Runeomicon: you draw runes by hand while peasants break down your door

You are a dark wizard performing a ritual of vengeance. Angry peasants are storming your sanctuary to stop you.

Your defence is drawing properly.

The action, which is the whole game

You trace runes in precise patterns while chaos erupts around you.

The studio's phrasing captures the intended sensation perfectly: the runes are simple to learn and nearly impossible to perfect under pressure. Break the pattern and the rune fails. Lose control and your defences begin to crumble.

I like that idea a great deal, because it shifts the skill being asked for. It is neither puzzle-solving nor clicking speed: it is precision of gesture under stress, which is rarely a game's subject.

And the game raises the demand in both directions: as your power grows, the runes become more complex, so your margin for error shrinks exactly as the pressure rises.

The loop

Three verbs structure a run.

Draw, under pressure, every line channelling power.

Defend, by unleashing magic, summoning creatures and holding the line against waves.

Summon, once you have gathered enough power. Six dark entities are available, each unlocking spells and abilities that seriously reshape your strategy.

On top sits branching progression to fortify your defences, unlock skills and draw faster and more accurately as mastery takes hold.

What to know

The game launches today, developed by TLR Games and published by Joystick Ventures, with no price or reviews as I write. It is single-player.

My reservation concerns the input. A game built entirely on precise strokes lives or dies on the quality of its gesture recognition and on the device you use. With a mouse, drawing a complex shape under pressure is not the same as with a stylus or a trackpad. That is the first thing I would check before buying.

What I do like is the coherence between theme and mechanic. A ritual failing because your hand shook is exactly what the game is about. Few defence games manage to align what you do and what you are playing this well.

How far into the ritual did your rune fail? We compare humiliations on the InsertCoins Discord.