![lost ruins weapons lost ruins weapons](https://pressakey.com/gamepix/6871/Lost-Ruins-243639.jpg)
Somehow, though, Lost Ruins managed to evoke that same desire to progress in me despite its lack of focus on the narrative. Personally, I generally prefer when games have a little bit more going on in the narrative department as it makes it easier for me to motivate myself to see the experience through to the end. That’s pretty much the extent of the overarching mystery, although there are small bits of lore scattered around the environment that add a small bit of flavor and context as to what might be happening in this strange place. From there, you’re tasked with finding and eliminating the followers of the Dark Lady who supposedly runs the place. The game’s unnamed heroine finds herself mysteriously transported to another world – with zero memories, of course – and is told by a mysterious being named Beatrice that many others have been summoned to this strange place before her, but none have been able to escape. Lost Ruins does have a story to tell – although it mostly exists in the background and is little more than an impetus to explore and fight some bosses – at least until the very end. It’s also a very high-stakes game – this is a world containing finite resources to help keep you alive, so exploration is both necessary and very dangerous. But the more I played through Lost Ruins, the more I began to appreciate the way in which it takes that classic game structure and melds it with new ideas, namely a very deep and challenging combat system that allows for a surprising selection of options to dispatch foes. There’s a high probability that players will notice a game like Lost Ruins and think to themselves, “that looks like something I’ve played before.” And that’s fair – there have been no shortage of nonlinear, side-scrolling action platformers with a pixel art aesthetic in recent years.