Rune Coliseum

There's a reason why recent reviews are mostly negative. The update on 7/19/2026 completely changed how the game plays. It was a dynamic roguelite deckbuilder with interesting unlocks, now it's a confusing card battle management sim. The original game's metaprogression permanently unlocked unique heroes with fun gear builds, and runs provided varied upgrades building up to challenging boss fights. In the new game you buy disposable slaves (that die or retire), give them disposable gear (that breaks via durability), manage them via numerous unlockable buildings, guide them through confusing combat, give them inconsequential upgrades between fights, and emerge with unpredictable rewards, all while time passes and seasons change. And none of it is clearly explained. The worst part is the old game was solid and easy enough to understand despite needing some polish. But now gladiators and gear and runs have been downgraded while a questionable management layer has been added, accompanied by a rough, unhelpful UI. 8.5 months passed without game updates before this latest release, and I'm pretty bummed about how things turned out.

Honestly playing this game as it is, feels frustrating. Tooltips are not really helpful in English. UI is jarring which is also mostly related to how the English text is squeezed into the boxes, tooltips etc. One of the main gimmicks of the game (attack preview) does not work properly; attacks that should hit, do not connect and the ones that shouldn't, do. During clashes the result might as well be random. I got damaged so many times when my block had the higher strength by a big power gap, same thing happens with dodge moves. Tbh game was in a better condition combat-wise before the big rework. At least combat preview was more reliable and the whole block- dodge power(clashing in general) was more consistent. Considering the amount of stats you have and the affect of each stat point you add, the Stat growth and stat points gained for distribution for your gladiator is so minor it feels like the game is taunting you. I like that they added a whole management aspect to the game it shows potential but this rework broke more things than it fixed. In its' current state, I can't recommend buying it.

New update is a disaster. The devs were far from optimizing the previous version (which was a straight-forward rogue-like with a pretty cool combat mechanic) and decided "hey how about we turn this into a whole different game"? I really like the core idea of this game but I am afraid it will never reach 1.0. Ps.: you kinda have to guess what each skill does, game does a terrible job with information.

It's hard to imagine that the confusing UI (which is dark and ugly) hasn't been updated for so long without any changes.

This game has a ton of potential, but before the dev goes any further they really need to overhaul the UX and interface to make everything more understandable. Also, clean up all the translation errors. The random asian text makes an already abstruse experience even worse. BUT, I still really like what I see, it just needs some polishing.

LOVE THIS GAME WAS GREAT BEFORE UPDATE SO MUXCH BETTER NOW