While it isn’t unusual for indie games to feature elements from more than one genre, most of the time you won’t see more than 2 being blended together at once. Certainly adding more variety of the game’s overall mix can make things more exciting potentially, but typically when you see developers going with the “kitchen sink” approach with too many elements, the experience ends up being a muddled mess. That makes it all the more surprising and exciting when there are examples like Into the Restless Ruins, where the combination actually works, resulting in gameplay that’s both fresh and familiar.

While the Switch is absolutely inundated with deckbuilding strategy titles, none of them tackle it quite this way. Somewhat playing the part of a dungeon master, your goal will be to use your limited number of room cards to try to create pathways to smoke-covered areas, hoping to find seals that will be needed to clear your current dungeon. Depending on what you’ve drawn, and how the overall space is configured, this can present some challenges just getting connected, but you’ll quickly realize that there’s at least one other dimension you need to concern yourself with. Simply being able to get to the seals is really only a portion of the battle, as once you’ve expended your build points for the round you’ll then need to take control of an adventurer who’ll need to survive the journey out into what quickly becomes your maze-like network of interconnected rooms. You’ll absolutely want certain perks like health regeneration, added fuel for your torch, or weapon upgrades somewhere along your journey or you may end up getting overwhelmed.

What’s great is that the game actually does a good job of getting you up to speed with how everything works in the initial tutorial dungeon, being sure to take some care to properly explain concepts and then have you play them out. So many titles have been doing a poor job of getting players on board, and with so many elements to take into consideration, the help is absolutely vital in a game like this. Another pleasant surprise is that even though the level of complexity in combat isn’t nearly as high as the likes of Vampire Survivors, it has that same sort of feel in how it plays out. Being sure to lead your enemies in certain ways, moving away when you’re being overwhelmed, and making great use of the space you have to work with absolutely will reward you with more success, rather than allowing the combat to be plain and one-dimensional.

Once you throw in new cards to collect, methods of adding and removing perks to your runs in order to better match your level of skill, and ways to enhance your deck in various ways, the game further helps to make itself stand out. Especially when combining so many styles of play at once, it isn’t unusual to see the skill floor continuing to get higher and higher, often alienating less experienced players. While there’s quite a lot to absorb and understand, it really feels like this is a title that has gone the extra mile to implement complexity without that being at the expense of accessibility. If you’re looking for something that simply plays differently, this is a great option to have on the Switch eShop.