The Haunted Ruins is an Eastern RPG with first-person Dungeon Crawler exploration.
In the game, you go down into the titular location in order to defeat the evil witch and restore the protective charm she broke, which allowed the monsters to pour out of the ruins and attack the nearby ruins.
It was made with Adobe Flash and can be found here
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This game provides examples of:
- Advanced Ancient Humans: Presumably, the makers of the haunted ruins, as said in the epilogue:[T]hese ruins are far beyond human control.
They are a legacy of an ancient civilization, long since destroyed by what they created.
Nature never changes.
Humans remain fools... - Alien Geometries: Sometimes floors have maps where you can enter the same room from two different entrances, and they are both dead ends.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Starting at one floor above the deepest floor you've seen instead of having to go down all the floors again, when you reenter the dungeon.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The Wizards did, into a Energy Being of Pure Thought.
- Bat Out of Hell: The Magic Bat enemy.
- The Blacksmith: You get ores from the Haunted Ruins and give them to the blacksmith in town to make swords and shields.
- Blob Monster: The Hornjellies of the first dungeon section, as they have the word "Jelly" in their names, and as described in the credits: "A slimeball with horns".
- But Thou Must!: Even saying "No" to refuse to enter the Haunted Ruins every time you're asked at the beginning of the game allows you to continue.
- Character Level: You defeat monsters to get Experience Points to level up and get better stats.
- Critical Hit: Noted by "Critical Hit!" and your attack dealing around twice as much damage.
- Death Is Cheap: When your Hit Points get damaged to 0, you get an "Everything goes dark..." and you reappear on the surface, having lost half your coins. When you go back into the Haunted Ruins, you start at 1 floor above the lowest floor you got to.
- Degraded Boss: A Steelworm is a boss in one of the first few levels, but it then becomes a common enemy in the third section or so.
- Dem Bones: In the fourth section of the dungeon, there's Skeletons wielding swords and shields.
- The End: The credits stop with a white text of "The End" and endless travel down a dungeon corridor of red walls and green ceiling and floors.
- Enemy Roll Call: At the end, there's a cast list of monsters, with descriptions, for example:
- Hornjelly: "A slimeball with horns"
- Evil Mouse: A ferocious little rodent
- Energy Being: What the Wizards are after their mass Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. They're made of Pure Thought.
- Escape Rope: The Spiderthread which returns you to town and saves at the same time.
- Experience Points: You get them from defeating monsters.
- Game Face: After you recover the dark orb, the shopkeeper will reveal that she's an evil witch and transform into a squidlike monster to serve as the final boss. Inverted if you refuse to hand over the orb, as she'll briefly turn back into her previous form/disguise to try and convince you.
- Golem: In the second section of the dungeon, there's Block Golems.
- Hit Points: For both enemies and the player character:
- For the player character, it's called HP, displayed in a fractional representation, of [Current HP] / [Maximum HP], and is the first thing on the first line of the left box in the bottom half of the screen.
- For the enemies, there's no indication of how much damage they can take, the number pops up after they are attacked, and either they make a move or die in a puff of smoke.
- Life Meter: It's yellow and measures HP, filling up with red from right to left as you lose HP. It's displayed at the bottom half of the screen.
- Mana: Called MP here, displayed in a fractional representation, of [Current MP] / [Maximum MP], and is the and is the first thing on the second line of the left box in the bottom half of the screen.
- Mana Meter: It's yellow and measures MP, filling up with red from right to left as you lose HP. It's displayed at the bottom half of the screen. It's below the Life Meter.
- Money Spider: Any defeated enemy gives you one coin, somehow.
- Mummy: The Mummer enemies in the fourth section of the dungeon may be mummies, as the rest of the section has undead enemies, like Skeletons and what is presumably decapitated zombies, called Decapito.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: When You level up, you get a refill of your HP and MP.
- No Body Left Behind: Defeated enemies pop, with a popping sound, and turns into a puff of white smoke that fades away.
- Our Dragons Are Different: They appear around Floor 29.
- Palette Swap: The different kinds of Hattercrabs: the normal kind, which have brown shells, the Red kind, with a red shell, and the Dead Hatters, which have grey shells, Paradise Crabs, which are turquoise.
- Percent-Based Values: From the manual given on the game's page:
- Meat: Restores 1/4 "HP."
- Magic Meat: Restores 1/4 "MP."
- The Recov spell: "Restores 1/2 "HP."
- The Boost spell: "Increases power of next attack by 3x."
- Poison: "When poisoned, you will lose 10% "HP" with each step."
- "When HP goes to zero, you lose half your money."
- The Place: The main place in the game is the Haunted Ruins, where you'll be spending most of your time fighting monsters.
- Pointy Ears: Multiple:
- The Witch that is the final enemy, has them.
- The speaker of the epilogue, presumably an elf, due to the ears.
- Pure Energy: The Wizards are humans that Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence into a Energy Being of pure thought.
- Save-Game Limits: You have one save file.
- Slow Transformation: The general shopkeeper slowly transforms from a seemingly innocent girl into an evil witch the deeper you venture into the dungeon. At first it looks like she just put on makeup, her hair grows longer, but then she gets Pointy Ears, her cashier uniform becomes a skimpy dress, and a tiara and pointy nose begin to gradually form on her. This transformation is mostly amusing to watch because of how she keeps on insisting that her changing appearance is all in your head and how you simply MUST show the fabled "Dark Orb" to her as soon as you find it, mmkay?
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The lower down the dungeon you go, the stronger the monsters are. The Big Bad has been disguised as the shopkeeper all along (or possibly been slowly corrupted somehow), but you still fight her last.
- Utility Weapon: At one point, a bomb is needed to break a wall to continue proceeding down the dungeon. It's not a special bomb, as they can be bought for a few coins at the shop outside the dungeon. But, the only explained use of bombs is as a weapon.
