Rise to Ruins Review & Guide

Everything was going well. My four guards and eight towers easily put down the beaten remains of any zombie that managed to escape the holy golems I had used my god powers to summon. It was a good night. Then the Blood Moon came. And I watched my defense crumble like a sand castle standing up to 6-foot wave.

Rise to Ruins is real-time strategy village management sim that includes elements of survival, tower, and colony management with inspiration from games like Gnomoria, Banished, and Dwarf Fortress. While it’s also similar in some ways to They Are Billions, making any sort of strong comparison between the two games wouldn’t do either of them justice.

Then the Blood Moon came. And I watched my defense crumble like a sand castle standing up to 6-foot wave.

At its most basic level, Rise to Ruins is a base building colony sim. You start by building a city center and then expanding with lumbers mills, houses, water collectors, farms, barracks, and walls. There is a limit to how many building you can construct, so you have to balance expansion with upgrading what you have already built.

Many building can be upgraded multiple times, with each upgrade giving you extra bonuses. For example, the main village center can be upgraded 15 times.

But the game can also be much more than that. Taking the game off Sandbox mode into the more difficult modes like Survival is where the real challenge lies. And it’s also where you’ll why the is called Rise to Ruins.

The game doesn’t start off too easy either. In the first few days, you have to balance building perimeter walls and defense while also constructing the all the necessary facilities. If you focus too much on defenses and you might find your settlers dying of dehydration. Too little, and your village won’t last more than a few days. Even if you survive the first week or two, the number of enemies can get out of hand quite quickly.

One of the keys to surviving in this game is embracing the tower defense aspects. Use walls to build a long, winding gauntlet of towers and golems that the enemies have to pass through in order to reach your base.

One of the keys to surviving in this game is embracing the tower defense aspects. Use walls to build a long, winding gauntlet of towers and golems that the enemies have to pass through in order to reach your base. When you combine that with a few godly powers to drop meteors, cast lightning, summon holy golems, and heal friendlies – you’ve got yourself a pretty good shot at surviving. If you’re anything like me, the first few games will be fairly short. But once you get the hang of the game, you can really start to push the days.

If you prefer to focus more on building a thriving colony rather than defending yourself from zombies then switch over to Peaceful or even Sandbox mode. In Peaceful mode, the enemy spawn rate is much lower and you can focus on building and expanding your village instead.

Rise to Ruins Tips

1. There are 3 ways to increase the number of building slots: upgrading the village center, building ancilleries, upgrading ancilleries.
2. Reclaiming buildings requires fewer resources than building them from scratch.
3. Upgrading buildings (like houses and towers) is more effective than building new ones.
4. Build extra farms and food storage to survive the autumn and winter.
5. Monsters tend to follow the shortest free path to your base or tower. Use walls to create a winding path that zombies have to walk through to get into your base. (Specters can fly over walls entirely)
6. Use a variety of tower to capitalize on their various benefits
7. Click on enemies to view their vulnerabilities and then build your defense accordingly.
8. Outposts are the best building for expanding the range of your colony
9. Build a way maker early and assign a few workers. By building roads early, you can capitalize on the movement speed bonus.
10. Use your god powers to summon workers golems to help build faster.
11. You can grab nomads and bring them to your base
12. Corruption placement depends on where you place your starting camp.
13. Having extra housing and jobs will attract nomads to join your village.
14. Maximum influence is determined by the number of villagers you have
15. Each individual villagers had their own stats: strength, dexterity, intelligence.
16. There are 4 types of natural disasters: meteor showers, lightning strikes, earthquakes, and blight.
17. There are 6 types of golems:
    • Labor golem
    • Holy golem
    • Rock golem
    • Wood golem
    • Crystal golem
    • ourier golem
18. Use the grab tool to drop suspicious keys into locked chests and open them.