Tue Jan 20 2026
- Added art jam trophy #13.
- Player movement system has been reworked for greater flexibility.
- Fixed bugs.
See details here: https://stonestoryrpg.com/releasenotes
Stone Story RPG is a triumph of 'less is more.' Seeing a fully realized dark fantasy world rendered entirely in ASCII characters is a breath of fresh air in an era of hyper-realistic graphics. But the real genius is StoneScript. It turns what could have been a simple idle game into a programmer's playground.
I spent hours just tweaking my scripts to swap from a fire sword to a shield the millisecond an enemy started its attack animation. It’s incredibly satisfying to watch your hero clear a boss you previously struggled with, knowing it was your 'code' that made the difference. Even if you never touch the scripting, the atmosphere and the loot loop are enough to keep you hooked for dozens of hours.
Stunning ASCII-animated art style
Deep StoneScript automation system
8 unique locations with epic bosses
Complex crafting and fusion mechanics
Watch the enemies' behavior patterns. Tap the screen to swap weapons and shields in real-time. Use elemental advantages to break through defenses and harvest resources for the crafting bench.
Unlock the mind-stone to access StoneScript. Write simple 'if/then' logic to make your hero automatically use potions when health is low or switch weapons based on the enemy type. This allows for efficient 'farming' of difficult zones.
No. Coding is entirely optional. You can play through the whole story by manually managing your equipment.
This game stands out as the .01% among the rest of the trash we see in the App Store these days. This game was clearly designed by someone who was not after a quick buck, and wanted to make a fun engaging experience. I was cautious when I saw “in app purchases” but playing the game I literally could not find a place where it would let me spend my money for the first few hours, then once I opened up an in game store a few hours in, there were a few purchases for buffs in the game, but nothing that seemed overly necessary, nor was it thrown in your face like many other games do. You see a similar thing with ads, where I have yet to see a forced ad, and only started getting the option for buffs at the cost of ads around the same time. It’s a shame I had to lead with that as there is so many other great things about the game. First the art style is amazingly realized, the music and ambient sounds equally lending the same experience. I think how equipment is handled is not perfect, but it is not terrible either, just a little wonky. Love the story telling and the characters you meet along the way. The sending a character on a small mission and letting him do the mission while managing his inventory/ health is a very fun approach here, I don’t think I would have liked the game so much if I was controlling every movement and attack of my character. The person who designed this game really new what they were doing and it shows.
This game is great. It’s fun, and no Wi-Fi needed. My only problem is with the games glitches. 1. When I stay in the upgrade items and upgrade, it just randomly freezes a lot. There’s an animation then you combine things and that when it freezes the most. It also happens when I try to fuse the same item together. Sometimes it freezes and doesn’t unfreeze so I have to reboot the game. 2. When I am fighting the big spider, and I switch to my bariche, it turns into a sword and shield, or other random sword combinations and I end up dying. I don’t have any of these combinations in my tool belt thing so I have no idea why it’s happening. It doesn’t happen with any other weapons too, so I am really confused. Maybe it’s because I am using a really high level weapon in a low level area but idk. I hold my bariche and sometime it immediately turns into sword and shield, other times it stays as a bariche until I fight the spider boss enemy, and sometimes it’s just in the middle of fighting the spider. These are minor problems but I grind on the spider place a lot and almost 60% of the time I am in the upgrading place. There’s also points where it’s just too hard to progress and I find myself grinding a lot and upstaging my weapons a lot.
Literally my ONLY complaint about this game, and the only thing holding it back from 5 stars imo is the inventory system in both the bag and workstation. PLEASE add an inventory filtering/management system. Progression is tied directly to upgrading items, and it’s extremely difficult to keep track of the items you want to keep with no functional organization, and extremely tedious to sort through your entire inventory every time you want to upgrade your items. I’ve only just started the icy ridge area and it’s already to the point that I don’t want to bother. I genuinely enjoy playing the game, but I’m finding I want to play less and less every time I open it and spend 20-25 minutes sorting through my inventory for that one item I want to upgrade and it’s dupes. It makes an integral aspect of the gameplay…entirely boring. If I could sort by star level, enchantment type and weapon type, and maybe a way to lock items I’d like to save(at minimum, but I’m a sucker for complex inventory systems)I’d definitely both enjoy the game more and be more motivated to play. Aside from that, this is easily one of the most creative and fun mobile games I’ve ever played(and as an added bonus ads are hardly present and not an essential part of progression or gameplay)I hope to see more content like Stone Story in the future. Keep up the good work Devs!
So I’ve made a good bit of progress into the game as of right now and it’s got a beautiful display of art work and story. The things I like about this game could go on forever but most of it is just because of my favorite style of game. One of the major things I like about this game tho is that it’s not a pay to win game, sure you could spend money to get some loot that you could literally get if you just played the game for a couple days but that’s not that bad. I went through and looked at some of the reviews and I would just like to say that the ads are optional and don’t provide that much of bonuses if you do. The only forced ad actually helps you a ton when it comes to time. I’m not gonna spoil any of the game but it’s definitely something I reccommend everyone to try. In terms of bugs/ glitches I haven’t run into any but one issue and it’s only happened one time and that’s when the screen doesn’t follow the character it wasn’t that rough as I could’ve done the place anyway but later on when it needs your attention it’s just not very good All in all tho an amazing game solid 10/10 in my opinion
today’s mobile game industry is filled with extremely low effort games with tons of forced ads that lie about other low effort games that are exactly the same so the developer can make a quick buck, this game stands out, not only is it clear just by the game’s amazing style that it very clearly took a long time to make, the fact that literally everything in the game is made out of Unicode characters is amazing for instance the symbol for the fire element is the Greek letter phi Φ, it’s a super unique style that I’ve never seen in a game before, along with its amazing style the game is fun, plus there is not a single forced ad, you can watch one or two here and there for extra stuff but if you don’t want to you won’t watch a single ad. If you are still on the fence about this game just try it, I will say it does take between 30-45min to get to the real rpg part of the game but it’s extremely fun once you get there. Seriously though give this game a try, if you like it then keep playing it, if you don’t well no harm done just uninstall it.
Haven’t played this yet? Well you definitely should. What makes this game amazing is it’s an interactive idle game. You collect loot and what not, but the best part is it’s scripting language. You can script without any major programming knowledge, and have the game play itself; and you still play a major role in how the game plays itself! The major drawback to this game, however, is how long it takes to open chests. Once you get to complete a zone, you get a chest, and that chest will contain loot which you can break down or infuse to make better gear, but eventually you will amass like 300 chests in some amount of hours ABs will have to sit there waiting for like 5 minutes for them all to open; and then you also get gear that’s much better broken down, so you have to wait like another five minutes for everything to break down into core components. I just really wish there was a way to shorten the amount of time spent opening chests and breaking down items, it just becomes such a slog with leveling up meaning that your hauls are bigger but also you spend even more time doing nothing but opening chests.
With all the cash grabby, ad farmy, stale gameplay loop games out rn for mobile, this is the mona lisa in comparison. The ads and micro transactions dont feel necessary, and I almost never spend money on mobile games but I’ve considered some of the premium weapons not because they feel necessary but because I feel like this game could easily cost a couple bucks but its free. As some others mentioned there are some bugs but I think I saw somewhere that its early access so I wouldn’t really complain about that. I will mention the ones Ive run into just incase the devs see this and want to fix them: sometimes the screen on the level doesn’t move when the character does and I cant see what’s happening. Sometimes the upgrade/merge thing doesn’t always display everything properly Other than those things its really fun and you should try it. Good gameplay, cool story, and its probably the best free game ive found on the app store
This game is amazing because most games are boring and just clicking games or idle games, but this is different, it’s an amazing story telling game with lots of descriptive words that help you imagine everything while still giving you visuals. This game is different from the rest though, because I’m pretty sure the developers and the other people who have worked on this game only used characters from our keyboards! But don’t let this stop you from playing the game because it is really amazing and, just because there are no colors doesn’t mean it’s bad. Please just get the game and see how amazing this game is before you have to pay to play this game! Lastly they spent over 7+ years to make this so let’s be happy they didn’t sell it for 10- 20 dollars (even though it probably should be more because of how good this is). Thank you devs for making this game.









Stone Story RPG begins with the birth of a singular “o”, blinking ceaselessly at the centre of a pitch black screen.
Rock Paper Shotgun Sat Apr 11 2020
Stone Story RPG is built entirely in ASCII characters, largely black and white with occasional flashes of color.
PC Gamer Sat Apr 11 2020
A recap of the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards 2020 with a focus on nominees, finalists, and the winners.
Shacknews Wed Nov 11 2020
Sorting through every new game on Steam so you don't have to.
PC Gamer Sat Apr 11 2020