DaRmaZat After six long years in the workshop of solo developer Brad Warren at Magic Puncher Games, Sunken Realms has finally made its way to Steam. Instead of chasing open-world trends, this indie project pares things down to a straightforward rogue-lite ARPG loop set inside a cursed underground city.
Playing as Alric, your quest is to venture into a dark dungeon called Aedaria, filled with orcs and other monsters, in search of the spirit of the father you never knew. Before stepping into the dungeon, you meet an old merchant camping nearby who offers to help you out, as long as you buy and sell things from him every now and then. He also gives you a glowing wisp named Glis, who helps you find keys and lets you revive. This setup combines a roguelike with an extraction fighter, and healing potions are definitely not handed out freely.
Each descent takes you into the same ruins, though the rooms are randomly generated. You battle enemies, gather gold, and loot whatever you can before deciding whether to head back to camp or push deeper. Returning to your campsite allows you to spend your gold, cook extra food for healing, rest to restore your health, and upgrade your abilities. However, choosing to push deeper into the dungeon comes with the risk of losing everything and having to start over.
The ruins themselves form an intriguing labyrinth filled with dark, carpet-covered corridors, scaffolding, staircases, and knight’s chambers. There are also pits that require you to get a running start before jumping across them. Luckily, a handy mini-map tracks where you are and where you have already explored. After clearing the enemies in the first section, you gain access to a treasure chamber and face a choice: extract to take your earned gold and items back to camp and use them to improve your skills, spells, and weapons, or use a key to unlock the boss door if you managed to find it. The boss door doesn’t actually take you straight to a level boss, though. Instead, it leads to another section where you first have to clear waves of enemies. After finally defeating the boss, you move on to the next stage, with six stages in total. Each boss drops Aedarian Essence, which allows you to teleport to the entrance after dying and skip that boss section on your next run.
Enemy encounters present a mixed bag. Orcs with swords and bows, wolves, spiders, and aggressive rats attack on sight, often in large groups. Over time, the variety within the same level section starts to wear thin, making progression essential to keep things from becoming monotonous. Enemy behavior also feels rough around the edges: foes routinely clip through walls and hop over obstacles several meters high as if bouncing on springs. It looks clunky and unpolished, especially considering the combat itself isn’t particularly complex. The stamina system also feels pretty brutal. Your stamina bar must refill completely before you can initiate another attack, so you can’t use the stamina you’ve already recovered while the rest of the bar is still recharging.
Despite these quirks, your moveset provides useful combat tools from the start. You can block incoming strikes with a shield, deliver a solid kick to your attackers, or perform a spinning sword slash to strike surrounding enemies. Movement across standard terrain feels smooth, though certain animations lack polish. Climbing in particular causes issues, as your character frequently ends up floating about a meter above the ground during the animation.
There are very few graphical settings, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend running the game on Ultra. High is the better choice, as the game is poorly optimized and unnecessarily heavy on system resources. Turning down Unreal Engine’s global illumination and reflection settings, which do make the game look considerably better, was necessary on my end because otherwise performance suffered badly and the FPS would drop massively. With those settings turned down, the game generally runs smoothly, with the occasional stutter. The bigger problem is the absolutely inconsistent load times. Sometimes sections load in quickly, while other times you’re left staring at a loading screen for more than a minute. The game definitely still needs some optimization here.
As for the cutscenes and facial animations, they aren’t bad for a solo project. There is still a bit of an uncanny feeling at times, as mouths and hands can move strangely, although other moments work quite well. The voice acting is good, and the interactions between the merchant and Alric have a believable charm to them. The music is another highlight, with a strong Elder Scrolls feel, not just because of its melodies, but also because of the ominous music that kicks in when enemies are nearby.
When it comes to controls, controller support is still only half-working, and the game is clearly designed to be played the classic way with mouse and keyboard. Strangely, you can’t remap the directional controls, meaning there is no proper support for AZERTY keyboards. You’ll have to switch Windows itself to QWERTY instead, unfortunately.
Final Thoughts
Sunken Realms is a pretty basic but accessible roguelike extraction ARPG, with much of its charm coming from the music and the Oblivion-like atmosphere the dungeon has to offer when you’re making progress. The clunky animations during traversal and combat can be annoying, but what bothered me most was the game’s unoptimized state, especially when it comes to load times, controller and keyboard controls, and the lack of more granular graphical settings. However, with some more polish, this could turn into an OK game, because the nostalgia is definitely there.
Additional Information
Release Date: September 18, 2026
Reviewed On: PC. Download code provided by the publisher and PR agency.
Developer: Magic Puncher Games
Publisher: Magic Puncher Games
Relevant Links: Available on STEAM
