Rubinite is a dark fantasy boss rush where a knife-wielding princess dismantles monsters one weak point at a time

Rubinite, a dark fantasy boss rush action RPG from Gameworks Ventures and Cup Dog Games, is out now on Steam. You play Ruby, an outcast princess of a conquered Scarlet Kingdom, working her way through a gauntlet of increasingly nasty bosses to reach the sorceress who dethroned her.

Ruby's kitchen knife does minimal raw damage, so the core mechanic revolves around marking enemy weak points. Hold a trigger, aim with the analog stick, fill a bar up to three times, then unleash a devastating strike. You can't move while marking, but a perfectly timed dodge during the process fills the bar instantly — take a hit, though, and all your marks vanish. There's no block button, so reading animations is essential. As you progress, you unlock talismans that add options like stunning enemies or converting chip damage into health potions, and individual bosses introduce their own twists, including projectiles you can deflect back at them.

The weak-point system draws obvious comparisons to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's deathblow mechanic, and the pixel-art aesthetic and grotesque religious architecture will feel immediately familiar to Blasphemous fans. The hub between fights is a crumbling tower populated by a handful of NPCs — a lizard blacksmith for comic relief, a mysterious owl-helmeted warrior — and it grows as you clear bosses, with side rooms hiding loot. The writing leans into moral ambiguity early: one NPC sends you to deliver soup to a prisoner who immediately begs you to kill him.

The impressions above are based on the demo rather than the full release, so the combat's long-term depth remains to be seen. Rubinite is available now on Steam.