Angeles Times. Interplay dedicated $1.5 million to the game's marketing budget, also the largest for any of its games by that point. In response to public reception of Stonekeeps pre-release demo, the company "stepped up the initial release forecast to 200,000 units". In the days before Stonekeeps release, Next Generation reported, "With store orders already topping 90,000, Interplay says it's set to become the fastest selling game in the company's 12-year history." Upon its release, the game placed fourth on PC Data's monthly computer game sales chart for November 1995, but was absent on the following month's chart. According to Interplay, its global sales surpassed 300,000 copies by June 1998. Author Erik Bethke later described Stonekeeps commercial performance as "weak", which he blamed on its five-year development cycle. Critical reviews A Next Generation critic deemed it "well worth the wait. The graphics are stunning, the music is eerie, and the interface is a pleasure to use." He made particular note of the automap, strong puzzle element, and original visual designs for the monsters. Maximum praised the game's "atmospheric 3D rendered world" and sound effects, but criticized the lack of challenging puzzles, low amount of gore, and "sluggish" combat. The editors of Computer Games Strategy Plus named Stonekeep the best computer role-playing game of 1995. Petra Schlunk of Computer Gaming World called Stonekeep "successful on many levels; both hard-core and newcomers to role-playing should enjoy this." She wrote that "a lot of thought and heart went into the game's design and production", and she singled out its writing, characters and storyline for praise. The game was later nominated for Computer Gaming Worlds 1995 Role-Playing Game of the Year award. The editors praised it as "a milestone in computer role-playing games", with "beautiful SGI rendered characters and fascinating story development", but noted that it was held back by bugs. It won the magazine's readers' choice award in its genre.PC Gamer USs Mike Wolf called it "a decent offering for roleplaying novices [... but] far from the magnum opus you'd expect". A review by Bernard Yee of GameSpot did not offer similar praises, concluding that "Stonekeep is a dated first-person RPG that suffers from a poor interface, little depth, and few frills." In Fusion, Arnie Katz called Stonekeep "a good antidote to the idiosyncratic complexities that pass for depth" among role-playing games, and praised its interface and audiovisual presentation. He summarized it as