The problem is simpler than it looks. You convert a rune value to an int value with int(r). But your code implies you want the integer value out of the ASCII (or UTF-8) representation of the digit, which you can trivially get with r - '0' as a rune, or int(r - '0') as an int. Be aware that out-of-range runes will corrupt that logic.
a := 'a' n := int(a-'0')