SimCity™ 4 Deluxe Edition

SimCity™ 4 Deluxe Edition

Ever thought you could make a better city? Pah, I could be a better Mayor; well now you can! SimCity 4 is just that and offers this opportunity and lets you sit in the chair titled “mayor”. I’ve definitely clocked up more hours in the days I installed this on ME and XP.

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition is another one of those games that has been created by EA… EA? Not again you say - except this time.. EA has really created a game and has polished it up to its standards. SC4 is one of the older prequels to ‘Societies’ and the 2013 SimCity relaunch; released after Sim City 3000, it showed off superb graphic capabilities at the time and invented new ways to enjoy building a simulated city, where you play as the city’s major, managing the: finances, housing stock, roads, ports, resident satisfaction, transit, and employment.

Real player with 567.8 hrs in game


Read More: Best Addictive Strategy Games.


Ah, SimCity 4, the best, in my opinion, of all of the SimCity games. The graphics are dated, being that this was released around fifteen years ago, but don’t let that deter you. Play times depend on how much you enjoy city building games. I myself have spent 2-4 hours today playing it.

The U-Drive-It mode is pretty cool, as it lets you drive through your transportation system with a variety of vehicles, but can get annoying over time with the other cars.

The regions are a nice addition, as you can have cities depend on each other, plus some of the regions come in the shape of several real-life cities, albeit with no structures. In the same vein, importing and exporting cities & regions are useful. If you have a sprawling metropolis and want to share it with the world, you can! Have a police state with stations on every corner? You now can show it to your friends and family!

Real player with 325.6 hrs in game

SimCity™ 4 Deluxe Edition on Steam

ISLANDERS

ISLANDERS

Islanders Review

This adventure never ends!

Some key points that this game offers:

  1. Procedural Generation; the fun never ends!

  2. Two gameplay modes

  3. Indie Gem 5/5

Gameplay & Controls:

The game is played with your keyboard and mouse; the layout and keys are pretty simplistic. This is in no way whatsoever a bad thing! This is simply a minimalistic game that doesn’t require much to offer you hours of joy.

You start the game on one island, choosing between two build packs. Once chosen it is up to you to determine where to place your buildings. Depending on the position that you build, you will receive a score for each placed building. There are several factors that multiply the score; it can either be increased or receive a loss. It comes down to some strategic thinking.

Real player with 122.9 hrs in game


Read More: Best Addictive Strategy Games.


THE ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARY…

Islanders is a simple yet sophisticated city builder that is both incredibly relaxing and delightfully addictive—and a VERY worthy addition to your game library!

[➕] THE POSITIVES

  • The ART STYLE. The game makes the absolute most of its colors and shapes to provide a minimalistic setting where you can build and grow your idyllic island city. Everything is themed to “fit” together—from the sprawling farmlands to the Tetris-like cities and manufacturing areas—and ultimately results in an island-scape that feels like your own, personal creation!

Real player with 73.9 hrs in game

ISLANDERS on Steam

Triple Town

Triple Town

“Triple Town” is a unique Match 3 game where you build as big a colony town as possible by matching three or more objects. These objects can evolve into others by making appropriate matches (e.g. three Grasses make a Bush, three Bushes make a Tree…three Trees make a Hut…and there’s more after that! ;-D). Matching more than three items, or mathcing certain high-end items will gift you different goodies that improve your score or other parts of the game! What you’re given to place each time is random, but you can place these objects in any free space you want (with the objects melding where you place the last item in the cluster), so there’s more strategy involved than the average Match 3.

Real player with 101.3 hrs in game


Read More: Best Addictive Strategy Games.


Triple Town is a game I’ve gotten a lot of value and fun out of, so the short answer is: yes, I would recommend this game.

There is something oddly addictive and yet very relaxing about playing this game. It is simple match three turn-based game, but the last item you place becomes the next tier up. So three bushes = 1 tree, 3 trees = 1 house, so on and so forth. It becomes a game about managing the precious space you have, and there is something very satisfactory and rewarding about putting in that one last piece and watching your board transform into a new thing you haven’t seen before.

Real player with 85.8 hrs in game

Triple Town on Steam

OIL PATCH SIMULATIONS

OIL PATCH SIMULATIONS

i have been playing the game for several months now. there are no problems with this game. everything works properly. technical support is outstanding. i had a problem starting the game because of my system setup is unique and the game itself gives you info on how to contact support. an impressive first for me. the game tells you what is wrong with it and how to fix it. nice. simple fix takes seconds just enter a special code and it fixes itself to work on my system. never heard of that before. top notch game support.

Real player with 68.2 hrs in game

so it says to purge drill rigs to relocate and various other commands that do not have options associated with them. how exactly does this work? do i write my own script to implement these dynamics that supposedly exist or do i just accept the fact that the game is not only broken but not even complete?

Real player with 1.5 hrs in game

OIL PATCH SIMULATIONS on Steam

5 Star Miami Resort

5 Star Miami Resort

I was a beta tester for this game. I enjoyed it then. The puzzles are challenging but not so much as to cause frustrations. I ended up going back and I’m currently playing the game again to get all the achievements which didn’t all transfer over from the beta.

This is another solid match 3 from RokaPlay. I enjoy it much more than like Hawaii Resort, for example. If you are a match 3 aficionado, I’d certainly recommend trying this. It has cute graphics and nice ambient sound effects. It’s what you’ve come to expect from Roka if you’ve consistently played their games.

Real player with 67.3 hrs in game

Another solid effort. Fun match 3 game. Not timed, rather you are restricted by number of moves. Cute artwork, funny dialogue.

Real player with 34.8 hrs in game

5 Star Miami Resort on Steam

Realm Grinder

Realm Grinder

I should probably begin by saying I have a weakness for idle games. The allure of always progressing and the goal of that next unlockable is appealing to me. I can’t describe properly why that’s the case. I’ve played many idle games. Clicker heroes, adventure capitalist, soda dungeon, the cookie game, time clickers and more.

Realm Grinder is the best by an absolute mile.

Does it do anything different to the other games listed? Not really, no. You’re still clicking on things to make things happen until you reach a point of allowing the game to be self sufficient and left alone until you want to update it and get bigger numbers. What Realm Grinder does differently to the other games is include a gigantic amount of depth. You’re not simply trying to reach the biggest possible numbers. Instead you are trying to reach goal after goal after goal. And everytime you think you’ve reached the limit, the game adds even more goals.

Real player with 7647.8 hrs in game

TLDR: If you like clickers that are more strategic and have lots of complexities to them, this is one for you. If you just like to click and not think about it, maybe give it a pass.

I decided to play this game after reading a negative feedback comment because it accurately described the game. I like my idle clickers that have times when you need to be active and other times when you can just leave it alone for a while. This does describe Realm Grinder.

You start the game with the basics and as you move on more dimensions of the game come into play. Each of these new additions adds to the complexity and forces you to be more strategic with your game play. Now, you can do this all on your own and figure it out by trial and error, or you can read the forums on Kongregate or the website http://musicfamily.org/realm/ which is entirely devoted to the game. There’s a plethora of information out there about all the different stages of the game, what to do when, and how to do it most effectively.

Real player with 5861.1 hrs in game

Realm Grinder on Steam

Gnomoria

Gnomoria

You can literally play for 2000 hours (yes 2000) hours of this game, over a year and a half, and not get bored of it. It’s that good. You can create limitless amounts of new kingdoms with each new game, set difficulties, peaceful or not, metal/gem/coal resource abundance etc. There is much more than meets the eye of simple gfx and sound. After a while you figure out that if you want to build a stone temple, you have to dig a hole down and get stone, turn it into stone blocks (with workshops for each type of thing) and craft the blocks and tell the gnomes where to build. It’s total freedom but with that comes the complexity of running your own little kingdom. Are you up to the challenge? It’s like simcity or warcraft meets minecraft. For those that don’t like FPS games or need a break from them, this is a great break. Actually… it is more like a black hole from which you won’t want to escape. It is that fun. Oh, and development is constant. No fears as with some in-development games… the dev is at the ready and giving many new features on a consistent basis. Don’t starve, die of thirst, or get killed by bears, or anything that spawns below level -7 (that is where monsters can spawn, at level -8 and below). Monsters also spawn on the surface but they are usually wild animals only. Occasionally, depending on difficulty you get goblin raids (not too rough at first, again depends on your settings), but after a while they can get pretty tough. You will have to grow your own food, or forage from the naturally occuring fruit trees, or clip and plant some more of your own to make sure you always have plenty of spare food.

Real player with 2886.4 hrs in game

Difficult review. The game’s definitely a mixed bag, with some fairly serious and annoying issues, but at the same a time, a lot of them are quite easy to resolve and I’ve somehow played hundreds of hours so … it did something right?

While not one of the many early access scams like “Towns”, “Timber and Stone” or “Spacebase DF-9”, Gnomoria’s 1.0 release was definitely disappointing.

The game was released feature complete, however it lacks polish and some of the leftover bugs are potentially gamebreaking. (although the 2 most common ones have a very simple solution, more later)

Real player with 542.8 hrs in game

Gnomoria on Steam

Life is Hard

Life is Hard

This game is, for me, very very addicting. I’m having an absolute blast with it, and am disappointed only with the fact that it is early access and there isn’t more to do/some issues with the game.

Some of said issues are as such:

The Nord Archers are able to outrange my archers even though they are in a tower (causing the tower to be destroyed and the soldiers to die)

The game doesn’t have much helping in terms of dealing with some of the random situations (one being the crops of your farms getting sick and not growing. I figured out I could destroy and rebuild the farm, but this doesn’t feel right, and granted there may be an actual way you can fix without destroying and rebuilding, but if the tutorial says so then I wasn’t able to know due to my tutorial seemingly starting when I say yes)

Real player with 26.7 hrs in game

This game is Kinda fun? Idk. Here’s my major issue with this game - I honestly don’t even have that much to complain about with the bugs….of which there are many. Getting stuck on menu screens. Having the game crash. Having enemies get stuck on enemies, having workers get stuck in loops. Having my hero charge into hordes of enemies even though I told him 100 times to get well behind the wall so he wouldn’t be tempted. Having the mercenaries get stuck beating the ever living shit out of a dead bear because my contract ended as they were killing it. Having buildings I destroyed never disappear. Etc Etc etc. But all of that would be fine if there wasn’t a literal infinite spawn of enemies. This feels worse than Call of Duty, because at least in COD once you find the correct path and rush forward the enemies stop spawning. This is just an endless nightmare. I currently have 7 fully decked out soldiers trying to take down the village to the East “Which I guess is North, because it tells me to destroy the village to the north”. I have so much faith and I’m spamming damage and healing spells. I have the death knight so I should be pretty F-ing powerful. But Whenever I’m in the Nordic village, which feels like it goes on forever. I’ve destroyed 2 massive towers and at least half a dozen buildings. But anytime I get to far the enemies just infinitely spawn. It will spawn couple archers, a couple weak soldiers and a strong soldier. Just non-stop. I kill them and they’re already popping back up. Why the hell do I have a limited population. But the Nords are backed by the full force of China’s population, all armed and trained. It’s not fun, it’s tedious. I just want to wipe them out for wronging me. That is clearly meant to be an option. I can kill their buildings, but it has absolutely no impact on this endless horde of zombies slowly marching ever westward and chipping away at my forces bit by bit.

Real player with 7.4 hrs in game

Life is Hard on Steam

Godus

Godus

it’s 2 years later and essentially nothing has changed… key personel in the company that were working on the game left because their contracts were not renewed, and insider whispers are that nobody is working on it anymore… the company denies that, yet nothing has been added or changed. Instead, they started making yet another microtransaction laden game for IOS, which, not only tries to push you to spend real money, but also has an obnoxious character that gets in your way frequently to try to get you to watch advertisements. 22cans… you are dead to me!

Real player with 482.4 hrs in game

GODUS Beta 2.1 Review Update August 2014

8 months after my first Review of this game, I have given Godus another 20 hours of game play in the latest 2.1 Patch.

The worst parts of the old Godus Alpha have been fully realised, Godus 2.1 is now an iOS game and the freemium model mechanics are fully in place.

After 20 hours in the 2.1 build I can say that there is no game here, just a count down mechanic, followed by a countdown mechanic, everything else you do in Godus leads you to a bigger countdown.

Real player with 144.3 hrs in game

Godus on Steam

Sid Meier’s Civilization® III Complete

Sid Meier’s Civilization® III Complete

Here’s what I think of this game, I’ll compare it to Civ 5 since most people consider that to be the best Civ game.

Music: Both Civ 5 and Civ III have fantastic soundtracks as with pretty much all Civ games. CIV 5’s soundtrack is better, but that doesn’t mean this soundtrack isn’t worth listening to.

Diplomacy: The diplomacy here in Civ III, in my opinion is better. You can trade maps technologies, change how agressive the AI is. The AI does get quite a bit agressive once you get to medium agressiveness although.

Real player with 328.3 hrs in game

I will start this review in two seperate forms, one for interested newcomers and then the Old Guard.

I will list off the pros first before the cons of this game, Civilization 3 is a different twist of the game than you may be familar with 4 and 5. Go in understanding this switch:

-Its an old game, if you can run the actual game, there should be no real issues.

-Graphically, it’s a sound experience and not many real issues, the modding community can find you bug fixes or new skins. Its pleasing regardless and you won’t really be let down by this game.

Real player with 325.2 hrs in game

Sid Meier's Civilization® III Complete on Steam