Raiders! Forsaken Earth
IN A WORD: MAYBE
IN A NUTSHELL:
WHAT TO EXPECT: Be the villain. Sandbox generated world. Mixes strategy with management. Turn-based, side-on combat with many tactical options. Post-apocalyptic setting. Lots of raider and some base customisation. Large array of inventory. Item crafting. Artillery, siege engine and landsail craft. Slaves and cannibal options. Seed generated world maps. Alot of micro-management. Optional endgame scenarios or endless mode. Singleplayer only. Currently supported by dev.
– Real player with 63.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Base Building Sandbox Games.
Can I recommend this game? Boy, that’s a doozey. If the game was $60, hell no. At its current price? Totally.
Basics of the game is, you start off with pretty much nothing. You got some raiders with you and they are bottom of the barrel. Its ok though because the way you level up is by fighting. There are, I believe, respawning caravans with really low level mobs that at first is a little bit of a challenge but after some levels and better armor, maybe weapons too, you can pretty much take on the whole wasteland. Your raiders quickly receive a message saying that Wasteland’s Rangers are coming in 120 days. I’m not kidding, they are pretty much the Wasteland game franchises Rangers. For some reason, after playing w2 and just devastating all the raiders, my head-canon really enjoyed being that ONE GROUP that won lol.
– Real player with 24.8 hrs in game
Astrobase Command
Salvage the remnants of your civilization by starting anew in uncharted space, with a small crew and the beginnings of an Astrobase. Grow your base by constructing modules on all three axes, put out fires both literal and metaphorical, and send characters with real personalities and emotions on non-linear text-based adventures across a procedural galaxy.
The only mode is ironman and every section, module, deck and crew member added to your Astrobase comes with implicit risks and reward, so choices matter. How long can you keep from succumbing to the dangers of space?
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Grow - Expand your Astrobase in all three directions.
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Nurture - Build a home for your crew and their daily lives
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Design - Layout the Astrobase to counter crises such conduit leaks, compartment failures, explosions, fires, personnel issues, and more
The Astrobase can be constructed along three axes. Your crew can expand the base by building modules or contract it by salvaging them. They can add or remove functionality by building up or tearing down sections in the modules. They can even build ships that lets you explore the galaxy.
You choose what to build and when to build it. The crew needs to rest and they need to breathe, do you rush the construction of the Enlisted Quarters or the Air Pump first? What’s the optimal placement of the new module? Is it better to have the Plasma Reactor closer to storage or to the crew’s quarters? Keep the station well maintained and stocked with supplies or disastrous consequences may result.
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Characters - Your crew make their own decisions as they interact with each other and the world around them.
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Full AI lifecycle - They work, eat, sleep, use the bathroom, relax, and socialize all as part of their daily lives.
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Morale - Your crew can get exhausted, or suffer from low morale which affects the quality of their lives and how they perform tasks.
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Relationships - Your crew form personal, professional, and romantic relationships. The relationships can be either positive or negative based on how their personalities and actions align.
Your crew live their own lives on the Astrobase. They have things to do and people to meet. Exactly how well they perform depends on how good they fit into their job, what adventures they’ve had, and what horrors they have survived; even how well matched they are with their peers matters, some will become romantic partners while others become bitter work rivals.
You will run into stumbling blocks, maybe your crew is exhausted because you’ve pushed them too hard, or low morale makes slacking off more enticing, or maybe Jenkins and Rodriguez spend too much time arguing while the Fission Reactor goes critical. Figure out your problems and fix them!
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Explore - Build and dispatch ships across the galaxy to explore planets, fight killbots, extract resources, and interact with other civilizations.
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Delegate - The ranking officer of each ship will make decisions based on their personality, and take recommendations from their team.
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Overrule - Change the decisions in the logs they send back, or let them make their own mistakes.
The procedural adventures of the crew assigned to your ships can be read and interacted with in the logs they send back. Carefully handpick the crew for each ship you send out. Monitor their progress or leave them to their own fate. Whatever you choose to do, the outcomes of their adventures will be felt in what resources they get, what injuries they suffer, and in how it changes their emotional state.
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Assign - Choose the best person for each job based on their stats, personalities, and over 50 different skills.
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Manage - Prioritize tasks, clear task blockers, optimize the routes that the crew take during their day.
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Observe - Calculate resource depletion and stay on top of tasks to prevent the reactors from exploding, the conduits leaking, and compartments failing,
The desk is where you design the Astrobase into a functioning home for your crew, promote leaders, manage tasks, monitor resource consumption, read reports from your ships and give them your input.
Running the station means manning your desk. Be efficient, and use your time wisely or take a break and play some Asteroid Shooter.
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Individuality - Characters maintain emotional memory, and experience psychological growth over time depending on how results align with expectations.
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Expression - Each character’s personality is expressed in their conversations, thoughts, and ship log entries
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Story - Over 100 personality traits and 42 intertwined emotions combine to author narratives that reflect how the crew are actually thinking and feeling.
The Astrobase’s crew will have conversations with each other, or insights about their lives. Crew members join the Astrobase with revealed personality traits that drive the emotions that effect their job suitability, choices and actions. More traits become unlocked as they experience emotional growth.
Ensure that your crew’s psychological needs are met and they have the ability to grow as people. When you’re processing recruit applications you’ll want to keep an eye out for personalities that might clash with your existing crew, or will be compatible and create lasting friendships.
Read More: Best Base Building Choices Matter Games.
Guilds Of Delenar
This game harkens back to the OLD school Isometric games of yester-decade. The music gives the listener the whistful feeling of older JRPGs, and classic anime from the 80s, the character models for the size given are rather well done, actually seeing the clothing change to me is AMAZING for a simpler game.
The strategy with ability/spellweaving is an interesting take on “powering up”, combining powers from different classes is a good touch as well.
Paying attention when you create/hire on people is a must, warrior types want STR/STAM, Caster types want INT/SPIRIT, so choose races wisely unless you want more of a challenge.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Base Building Casual Games.
Strong framework in place for a high quality game.
Active developer who is working hard to add new content.
Had no technical issues, no crashes or lock ups.
Will appeal to strategy gamers who like turn based combat. Also many different character build options - and is free respec available at any time to try different skill trees. Stacking and combining the skills is a must as with any high quality turn based combat game.
Also really cool magic items system with the ability to make slight modification to items in the forge.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Tales from The Dancing Moon
Tales from the Dancing Moon is a casual story-driven RPG that has elements of life-simulation, crafting, building and survival. All layered on top of a thread of mystery. Presented with a detailed isometric style, inspired by classic role-playing games.
You wake up to find yourself in a strange world. A local Innkeeper finds you and helps you make your way to the nearby village of Illisor – a ruined place that’s recovering from a recent attack of deadly shadow-beasts.
You spend your time at The Dancing Moon Inn where you assist the citizens in rebuilding their village. During your stay you discover that you weren’t the only stranger passing through this village recently. You begin to unravel the mystery that they left behind.
Will you discover your purpose here? And will you find a way back home?
Character Customisation
Customisation options allow you to become whoever you wish to be in this story.
Story
Discover the lore of Illisor by interacting with NPCs, completing quests, forging relationships and reading notes and books scattered around the town.
Crafting and base-building
Flexible and robust object placement tools allow you build the medieval town you’ve always wanted to build.
Hone your skills
Skills like farming, crafting, fishing, and swordsmanship will help you complete the various tasks given to you in Illisor.
Photo-mode
Show off your town and other stunning photography skills with a free-camera mode that has lens and filter options.
Waste Walkers
A surprisingly well excuted use of the RPG Maker engine to produce something more than the usual fare. Mechanics are about as would be predicted for the engine and genre, extended to include welcome survial elements (which I believe can be turned off? Wasn’t intrested in doing so myself but do recall seeing that).
The setting might be said to be like Fallout, but unlike Fallout which takes place many decades after an apocolyptic event, Waste Walkers places you in the role of a survivor shortly after whatever happened (it seems to be one of the mysteries of the game) happened. Resources are scarce and heavy enough to make you concerned and wish to create stashes around the city, but not so far as to panic. Combat is very challenging but not impossible, and the survival element is reinforced by some encounters consistantly costing more resources than they reward, making ‘fight or flight?’ an important question throughout the game.
– Real player with 30.6 hrs in game
April 26 2020 edit
Theres now literally no way to be lost in the game. The map you start off with has every single individual building marked with their names. Now you can go to wherever a quest tells you to.
Very cluttered, mostly readable. But you can definitely find anything for the most part.
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MARKED AS RECEIVED FOR FREE SINCE A NICE STEAM FRIEND SENT IT MY WAY BUT I FORGOT WHO GAVE IT TO ME :(
After posting this review, i noticed the store page description of the game does it a very good job.
– Real player with 29.8 hrs in game
Discoverer
Discoverer is a game of exploration and discovery. The player must locate new lands, classify the unknown, build and defend a settlement, collect and manage resources, create objects, manipulate alchemy and minerals, master teleportation, improve the +50 available skills, avoid diseases, procure a food stock, use stealth, learn new attacks to use with the Energy Sphere, navigate the seas, draw maps and survive in a hostile environment; while searching for the Land of Energy and attempts to save the destiny of his world.
Blue Horizon
Well what can i say it’s a good game but has many bugs and issues but they are getting sorted by the Developer
PLEASE NOTE…this game is playable to a point in the game as the patch 1.0.8 has not corrected all the issues with the save and load process you still can’t save upgrades bought from a shop keeper in the city also the quest you get from the pirate in the inn where you pay 50 gold pieces for the quest he marks it on your map but when you save and load back up it is no longer there on your map, also it does not save any provisions you have collected.
– Real player with 34.8 hrs in game
Update: I no longer recommend Blue Horison.
The updates have practically stopped. There were a few after the game went live, and I think there was one a couple months ago, but there have not been significant changes to the game. Even with bug fixes, there are fundamental problems with Blue Horizon and it seems the developer is done with the game, which is a shame.
As far as stability, the game is solid. Visually, the game is pleasing and immersive (and less clunky than it was initially), but the functions within the game work against the immersion by smearing it with a feeling of low-budget-indie-developer who has reached the limits of his talent. Look up MDickie.com as an example. I don’t mean to be cruel here, it’s just that the player has minimal impact on the in-game world which limits interaction and the developers are okay with that, as if the game is a prof of concept demo. I understand that the game is Story-Driven, but it detracts heavily from RPG elements. I prefer to see a labor of love with the developers churning out patches and updates, you know, actual development that says this is a project more than a product. In this case, the game feels like a product on rails intended for a quick and incidental sale. Maybe this game will be a stepping stone in Blue Horizon Studios' journey into the single-player pirate genre (a genre long neglected), hopefully with something ground breaking later.
– Real player with 10.3 hrs in game
Planet’s Edge
When the alien craft entered Earth’s solar system, the human race was alive with excitement. However, when it was accidentally fired upon, the consequences were dire. In a burst of electromagnetic energy, the entire planet Earth disappeared, leaving its gravity well and the moon behind.
In this open world, sci-fi role-playing game, you are part of the Moon base team on a desperate mission to bring Earth back. You must assemble and equip your crew, customize your ship and set out in search of unique parts to create the Centauri Drive, a device your team hopes will reverse the electromagnetic phenomenon that swallowed Earth.
Travel between dozens of stars, harvest resources to repair and upgrade your equipment, meet and negotiate with friendly (and hostile) aliens, and do whatever it takes to stay alive and bring Earth back.
Planet’s Edge features:
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An open-ended story driven by the player
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Dynamic, real-time spaceship combat
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Mining, trading and puzzle solving
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Turn-based ground combat
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Customize and upgrade your ship for any situation
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Select your crew (or clone a new one) and equip them for success
Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror
This is one of those times where an up or down vote just doesn’t capture how I feel. I do recommend this game, but I’m not entirely sure who I’m recommending it to. To fans of previous SW games, I will say that if you’ve enjoyed Jeff Vogel’s writing in past games, it’s a safe bet you will enjoy it here as well. This is first and foremost for me personally, so despite the gameplay critiques that are going to follow, I have definitely enjoyed my time with the game. Playing the Prince(ss) of Haven is genuinely fun, with lots of options for how you want to characterize him or her. The role-playing opportunities here are delicious and will only be more so as the series continues. (Unlike past SW sequels that canonized various choices from the earlier games, the results of your choices are planned to carry over in future titles.)
– Real player with 90.5 hrs in game
Having followed Vogel’s creations through several trilogies now, taking the good with the bad as the case may be, I can say I enjoyed my playthrough of this initiation into yet another promising series. That being said, there were things that were done well and things that weren’t, and since the interaction of the mechanics in Spiderweb’s games are so intrinsic to their enjoyability, I think a breakdown of individual factors may be the best synopsis I can give (typically I’d just go with a summary, but given this was a hard sell even for me at the outset, I feel the extra effort is warranted here).
– Real player with 67.2 hrs in game
Titan Outpost
Wow. This game is an amazing hybrid of my favorite types of games…. It just ticks all the boxes for me. Engaging story, very interesting gameplay and immersive roleplaying in a hard sci-fi setting. The music also deserves special mention, it’s up there with the best.
I was a bit confused at first, because the game almost carves out a new genre for itself… but after I started figuring stuff out, I really got into it. The graphics are very decent for an indie game… with tasteful art direction that feels like a sci-fi movie from the 1970’s. The portrayal of Titan is downright beautiful at times.
– Real player with 65.0 hrs in game
This game is truly excellent and the definition of a hidden gem.
And a very well hidden gem indeed, because I had never even heard of it, steam algorithms never recommended it to me and I stumbled on it completely by accident(only place you can find any coverage is RPG codex).
Speaking of gems -and fair warning to you- it is more of a diamond in the rough (being an indie game made by an one-man team), but a complete game at that, plus I have personally experienced no bugs or glitches.
Having said that, to me it is a groundbreaking game and one can only wonder what a masterpiece it would be if the developer had more resources to pour into it.
– Real player with 29.6 hrs in game