BlackChain

BlackChain

Great game. Pathing and controls are super smooth. It is incredible that this is made by a single person. Only in terms of features, you notice that it’s just a single dev. It is only one race and multiplayer is only possible through LAN (virtual LAN for online play) and 2v2 still has some issues with desyncs. But everything that is in the game is unique and high quality. I really enjoy the micro in this game. It has a bit of a modern Starcraft: BroodWar feeling but it is still quite different. With the low price of only 4€, there is no reason not to get this game. The AI is pretty good even without cheating and tries to actively hunt down your workers with air units for example. The dev deserves the support so he is able to create more content for this. (I have received the key from a giveaway which has nothing to do with the dev)

Real player with 11.2 hrs in game


Read More: Best Base Building RTS Games.


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Review by Gaming Masterpieces - The greatest games of all time on Steam.

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Real-time strategy, once the second most important genre after FPS games, is dead, isn’t it? While the few releases of recent years were mostly below average, there are some exceptions. This is one.

Great indie real-time stragegy game, heavily inspired by the seminal Starcraft. Build structures, build units, mine ressources and crypto-currency, wipe your enemies off the map. Fully voiced units and 12 campaign missions (all unlocked from the beginning), even a network option. Great little game - what a nice surprise!

Real player with 9.3 hrs in game

BlackChain on Steam

EVERGLORY

EVERGLORY

Stockpile resources, build your settlement, raise an army, and wage war in this modern take on the classic RTS formula.

In EVERGLORY resources are stored at local storage sites and must be consolidated at a location in order to be used. Plan your base wisely and set up transport routes as you craft the living machinery powering your economy. Optimizing supply chains is key.

Combine existing units and resources in a plethora of ways to form an increasingly more powerful army. Every great warrior starts out as a humble peasant.

Guide up to 1000 individually-controlled units through the battlefield. Explore enormous maps stretching across 1024x1024 tiles.

Embark on a legendary journey that takes place on meticulously-crafted maps full of diverse quests, mysterious secrets, custom mechanics, and scripted interactions.

Explore a mystic world inspired by the history of medieval Russia. Fight off hordes of Mongolian Orcs and foil the sinister plans of the magic-wielding Teutonic Knights.

EVERGLRORY is powered by the fully open-source Permafrost Engine. Re-balance units, tweak missions, or change the fundamental rules of the game all by editing a couple of lines of Python. All the tools used for creating the campaign are included with the release.


Read More: Best Base Building RTS Games.


EVERGLORY on Steam

FrankenStorm TD: Prologue

FrankenStorm TD: Prologue

A solid tower defense, reminiscent of the Warcraft III tower defenses it was inspired by. Its strength is in its simplicity. A lot of tower defense games try to go wide, giving players many options of towers while restricting their ability to influence placement and mob flow. This game does the opposite by restricting you to one tower type. It lowers your immediate ability to change your damage types/styles, but allows for larges mazes and clever placement.

As you continue playing, you can collect power-ups that will allow you to shape your game-play even more. The towers are all still the same tower, but you can add attack speed, damage, give the ability to stun, or insta-kill low-health enemies, etc. to them. Every power-up comes with a penalty, that makes the strategy involved more complex, modifying all of your enemy’s abilities at the same time as it modifies all your towers.

Real player with 56.9 hrs in game


Read More: Best Base Building Tower Defense Games.


I have to think the devs like Path of Exile because the way you “gear up” has so much in common. Everything you find has an upside and a downside. There are uniques that are build enabling, but total garbage if you don’t build for them. There is a specific range for the rolls that a unique can get. There is stuff that has great synergy together (For example, if you stack the increased chance that the enemy procs some special ability, then there is no big downside to grabbing more of that. But the downside that you are completely prevented from getting even 2% of something like enemy dodge chance because 2% dodge X 200% increased chance chance equals insta-death. They also both have the concept of “increased” and “more”. (i.e. you can get 5% increased damage or 5 more damage.) They also both have tooltips that show your basic damage oputput without revealing any useful information without you doing math. (i.e the tooltip will show your crit chance and it will show your percentage increase that random events proc. But it will not show your ACTUAL crit chance after it has been modified by your chance chance.)

Real player with 45.1 hrs in game

FrankenStorm TD: Prologue on Steam

SunAge: Battle for Elysium

SunAge: Battle for Elysium

I saw SunAge the first time way back before it was even released and I already knew I would like it. However this game isn’t without its flaws.

Pros

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  • Beautiful old skool grafics, a throw back to the 90’s RTS genre. Most critic reviews I’ve read all say that the GFX are outdated, even ancient. Anyone that says this is, I’m sorry, but they’re idiots. RTS just don’t really translate that well in 3D. Believe me, it used to be my favorite genre yet there are only about 3 maybe 4 3D RTS games that I like. I don’t need a rotating camera to enjoy a game.

Real player with 98.3 hrs in game

First off, I just want to give a big shoutout to the people involved in the making of this game, it’s quite amazing for such a small team, the graphics, the sound, the units, it all feels professional and like a high quality indie game. However there are a lot of small bugs.

A bit of a detailed explanation of the specificities of the game compared to other RTS I know:

+All units have 2 modes that can be switched without cooldowns (for example heavy infantry can switch between rocket launchers or mortars) it can also switch between anti-air to support heals and so on, however the alternate mode must be researched first in the research lab

Real player with 38.7 hrs in game

SunAge: Battle for Elysium on Steam

War Wind II: Human Onslaught

War Wind II: Human Onslaught

As a huge fan of War Wind 1, this is honestly quite disappointing. Controls are very confusing, much more so than in the 1st War Wind. Technology trees for each of the races is complicated and hard to get used to. The alien races now speak mostly English which doesn’t feel as authentic. The mechanics of hiring new units is a huge downgrade from the 1st War Wind in the sense that you can only hire from external villages that do not respawn new villagers. These villagers can be accidentally attacked. Overall, hugely disappointing and the only saving grace was the low cost to purchase this game. Perhaps players without prior experience playing the 1st War Wind would find this ok but for those like me who are expecting a game that improves on the 1st one would be terribly disappointed.

Real player with 3.4 hrs in game

War Wind II: Human Onslaught on Steam

Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror

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

Queen's Wish: The Conqueror on Steam

Fimbul Winter

Fimbul Winter

Absolutely broken game, they need to call it what it is, Log Chopping Simulator. Definitely worth the price though.

Real player with 1.4 hrs in game

I paid .27 cents USD for this in a bundle. I want to love this game as the concept is there. A rather hunky and shirtless hermit has to survive Fimbulwinter. The final winter before Ragnarok. You start off with some goats, some hay for the goats. Some firewood and an ax to chop it with.

Your wolf, I’m guessing fylgia, will lead you if you press F. Most of the time. I made it through several days of chopping wood and lighting fires. Feeding goats and following my fylgia. The game does show a lot of promise as the draugr apparently can teleport right over to your little cabin.

Real player with 0.9 hrs in game

Fimbul Winter on Steam

Pew Pew Puzzle Defense

Pew Pew Puzzle Defense

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

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I’m reviewing the game only based on my experience playing it with a controller and I haven’t tried local multiplayer yet.

DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER REVIEW 👍

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Real player with 2.9 hrs in game

Most towers are manually fired, which is fine in and of itself. however, the basic tower requires button mashing to fire at a vaguely reasonable rate, and when you’re firing you can’t run around collecting coins. When you’re running around collecting coins, you can’t fire. The flamethrower tower can fire just by being held down, which is fine, but it’s very short range, so it’s not usable as a front line of defense. May be more fun with multiplayer, since one of you could be collecting coins while the other shoots, and you can double up on shooting when you’re close to losing. The button mashing killed the game for me.

Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

Pew Pew Puzzle Defense on Steam

Kainga: Seeds of Civilization

Kainga: Seeds of Civilization

i previously did a hastily anger fueled review after losing my thinker to walking into the water and ending my game but after another 14 hrs can say nothing has changed and my thinker had died a few more time this way. The road map will be very delayed to add new content as alot of the games current content needs alot of bug fixes, i’ve never played a game with so many bugs early access or not i’ve played plenty of pre release games too with less bugs then this.

Do not buy until Dec/Jan and even then unless rolling in $ wait for a sale. the sheer amount of bugs and stuff that just doesn’t work will turn you off the potentionally great game

Real player with 37.2 hrs in game

This game has so much potential but really needs to be balanced in order to stave off some real frustrations. The RNG aspect of the game really works against the player in most cases, and the enemy tribes start off ahead and are a real hindrance to get your tribe out of the mud. They attack or demand tribute almost immediately, and 9 times out of 10 despite how big the map is, you spawn right next to them. Aside from the tutorial there’s no “starting area” to get your feet wet and learn the game. One map has half of the inspiration areas inaccessible (including the inspiration that allows these areas to become accessible, the other map has hardly any resources, and if you don’t “draw” the right tech after inspiration, you’re screwed. Because of all of this, it took me 20 attempts to pass the first challenge. A third map is unlocked later, but is harder still.

Real player with 32.6 hrs in game

Kainga: Seeds of Civilization on Steam

Academia : School Simulator

Academia : School Simulator

I am a huge fan of Rimworld, I really enjoyed Prison Architect and plus, I’m a teacher. So I was pretty excited about this game.

I’m giving it a hesitant thumbs up on the premise that it will deliver on its promises as it progresses through EA. It’s very bare bones at the moment but I’m hopeful that it will live up to its potential as its exactly the kind of game that I would love if it were much, much bigger.

As a teacher, I do have some feedback on the academic side of things for the developers:

Real player with 163.6 hrs in game

TL;DR

It’s fine, but not worth $20 because it has very little replay value.

Overview

Academia: School Simulator is a game. It’s challenging to call it a good game, but it certainly isn’t a bad one. I originally purchased this game after seeing it on youtube and being interesting in a school sandbox game, in which I could do a variety of things from build the best school, to making a living hellscape. Academia: School Simulator, did not meet those expectations.

Story

I don’t truly demand story in every game I play, but I feel like this could use a little… anything? I dunno even just a: Gramps left me his inheritance and I was told to spend it on his dying wish: building a school. Whatever, moving on.

Real player with 98.7 hrs in game

Academia : School Simulator on Steam