Lew Pulsipher’s Doomstar
Doomstar is a nice, space-themed, turn-based casual strategy game with easy graphics and pleasing music, from a friendly dev.
This game was made for pvp, the whole campaing is just a long tutorial, so buy it only if you plan to play it with friends or community members.
The mechanics are partly close to chess - move with one unit at a time on a grid, fleets come out face to face - but it has significant luck factor too. If the opponents dont hesitate too much, a battle isnt longer than 1/2-1 hour, but Doomstar supports Steam Turn Notifications therefore you are able to play it considered and slow.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Strategy Games.
The game features a small campaign full of unbalanced missions (the AI is given powerful ships in greater quantities), more fair skirmishes against the AI, and asynchronous online multiplayer. Doomstar incorporates the basic game rules of the classic board game Stratego (simple attack ratings, unknown ship attributes until attacked, highest ship number wins) with a reduced number of units for faster gameplay. The goal is to destroy the enemy command ship with any vessel. Mines don’t move but destroy everything except light fighters and carriers. Fighters can move as many spaces as they want across the board. Battle cruisers and dreadnoughts are the most powerful units on the board. Black holes allow units to move multiple spaces in a single turn, and two set of fighters can attack the same enemy in the same turn. The AI is decent enough at the game to provide a good challenge, although online multiplayer is where the true action lies. Fans of Stratego will enjoy Doomstar, but the feature set is fairly basic.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Galaxy Trucker: Extended Edition
I’d recommend this game but with a few caveats. I’d encourage the developers to patch it with a couple of things:
Some of the missions are buried in the game in a way that could have just little more convenience built in to finding them. There are even dialogue boxes that say for the player, “I thought I was done with the campaign.” Kind of cute. Mostly irritating.
The more difficult missions, especially the big race, are so difficult that they are likely to be redone. Please don’t make a player click fifty times through the same flavor text every single time the mission is reset. That’s a mid-90s rookie mistake in any game design–like the long cut scene that can’t be skipped. Do it once, give us our laugh, and then let get about the business grinding away at a nearly impossible mission.
– Real player with 70.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Strategy Games.
Great, great conversion from the board game. This is one of those board games that was looking for the perfect digital adaption and they nailed. I only wish they didn’t TAKE SO LONG to make it playable on my OS, and that my version wasn’t still in the habit of making all my options on the home screen come up with a question “Do you want to quit?”. That is some serious glitch. Every time I come back to the home screen I’m forced to quit the game if I want to do anything because I have to restart it to use any option on the homepage. Other than that the game is free of glitches, and just excellent on every level. I want different musical options too, though I’ll probably not use any of them much. Another expansion would be good too, but the included one still has me busy :)
– Real player with 39.6 hrs in game
Tharsis
Elder Sign and Alien Frontiers' ugly baby
Tharsis is basically a cheap, space-themed copy of Elder Sign . I’m not giving this thumbs-down because it’s difficult and sometimes you’ll lose just because of bad luck. I liked Elder Sign enough to buy each one of its overpriced expansions (on the iPad version), because although Elder Sign does a piss poor job of explaining how the game works, it’s actually FUN and gives you enough control over the chaos to be satisfying. In contrast, Tharsis feels more like the Iraqi version of Wheel of Fortune: https://youtu.be/Cz8cSpRmowM?t=1m1s
– Real player with 32.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Strategy Games.
I love board games, I don’t hate dice, I usually like a good strategy challenge, and I think space & Mars are cool - So I can recommend this to people like me when it is on sale for at least half off. YOU SHOULD KNOW: I’d ignore reviews before August 2016 because a patch was added with a better tutorial, bug fixes, and some missions - All of which were significant additions to the game (at least for me). If you expect something more than a turn based board game, you’re gonna have a bad time. Also, I strongly encourage doing the Training missions before or after beating Easy as well as picking crew abilites that best main reasons for losing a game - Without these I could’ve rage quit before beating Normal mode. Now for a full breakdown that I haven’t seen anyone else give like this, followed by exactly what turns consist of:
– Real player with 24.8 hrs in game
Raygun Chess
Raygun Chess is a Early Access free VR game that is very bare bones right now. It worked on my HTC Vive system, looked ok, played ok, sounded ok. There are only 6 boards at the time of this review and they are part of the tutorial. The tutorial worked. Nothing else you can play at this time. There is no multiplayer at this time. Sort of interesting take on battle chess.
Not sure how to play the big board with the 4 players. Looked like a tech demo at this time.
Maybe come back to this game sometime Next year.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
There is a very good reason no-one has come up with a game to take over from chess and that is because chess is the perfect game! But that doesn’t stop ‘Raygun Chess’ from giving it a go. In short, it is chess, but with rayguns. So you have a handful of pieces that move in certain directions and amounts and if they get close enough to an opposing piece they will shoot it down. To be fair the models look good and so does the sparse, but oddly peaceful space setting! But when it comes to gameplay I just couldn’t get into it. The grabbing mechanic of the pieces hardly worked at all and when it did I found that there wasn’t a lot of strategy involved, in fact, you can win all the levels by simply moving your shooters over to the enemy as fast as you can. But hey! Someone might like this and it is at least free, so I will give it the thumbs up with a note that if I could have given it a neutral rating I would have. But it didn’t deserve the thumbs down because it is free after all.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Adeptus Titanicus: Dominus
Where to start?
This game is beautiful. If you’re into turn-based skirmishes, strategic play, and giant mechs, it’s for you. Period.
Great unit mechanics, a fast-growing playerbase, and wonderful gameplay; for once in my life, I’ve picked up an alpha Early Access that didn’t try to rob me, and that is actually playable, right out the box.
It already supports multiplayer, it has solo skirmishes/scenarios, and there’s a campaign on the way. Well worth any price, and does more for my giant mech itch than most games can.
– Real player with 32.9 hrs in game
“No weapon in the arsenal of the Imperium or the Traitor equals the Titan on the battlefield, and a Legion of such war machines can bring any world to its knees. In truth a Titan has only three enemies: folly, hubris and another of its own kind."
— Grand Master Volkus, Ordo Sinister, Divisio Militaris
INTRODUCTION
The Collegia Titanica is the division of the ancient Mechanicum and the current Adeptus Mechanicus that operates and oversees the Titans, but is also more rarely known as the Adeptus Titanicus (a contraction of Adeptus Mechanicus Collegia Titanica). Bristling with massive cannons and missile launchers capable of wreaking terrible destruction upon an enemy, they dominate the battlefields of the galaxy and are a testimony to the consummate skills of the Tech-priests of the Cult Mechanicus. The Titan Legions of the Adeptus Mechanicus are amongst the most powerful military entities within the Imperium of Man, as it is known in the 41st Millenium. Ancient and implacable, Titans are colossal engines of war, massive robotic combat walkers the size of multi-story buildings rightly known as God Machines or God Engines to the Tech-priests.
– Real player with 21.0 hrs in game
Terraforming Mars
This game had a few bugs to play around but it wasn’t awful. As of the Nov update you can now barely finish a game there are some many new bugs. If you are thinking of purchasing this i would recommend you not. Save your money till its fixed, if it ever is. It is 3 years after the release and still has very poor stability or chance to complete a game without bugs.
– Real player with 972.0 hrs in game
Too many bugs. Too many cards that dont work as intended. And too dumb an AI. And the recent patch just broke it. It was bearable before - mainly just an inept AI. But at least it worked. Now it doesnt even do that.
– Real player with 392.0 hrs in game
The Captain is Dead
Fantastic. I’d never played the physical board game, but this was so much fun I went out and bought a copy.
Sure, I’m not a fan of the art style, and the fires on the ship are maybe a bit confusing - since they are purely aesthetic and don’t actually indicate problems, yet when you see fire you tend to assume there are problems. But these are minor points.
In The Captain is Dead, you play an intrepid crew of as many as 6 struggling to fend off ever-encroaching oblivion as your spaceship disintegrates around you. After each crew member takes their turn, another disaster strikes. Maybe the ship’s teleporter overloads, maybe an alien spacecraft attacks, or maybe a hostile raiding party beams in. If your shields go below 0%, you’re dead. If 13 invaders beam onto the ship, you’re dead. And if you spend so many resources avoiding those things that you can’t fix your ship’s jump core in time … guess what, you’re dead.
– Real player with 68.3 hrs in game
First of all, let me just say that I own the original board game copies of the TCID and its second episode (Lockdown), so you could say that I’m already a fan of the franchise. This is also the very first review I’ve written outside of an educational capacity, so I hope that you all find it helpful.
I. OVERVIEW
The Captain is Dead pits you (and a team of your buddies if you so choose) against an unknown alien enemy that attacks your ship for reasons unknown. Unfortunately for you, your captain, who could probably get you out of this situation with little to no trouble at all, has died (hence the title). You could escape by making a jump into light speed, but your jump core (or hyper drive) is on the fritz, and you don’t have R2-D2 to help you reactivate it. Therefore, it is now up to you to utilize the talents of the remaining crew to make all necessary repairs to the jump core, while mitigating disaster by fending off alien intruders and preventing the destruction of your oh-so-delicate ship.
– Real player with 28.3 hrs in game
Under Domain - Alien Invasion Simulator
This game feels like the creator made a unique and interesting system to play this game but then refuses to teach anyone how to use it. The tutorial even states it’s a LIMITED tutorial and you will learn the more advanced parts of the game with play… except the game play is totally static with no learning curve, so the advanced functions and parts of the game are impossible to reach. At first I figured I was playing the game wrong or just not getting something, but after going to find some kind of guide online (there are none at the time of writing this), or looking at the game’s web page for more information (the game’s page is only a landing page with screen shots, logos, and PR/Sales Hype), and then finally the game reviews/comments that all have the same problem with the game play and then some… I am now pretty sure this game isn’t finished and there are commands and graphics missing to advance the game play. Glad I got this on sale for like $2 since even $6 for this game is over priced as the game currently stands.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
The game is really good-looking, definitely an interesting idea. The art, graphics, sound - top notch! And there are a lot of possibilities for further update, which, judging from Antarctica screenshot from “About this game”-section, might be coming (
! I didn’t see a way to build Earth, Moon or ocean bases ).
Basically you play as an alien race that, for a good reason (from their perspective), wants to invade the Earth. And with maximum of 12 decades (from year 1900) and 10 turns per decade you can invade the Earth by 2020 (yep)!
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
Before the battery´s over
Very good puzzle, I’m afraid there are only 7 scenes left and I only have 40% of the battery, I need finish before the battery runs out! A great experience and I think I will have a great ending!
– Real player with 11.3 hrs in game
Simple and effective artstyle and storytelling.
I’m not in the middle of the game yet, and had to come and recommend this game.
– Real player with 9.5 hrs in game
Space Drone: Rescue Mission
This is actually a good little puzzle adventure.
Rooms can get quite difficult as you proceed further into the game.
Also its cheap and entirely worth the modest price being asked.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
Ok, this game has taken me by surprise. I was expecting something easy and fast, but this game has some puzzles that forced me to stop and think what am i doing - what isn’t something bad, to the contrary, is extremely good. It gets harder the more you progress, and i still didnt finished it (pretty close to the end tho), but, until now, i having lots of fun with this.
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game