Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville
A series that takes an inventive twist on the zombie apocalypse setting, Rebuild takes the “man versus man versus nature” struggle present in most games pertaining to zombies and reframes the gameplay from the more common action/shooter elements and turns it into a 4X game of conquest. The world of Rebuild is one in which the survivors are all fairly competent people. Nobody here is an idiot that is going to stand there and quiver in fear while the zombies take a bite out of their neck. The primary struggle is maintaining the flow of your resources and zombies are only really a threat when you spread your people thin. Fortunately the game manages to balance this well so that you’re generally never too comfortable that you don’t have to worry. Each map tends to follow the same flow of scrambling your survivors frantically so you can find food to eat that night to having a slight bit of breathing room so that you can begin to, as the title suggests, Rebuild and then challenge the AI factions present. Zombies ramp up their difficulty as time goes on as well. There are a few strategies that generally guarantee victory as long as you execute them well but I’ll leave you to figure out what those are. It has clever nooks and crannies and like any other good 4X you’ve played it’ll keep you up all night as you have multiple goals planned out at once, one of which can always be achieved in Just One More Turn. The ebb and flow guarantees that you’ve always got something to do.
– Real player with 338.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choices Matter Building Games.
Summary: Turn based zombie survival
Multiplayer: No
Completion: 46 hrs
Cards: Yes
Cloud: Yes
Rebuild 3 is a real time or turn-based tactical zombie survival game with a focus on recruiting followers and expanding territory. The game offers two distinct modes of play, Quick Play, and Story. Quick play offers unlimited procedurally generated maps, with various settings that can be adjusted to your liking. Story mode is a whole campaign where you can carry over leader stats and a small group between missions.
– Real player with 81.6 hrs in game
Hexia
This is a game that relies heavily on luck. You can very easily get a random event that completely ruins you seconds into your game. You might end up starting a new game over and over before you make it through the first ‘story’ goal. And yet, it’s very much worth playing.
Once you get that little bit of good luck mixed with frugal resource management, you can make it through the first twenty or thirty tiles and clear the first couple of challenges. Learn your limits – don’t overspend or expand too fast. You’ll learn what impact each event choice has, which upgrades work best for your kingdom.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
Had fun in the short time I’ve played and quickly figured out how to keep a 0 loss of people.
I would love to see it expand more than 100 tiles but even at 90 it became slow to move across the screen when zoomed out. Some kind of option to speed up the cursor would be needed to expand more I guess.
More levels of 100 tiles but with harder conditions would be nice if expanding to more tiles is not feasible.
The text sections are a little long and some repeat through the game, so I did as another reviewer had done and skipped through the text to find the main points.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown
Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown is a Medieval Fantasy city builder that forces you to make dire decisions that ensure the survival of your kingdom and the people you lead.
Volition is a valuable tool in your inventory as you build your city, shape the land and fortify it as you see fit. Burdened by the weight of your decisions, a seemingly trivial choice can shape your legacy and determine if you’re a soulless tyrant or a fair and just monarch.
Will your kingdom merely survive, or do you have the resilience and dedication to make it THRIVE?
#### Features
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Struggle with real-time decision making that leads to real-time consequences
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Uncover the true nature of the mysterious Waelgrim
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Survive the harsh realities of medieval life, both natural and manmade
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Advance the development of your kingdom through an in-depth tech tree
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Discover your benevolent or tyrannical nature
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Traverse an unknown land to gain new resources and allies
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Explore this land alone or with up to four friends
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Experience a day-night cycle that affects your citizens’ behaviors
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Defend your growing kingdom by waging epic battles
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Receive modding support to play your way
#### Benevolence & Tyranny
The path by which you rule, be it benevolent or tyrannical, is determined entirely by the decisions you make. Thrive’s narrative-driven event system presents dynamic, nuanced options that often make the best choice unclear. Compassion and communion with nature can empower you, but rapid growth and progression could catapult your dominion. One must always remember that a hero to some is a villain to others. What will be your legacy?
#### A Vast Land
Establish your presence in a large-scale 4X land, rich in possibility and potential conflict, with up to four friends. Compete for resources and develop relationships with numerous AI villages and kingdoms, strengthening your foothold in this new territory’s active economy. Develop outposts and small villages to gain increased resources while helping to extend the reaches of trade. As your kingdom grows, will you develop a legacy of fear or friendship?
#### Survival
To survive is to take heed of what you can control, and weather what you cannot. Direct your kingdom’s future through effective planning, advancement and a detailed tech tree. Success is rewarded with new options to empower or enforce the nature of your rule. Countless variables, from weather to Waelgrim, add increased pressure to your reign. Endure these unpredictable forces and prove you truly have what it takes to thrive.
#### Waging War
Thrive’s real-time combat is reflected in the costs of war. Choices are realistic and impactful: soldiers’ deaths affect morale, ammunition needs resupply, armour and weapons require repairs, and troops experience fatigue. Engage in siegecraft, both as an inflictor and receiver, to show you can persevere against any form of adversary. Approach all conflict with a clear strategy, lest you long for a bitter reminder of failure’s high cost.
Read More: Best Choices Matter Fantasy Games.
Dawn of Man
I love a lot of this game. But what genius makes a game of superhuman raiders that march through winter and blizzards but your dudes decide its just cool to sit in the hut while the town in destroyed. Go ahead and slice my head off while is sit here with yellow thermal condition. Spend hours building and surviving only to have a uncontrolled illogical game issue ruin it. Congrats in your inability to handle this issue in beta.
– Real player with 555.2 hrs in game
Dawn of Man is an excellent educational game. It’s a quick way to teach children how difficult it is to build up a town, society, and people. Farming, Hunting, Building - all skills that all humans should know the basics of how to do it - For REAL - and do with their own two hands. This game gives students a way to experience decades of development in only a few hours.
– Real player with 539.6 hrs in game
Space Trader: Merchant Marine
Space Trader Merchant Marine is that strange situation where two very different genres have been combined together in the hope of hitting that once in a lifetime combination that everybody agrees is pure genius, like Vampires and Teenagers, or Ninjas and Cheerleaders. Space Trader doesn’t quite hit that special recipe however.
Space Trader is a combination of a numbers trading simulator and a first person shooter and by far and large the biggest problem is that playing the game you have trouble telling which of these two aspects feel the most tacked on.
– Real player with 82.7 hrs in game
Space Trader Merchant Marine was released in Oct 23, 2008. It boasts a score of 89% from a review by GameFocus saying, ““One of the best indie games of 2008. An innovative and addictive experience. Addictive, very fun and innovative are the best words to describe the game and the bottom line is this is a welcome addition to any gamer’s library so buy this game and enjoy it.”
This is very akin to the how ‘reviews’ reflected Bubsy 3D on its own packaging, to those that remember.
The game is broken down into four different areas, exploration, trading, time management, and fighting/bounty hunting.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
Wastelander
Wastelander is a roguelike turn-based colony-building game. Explore a barren alien world and build a unique colony by unlocking new buildings, and re-activating ancient alien technologies while defending yourself from destructive atmospheric storms. Can you build a unique thriving colony, and find a way to escape this deadly predicament before it’s too late?
In Wastelander you’ll start from nothing as a castaway on an alien world. As your colony expands you’ll find alien artifacts and buildings, perks, technology upgrades, and consumable items scattered across the map.
START FROM NOTHING
Create a simple colony as you explore your immediate surroundings.
BUILD AN ECONOMY
Harvest resources and expand your base. Connect to alien ruins to unlock new buildings and alien technology.
MASTER THE WASTELAND
Create a sweeping colony that spans the globe. Connect your base to all the alien ruins to escape the planet before the final mega-storm buries the wasteland and you along with it.
KEY FEATURES:
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Simple turn based colony building gameplay that’s easy to learn, but difficult to master!
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Scan your surroundings to uncover resources and other hidden alien items.
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Build and expand your colony using your resources efficiently.
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Construct defenses to protect your buildings from regular destructive storms.
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Upgrade and unlock new buildings as you explore maps shrouded in mystery.
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Use powerful abilities granted by ancient alien buildings
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Unlock the secrets of the alien ruins to improve your technology and unlock a path to escape and victory!
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Compete with other players' high scores on the “Daily Challenge” leaderboard.
Exogate Initiative
Exogate Initiative is a management/base-building game that puts you in charge of mankind’s first worlds exploration program. In the near future, a new technology will allow us to travel instantly anywhere in the universe, via portals known as Exogates. An international initiative is created to develop this technology and start the first exploration program.
You will lead mankind into the vast unknown, where we never before dreamt to tread.
In the depth of a mountain plan, excavate and build your base using a variety of specialized rooms and equipment.
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Complete freedom to dig anywhere on the map.
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Plan and build specialized rooms, explorers will need barracks to rest, a training field to prepare for their missions or a laboratory to study samples they brought back from other worlds.
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Place equipment in these rooms, each one of them will have a dedicated purpose.
Recruit, train and manage specialists from all around the world.
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You will unlock 6 different classes of explorers, the scientist will study flora and fauna on other worlds, the scholar will decipher alien culture and languages and the soldier will ensure everyone is safe.
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Explorers are called gaters, they are completely autonomous.
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Each gater is unique. They come from different countries, have different ages, look different.
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Take care of their needs and ensure their well-being, both physical and psychological, as they are constantly facing the unknown.
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They will develop relationships between each other, and losing a friend on a mission will not have the same impact as losing someone you hate.
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Provide them with the tools and suits needed for their journey
Assemble teams and send them exploring new worlds through the Exogate.
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Gaters will perform missions on their own but will request your help from time to time.
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These contacts are micro interactive stories that will constantly try to surprise you, and where you will sometimes have to make difficult decisions.
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They may discover new flora, fauna or even intelligent beings. There are more than 10 different kinds of encounters
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After each mission, teams will return with more experience and interesting things to study. This will allow you to unlock new technologies and earn money to keep the initiative running.
Don’t forget to wishlist and follow!
Fata Deum
With the power of a god, who will you become?
A god game where you not only build settlements, but compete with other gods for influence. In Fata Deum, the more followers you have, the more power you wield.
Manage your mana to manipulate your settlements, devotees and the fabric of reality itself. As you amass more power, you’ll be able to pick more unearthly feats to wield.
Convince or conquer
During the day, use your influence on the mortals. Will you bless and inspire them onto good work, or strike fear into their hearts with terrifying visions? But be wary, the townsfolk have their own free will.
At night, you can manipulate settlements. Instruct the mortals to build you mighty temples for worship, farms and lumber mills so that they may prosper, or even to ruin other villages.
Frighten or foster
Perhaps you’d like to be a tyrant, ruling over a kingdom of debauchery and blood. Raise an army and sacrifice your mortals to summon terrifying demons. Your choice.
Or maybe you do believe in fun, festivities and spreading the love, but have no qualms weakening your enemies by spreading fear - or just hitting them with a Thunderstrike.
Shape a living world
As your influence grows, the living world will shape around it, getting ever more vast. Each god manifests their kingdom differently.
Will yours be a kingdom of crops and light, or twisted trees and glowering darkness? You’ll battle gods of Violence, Deceit, Fertility and Pleasure.
Experience your story
Play a young god rising to glory in campaign mode, which is full of curious and revealing challenges set to an engaging narrative.
The Hundred Year Kingdom
Welcome to an untouched new world.
Only you—the Creator—and a mythical young goddess who calls herself an oracle exist here.
Share times of laughter, tears, and joy as you combine your skills and powers to guide the emergence of a brand new civilization.
Behold what becomes of your world after a century of growth.
・Develop a civilization from the ground up over 100 years in this simple turn-based simulation.
・Construct buildings and cultivate land to create and nurture a civilization with the help of a mythical young goddess who calls herself an oracle.
・Your world will be free of complicating elements like diplomacy, war, and calamities. Rest assured, barbarians won’t invade and Gandhi won’t launch a nuclear attack on your beautiful world!
・How you care for your civilization is up to you.
The Hundred Year Kingdom lets you build and care for a civilization in a world of your own making.
Set up and reshape your world with realms covered in mountains, vast seas, thick savanna, or whatever you like!
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