Somewhen
SOMEWHEN is a retro RPG inspired by early J-RPGs. Enjoy dungeon diving, resource gathering, and town building mechanics. In Somewhen, you must help Idyll and company restore a fractured world with an uncertain future using a curious time-travelling train and a little something called the Conductor to rebuild entire towns. Your goal is to quite literally reshape the future by placing homes, trees, and other structures in the present. Rebuild towns using a unique top-down system while fighting for your future with a snappy, on-map battle system!
Read More: Best City Builder RPG Games.
A Game of Dwarves
I recently played through the campaign for A Game of Dwarves. I’m giving it a thumbs up, but a qualified one.
The Game
The game is something of a builder/manager game: you control a settlement of dwarves and guide them in both mining out the area around their settlement and building the things they need to be happy and do well.
I really liked the potential of this game: I find it a fun thing to occupy myself with while watching TV or just winding down in the evening, and there is some challenge to it too — more than once I restarted a scenario to come at it from a better angle.
– Real player with 230.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Building Games.
I used to love the old “Dungeon Keeper” game, but my dungeons always got destroyed when I broke through to the hero’s lair because I couldn’t keep up with the attacks. “A Game of Dwarves” is styled after “Dungeon Keeper” but has what amounts to a sandbox mode (so you can play and dig and build to your heart’s content without being attacked left and right), is brighter (one of my complaints about DK was that everything was dim and dark, being in a dungeon, and that I couldn’t see what was going on half the time), is 3D so you can dig up and down as well as sideways, and retains the humour that made DK fun to play.
– Real player with 116.3 hrs in game
Alek - The Lost Kingdom
Updated opinion from edit is at the bottom.
Great Concept, I have played 11 hours in and I still want to play. However, the game just crashes now and it’s because of a bugged out Hunter. He doesn’t hunt unless you interact and close the menu, if you make him quit the game crashes. I lost 10 minutes of progress which turned out to be a lot of stuff being done in that time span. It’s fustrating to have an incompetent NPC that carries a heavy liability to cause crashes.
I sent a couple of the crashes not sure if the Dev received them. With this problem I am held back from progression in the game. It won’t matter if I do another save because the bug can just happen again.
– Real player with 23.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder RPG Games.
Here I am back for another game review!
Today I’m covering elements of Alek - The Lost Kingdom.
This is a charming little adventurer simulator that centers around Alek (the PC). In this game you build up and manage village settlements, ward off attacks, and help develop a land. Now mind this game IS only in Early Access at the time of this review. That being said it has a lot to offer. Now I know some of you are going to look at my play time and say “But Relmara! That’s hardly enough for a fair review!” The only reason I haven’t logged more time in this game is because of a nasty bug that kept me from loading an old game and starting a new one. Here is where I have to say I am thoroughly impressed. Dev. Blackmeyers has been VERY hands on with us early access player when regarding bugs. I know that working out such issues is laboriously hard. I have never had a dev. respond so expediently to an issue. It’s very heartening to know that we have someone so invested in their player base working to helm the game.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
Champions of Anteria™
Champions of Anteria is a sort of hybrid of genres involving real-time combat (sort of) and “puzzle”-based base building outside of combat.
Pros:
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The puzzle-based nature of the base building was amusing.
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Combat was OK.
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I like the ability to choose which battles I will do.
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Upgrade paths for characters were OK, if uninspired.
Cons:
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Uplay
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Game was way too long. By the end, I was begging for it to end. Mechanisms had become way too repetitive by end-game.
– Real player with 72.4 hrs in game
This is an amazingly addictive game! I really enjoyed playing it and have no doubt you will enjoy it too.
Lots of funny dialogues. Fun soundtrack that always play the right music for the right moment.
Game can be played with complete relaxation and enjoyment or in a challenging way - depending on how you choose to play.
RPG style potions, magics, unique powers for each champions and completely different kinds of locations and enemies makes the game one of a kind. There’s a huge skill tree for you to upgrade a number of things for almost every item in the game.
– Real player with 61.2 hrs in game
Distant Kingdoms
(2 hours in) So far, I am enjoying this game quite a bit! I only have a couple of hours in so far, but would like to say that I have a very good first impression. I have not encountered any bugs yet. I have encountered one minor glitch during the opening sequence. The game lagged for about 2 seconds, figured I would mention it as I have a fairly high end computer so it could be worse for others. (1080 TI, 7700)
As others have said, this game feels VERY Anno to me. That imo is NOT a bad thing. I actually really enjoy the different races aspect of the game. It does add more production chains, but in a fun and interesting way! Roads can not be built with turns in them, which personally isn’t game breaking at all but could be annoying for some. I love the adventuring system to expand my territory! You choose out your party of adventurers whom all have different traits and perks to them. To conquer a new area you must successfully pass through the encounter which is very similar to the little D&D game in Stardew Valley. Your adventurers do gain experience as they continue to explore more and have more successful encounters. Love this feature! The other thing that I really enjoy is the way the research in this game works, best system I’ve encountered in this type of game! Rather than just click the button to begin research and wait for X period of time, when you click to begin research then you receive a quest that you must complete to gain the new knowledge. This to me feels a lot more rewarding than building a bunch of research generating buildings like in some other games.
– Real player with 54.9 hrs in game
i love city builders and i’m really enjoying this game so far. there is a bit of a learning curve; i restarted a couple times before i got the hang of it, but it really isn’t that difficult - but definitely pay attention to your realm overview. how many peasants you have and how many jobs need filling by them vs citizens is an important stat i didn’t utilize at first, and now i check it all the time. the key, for me, is to maximize your production output in advance of building houses and gaining residents. i always have an excess now of bread, clothing, animal products, etc; if i see the number start to drop, i just build more. racial bonuses for building production and foreman totems are your friend!
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Hinterland
At first I bought Hinterland because it was dirt cheap on the Summer Sale and I had a few bucks left in my wallet.. and I was kind of nostalgic for some of the old City Builder series that some of the folks at Tilted Mill had a bit of a hand in towards the end.. but really, I wasn’t expecting much.
I’m actually pretty pleasantly surprised, truth be told. At first glance, it’s like a kind of toned-down Diablo I, with a few city building/management elements thrown in.. And that’s pretty much what it delivers. Perhaps the younger set or the hardcore strategy or simulation players won’t like it, but I’m finding it to be.. almost refreshingly nostalgic. It has a pretty “old school” feel to it, and it’s fairly challenging and moderately replayable. I imagine the harder difficulties will prove much beefier to get through than the “easy” games I’ve done so far.. I could see very much how it can scale.
– Real player with 103.7 hrs in game
I played this for hundreds of hours back when it first came out. I still have the disc. I thought maybe the Steam version would have extra content. It doesn’t. The original disc runs fine on Win 8.1, by the way.
You choose a hero class, some of which are also race-specific. Each of them have advantages and disadvantages with regards to starting equipment, building costs, food and gold production in your city, etc. You can choose male or female, which is purely asthetic. Name your character. Then, choose from 4 difficulty levels (easy, medium, difficult, and hardcore) and 3 game lengths (short, medium, long). The game lengths determine how much of the map is populated with monster bases/resources. You can choose to start with all resources, or with random resources that will not include all of them. You can choose to have raiders and requests from the king for resources, food, or gold. These are well-worth fulfilling, but if you cannot attain a resource, this can be very frustrating. You can choose to start with all parts of the map revealed or not. All of these choices affect bonuses or lack thereof to your game score.
– Real player with 44.6 hrs in game
The Unexpected Quest
Note well: this is not really a combat game. If you’re looking for hack-and-slash, try elsewhere. This is a puzzle/strategy game, with resource collecting an essential feature. Yes, you fight monsters, but it’s not complicated; it isn’t meant to be. It’s your strategic abilities that come into play here above all; analysing each level for priorities is important, and so is deciding how to use your resources.
That said, I really like the cute characters and their quest against oddly comic undead. I love the strategic gameplay–for everyone who said ‘this is too easy’, there’s someone like me who prefers it on a more laidback level than (e.g.) Dark Souls!
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
[url] Please see my curator page for more games that are well worth your time[/url]
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 6-10h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1, there is chapter selection
Has it been in a bundle: No
Is there a good guide available: You don’t need a guide
How many people have completed this game at the time I’m writing this review: 2 on Astats
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
Architects of Shangri-La
Architects of Shangri-La takes you to a beautiful, mountainous land full of myths and untold stories. The state is led by thoughtful monks that constitute spiritual, political and economical power of the nation. Help them build their community, spread wisdom, make Shangri-La thrive and guard it against enemies!
Colonize uninhabited wild slopes. Search for the right spots so that your settlements are easy to reach by traders and porters, but also safe from natural disasters, animals and foes. Make sure that there is room for necessary infrastructure and future expansion. Try to make living in the mountains easier for your citizens.
Take care of physical and spiritual needs of your people. Give them shelter, provide with food by building farms and breeding cattle, ensure access to water, organize trade, construct places of worship and meditation to keep their morale high. Protect your citizens from wild animals, weather breakdowns as well as raiders wanting to disturb your peace.
Communication in the mountains is essential. Carve your way through rocks to connect your settlements with the net of roads and narrow, hazardous paths. Monitor their state and repair them to maintain supply chains, necessary for your people to survive.
Fulfill your spiritual duties. Schedule regular prayers, build chapels and temples to keep evil spirits away and be blessed in your deeds. Meditate to acquire wisdom and remain in balance with your body and mind, assuring happy and peaceful life.
Fantasy Town Regional Manager
This game was not what I was expecting. I thought it would be something like SimCity where you endlessly expand your town. But this game isn’t meant for you to build a long term town right out of the gate. You are expected to create a town, accomplish some small goals and quests, earn upgrade points and then - when your town crashes and burns - unlock some upgrades and start over again.
I’ve played for 16 hours and have yet to fully unlock all of the upgrades. I have unlocked all of the buildings and it is starting to get a little repetitive but I can see this as a fun game to come back to after a break and play a few rounds to pass the time.
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
Fun, engaging, eases you into some interesting complexities
I love how vibrant the game is, which is thanks to the music, the cute colours, the little people moving about the buildings, and the amount of story it’s able to fit in with the newspaper and your own gameplay.
That’s all drawn me in, but what’s kept me playing is seeing more new buildings appear, then deciding how their placement might affect the satisfaction of each class of adventurers. It starts off simple enough but when you’re ready, you’re able to introduce modifiers that impact the way you play even further.
– Real player with 15.3 hrs in game
Mythos: Slavic Builder
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1732910/Photography_Simulator/
Before the missionaries came to the Slavic lands to start writing down the known history, there was the Age of Mythos:
Forests, valleys and fields are full of creatures from Slavic beliefs. Even though they may look like monsters, you don’t have to fight them all. Make proper offerings to them and you will gain powerful allies.
Give your workers a roof over their heads and a good supper and they will build a thriving settlement for you. Do not disappoint your subjects, because dissatisfied people may leave you.
A long spear and a sharp sword will always be useful - your settlement is threatened by monsters, other tribes, Vikings or even demons from distant lands.
Follow Slavic traditions to earn points that you may spend on special blessings from the gods - the warlike Perun, the generous Mokosh and the mysterious Veles.
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