Hexters
This is a fun little game that as of this review is still in development for more maps past the 5th one. The banter with the “ai” programs as you complete the objectives for each one have a nice zest of comedy with them.
It runs very well and even when set to 1920x1080 whist having fullscreen disabled I am able to take advantage of my ultrawide using borderless gaming.
The response of the devs in regards to suggestions and reports is very satisfactory and I am more than happy to see the evolution of this game to its full state as well as possibaly check out any future projects they have in mind.
– Real player with 43.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Early Access Games.
Hexters is a story-driven RTS that takes place deep inside a computer. Apparently there has been one too many accidental bewerage container discharges on top of the computer since the tiny programs and the world running inside are in a complete disarray. You,as the User, are charged with traversing the bitscape through multiple levels to gather both the scattered programs and routines that keep your computer running, and the information of what actually led to the post-digicalyptic state of the machine. Unfortunately, you have to fight gnarly manifestations of bugs, glitches and stale memes not belonging in a healthy computer that inhibit your technological journey.
– Real player with 13.3 hrs in game
Tropico 4
Power corrupts, absolute power… is pretty neat.
Tropico 4 is the magnum opus of the Tropico franchise. It has the best gameplay, graphics, story and characters of the whole franchise. This game took the torch from Tropico 3 and made everything absolutely better. The soundtrack is amazing and gives you the Caribbean immersion you need to rule the proud nation of Tropico. The interface is clean and to the point, and the game communicates very well to the player what he is supposed to do, and the colour palettes in this game are gorgeous even by today standards. Also the jokes are hilarious and never get old.
– Real player with 817.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Management Games.
At first, I wanted to be a kind, benevolent dictator, in charge of my island which of course would be perfectly green, a land of equality, equal pay, a high living standard, jobs for every Tropican, a high level of schooling and a good member of the United Nations.
However, people kept complaining. At first, this was fine. Free Speech and all. But they were not working. Worse, they began to become rebels and attack the work of innocent, hard working Tropicans. “Right,” I thought, “no more of that.” I built guard posts around the nation to protect my other civilians and the economy which kept everyone fed and housed. After a while, the strikes became too much. “This right to protest is too inefficient”, I thought, “and we just missed that freighter. We needed that boost to the economy.” In a moment of Thatcher, I had the newly raised guards gun down some of the strikers. The rest returned to work. The right to protest had been removed, but people were happier as everyone got richer.
– Real player with 258.9 hrs in game
Tropico Reloaded
One of the greatest political simulators of all time. The only thing the remakes do better is adding vehicles, tropicans have a real hard time walking the length of larger islands. Still runs excellent on modern machines.
Why is Tropico one of the greatest simulators of all time?
1. Clear factions that know what they want - people follow factions to varying degrees, factions have measurements of how you are doing based on their own criteria. Communists like housing and income equality, capitalists like industry, religious people like cathedrals and a robust clergy etc. In theory you can make all the factions happy, but if you actually manage do that, turn up your difficulty.
– Real player with 149.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Management Games.
The original Tropico is still good, but not quite as good as the later ones. Tropico 2, on the other hand, is still the only game that lets you run a pirate island and is very much worth playing.
Tropico 1 is still quite enjoyable, but if you’ve played 3 and onwards you’ll miss the cars as it takes Tropicans forever to get anywhere on foot. This tends to cause food supply problems on large islands even with plenty of farms and wharves and markets. There’s also the same problem that’s been present in every game until Tropico 4’s Modern Times expansion of any housing with decent quality taking enormous amounts of real estate for the tiny number of people it houses. On the bright side, the excessively goofy style of the later games is absent here.
– Real player with 78.8 hrs in game
Lethis - Path of Progress
This game is a spiritual sucessor of the Pharaoh/Cleopatra/Caesar/Zeus/Poseidon and Emperor from Impression Games.
That said, it has the same core mechanics.
Graphics: are AMAZING, the game is h pretty, animation too.
Sound: beutiful soundtrack and when you click in buildings there is also sounds for each of them. There is no background sound yet, but Devs said that will be added soon, so I might update the review
Interface: Most of the interface is intuitive, there is tabs for each production chain and services. There is also graphics and most of the time you dont need many clicks to get what you want to see.
– Real player with 20.8 hrs in game
Lethis - Path of Progress is a city builder game similar to the old Sierra games like Cesar III or Pharao. A game following a game desing principle that’s been dropped for about a decade now, but unlike its old predecessors it’s playing in a fantasy (Steampunk) setting instead of a historical one. So when I saw this game on Steam I was pretty enthusiastic and added it to my wishlist for the next sale.
Now that I’ve played it a bit I’ve got rather mixed feelings about it. It plays pretty much exactly like Pharao, except for the improvement that factories just need to be connected with settlements by roads instead of runners. Which helps avoiding some stupid compromises Pharao forced on the player. The graphics are also rather nice, I very much liked the style of this game. There’s also the citizens' mood feature, which is new and interesting and I rather liked the ghost-threat.
– Real player with 18.6 hrs in game
Block’hood
For a 3 dimensional city builder; the game is remarkably devoid of depth. It’s very pretty, but as a simulation or a strategy game, Block’hood falls flat where it matters.
I love city builders. Creating a carefully balanced, tightly operating system of checks and balances that eventually bloom into a series of new gameplay mechanics and challenges, is a joy, whether it be Anno, Simtower, or Simcity/Skylines. What Block’hood brings to the genre, is an ingenious sense of 3D verticality. Both Simcity and Simtower were fine games, but in both you were stuck between either the directions of a compass, or to the left side / right side dichotomy of of a vertical slice of your ascending tower. Let’s face it; both games pinned you down upon a flat sheet.
– Real player with 60.4 hrs in game
An acquired taste.
Summary
Don’t buy this game based on the assumption that it’s a tower-building sim, because this game’s heart is clearly in the strategy-puzzle genre once you get to playing it. If you already enjoy resource-management see-saw puzzle games, you’ll immediately love the depth and complexity of this game behind it’s simple, pleasant looking facade. Those who don’t enjoy the hectic, non-stop balancing act of games like this, steer clear, this game is a 1-trick pony. Those who aren’t sure, pick this up on sale and tool around with it, you’ll either love it or hate it.
– Real player with 29.8 hrs in game
Stars Beyond Reach
Why Unlikely To Release?
We spent a long time working on this game, and ultimately it never reached the level of being fun. We had to step back from this in 2015, and moved on to other projects. We had over 100 testers in our alpha versions, and a lot of them did have fun, but the experience as a whole never truly gelled. Releasing into Early Access is not an option, because once we take your money we are obligated to somehow figure it out. Releasing it in a half-baked format also doesn’t seem like a great idea, even at a very low or free price.
So a lot of the great ideas from this game, the parts that worked, will probably wind up finding their way into the DNA of our other projects. Many of them already have, in AI War 2. Many of the technical achievements that we made with this game – or indeed with the also ill-fated In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor – went on to directly have a positive impact on AI War 2.
We actually have had many projects that went through some amount of R&D before being shelved, some with public testing and some without. Exodus of the Machine was one that had a huge bunch of art done on it. Starport 28 was a promising idea that wasn’t visually legible in the sort of art we could do. Cretaceous was a cool dinosaur-themed citybuilder/risk-like that gave some inspiration to Stars Beyond Reach. The difference with all those other projects is that we spent far less money working on them, and they never had any presence on Steam or any other storefront.
Stars Beyond Reach was to be our magnum opus, and so many things were going right with it, and we spent a ton of money on it, but ultimately it’s just another one for the R&D pile. The actual game itself, as it exists in these screenshots, is based on a UI system we no longer use or want to use, an art pipeline that is no longer compatible with how we make games, and a far older version of our codebase. There are also inevitable complications with rights on various pieces of the direct work here, which would make it hard for us to revisit it from a financial sense. We will inevitably revisit some of the same themes and ideas in the future in other ways, but it won’t be from digging up the code or art from this game itself (as good as both are).
TLDR: Its legacy will live on in various other titles we may do in the future, but this one was indeed beyond reach. (That pun is inevitable low hanging fruit)
Original Description
Crash-land on a hostile sentient world in this deep, turn-based 4X/citybuildier. Learn the languages of other trapped alien empires, explore, form alliances, and ultimately attempt the impossible: escape.
Features
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Manage your own civilization like a turn-based citybuilder, but in a 4X setting.
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Deal with other civilizations using force or more nuanced building abilities (“poison Narr’s water,” “invite Keleci to the opera,” “dump bodies on Strot’s populace”).
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The game takes place over four “acts” during which you have unique objectives and challenges: Arrival, Discovery, Alliances, and Doomsday.
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You have considerable freedom in how you build your empire and make friends or foes, but each race is filled with unique character under your control or that of an AI.
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14 alien races each have 3 possible leaders with their own personalities and goals. You will have to devise unique strategies for befriending or neutralizing them depending on their situation and exactly who is in a campaign.
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There are distinct degrees of victory that you can achieve. Just winning the game doesn’t mean you won well.
Info Dump Incoming!
There’s a whole lot of text down there. The trailer and the bullet points might be enough for you, and if so then go ahead and stop reading! But a lot of this game’s audience are the sort of grognards who – like me – would like to know as much as possible. So here’s the flow of the game as it progress through each act. Pretty cool stuff actually!
Act I: Arrival
When you first land on the planet, your minds and your computers have been all but wiped. You quickly have to learn both basic and advanced technologies and establish yourself as a new civilization. When you choose your landing spot, your citizens let you know what special objectives they expect you to meet in order to exit this first act.
During act 1, my interactions with the 13 other races on the planet are pretty limited. I can fight them if I wish. I can do things to them or experience things that they do to me. But I don’t speak their languages, nor they mine. If I want to capture more territories (think Risk), I can do so. I have a fair bit of freedom here, but only low-level technologies and buildings.
Whether or not I choose to go conquer or subjugate someone I can’t even speak to yet is up to me. My core goals are all about my own city, however. My citizenry is complex and I need to get them established and built up.
This is a living world where your own territories are as interesting and complex as the civilizations you encounter. Threats come as much from inside your own civilization as much as from outside it – and in Act 1, the focus is on threats from within.
Act II: Discovery
Now we’re starting to look outward. The abilities and needs of our own empire have just upgraded substantially, and we’re able to start learning the languages of our potential allies and enemies.
At this point there are specialized “natural wonders” scattered around the world that our scientists need to examine. There is key information about the world that we are able to detect in these places (and for fans of Arcen’s other titles, you can find some answers to longstanding questions about both AI War: Fleet Command and The Last Federation).
Problem is, a lot of those natural wonders are in territories controlled by other races. How do we deal with those? Maybe we get lucky and can snatch up enough territories that we can learn what we need without involving the other races at all just yet. Maybe we beat a few heads into the ground. Or, more intelligently, maybe we find out what their deepest-seated fears and desires are… and then exploit whichever of them we can.
I might be renting out mainframe time to Xermi, who desperately needs it, while at the same time dumping garbage all throughout the lands of Vesden until she gives us the information just to get me off her back. I might not trust the shifty and volatile doShal, and might militarily suppress him to the point that he surrenders and becomes an early puppet state for me.
Act III: Alliances
A sudden realization has hit us. I won’t spoil what is learned, but something becomes abundantly clear. I must attempt what all the other races have failed to do: return to the stars. Armed with my new information, it is time to set out and gather as many allies as possible.
Unfortunately, I can’t make friends with everyone. Isn’t it always the case where the most eager-to-be-friends folks seem to be the least useful in a disaster scenario? Well, some of the stronger folks come with unsavory demands: they might not join me if I don’t murder an entire innocent species, drive an empire into poverty, or bring them an enslaved race of fallen foes.
What mix of races am I willing to ally with? Even if I throw morality to the wind, what will set me up in the optimal situation for Act IV? Can I get those races who are determinedly neutral to actually take action? Some of them are incredibly powerful, but almost as hard to sway.
Act IV: Doomsday
I don’t want to spoil much about this one. The battle lines have been drawn. Everyone has declared their alliances or their neutrality. And the planet itself has put its own long-dormant plans into motion. It’s time to hope that my empire is robust enough to survive the all-out war that now consumes the world. Can I help my allies live through the assaults of their enemies? Can they help me against flying saucers arriving on my doorstep and monsters erupting from the ground?
All of the choices I have made in prior acts now either come to fruition or come crashing down. Either way it should be quite entertaining, as both my citizens, my enemies, my allies, and the planet itself will have plenty of remarks on what is happening (all unobtrusive and something you can skip reading with ease if you just want the meat and no dressing).
Degrees Of Victory
This is one of the few games where “winning” is not a black and white proposition. There are two overall goals for Act IV: escaping, and stopping the planet’s machinations.
But just what does it mean to “escape?” If only I and a handful of my higher-ups from the government make it out alive, and everyone else dies, is that a victory? The game will tell me it is, sure, although a pretty poor one.
How about getting more of my citizens offworld, and even allied citizens of other races offworld, and thus really saving some genetic lineages there – is that a good victory? Well, I suppose that’s not bad. But if I haven’t stopped the planet from doing… what it’s doing that I won’t spoil… then there are some pretty awful things that are going to happen around the galaxy. So… yay me, I guess?
On the other end of the scale, what if I stop the planet, but at the expense of my own life and everyone else living on the planet? I may completely fail to escape, but stop this awful planet for good. In the grand scheme this is actually a far more notable victory – but then again I have killed myself and everyone I ever knew in order to accomplish it.
In an ideal world I would get everyone to safety, stop the planet, and do so without committing any moral atrocities along the way. But there’s the question: am I good enough to pull that off?
A Note About Humor
This is a serious 4X and citybuilding/simulation game, despite the funny promotional videos. Let’s face it, when you play a game of this sort that has anything novel at all in it, the result at first can be death spirals and unintentional hilarity. May as well have some fun with that! Better a Memorable Defeat than a Forgettable Victory , you know?
That said, the game itself maintains the more serious tone you would expect, dark or wry humor aside. Sometimes you get hilarious things like a race of capitalistic amoral robots inventing a TV show they call The Sweatshop Comedy Hour , but it’s actually a useful upgrade that makes them more fearsome – so mock them at your peril!
We know that not everybody wants humor injected into their serious strategy game (our earliest beta testers actually made this pretty clear to us), and we have kept that in mind. But we’re huge fans of the LP called Boatmurdered, and we hope that this game will inspire similar tales of dark humor.
SimCity™ 4 Deluxe Edition
Ever thought you could make a better city? Pah, I could be a better Mayor; well now you can! SimCity 4 is just that and offers this opportunity and lets you sit in the chair titled “mayor”. I’ve definitely clocked up more hours in the days I installed this on ME and XP.
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition is another one of those games that has been created by EA… EA? Not again you say - except this time.. EA has really created a game and has polished it up to its standards. SC4 is one of the older prequels to ‘Societies’ and the 2013 SimCity relaunch; released after Sim City 3000, it showed off superb graphic capabilities at the time and invented new ways to enjoy building a simulated city, where you play as the city’s major, managing the: finances, housing stock, roads, ports, resident satisfaction, transit, and employment.
– Real player with 567.8 hrs in game
Ah, SimCity 4, the best, in my opinion, of all of the SimCity games. The graphics are dated, being that this was released around fifteen years ago, but don’t let that deter you. Play times depend on how much you enjoy city building games. I myself have spent 2-4 hours today playing it.
The U-Drive-It mode is pretty cool, as it lets you drive through your transportation system with a variety of vehicles, but can get annoying over time with the other cars.
The regions are a nice addition, as you can have cities depend on each other, plus some of the regions come in the shape of several real-life cities, albeit with no structures. In the same vein, importing and exporting cities & regions are useful. If you have a sprawling metropolis and want to share it with the world, you can! Have a police state with stations on every corner? You now can show it to your friends and family!
– Real player with 325.6 hrs in game
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition
Excellent remake of a classic
– Real player with 118.8 hrs in game
I’m too old for this
– Real player with 96.4 hrs in game
Tropico 3
Day 1:start game ,listen to a overly excited probably bribed anouncer welcome you in,build house,no one lives in said house,
Day 2:i want to build a farm,builders refuse to build farm,i get mad,i use army to “convince” the builders to build,
Day 3: the people no longer like me now, i have 8 rebels on my small island…my army still cant find them,
i cower in fear in my palace.
Day 4: They have attacked, i’m the only one left, the one last man in the army. i’ve taken out only 2, now i retreat in shame. where are my people?
– Real player with 733.9 hrs in game
El Presidente Version 3
This is my first Tropico Game and after some time of frustrating restarts and head meets desk moments,
i finally figured out how to be a good El Presidente.
Sure some folks are always bothering me, but meh i got a prison.
You have many ways of getting rid of negative people as well as options to make your people happy.
Beating these small shacks, your worst enemies, can be difficult, since they tend to pop up in the worst moments.
Also your workers are damn lazy, they dont build your houses and ignore the big ass transport ships in your harbor -.-
– Real player with 30.5 hrs in game
Anno 2205™
A bold new direction for the Anno Series, but it’s going to be a hard pill to swallow…
We’re now several patches in, I’ve decided my old review no longer applies because frankly the game that’s taking shape from the patches is something new and interesting. It’s still Anno to an extent, but there’s a massive raft of changes. So let’s deal with the TLDR first and foremost.
If you want a multiplayer anno experience, right now this is not the game for you. Go back to Anno 1404 Venice. I wouldn’t even recommend Anno 2070 because in my extensive experience of the Anno series, 1404 is the stronger entry, Anno 2070 is too crufty, and too overloaded with some really strange ideas that just don’t quite work. Venice is a far more consistent, challenging and interesting experience, and you’ll find it a far more -fun- game to play. As a multiplayer game, and indeed, as a versus AI, 1404 wins against 2070 for that purpose.
– Real player with 203.1 hrs in game
*** SUPER UPDATED ***
I liked this game. But then the Tundra DLC released and suddenly I could no longer play it. No big deal, I guess, I was pissy but that didn’t make the base game bad.
All my attempts at getting a refund or a fix were ignored, which made me more pissy.
Now they’ve released a DLC that season pass and Gold Edition buyers will have to purchase.
THIS IS NOT OKAY UBISOFT.
UPDATED
It’s hard to give a review for this game.
I’m a big fan of previous Anno games, and I’ve spent a lot of time with Anno 2070, doing little side missions, replaying the main content, continuous games… I never did multiplayer, admittedly, because I’m not a huge fan of acknowledging other people even exist, let alone let them invade my game.
– Real player with 170.2 hrs in game