Sword of the Stars: The Pit
OK, let’s get this out of the way right now.
You will die.
Lots.
You will be poisoned, diseased, irradiated, blown up, and electrocuted. You will be hungry and starved, your equipment will break, your armor will fail, and your ammunition will run dry. You will be stunned, confused, blinded, and terrorized. You will be shot by crazed security robots, shredded by mutated terrors, and gnawed on by countless foes, and occasionally disintegrated.
…so, you’ve got that going for you.
Overview (what is it?):
– Real player with 522.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Crafting Difficult Games.
This game is excellent for so many reasons. It’s a Rogue-like, and, if you know what that means, you’re probably a fan of the type. If not, do a little research because the sub-genre isn’t for everyone.
Firstly, the game is very broad for how simple it is. There are a ton of interactable objects within the Pit to interact with, all relying on your particular class' skills and some RNG to determine the effect when using them. (Typically, pass/fail, but sometimes the reward or punishment can be greater than standard.) Tons of weapons, armors, utility items and the like to aid in your overall objective which is to reach the bottom of the Pit!
– Real player with 512.2 hrs in game
Wayward
TLDR: BUY THE GAME YOU WON’T REGRET IT!!
First, let me start by saying, My game play style is usually casual. I’m normally not a fan of rogue-like, perma-death games at all. Games that even have the words rogue-like or perma-death, I wouldn’t usually even give a chance…..BUT…..A friend that is, and always will be a rogue at heart in every game, that has played Wayward long before it even came to Steam, repeatedly tried to get me to play saying, “just try it, I think you will like this one” managed to get me hooked on this game.
– Real player with 1437.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Crafting Multiplayer Games.
TL:DR -
This game is extremely good. The updates are pretty slow so that part sucks, but otherwise it’s pretty playable as is. There’s a decent exchange between the community and the developer, he’s super active on the game’s subreddit. In terms of community outreach I’d say the guy has been doing a phenomenonal job.
Having said that, some things can get a bit repetitive. One of my biggest gripes is how you can’t craft things in batches and instead have to do it one by one. This may not seem like a huge issue initially, but when you’re crafting 120 strings where each crafting action takes ~250-500ms then this adds up rather quickly (another good example is if you want to craft wooden arrows in bulk. You need a bunch of sticks first, and one of the best ways to get a bunch is to chop a few trees for logs and to dismantle them into bark and sticks, not mentioning gathering the feathers that are also required. Excluding the time required to gather the required feathers, it takes about 5 minutes to craft 120 arrows. 120 arrows may seem like a lot and it is if you’re fighting stuff on land, but if you’re fighting stuff that lives in the sea then each arrow is lost on a successful hit. It’s very easy to go through a lot of arrows in the process. I do like this mechanic of losing your arrows since it mostly makes sense, though I think you should be able to salvage a few if you carve up the monster’s carcass. It’s just a hassle to make more and more arrows, especially if you want the higher-tiered ones like iron/stone arrows). You need to use your mouse as well to craft stuff, so my mouse has taken a bit of a beating because of this.
– Real player with 284.1 hrs in game
C:\raft
After playing this game for quite a bit, I’ve got to say it’s quite enjoyable. Definitely a roguelike (not a fake, free-roaming one, but an actual turn-based, punishing, strategize before-hand one), and an enjoyable one at that. Don’t expect to walk in and start killing everything, because chances are if you’re new to the genre (or even a bit experienced like myself), you’ll still die a dozen times before you get the hang of it. Learning it is easy enough; mastering it is quite difficult. One of the things I really enjoyed was having dungeons created based off the files I chose from my folder.
– Real player with 30.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Crafting Dungeon Crawler Games.
I truly want to enjoy this game, but the lack of guidance is concerning. As this is an early access game, it is understandable if a lot of the features or the UI is incomplete, but there is a lot of things that is missing from the game to actually guide the player.
Now, I am not asking for the game to become a linear, hand holding game that it will never be. It’s not in the style of the game, but the game itself doesn’t provide any assistance with complex actions such as quests and crafting. It would be more likely that I end up never completing a quest or crafting an item.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Dungeons of Dredmor
I can’t believe I haven’t written a review for one of my favorite games of all time.
Dungeons of Dredmor is an incredible roguelike. It’s a liiiiittle buggy, but sometimes that bugginess is part of the charm. Other times you get stuck in geometry by accident and crash to desktop. It’s a SOMEWHAT stable game, but it does sometimes hardlock, so make sure you save frequently(I recommend right before and after heading down a floor).
the classes are varied and creative, with literally over four dozen different skill trees to choose from, you pick seven and head off to your likely rapid doom. Most skill trees have viability, there’s very few out and out stinkers, and even then those can be propped up by better skills or even buoy good skills into amazing skills when combo’d together.
– Real player with 517.0 hrs in game
TL:DR Imagine if your favourite comedian was also a nuclear physicist.
It’s taken me a while to write this review - because I CAN’T STOP PLAYING.
Thou art a pimple on the dungeon floor!
I used to play a dungeon based game called Larn when I should have been studying. In those days PCs only had two colours and in that game walls were portrayed using the ‘#’ and ‘U’ was reserved for a creature called Umber Hulk. The little ‘g’ was a creature called Gelatinous Cube. I hated that guy. The whole world was built using key board characters which allowed your imagination to flourish. Cue deep romantic sigh.
– Real player with 293.9 hrs in game
Legion’s Crawl
You might look at this game and think it looks really B for its low budget graphics, but with countless games played and over a thousand titles in my library there’s not many that I can honestly say keeps me coming back for more every few days like this one.
Pros:
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Very satisfying gameplay
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Intricate character development choices that make you keep considering different approaches
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Keybindings for everything but can also mostly be played with just a mouse
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Easy to learn, difficult to master
– Real player with 153.6 hrs in game
RECOMMENDED : Ratings 6/10 (Simple, Fun, Relaxing)
During the last few days, I have been having lots of fun playing this Rogue-like Dungeon crawler. I would love to recommend it because of the following reasons.
Simplicity is the best attraction of this game for me. The interface is simple, and there is not much of a learning curve. It has a procedurally generated dungeon of about 16 levels and you can select 1 of 6 heroes. Each heroes has a slightly different dungeon rule (for example, no merchant but crafting station on every level, etc) so choosing a different hero is like playing a “different” type of dungeon.
– Real player with 68.0 hrs in game
Sword of the Stars: The Pit 2
As an Early Acess review I just want to get a quick review out to players of the first Pit who wonder whether the sequel is worth it.
The successor to the first Pit is shaping up quite nicely. While it is obviously still missing quite a few features and content from its predecessor - not just because of Early Access but because it was humongous, the Developers are very responsive when it comes feedback and bug reports.
The Pit 2 goes back to the turn based dungeon crawling and once done will mean you pretty much get the first Pit plus all the extra good stuff they - and the community - can come up with.
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
If you liked SOTS: The Pit 1, you’ll love this! Everything is back the way you like it, but now in glorious 3d!
It’s early access, so some stuff doesn’t work yet, as to be expected.
Please support this game so it lives up to the glory of SOTS: The Pit 1!
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Rogue Harvest
Something happened. You wake up in a forest. Now you have to survive! Run, the ents are coming!
This is a great game and try to be cautious, surviving the first night won’t be the best. I started to think the best way is just running for your life. This is a complicated survival game or complicated and funny survival game where you have to create the best shelter to avoid the enemies at night. Yeah, they are not so great at day but the skeletons.. and other things, you know. They going to destroy your shelter. Now you know!
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game
Interested in seeing some gameplay? see below!
TL:DR: Cheap but fun roguelike survival game, some way to go before it’s finished, but well worth the price with the current content! 7.5/10
Review
Rogue Harvest is a roguelike survival game, with permadeath and gameplay similar to that of hardcore Minecraft or Terraria. In Rogue Harvest you play as the survivor of a plane crash fighting to make sense of and survive in the hostile world in which he’s found himself. The gameplay is fun and currently semi-deep, there’s several tiers of content for each item (from 2-4 depending on the item) and you are free to create some awesome looking houses to defend yourself with.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Dredgers
This is tough, because I love this game and it’s concept. It’s so fun! I have a lot of praise for it.
Unfortunately, I feel like I can’t recommend it at this time for two reasons:
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Missing basics like any type of saving, which pretty much everything I’ve played since the days of shareware has had, seems quite sloppy. The display of the amount of hours I’ve played isn’t really correct: most of that has been on pause because I didn’t want to exit and lose all my progress on the run.
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Do you know how my last run ended? No? Neither do I. Based on all the information I had, it didn’t make sense. Many key things are just not explained, so new players are going to go through several baptisms by fire, creating a lot of frustration.
– Real player with 152.5 hrs in game
Pretty solid roguelike with emphasis on speedy playthroughs and choosing your next step, though that can be its weakness too. Its big selling points are the 30+ races and crazy class combinations which are very very satisfying to play with, as well as actual honest-to-god necromancy where you can have a zombie horde if you want. Or you could skip zombies altogether, dominate the minds of your enemies, send them at your foes, blow up their (animate or inanimate) corpses into a huge mess when they die and then revive them and your former foes as skeletons. Full crafter build is viable, and thats before we get onto races. Pretty much anything that spawns in the dungeon is something you can unlock and play pretty quickly. Only exception afaik is the slime MAN (you can be a regular slime) but I suspect that’ll be implemented in time.
– Real player with 61.1 hrs in game
UnReal World
This may be the best game I’ve ever played.
You may be wondering why I’m about to give this game such a glowing review when I have under an hour of play time on Steam. That’s because it’s free. It’s been free on the internet for ages. Unreal World, developed by Sami Maaranen, and Erkka Lehmus, is a low fantasy roguelike set in Iron Age Finland. Of course, you know that from the description. To get to know this game, you need to immerse yourself in the world. And it’s a big, complex world. URW has been updated regularly since its release in 1992. That’s 25 years of frequent updates. The most recent version is 3.40, which just left alpha this year. I bought this game to support the devs, and it was worth every penny I paid for it. I’ll do a quick rundown of pros and cons.
– Real player with 776.4 hrs in game
I am absolutely ashamed of myself.
I’ve never considered graphics an issue. Many of my favorite games are pretty old, and I’ve never minded motionless sprites or minimal animation. I played Spiderweb Software’s Exile back in the 90s (and sank countless hours into both of its remakes), along with obscure RPGs like Realmz and TaskMaker, and I enjoyed some truly ancient roguelikes found on shareware CDs that came with magazines. I never had any problems with putting myself into my characters' shoes, graphics notwithstanding. I feel as if the minimal graphics give my imagination more freedom to roam and create on its own, much like reading a book.
– Real player with 588.4 hrs in game
Solar Rogue
I’m enjoying Solar Rogue much more than I was expecting. You keep your ship’s energy up so you can convert and craft upgrades. Move through sectors of space looking for more. Crew management is place holder at this time but will hopefully be added during early access.
– Real player with 30.5 hrs in game