The Depths of Tolagal

The Depths of Tolagal

A round of applause for the developers here! They succeeded in creating a tough as nails rougelike that challenges you measure ever step and I do mean EVERY step but (for the most part) only punished the clumsy or the uninformed. I have died several times by virtue of approaching a hallway and accidentally alerting an extra orc or two and promptly getting my teeth kicked in. I have come to realization that the tactical aspect of the game is actually a good bit deeper than rpg aspect of it. Level progression unlocks triats as opposed to a solid stat boost across the board. Many of the traits simply open up intersting opportunties which require you to adjust your playstyle in order to gain an advantage. So overall I would say this game is TACTICAL rougelike more than a classic rougelike rpg.

Real player with 10.4 hrs in game


Read More: Best Dungeon Crawler Roguelike Games.


Beta tested before the game hit steam.

The studio may not be updating anymore, but the main dev (matt) that responded to beta reports was responsive and helpful.

Fun game, gets tough at the the second to last and last map and really makes you question what load out you wanna run in terms of skills and weapons so yes, it’s worth the price. It’s pretty fun and once the difficulty ramps up you have to think about choices even more. What skills you need, more inv space, throwing weapons, push back weapons to make the enemies waste a turn, etc..

Real player with 6.8 hrs in game

The Depths of Tolagal on Steam

Rime Berta

Rime Berta

To note: while I do recommend this game, I do so with careful consideration of the game’s many MANY issues, which you’ll find below. The playtime is not exactly correct (I did leave the game idling a few times), but I did beat it on Hard.

At its core, Rime Berta is an extremely barebones SRPG in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics (but without most of the depth). You get to command an army of ‘puppets’ with different classes, each with mostly unique skills, and occasionally change classes when you hit certain skill milestones and get to hire random units at the end of most battles. There are no items or inventory whatsoever, units can’t change class outside of their own class trees and can’t choose different branches of the same tree once you commit to one. Combat’s fun enough when it works and I don’t remember running into any glitches.

Real player with 62.7 hrs in game


Read More: Best Dungeon Crawler Tactical RPG Games.


This game is not Tactics Ogre, nor is it Final Fantasy Tactics. It lacks features like items, detailed plot, and multiple ways to heal units beyond what support units (clerics in the aforementioned games) can provide.

However that does not mean it’s a bad game.

As an indie game, its lack of features and arguably gameplay polish is quite evident. The camera controls are unintuitve, but the developers allow you to select units from a list if your POV can’t spot them. Sometimes archers can’t shoot down cliffs in certain situations, but mages laugh at the concept of terrain. For many flaws, the developers have offered less frustrating workarounds.

Real player with 42.2 hrs in game

Rime Berta on Steam

Sol Blanka

Sol Blanka

Try the first ever game that started the journey to Wizard’s Quest! This is only a sample game that was made back in 2014 in which I do not plan to complete, but it is a interesting little game to try out. This is an experimental game which features:

Quick free Turn-based combat with classic 2d graphics.

A jump button feature for some platforming.

On-the-go story-based sequences.

Minor Character interactions with bigger portraits during dialogue.

Minor environmental interactions.


Read More: Best Dungeon Crawler Singleplayer Games.


Sol Blanka on Steam

Torchway

Torchway

How many secrets are kept in the mines, catacombs and dark halls of the ancient borders? Only with a lantern in hand can you find treasures in the darkest corners of the dungeons!

Collect expeditions, explore different locations, find artifacts and bring light!

FEATURES

  • Meditative adventure - slowly explore the unknown, shining light on new parts of the location

  • Look for clues to solve the riddles of ancient civilizations

  • Avoid traps and dangerous enemies guarding the treasures of the ancients

  • Completely new explorer gaming experience

  • Juicy pixel art

Torchway on Steam

Dungeoneers

Dungeoneers

Very very fun. Counting the web version, I’ve put hundreds if not thousands of hours in to this game. Strategy is very important. Like backgammon, it’s still skill even with RNG. My review is mostly using the version from about a week ago. I’ll update it when I’ve spent some more time with the new version.

Pros:

Strategy is easy to learn but hard to master

Art is pretty cool

Very few bugs

It manages good variety without excessive complexity

I can’t say exactly what it is, but I really like the gameplay

Real player with 175.5 hrs in game

A great casual hex based strategic beat em up rpg, like a classic D and D one shot campaign. Weigh the options of attacking vs. sneaking and grabbing swords, bows and shields vs. counting your potions and scrolls for the dragons. No story lines to remember, just dragons to beat up, and mummies, and trolls, and those pesky firebugs.

Run in the daily hunt against all other players, how many skeleton elbows can you collect in one run? 100? Inconceivable!

A lot of strategy in each room, should I sneak by the orcs and just grab the loot, hoping to not be spotted? Can I take out the casters and snipers before I get clobbered? Can I handle the rain of fireballs? (p.s. if you get stuck in a rain of fireballs, you are doing it wrong).

Real player with 116.1 hrs in game

Dungeoneers on Steam

Heroes of Steel RPG

Heroes of Steel RPG

All I can say is, “Wow”! What a great game! This is a must-have if you like these types of games. Heroes of Steel puts the Tactical in tactical turn-based RPGs. With constant developer support and responsiveness, bugs are non-existent and the gameplay experience keeps getting better and better with more content and constant user-suggested improvements. Refreshing to say the least.

As for the gameplay….outstanding. I love these types of old school games. Graphics and soundwise, that’s what this feels like. Almost nostalgic. However, don’t let that fool you, this game is very current and plenty sophisticated in its combat-oriented content. You truly are the difference in winning and losing battles. Your positioning, movement, order of attack, buffs, de-buffs, spells, etc…make all the difference in almost every battle. If you get careless, you get hurt. If you pay attention, you can still get hurt but you should be able to implement a strategy to win and advance and it’s very satisfying.

Real player with 2565.1 hrs in game

Picked up Heroes of Steel during Xmas sale when it was going for 60% off (that’s cheaper than the cost of a movie here and hundreds more hours of entertaining tactical fun) and have had a blast with it so far. Came into this game blind, after seeing that a friend had played it quite a bit during the holiday season and will have to say that it is one of the most memorable turn based experiences I’ve had. So here’s a fervent thank you from me to the developers for making a very engaging turn based tactics game with good depth and options!

Real player with 500.3 hrs in game

Heroes of Steel RPG on Steam

Netherguild

Netherguild

Netherguild is a turn-based tactical roguelite dungeon-crawler, where you command expeditions below the earth in a desperate attempt to cure a strange plague.

Explore, camp, and fight as far as you can before heading back to resupply.

What will you discover underground?

Key Features:

Bonfires:

Construct campfires underground, rest and eat next to them. The food items you consume affect your guild members and the rest of your expedition, with passive effects, permanent changes and more!

──────────────────────────────────────────

Combat:

Learn how to defeat different enemies (and when to flee) in combat. Hitting enemies requires no RNG - so you can depend on your abilities, but watch out for tricky enemies that are immune to your strategy, unfortunate circumstances and surprises!

In Netherguild, combat is another form of resource management- how can you prevent your characters from getting hurt, or receiving harmful debuffs? When is it the right time to use a powerful ability, when should you save it for later?

──────────────────────────────────────────────────

Oddities:

Different oddities you find underground will present you with various choices that may affect your expedition and the game world at large.

────────────────────────────────────────────────

The World Above:

While you explore below, different events may happen above-ground, presenting opportunity and choice when you return from expeditions.

────────────────────────────────────

Replay Value:

Random equipment, random character backgrounds with different skills each playthrough and procedurally generated levels every time you descend underground mean that playthroughs feel different every time.

────────────────────────────────────

Additional Features:

  • Roguelite with Persistence and Story: Keep your characters at the end of each expedition (if they survive), equip them with powerful items and level them up over time. Netherguild’s story progresses the more you explore and find out about the secrets of its world.

  • Dungeon Crawling Resource Management: Powerful abilities have a limited amount of uses. Your characters have limited inventory space. What is more important? The priceless loot you bring up back to the surface, or the firewood logs that let you descend even deeper?

  • Original Game World: Netherguild may be fantasy, but don’t expect it to play by genre conventions at all; No Orcs, no Elves, and no wizards casting fireballs. Expect to find strange biospheres and denizens far underground.

  • Cute Voxel Aesthetics: Contrasted by a story with serious themes, as you face against plague and conspiracy!

  • Solo Developed: I’m always happy to get feedback, suggestions and inspiration from players. You can reach me through various channels such as my twitter, the Netherguild discord and Netherguild Steam forum. If you love Netherguild, dislike something about it, or you have a fantastic idea you think should be added to the game, please let me know! :D

Early Access: Risks, Plans and Expectations:

  • Risks: It’s possible that during development, I would run out of money and wouldn’t be able to continue full time development.

    If that were to happen, I’ll take up part time or full time work and develop Netherguild in my spare time. This game will be finished as long as I’m physically able to work on it.

    I’m doing everything in my power to combat this risk - for example, marketing and getting to a certain number of wishlists before release should prevent it from ever occurring - but I think it’s still important to be honest about risks like this before release.

  • Plans: Updates will happen in regular intervals; With a new update every week to three weeks. I would like to have weekly / bi-weekly updates for the most part, but of course that depends on development, with bigger changes taking longer to update, but containing more content and additions.

  • Expectations: Expect progress to be slow and steady- being a solo dev means I can’t finish the game in a year, and big updates will take time. Also, expect me to always be active on the Netherguild discord during Early Access, listening to your feedback.

Netherguild on Steam

Quest of Dungeons

Quest of Dungeons

I realize I spent way too much time completing this game. But I wanted to get all the achievements.

Disregarding that, it is actually a really cool adventure/rogue-like dungeon crawler.

It has 5 unique characters with different builds with 4 different levels you can play them on.

The game is pretty challenging even on the easier difficulties but still feels rewarding when completing bosses or stages especially with the achievements that are very well implemented.

I do have a few issues with it though.

Real player with 58.1 hrs in game

Quest of Dungeon originally got my attention simply for the funny trailer, however as I sank a few hours in, I felt like it was the devs that got the last laugh. This is not worth your money at all. And here’s why in this long list of issues.

-The game is overly simple. The game throws at you ton food items that any experienced Roguelike player would expect them to serve a greater purpose aka hunger. Here, their only purpose is simply to (restore a bit of HP). They are basically just lesser Health Potion. Also, The only strategy involved with any character is to spam skills whenever they are available. There’s no wands of teleport or rings of polymorph to be found here. No fun silly deaths that you’d find in other roguelike eitheir. Here. Your deaths will be solely attributed to dying to a boss you shouldn’t have tackled yet. (But you had no way of knowing prior).

Real player with 26.9 hrs in game

Quest of Dungeons on Steam

The Dungeon Paradox

The Dungeon Paradox

I purchased this Early Access of Dungeon Paradox for $15 because i saw a video on YouTube with upcoming Turn Based Tactic Games and they had the trailer to this game so i was very intrigued. I am in my late 50’s and my first dungeon game i played was Wizardry 1 on a 48K Apple Computer back in the early 80’s and this game stole alot of hours of my life. Followed by Ultima and then the FTL Games “Dungeon Master & Chaos Strike Back” on a Amiga. Now its years later and many Dungeon games later this game peaked my interest. It brings back the old flavor of Turn Based Dungeon Crawler but with a Tactical Turn Based Maneuvers, I am glad i purchased this game and cant wait for it be finished. looking forward to see how they develop the combat system further and how the Ai on the advanced monsters will look also.

Real player with 21.3 hrs in game

An interesting take on Modern vs Fantasy.

Think of Breach and Clear meets D&D.

Though there isn’t much as of the current version, if you like the concept. Wishlist it.

Real player with 12.3 hrs in game

The Dungeon Paradox on Steam

Dungeon of Rikka

Dungeon of Rikka

Fun, challenging and addictive roguelike (with permadeath!). The graphics are very simple and might put off a little, but the interface is easy to understand, and with 4 classes, procedurally generated dungeons, items that change effect at every playthrough (so you have to take a risk and test them first), plus an unlockable dungeon (that I have yet to beat–I liked the way the player is given the hint to unlock it), it has a good replay value. The game can be a bit difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, as long as you don’t rush it, things go far more smoothly. A bit buggy at times, but as it can be seen from the news section, the dev has been very active fixing eventual things that pop up. I bought the game while on sale, but I’d say it’s worth it even full price.

Real player with 41.2 hrs in game

Wow, I got this in the Lunar Sale cos it was only 71p but I did not expect this to be so addictive.

Its very much an indie dungeon crawler turn based game with procedural dungeons but once it hooks you you wont want to stop playing.

Best 71p I ever spent. !

P.S Even at the full price of £4.79 its an absolute steal.

Just buy it dude.

Real player with 13.8 hrs in game

Dungeon of Rikka on Steam