Cogmind
Cogmind is a roguelike game, where you constantly build and rebuild your character. Your capabilities are defined by the items you acquire. There is no experience (no grinding!), you gain ‘levels’ by climbing to the next floor. This system makes various builds equally viable: combat, speed, stealth, all sorts of hybrids and so on.
Items are not just stats +X. You will balance energy output, heat generation and support with your combat capabilities, speed and information gathering capabilities. There are over a thousand different items: weapons, power sources, cooling, propulsion, sensors, armors, shields, hackware, build and repair utilities and many, many more. Each item has a cost to use it, with more powerful items typically having bigger costs. There are various synergies and you can get some sick combos! But don’t get too attached to the components you currently own, because sooner or later they WILL get destroyed. That’s why you constantly need to acquire new parts (they are everywhere!) to rebuild yourself, sometimes completely respecializing to a different build type (You were a heavy tank, machine of destruction, but after a particularly tough fight not much is left of you? Time to become an ultra light jet that zips past enemies before they get a chance to act!).
– Real player with 1628.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Early Access Atmospheric Games.
This game is good. Really good.
I’ve put 200+ hours into it, and I still want to play more.
In depth reasons below, but a quick tl;dr:
This game solves a lot of problems that I’ve found with the entire roguelike genre, in major ways. Even without looking at roguelikes at all, this is a very good game in it’s own right, and once you learn all the systems in play (which the game helps you learn, instead of having to look in an out of game wiki for arcane details) it’s a joy to play. It’s also fun to discover these things out as you go, and I really liked the magical feeling upon finding new areas off the beaten path. Running into Z(partially redacted) was a really cool moment in my first few hours of play, and those are scattered throughout the game. In addition, the early game is a lot better then other games of this type, instead of being a slog.
– Real player with 532.5 hrs in game
Approaching Infinity
Send help. I put 60 hours into this game in one week. I’ve lost control of my nervous system. I can’t stop thinking about this game. I’m ducking obsessed!
Approaching Infinity is by far the best game in this type of genre that I’ve ever played. What sort of genre? Well, the trading/planet exploration/ship combat/character and ship customization/space sim genre. You’re basically captain of the Enterprise, except the Enterprise comes in a bunch of different flavors.
The game isn’t perfect, but you should know the background of its history before judging. This game is actually years and years old. The developer, Bob, worked under a publisher for a while, but they were run by greedy idiots. They kept actively sabotaging him to make the game worse. It took him years for the game to fall into such a bad state that they finally sold him the rights back for pennies on the dollar. Now that Bob owns the rights, he’s jumped back into fixing the bugs, errors, glitches, and major oversights caused when a publisher is garbage.
– Real player with 126.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Early Access Sci-fi Games.
Please read this comment if you are hesitating whether to buy this game. Because I remember 1 week ago, I also wasn’t sure about it.
Short Version - Freaking buy it if you like sci fi/exploration/planet and wreck scavenging - just do it! This game is purely amazing, fun and mindblowing!
Long Version
Game is roguelike, with very nicely done balance, it is always challenging, always one step behind you, but at the same time, it gives a lot of satisfaction - infinity idea is amazingly implemented here, everything is scaling. So however long you play, there’s always something new, powerful after next corner.
– Real player with 92.7 hrs in game
Megania Online
all i need to say is 93h playtime in 4 days with many more hours to come! :)
– Real player with 139.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Early Access Exploration Games.
Tons of bugs still, I understand that it’s still alpha but there are a lot of game breaking bugs. It’s taking the devs a long time to even acknowledge the bugs. Every time they fix one bug they create another.
It has potential as game but I wouldn’t recommend playing until they fix quite a bit of it
– Real player with 69.9 hrs in game
Rogue Fable III
You’ve probably never heard of Rogue Fable and Rogue Fable II; neither came out on steam as far as I know, and they were only mildly popular on kongregate from what I can remeber when I played the first two. I came across Rogue Fable II, and it was a very fun, addictive dungeon diving game. I even helped out with a few suggestions that made it into that game, shortly after it was released.
Luckily for me, I ended up getting a notification from the developer about the sequel, and I immediately joined Beta testing. There’s already far more content in Rogue Fable III than there was in Rogue Fable II, and we’re just barely getting started. The creator already has a huge amount of plans, and suggestions from the community, and he’s been implementing them one after another at least once a week. The game is rather stable as well, especially since he cleaned everything up before the Steam release.
– Real player with 2134.0 hrs in game
–Updated Review 2–
Still continue recommending it for the yearly labor of love nomination. 2 years and still continuing to receive regular updates.
—Updated Review—
This game has continued to receive updates and new content at decent pace. Still highly recommend investing in this game. Recent updates have really increased the challenge of reaching your objective but in a good way.
—Original Review—
First things first, yes there is a free version of this game but it is an earlier version without some of the new features added in the steam release such as race. If your not sure about this game play the free version and after learning from your mistake immediately throw your $5 at the developer.
– Real player with 496.3 hrs in game
NovaMundi: The Spear of Chaquén
I love the game. It is very refreshing to find a game in a new world and based on a new-old mythology and set up. This is not a medieval fantasy or your generic story. This is about real events, with some changes in order to improve gameplay and storytelling but in such a way that is interesting. Of course, because it is in early access it has a lot to improve and tweak but I recommend to give it a chance and help the developer to develop…
Now, gameplay wise you have a party and you need to explore the (huge) map to finish missions. There are towns with markets where buy supplies and hire party members. At least for now and for me, the game can be hard. But there is a lot to learn that scratch that final part.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
I’ll update my review as needed, but so far…
The game has huge potential. There are a few bugs, but it just released in early access, so give it a minute. Other than the bugs, I really like some of the game concepts.
The map is pretty big. I’m in day 35 or so and have only explored maybe 1/3 of it. Combat can be optimized, but it’s still pretty rewarding to watch 40 dudes just melt to your warband.
Excited to see what the coming months bring.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
The Red Prison
This game has already given me a place to improve my skills and understanding of Dungeons and Dragons, using 5th edition rules. Right now, I am learning about the fighter class, fighting style, and abilities such as second wind.
Also, the developer is very responsive.
– Real player with 33.2 hrs in game
If you like Dungeons and Dragons this is a game to add to your collection. It is a “rogue like” that is set in 5e Dungeon’s and Dragon’s, lots of in game depth for being such a lite game. It brings the player multiple choices of races, classes, abilities for specific classes, stat customization, and pregenerated character’s if you want to open and go.
I am very pleased with the game, and look forward to what this developer contributes to this game with future updates. Simply put a great, fun, pleasing, game to play. Thank you.
– Real player with 22.5 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
Lost Flame
Oh my goodness I am bad at traditional rogue-like games. That’s honestly the beauty of Lost Flame. It feels old without the sense of being dated. I wish this game got more attention from content creators. It took me 4 tries just to get out of the tutorial, but it wasn’t because the game was “hard”. I was just playing stupid. I’d love to see in-depth tutorials about weapons or whatnot.
Edit: dumped way more time into the game, and there is just a lot of content already packed in with enemy variety and loot combinations. Still a highly suggested roguelike in my opinion.
– Real player with 57.9 hrs in game
Turns based Dark Souls. Hub with comfy but sad music included.
Try it even if you don’t like traditional roguelikes, this game removes some of usual tedium (for example all your carried items auto identify on level up). Moment to moment gameplay is more involved since you can step out of many attacks and multi tile enemies add a lot interesting decisions to combat.
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
Caves of Qud
This game is hard but in a good way. Early on, you’ll die, a lot. Basically every death will be a learning experience and oh boy is there a lot to learn (even now before full release).
Caves of Qud has incredible amount of content and replayability. It has so many amazing features that I don’t want to spoil and different ways to play each character with unique build or playstyle and so so so many secrets that you probably won’t ever find or at least not easily.
Ok now for a story time of many things that can happen in Caves of Qud. (very mild spoilers ahead)
– Real player with 248.3 hrs in game
A masterpiece of worldbuilding, game design and procedural generation. One of the most beautiful, enticing, unique and creatively weird worlds I ever explored. Layers upon layers of content depth. The writing is absolutely gorgeous. You can share water with an ape god, multiply the pope, and get chased by your clone from the future all around the landscape of not-Israel.
It’s Dune on steroids made by furry communists over nearly a decade. Please support them.
– Real player with 203.4 hrs in game
Low Magic Age
TL;DR: The game is a fun grind, but it is not well balanced.
I have about 90 hours in the arena and about 10 in the adventure mode. I have raised a party to around level 100 in the arena. I am recommending this game with some suggestions for the devs. I hope the devs will implement some change so the player feels like they are growing more powerful as they level up, instead of feeling like they are barely holding on and crawling towards the inevitable moment when they will no longer be able to beat a single encounter.
– Real player with 136.4 hrs in game
Well as of the date of this review we are still awaiting the Campaign Mode to be implemented. I am hopeful from what the developers have shown recently that it will be at least released sometime this summer. It might even be close to Fall before we see the full game come to be. Even so for $6 I still recommend this game.
Right now we have what is called “Arena Mode”. You take a pre-made party or create a custom party to be placed (by the game) as a group on a random map to fight one wave of monsters at a time. These waves are chosen by you as the player and can contain random kinds and numbers of mobs. The waves range from easy to difficult. You get to choose what difficulty you are comfortable fighting against which is nice. After each battle, if your party prevails, you get a certain amount of gold based on how your characters did in the battle. If no one in your party dies you get bonus gold. You also may get a piece of loot or two. After each battle you are also given a chance to buy and upgrade equipment for your party, which is randomly generated, if you have enough gold. You can also level your characters once they have achieved enough XP to do so. The rules mainly try to follow the 3.x DnD ruleset. And it does a pretty decent job of doing so. With each of your characters gaining higher Feats and Talents as they progress. The magic system is different as there is no mana involved for any spells that are cast. Instead you have a cooldown period for each spell. Some do not like the way this mana-less sytem plays but I love it personally. There will also eventually be crafting available which is nice.
– Real player with 64.0 hrs in game