Mesmer
I have reviewed this game as a positive overall because I like what I have played so far.
It is a bit buggy however, currently I have a black screen that will not resolve when I try to continue my game. Luckily, I have manually kept a save so I won’t lose my entire playthrough, but it is frustrating. Occasionally when I open the game, the map is pinned open and won’t minimise. My character has been stuck on a couple of staircases. I also feel like maps have had labels on since maps were a thing, so labelling even just the districts surely cannot destroy the immersion?
– Real player with 18.3 hrs in game
This Game is criminally underrated!
It’s a beautiful blend of Strategy, Adventure, and even minor dungeon crawling!
Lets start with the Positives about the game.
Music? Atmospheric, unique to each district and definitely carries the tone of each faction and their respective beliefs.
Music is fantastic.
Graphics? At first one might not be used to the more obtuse (unusual compared to other games) graphics and renditions, but once you look past that, it really sells itself well. Additionally, if you’re familiar with Teslagrad and World to the West, The character design is a return to form and stays true to the world-building that Rain Games has done.
– Real player with 8.8 hrs in game
Ashley: The Story Of Survival
Game was a little interesting up front but quickly turned into a linear clicker game with an anoying end game of clicking an option 99 times, healing and repeating until you have enough to end the game.
Took less than an hour to complete with a speed clicker
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Female Protagonist Atmospheric Games.
Rather haunting soundtrack in what is really just a generic clicker. In the early game there’s some strategy involved to avoid going hungry or becoming really sick, but later on you rake in absurd amounts of cash to fund a weirdly lavish post-apoc lifestyle. There is a story throughout of the girl Ashley losing her entire family to what I’m assuming was a freak attack by a major world power, but it doesn’t much go into detail in her younger hard years and skips up into high school and college fairly fast. Also yes, the story is in rather broken and sometimes funny english as expected.
– Real player with 2.6 hrs in game
Black Closet
Are you good enough to get into a prestigious college?
Well, you better hope you are, because that’s your ultimate goal as Black Closet’s main character Elsa Jackson. Actually achieving that goal requires a successful term as president of your school’s student council, and achieving that goal requires putting the lid on several potential scandals without damaging your own credibility too badly. Let me tell you, there are a lot of potential scandals, and other forces at work may end up making your life more difficult. But first you need to identify and neutralize the traitor within your ranks…
– Real player with 104.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Female Protagonist Noir Games.
Black Closet is one of my favorite games. The characters are interesting and sometimes complex, the story is entertaining and contains some interesting branches, and the gameplay is a really fun application of resource management to solve mysteries.
Elsa, the player character, is the president of the student council and must strategically deploy her “minions” (the other student council members) to resolve various crises so that their fancy private school remains respected while also trying not to ruin the student council’s reputation with the rest of the student body. These crises vary from mundane (the daughter of someone important might be failing a class) to serious (a student has gone missing). You need to assign the right minion for various investigative tasks that match their personal skills (for example, you don’t want to send the nice friendly girl to yell at a culprit or send the introvert to gather info via a friendly chat with a suspect) while also balancing your minions' needs because they will be temporarily unavailable if their workload causes too much stress. The cases are randomized, so this is great for replayability!
– Real player with 66.2 hrs in game
Cepheus Protocol
an open world RTS game the description can be a little confusing to the ear as what makes an “open world rts” other than an RTS with a really big map?
it is in fact justified, in that the mechanics differ somewhat from your typical RTS game. specifically the ability to build almost anywhere and the unique emphasis on resource utilisation as opposed to procurement and steam rolling, rushing and turtling as you may in other titles. whilst these methods are indeed still viable it by no means guarantees success as sticking to any one template will often result in your defeat.
– Real player with 57.4 hrs in game
As someone who normally plays steam games and doesn’t keep up-to-date with patch notes and news related information relayed by developers, Cepheus Protocol stands out as one of the first games where I genuinely take the time to read Dev letters and patch notes. Without considering the overall story, the visuals and gameplay of Cepheus Protocol are always engaging for me and the dynamic between the CERC and the infected really sets the tone for how the game plays out, as I often find myself underestimating the infected and their sheer numbers, paying for such mistakes dearly. It definitely puts me on the edge of my seat and contrary to other games, I find myself often taking the time to put the game in slow motion or pause to consider future actions instead of trying to speed the game up- a clear indicator to me that strategy cannot simply be waylaid by overwhelming firepower for early to mid game. Once you do acquire overwhelming firepower at the end game though, the game simply becomes more fun and casual as you can enjoy the visual and audio effects of clearing out hordes of infected with air support and your geared ground troops. I cannot wait to see what the developers of Cepheus Protocol have planned for the campaign with what I have experienced in their open world mode, and I look forward to seeing the release of what I hope to be an engaging story alongside the already great RTS element that has been introduced. TLDR pros and cons below:
– Real player with 31.9 hrs in game
Super Trench Attack 2
Pretty fun! Worth a look.
I dug Super Trench Attack, more or less. This is a much different game.
Turn based, squad-based battles instead of real-time clicky action. The system is interesting. You have a certain amount of movement radius to use per squad member per turn (if you activate them), as well as a certain number of activation points you can use to make your squad members fire weapons.
You use WASD to make your active squad member move, and can only see a certain distance around them, though you can, at any time, check the map layout to see where the enemies are. Not certain why view distance is limited this way; probably to keep the sprites at an appropriate size, which is understandable.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Super Trench Attack 2 is a blast! I see a lot of people comparing it to FTL. I guess I can see why people would make that comparison. The map looks similar, you have crazy good/bad random events, and you can hire a squad as you progress. It is a rogue-lite, like FTL, so there is permadeath. Beyond these similarities the gameplay is much different.
As you move along the map screen you will encounter combat situations that will require you to put your squad to use. You will see representations of your squad members and enemies on a battlefield layout screen. From here you can strategize the best way to take out the enemy squad within your limited amount of turns. From the layout screen you can select one of your units and the game will switch into a top-down perspective of the battlefield. You are allowed to move and shoot a limited amount each turn (pistols=3 shots, shotguns=2 shots, rifles=1 shot, etc). This makes for some fun, strategic gameplay that I didn’t grow tired of at all in my initial session.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
Ten Thousand Coins: The Golden Merchant
Ten Thousand Coins: The Golden Merchant is a story-driven merchant adventure about a bold merchant fox girl who gets into big debt trouble against the mighty Basilisk Company. She soon finds herself in the midst of chaos and must trade, earn coins, and make tough decisions in order to pay back a colossal 10,000 gold coins.
Moral Choices and Conflict - A heavy emphasis is put into the consequences of the actions you take, reintroducing a humanizing element into the trading game genre. For example, would you help a merchant back on their feet and make a new friend, but potentially lose out on a profitable deal, or ignore their cries for help to make sure you come out on top? Would you smuggle illicit goods for some easy coins, despite the negative effects it could have on a town’s inhabitants? As you make these choices, you are also pitted against time to save a loved one, creating a sense of urgency to amass as many coins as possible.
Bartering System - More than just buying and selling with currency, Ten Thousand Coins features a system where you can barter goods directly with other traders. Depending on the trader’s mood and what each trader needs, different items can have a higher value, therefore knowing what item to offer and when to offer them is the key to a successful trade.
Features Include:
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An immersive and character-focused storyline.
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Make tough choices between altruism and materialism.
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Various colorful characters and side stories to discover and complete to further build the world’s narrative.
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Many cities and towns to explore, trade, and build a reputation with.
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A crisp hand-drawn anime-inspired art style.
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Hundreds of unique items to use and trade.
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Random encounters in the wilderness and challenging enemies to battle against.
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Hire various convoys to aid you on your adventure.
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Multiple story endings depending on choices made throughout the story.
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Two different game modes: Story Mode and Challenge Mode.
Devil, It’s me
Quite difficult dungeon management / short visual novel with cute pixel art
– Real player with 18.6 hrs in game
Very fun to play, money well expend.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
Disciples: Liberation
Never played Disciples (1). Was a big fan of Disciples 2. Disciples 3 was a disappointment. I was grateful for the release of Reincarnation which allowed me to finally play the 3rd issue of the game, but I didn’t finish it. I truly thought that the Disciples series was over.
So I was completely surprised in October of this year when I came across Disciples Liberation. The trailer looked interesting and there was a lengthy free demo being offered. I downloaded it, played it for some 30 hours, and was hooked. Later the full game was released and I just finished it after investing more than 120 hours.
– Real player with 182.3 hrs in game
73 hours to finish the game, well I’m not the speedrun type. I like to go away from my screen and make me another coffee. With 73 hours I finished the first run, if you want to do the true ending you’ll need to unlock and launch Liberation mode.
Pros :
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Beautiful art, proof that you can design lots of armors for a woman, and none of them is a titanium bikini. Maps, dungeons, Yllian, gear… really satisfying.
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The big story is kind of déjà vu. No spoiler : you decide who is the bad guy, you have 4 choices and in the end you crush all of them anyway to become the champion of the gods of god champions. And nobody cares ! Look : when you take the highway from Lisboa to Vladivostok, ALL THE WAY you are fully conscious that your destination will be Vladivostok, right ? So if the big direction is 300% predictable, the good part is the quality of the journey, the details :
– Real player with 81.7 hrs in game
Fabulous - New York to LA
First of all, GameHouse always have my respect and a special place inside my heart for it always tell the best stories of the lives of many inspiration characters in various of series. Without a doubt, our Fabulous Angela is one them.
In this season of the Fabulous series, I was overjoy to see the cinematic animation here. Not only has it improved since last season, it is absolutely breathtaking!! I just couldn’t help but have to repeat the levels just to fully admire the cinematic animation scenes again. Not to mention, there is even more levels in the season of Fabulous series and on such a generous price - which you have my utmost respect because surely, the designs, soundtracks, animating and programming take times and a lots of efforts. They are definitely not easy tasks to do. This feels like a gift from you to us, players even if it is not intentional. But thank you for prioritizing us even at this stage of the game production. We sincerely appreciate it and hopeful to see more of this series.
– Real player with 105.2 hrs in game
I love how many levels there are! Another great Gamehouse story
– Real player with 40.5 hrs in game
Grand Guilds
(Note/Disclosure - I got into this game from Kickstarter and played the beta, and due to liking it also ended up doing design work for it (primarily cards and passives) - since I worked on the game in the first place because I liked it, rather than the other way around, I think I can make a useful review, but of course I want to disclose the fact that I helped design some elements up front)
As someone who tends to go for games purely thanks to mechanics, rather than due to a story, I still have to say the story’s what’ll stick with me most from Grand Guilds. It’s refreshingly… justified, in a way. My litmus test for a lot of these kinds of “fantasy party” stories is “could this problem just be solved by 100 guys with spears and muskets” and in Grand Guilds the answer is always a resounding no - the unique skills of the main characters really let them accomplish stuff much faster and cleaner than any larger organization would, and they all consistently use their unique abilities to great effect in the story - the character who can move extremely fast can quickly get back a hostage, the character who can sense magic is great at finding targets amidst large areas, etc. And the dynamics between the characters and writing are all just plain charming at times. The boss fights aren’t as memorable as the characters behind them in places, but it still feels well placed. All I can really say is that I’m not usually a story guy at all, but the story’s what hooked me here most of all.
– Real player with 84.5 hrs in game
Rating:
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Recommended at full price
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Recommended at a discount
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Recommended but only at a discount
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Not Recommended UNLESS you have a patience for bugs, in which case I recommend it at a discount
**### Buggy as all hell, but surprisingly enjoyable nonetheless
Closest comparison: Children of Zodiarks (both are grid turn based tactical games with deckbuilding and linear storytelling)
Duration: 20-30hs (depending on how many sidequests you do, it has 3 difficulties to choose from but I doubt they will be enough to hold your attention for more than 1 playthrough)**
– Real player with 28.8 hrs in game