Der Geisterturm / The Ghost Tower

Der Geisterturm / The Ghost Tower

Der Geisterturm is a game i could only describe as “hostile”.

It’s a grid-based, first person dungeon crawler not unlike say, Warhammer 40k’s Space Hulk, except you’re piloting a mecha - and i don’t mean the “protagonist” kinda mecha. You’re essentially stomping around in the kinda grunt suit that gets oneshot by the Gundam 5 seconds into a battle setpiece. You know, a Zaku I basically.

Now, while nothing in the game will actually oneshot you, what this means is that combat is often going to be an extremely risky endeavor, as to even have the slightest chance of survival you’re going to have to learn to:

Real player with 16.9 hrs in game


Read More: Best Futuristic Mechs Games.


The spin-off sequel to the mecha dungeon crawler Das Geistersciff. Der Geisterturm improves on every aspect of the original title. Like the original game, an emphasis is placed on moving with purpose instead of slowly farming experience for levels. The player must manage limited resources such as ammo and the overall durability of your Robotic Combat Suit through the use of repair stations scattered around the tower. The player also has to worry about the health of the suit’s pilot as durability decreases, putting a heavier emphasis on avoiding enemies and damage whenever possible.

Real player with 16.9 hrs in game

Der Geisterturm / The Ghost Tower on Steam

Guardians of Lumen

Guardians of Lumen

The land of Lumen is hostile. Monsters, both the Horrors and the Daemons, force the residences to live in 9 strongholds while they prowl the wastelands.

Against the beasts of shadows, two forces strive to keep the people safe:

The Deciphers study and worship the past in hopes of carving a path to the future.

The Guardians fight and serve, ever ready to help even the smallest of citizens.

With the help of ancient spirits, they stand ready against the darkness.

Will you aid them?

Key Features:

  • Classic, turn-based combat with modern twists.

  • 26 Unique Ay, each with their own Ability Tree, Quest and play style

  • 6 Playable characters each with history, emotions and a story of their own

  • An interactive world where your actions are remembered and honoured.

  • A unique progression system, unrelated to experience points or skill point grinding

  • 180 Mini-dungeons

  • A story that moulds to your actions.

I hope you enjoy it.


Read More: Best Futuristic Fantasy Games.


Guardians of Lumen on Steam

Oneons: Prisoners

Oneons: Prisoners

For more reviews like this please visit the curator group Indie Game Feedback

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/indie-game-feedback

A roguelite that plays with the concept of get to the final floor while maintaining a balance of health and energy.

What sets this game apart from others are the following

+It is very accessible on multiple devices (keyboard, mouse, touchscreen)

+Options for people who would like jumbo icons (visually impared)

+All assets are created by a single developer along with the level design

Real player with 2.7 hrs in game


Read More: Best Futuristic Roguelike Games.


A very short but sweet game!

Gameplay is very fun! Managing your energy while trying to survive, killing enemies and finding the portals to the next levels as fast as you can. It’s beginner friendly, in the beginning and becomes more challenging as levels progress, but still fun!

The artstyle is pretty nice.

Overall, it’s really good and fun!

Real player with 1.1 hrs in game

Oneons: Prisoners on Steam

Wirewalk()↳

Wirewalk()↳

As an old school (S)NES RPG player I was really pleased to play this game, the gameplay feels like playing Zelda - A Link to the Past, with a Megaman like soundtrack ! The story shows a not so far future where people is even more dependent on technology in a clear criticism to our current society, I won’t do spoilers here but the jokes about this society are clever and made me laugh more than once. I felt like the game was fairly easy (maybe because I’m used to this kind of game) and made me want more, an expansion with more levels/bosses would be great. In a nutshell, entertaining with a nice message to the player.

Real player with 6.5 hrs in game

Disclaimer, for transparency’s sake: the developer is a friend of mine however I’ll be reviewing this game as unbiased as possible.

Wirewalk is a typical Gameboy dungeon crawler adventure game in the molds of the first Zelda titles with a top-down gameplay and retro graphics.

First, the story: It is rather straightforward - you’re a girl named Rada who lives in a town suddenly plagued by a mysterious computer virus that renders technology inoperable. Fortunately, Rada knows her way around computers and has developed a program nicknamed “Wirewalk” in which she’s able to “go inside the code” to fix people’s various devices.

Real player with 4.5 hrs in game

Wirewalk()↳ on Steam

Der Geisterjäger / The Ghost Hunter

Der Geisterjäger / The Ghost Hunter

You know the expression “handling something with kid gloves”?

Yeah, Der Geisterjäger does - except its “kid gloves” are boxing gloves with horseshoes in them.

Basically, DGJ is a mecha dungeon crawler that not only isn’t afraid of being “unfair”, it actually incorporates savescumming as a canonical ability for your main character - something like precognition from Katana Zero, if you will. “This is only a dream” is a sentence that, if you, like me, are not a particularly sharp tactical mind, you’ll get used to seeing. A lot.

Real player with 20.6 hrs in game

Der Geisterjager is a lot like Der Geisterturm, but better in every way. More enemy variety, interesting environmental challenges, and new hazards to deal with that aren’t mines. Along with quality of life improvements you should expect from continued development.

The single most important change is the addition of the credit system, you gain money for killing enemies now and the credits allow you upgrade your RCS as you see fit at repair stations dotted about the dungeons, creating an agency that the previous two games lacked while providing a much greater replay value.

Real player with 14.4 hrs in game

Der Geisterjäger / The Ghost Hunter on Steam

Earth’s Shadow

Earth’s Shadow

Earth’s Shadow is a third person action Sci-Fi dungeon crawler set in the year 3081 on planet Sumbra; a remote alien planet where legends of valuable relics surround this black world, calling to the greedy and brave explorers seeking a bright future… but end up uncovering an even darker past.

Working a dead-end job… Alexi-Ru, a cyborg CSP (cargo ship pilot), tends to fill the void-ness of his boring flight job by day-dreaming of the mysterious stories surrounding planet Sumbra, aka Earth’s Shadow.

In the year 3081, the original Earth and it’s galaxy has been dead for centuries, and although a few humans still exist, colonized in far away sectors… Earth’s legacy is not forgotten with some even referring to Sumbra, as the shadow of Earth.

Intrigued by Earth’s history, Alexi-Ru often finds himself flying millions of light-clicks off his normal cargo route just to speed by the mysterious planet, hoping to catch a glimpse of something on the alien surface via radar that might force him to slow down or possibly even stop.

Eventually Alexi-Ru’s curiosity is justified when his ship encounters a malfunction one night, while passing by the tiny planet, forcing him to crash-land on the surface he dreamed of so often on previous flights.

Alexi-Ru remembers his attention right before the impending crash, focused on an un-jostled book, thrown from a compartment during the violent atmosphere re-entry, titled… “When Day-Dreams Turn To Nightmares”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” mumbles Alexi-Ru, trying to re-assure himself as he arms himself with a Tec-9000 semi-automatic and sets forth to explore… Earth’s Shadow.

Features

  • Explore and uncover secrets from an ancient alien civilization

  • Find and equip weapons and tech with dynamic stats and modifiers

  • Crawl through procedural and custom locations

  • All loot is random, making each playthrough a different experience

Earth's Shadow on Steam

Thearchy

Thearchy

This is in fact a game.

Real player with 0.6 hrs in game

Thearchy is a 2D top down retro pixel dungeon crawler game that’s been slapped together with the godawful GameMaker Studio construction kit from Yoyogames. Using a low quality video game construction kit invariably results in a low quality game, and there’s no exception here.

The technical implementation is fairly bare bones, with blocky 2D retro pixel “art” graphics. Controls and resolution are locked. Overall the quality and depth of the game are very low. The developer seems to have decided that PC game controllers like HOTAS, pedals, racing wheels etc are in fact console peasant childrens toy gamepads. It’s just my opinion of course, that these are in fact not console peasant pads. Regardless, the developer doesn’t agree, and maps them as if they are, so the mouse control is overridden and the mouse pointer is shoved up into the top left corner of the screen. The menu can’t be negotiated without the mouse (which the developer has rendered useless through this questionable controller design decision), so the game cannot be played. Basic testing on a gaming PC would have caught this.

Real player with 0.1 hrs in game

Thearchy on Steam

The Crust

The Crust

Welcome to the Crust — the game where you can be the CEO of a gigantic moon colonizing company. It is a large-scale economic simulator with elements of survival along with a rich setting and dramatic script.

No fate is determined. The progress is driven by people. It’s time for you to decide whether you become the one who brings changes — or the one who adapts to them. Whether to be mediocre and insignificant anybody — or to be a pioneer in the space colonization industry, leading your corporation to dominance and bringing necessary effort to make humanity an interstellar species.

Building the world of the future will mark a place for you in the history books. Only the strongest can survive on a giant grim permafrost rock surrounded by vacuum, deep space darkness, and deadly silence.

To be the second in the space race means to be the first who loses. Are you ready to take this challenge? The conquest of the Moon has already begun.

The Crust on Steam

Portal Defect

Portal Defect

I really wanted to like this game given its similarity to hotline miami, as well as looking really gorgeous, but there are just too many things wrong with it for this to be currently sold out of early access. Some examples being, the game being 20gb when it can be compressed down to 10gb through Compactor, it being incredibly unoptimized (my 1060,i7-7k, 16gb of ram rig struggling to push out 50-60 fps), not being able to turn off/turn down the repetitive music even though theres an option in settings(!), melee weapons feeling incredibly clunky, and falling out of the literal map. On the other hand, I will say that there are some really good aspects about the game such as the previously mentioned graphics being really pretty and some of the mechanics are kind of interesting. However in its current state I feel the dev has just rushed the gun on marketing this spaghetti code, and if he really felt that he wanted to make it great, his plan should have been making some version of this a free demo and THEN publish a polished game, instead of the current mess that it is. However, I suspect that this game has ultimately been abandoned given there havent been any updates since april of this year (and it was published of january of this year), but I suppose time will tell.

Real player with 0.5 hrs in game

For and early access game its, fine leaning on not being a good first impression. The games music is broken and continues playing at the loudest volume possible, the loading and performance is heavily unoptimized to the point where even my 1070 and i7 seem stressed. The hit registration is confusing and inconsistent as hell when you think you should hit or be hit by a melee weapon, it doesnt land, not to mention most guns dont sound or hit the way you would think, a shotgun seems to fire as if it was a semi automatic assault rifle without any power, it feels like its shooting 5.56 or 9mm rounds. The spells have no impact and aren’t explained either. If you want to go in barehanded you cant even attack. The loading of levels is just strange and laggy. Nothing really motivates me to move forward, and this first impression has been a very sour one so far. I can’t recommend this game so far although it looks like it can have potential. Don’t take this the wrong way but i’ve been keeping an eye out on this game and it look interesting, i want it to succeed but in its current state it leaves much to be desired even in early access compared to the other games i have played.

Real player with 0.5 hrs in game

Portal Defect on Steam

Farlight Commanders

Farlight Commanders

SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE

I started playing just a bit to take a break from my uni work and I spent 3 hours in the first sit. BEWARE, it’s a deep game with multiple choices, make sure you check the shop before you spent your ability points so you can buy the right things for yourself and the ship. If you spend your points lately the game will be way more challenging. The game needs more feedback to the player and be more clear at some points with the management of the ship and the ability points but, if you are patient and spend some time with it you will love it.

Real player with 5.4 hrs in game

Has great potential as a coop 2D side scroller mixing both infantry combat and spaceship to spaceship combat. Some of the UI navigation is a bit clunky and takes some getting used to and will hopefully be polished over time.

Real player with 2.0 hrs in game

Farlight Commanders on Steam