Bubbleland
In Bubblelands you will lead a team of cartoon heroes - the brave bean brawler, the fluffy feline defender, and the outlandish onion with oseledets - through a series of tactical turn-based battles on a grid of hexes. Each hero on the team has a different potential use in battle, skill set and development opportunities. The combat rewards smart positioning and using skills appropriate to the situation on the battlefield.
On their way, the heroes may encounter characters who need their help and allies who will join their party and strengthen the team with their special powers. You can meet them later at the party’s camp, where the heroes can also improve their skills and buy upgrades.
Bubbles are what fuels the technology and economy of this land. However, one day the soapy resource ceased to flow from the taps and fountains. In the atmosphere of the apocalypse, three heroes set off on a journey through foreign lands to find out where the life-giving Bubbles have gone.
Tactical Yet Simple Combat
The game is rules-light, you’re not going to find long statblocks and hour-long battles here. You may just hop in for a few fights any time!
Simple Yet Deep Mechanics
Bubbleland is not crunchy, but you still have to think before you act. Cautious positioning of the heroes and planning your actions is crucial!
Deep story… Not Really!
The world and story of Bubbleland is colorful and fun to watch. Find out if fluffy cats, angry cucumbers and onion cossacks fighting each other over bubbles have any deeper meaning!
Read More: Best Hex Grid Colorful Games.
WARTILE
Edit: I’ve won the game and it is pretty fun. The key factor to realize is that the archer is the most important character using the volley card. Once you get used to the game I really like the concept but it was challenging to mentally adjust to the different style of game (cool down vs turn based) coming from the turn based world. Using the slow down feature is essential until you get up to speed. On the higher levels it is absolutely critical to use the slow down feature to dodge tough opponents as them attack.
– Real player with 322.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hex Grid Action Games.
Tabletop quest for the Sagas
Wartile is a strategy game allowing the player to take command of a Norse warband on a quest to save their land from a mysterious plague. Developed by a very aptly named danish studio PlaywoodProject, the game plays as a miniature wargame. Each character in Wartile is represented by a wooden figurine, battling their way across adorably detailed dioramas. While the game had visibly limited resources to work with, the developers have fully committed what they had towards an idea of tabletop game brought to life. An idea, in my book, they firmly delivered upon.
– Real player with 17.5 hrs in game
Auro: A Monster-Bumping Adventure
Update: amazingly, the game was ported to Unity five years after release and many of the issues were fixed. I still encounter the occasional bug, but I have no reservations about recommending it now.
[original review below]
One of my favorite roguelikes ever.
At first the strange mechanics of the game make you feel impotent. Why can’t I just attack monsters!? But pushing monsters into water is the name of the game here and it feels way more satisfying than simply hacking at them. Beyond that is the spell system. In each round you get 4 randomly selected spells + a slot for a one-use pickup. If you’re clever enough, you can wipe out a whole screen of monsters at once. The way your spells recharge by picking up energy from floor tiles is tactically interesting and not something I’ve seen elsewhere.
– Real player with 279.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hex Grid Pixel Graphics Games.
Disclaimer: I am currently a part time developer for Dinofarm games. I was lucky enough to fall madly in love with the mobile version of this game (where I player well over 1,000 runs) prior to joining the dev-team, though, and can safely say that I would enjoy this game tremendously even if I wasn’t one of the programmers behind it.
Auro is a turn-based rogue-like that introduces two key innovations to the genre. The first is its ranking system, which generates levels for the player based on their persistent skill level. It cuts down dramatically on the stress you may experience in the first few hours of most rgue-likes, and helps make sure that you always have a fighting chance and that all of your runs will be exciting and dramatic.
– Real player with 121.3 hrs in game
Himeko Sutori
Himeko Sutori is a short story about a family of sisters and a journey they are forced into. The game is all delivered by a very small group, mostly a single developer as a labour of love and some contracted elements. This does leave some rough edges, but those work well enough.
I have played through multiple variations of the game and systems since its EA release 2 years ago, and my biggest praise has to be towards Nathaniel’s (Developer) commitment to his project, fixing things promptly and engaging with the community.
– Real player with 317.6 hrs in game
I’m quite torn about this game. The positive rating is mostly to even out the negative ratings because I think the game is worth buying. But it could be much better than it is.
My biggest grudge is the leveling system. Instead of being allowed to pick whatever perks you want you have to choose something from three randomly picked cards. This means that quite often you can only pick things you do not want on that character. Welp, there goes a wasted level. You can always reload (and that’s what I usually do) until you are happy with the result. But that is a colossal waste of time and NOT FUN AT ALL. Much of my displayed playing time is actually reloading time and as such the opposite of fun playing time.
– Real player with 120.0 hrs in game
King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North
I sometimes feel like the King’s Bounty games were made with me in mind. I will be the first to admit that I am NOT “the brightest bulb on the tree.” But even I can easily win these games (on easy.) And what fun is it to play a game that you can’t win? (Okay. Some people, like “my brother the genius” play on impossible just to see what it is like. And seem to enjoy it. But for the rest of us…?)
I have read some reviews of WOTN that complain about the reuse of certain maps from TL. (King’s Bounty - The Legend. Two games back.) That seems spurious to me. It takes place in the same world, just a few years later in time. And the very few maps that are the same have all been altered by time and the ravages of war.
– Real player with 724.9 hrs in game
So! 417 hours is an awful long time to play a game and give it a thumbs down. Why?
TL;DR, the endgame is INSANELY buggy and completely killed my impossible, no loss completionist run.
The good:
The gameplay is classic KB gameplay. I’ve put a ton of time into the series so far, and it never gets old.
Exploration was fun.
The new viking units were neat to play with.
The callbacks to previous KB games were fun.
Many interesting characters to interact with.
The valkyries are pretty neat, and a nice twist from the previous companion systems.
– Real player with 419.1 hrs in game
Farabel
Farabel is a charming and addictive little turn-based strategy game. The central premise of “turning back time”, while interesting to the plot, does not really change the feeling of working through progressively difficult levels. Everything is balanced to provide a good upward hardness curve. However, unlike something like Memento - where gradually seeing the past makes earlier story make sense - I couldn’t shake the feeling that Farabel was simply a series of interesting scenarios, without any cohesive plot. Although, lowering the main unit’s abilities each turn provides an interesting twist, while working out which specific abilites you can least live without.
– Real player with 32.3 hrs in game
I initially got this because I thought the premise was very interesting, and to support a day-1 Linux game.
I am not exactly sure why, but I don’t find the gameplay so entertaining. I was quite bored doing the first missions, and till about the 9th one I didn’t have to really think about it to not lose… I was really surprised how easy it was, but somehow the mission after the big shaman, it all changed.
Some of the text is way too small on my screen so I just didn’t read it… and therefore during my first playthrough I had no idea about the units' passive abilities because I couldn’t read them. When I discovered how good charge was on a video, I got closer to my HDTV to read all these little texts, and it made the last few missions easy as well.
– Real player with 22.7 hrs in game
To Battle!: Hell’s Crusade
I thoroughly enjoyed this game - and yes, the humor is sophomoric and the voice acting is tongue-in-cheek, but it just works for me. It’s an old-school general’s type game from the SSI era and as everyone else has already said, in line with the modern Fantasy General.
More importantly, I think the strategic design is really well thought out - the units each have their niche but aren’t hobbled by hyper-specialization. And while the maps are static, and prior map-knowledge is extremely advantageous, it also opens up the pursuit of battle perfection.
– Real player with 32.1 hrs in game
Disclaimer: I’ve been a beta tester and I know the developers personally. But….
Here’s my review:
I’ve played HC now for probably several hundred hours (most of that was in beta). The campaigns aren’t suuuuper long, but somehow I just enjoy playing them over and over because it always goes a little different each time I do. Like I can beat all of the missions now, but I cant ever do it as well as I want to. So I just keep trying! lol
The tactical campaign is more kind of old school in that you’ll probably have to restart missions. I do anyway. It’s kind of like chess cause you really have to plan ahead. The adventure campaign starts out easier so it may be better for your first playthrough, but about half way through it starts getting pretty challenging.
– Real player with 16.3 hrs in game
Z Dawn
I’ve been playing this game a lot, being getting updated regularly, for me its a good game, good zombie survival 4x strategy games.
You gotta focus a lot on managing your survivors otherwise it will be a very pain experience.
Basically your start with a small group of survivors, 6 then you gotta find a nice place to set up an encampment, collect resources, wood a lots of wood to build camp defenses, then scavanging for resources like crazy, kill a lots lots of zombie, watch your survivors you love to much gettting bitten and some of then will die, others will get amputated. That’s ok, there’s prosthetics to solve that too. Its a bit painfull to have a leg amputee, will slow down the entire group, other than that you can assign that dude for a suicidal exploring mission.
– Real player with 153.7 hrs in game
Just started. In the first few minutes I found a factory. Each time I hit next turn my group of 6 discovers/searches the building by a percentage of total coverage that equals .01.
This means I have to hit the search/next turn button a thousand times.
On the bright side.. all my group have some starter weapons and speed of 1 or 2.
Then inside the factory I found a guy who was just bitten. The message said I could amputate him (didnt say whether it was his head or some other body part, so I assumed it wasnt going to be his head.)
– Real player with 92.1 hrs in game
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
Tales Of Chandar
In the dangerous lands of Chandar the evil mage Haaraf have kidnapped the Princess. Mharak, the King of Chandar selected his best fighters and mages to get her back. The small, but tough group have managed to free her. But this is not the end, only the beginning: your goal is to get her home alive!
Gameplay
Tales Of Chandar is a mix of Turn-Based Strategy & RPG, where you’ll fight dozens of various enemies. Gain experience, level up your heroes, unlock their special skills and find out which of these are suitable for your playstyle.
Interact with strangers for side quests and unlock new characters who’ll join your party and help you on your journey.
But enemies and monsters are not the only one to fight with: you’ll have to pay attention to your heroes' thirst and hunger level, which will drop constantly as you’re wandering the lands. Place down traps to get food, and fill your bucket with water when it rains, or when you’ll find a lake.
You’re not satisfied with your currently selected heroes? Just find some wood, make a campfire and you can switch your party members.
Look out for treasure chests scattered throughout the world, and open them for valuable rewards.
Key features:
-More than 10 heroes to choose from
-More than 60 enemies to fight with
-5 chapters with bosses and mini-bosses
-Turned-based battle system
-RPG system with upgradeable attributes, unlockable special skills, and useful collectable items
-Stylish 2D graphics
-Up to 4 players local (hot-seat) co-op gameplay experience