Best Nonlinear Turn-Based Combat Games on PC

GLITCHED

When a glitch appears in the video game world of Soren, an NPC named Gus becomes aware of you- the player. Travel together to solve the mystery of the glitch and save Gus’s friends, hometown, and digital world. As the story unfolds, Gus might start to question what role you play in his world.

Making choices will change Gus’s essence. His essence determines his personality, grants him new powers, and causes characters to react differently to him. There are six different essences and playing as each will provide a unique experience.

Not only will your choices affect Gus’s essence, but they will have a real impact on the world and characters. Make each choice carefully. What content you can experience will depend on your choices. Sometimes your choices will open up tons of new events, and other times you’ll stop quests before they can even begin. Consequences can be both good and bad.

Experience can be used to patch glitches, allowing you to access new areas and progress the story. Every activity in the game gives experience. Players are free to take on the content they want. Join the Hero Academy, raise bebos, go exploring, or kick back with your party members. No matter what you decide to do, you’ll be gaining experience and furthering your story progression.

Any time during your adventure, you can talk to Gus. You will learn about each other as you talk about his life, his surroundings, the world of Soren, existence, or whatever random thought pops into his head. As the game progresses, Gus will slowly become aware that you aren’t just a visitor in his world… but something else entirely.

There are no random encounters or grinding in GLITCHED. Fights only happen when characters in the world want to make a situation go their way. The story will change based on if you win or lose, so you’ll almost never see a game over screen. The turn-based combat uses a unique system with skills, energy, and quirks to keep every fight engaging. Collect different skills for your many allies and build a team to your liking.

20+ potential party members
Raise bebos and enjoy that sweet monster-raising RPG content
A friendship & romance system for party members
Tons of achievements
Every object has unique flavor text (yes, every object. thousands of objects)
Tons of outfits that change up all party members
Cool and weird equipment
Multiple endings
Frogs
A large and varied soundtrack with 100+ songs
Tons of magic spells that have different effects on things while exploring
A day & night system
Looming existential dread as Gus slowly realizes he lives inside a video game
Cool and wacky characters
An arcade mode to take on unique and challenging battles

Read More: Best Nonlinear Singleplayer Games.

GLITCHED on Steam

Iris Covenant –Song of the Forgotten Heroes–

Iris Covenant is an unusually pretty JRPG for its quality - by which I mean, the character and monster art is all quite good, but the story is intentionally vague and also poorly translated from Japanese to English, and the mechanics are very simplistic and lacking, between character classes which are only defined by their names and skills generally not doing much except having 100% hit rate or hitting all enemies, but generally for less than your basic attack.

Its unique gimmick, being able to recruit almost any enemy in the game to join your party, is likewise set back by most enemies being mechanically terrible and thus not worth using even if you recruit them. Likewise, while it has NG+ and multiple endings, the two endings (at least, if there’s more, I don’t have any idea how I could reach them!) are very similar and also intentionally vague.

– Real player with 5.9 hrs in game

Read More: Best Nonlinear Nudity Games.

The game looks nice enough, I expected adult content but its surprisingly R15.

It reminds me a lot of “The Vagrant” and menus as well as stat mechanics are well implemented.

However, theres as of now no controller support and the game is basically point & click, which takes a lot of the fun imo. If you dont mind that, then its a solid game though.

– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game

Iris Covenant –Song of the Forgotten Heroes– on Steam

The Age of Decadence

–-{Graphics}—

☐ You forget what reality is

☐ Beautiful

☐ Good

☑ Decent

☐ Bad

☐ Don‘t look too long at it

☐ MS-DOS

The game portrays an aesthetic I have a massive soft spot for - Post-apocalyptic colonial Roman Empire. The environment art is well polished and beautiful, and the art style is self-consistent and immersive. I really feel like I’m somewhere in Carthage. The cities feel appropriate for their size – Maadoran feels like a dirty, bustling metropolis down on its luck. The design of the armours and weapons are all era-appropriate, with proper, real-life names (e.g. Lorica Segmentata).

– Real player with 391.5 hrs in game

Read More: Best Nonlinear Open World Games.

In brief: AoD ditches many of the genre long established staples to focus on the roleplaying, and this it does amazingly well; there really is nothing quite like it out there. The EA version is very much playable (there are less bugs than in many releases). The combat, which has been much the focus of attention due to its difficulty, is not awesome, but it gets the job done and it is optional.

***Since for some reason Steam has decided to implement a character limit to user reviews (what’s up with that Gabe?), you can read my whole review here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/230070/discussions/0/666827315713399977/ , but below is a very long extract:

– Real player with 214.3 hrs in game

The Age of Decadence on Steam

Irongate Arena

Continue your family legacy into new and exotic lands, but first prove yourself a worthy commander to the men who have pledged fealty to you. Battle in the proving grounds where humans are not the only fighters trying to knock you on your ass! Will your reward be glory or death?

If you have the strength, journey through the desert where if the heat doesn’t kill you, something or someone venomous just may. If you have the will of a warrior those deadly and toxic creatures may join you and take up your cause of vengeance.

To make it in the harsh, icy, North you must be a wise in deploying the right strategies to defeat your enemies in the Arena. Vikings, elves and witches can be so cold, but not cold enough to turn down a little coin to join your ranks, if the price is right.

Put your team skills to the test and push their limits in order to survive the Inferno. Hotter than Hades itself only the most vile creatures dwell here, along with the strongest arena fighters. If fear has not run your men out, then you may stand a chance, otherwise see yourself cut down by powerful beings capable of wielding great strength and abilities.

You must have strategic cunning when facing Lord Asshat, so that you may reclaim honor to your surname. Will your become the champion your father was or will you fall before your enemies?

Irongate Arena on Steam

Slime Dice

Roll Dice! Make Characters! Play Mini-games & Strategize Combat! Gather a team of your very own characters and defeat the monsters of Spegroon. Slime Dice is based heavily on both 2000’s era video games and board games. Combat itself also offers many decisions, both when creating your team, and while in battle. Roll dice to get special combos, or go for another strategy entirely!

Character Creation is where you’ll start the game, making your own character first. You can change the visuals, the voice, and even their default emotions! After that, you pick their stats. There are four different stats to invest into, and a large amount of abilities to select from. Mixing and matching these abilities, stats, and equipment is a big part of the game! Do this not only for this character, but up to a total of eight! Will you make a party of mages? Perhaps a pirate crew, wielding flintlocks and axes? Or, will you make a team based on characters from your favorite game/series? The choice is yours!

Slime Dice on Steam

Element Space

Updated 5/2019 from the initial review.

Disappointing, it clearly has some great ideas but is currently still frustrating to play. Cool xcom type turn based combat game with little strategic choices. Appears to have some fun ideas about combo ablities amongst your 3 characters. While patches have improved the fun, there is still a fair amount of frustration in playing.

Graphics are nice, but there is literally nothing to the game other than the combat grid. You have some time wasting “walk your party through the non-interactive environment until the next invisible trigger” type stuff in between combat in the missions. You can’t re-equip or even swap weapons (like you can in combat) when outside of combat. There is still no documentation in game about various rules (LOS, squad level “one use” items that are actually 1 use per person). The enemy will have various unusual weapons/abilities that show up. You will have little clue about what they are or how they work until it blows up on you (unless they have a passive ability “on” which you can now see a tiny icon next to them that sort of describes it). You are given an ability early on that causes push back, but you will never really know how far the enemy will get pushed (though they did at least add an arrow showing where the enemy goes). The push action will reveal your lack of knowledge about what counts as a “wall” and what is just neutral landscape (ie. elevated railings block LOS but don’t count as a wall for push damage). And since push typically leaves the character standing out in the open, its a crap shoot on when you should use it since you never know if the target will get pushed off the dock or just move a few inches and then shoot you. In my 2nd mission I got wiped out 3 times in a row, as I learned what each of the 4 new unique enemy units would do to me.

– Real player with 64.6 hrs in game

https://youtu.be/oRxn38yrVM0

Attractive, compelling, turn-based squad strategy with powerful characters in a science fiction setting with complex worlds, politics and back stories. Likely alienated much of its potential audience because of its unforgiving lack of manual game saving, not providing new players enough training before dumping them into tough battles against ferocious enemies, and a preponderance of game stopping and crashing bugs - doubly frustrating due to the lack of manual saving or in-battle autosaving. Although to be fair, many of these have been fixed by subsequent patches/updates, and the devs continue to work hard on bug-stomping.

– Real player with 45.2 hrs in game

Element Space on Steam

F-Team

Recruit your team of fantasy heroes and save the world!

As a rising entrepreneur in the world of fantasy security services, recruit and fully customize your heroes as you send them on various quests. Improve your heroes as they gain experience and level up. Train them in new skills and improve their equipment. Strategically decide which quests to take on and which heroes to send where.

If you have a quest, if no one else can help and if you can afford them, then maybe you too can hire the F-Team!

Game currently contains two chapters, The Bridge at Londoress and The Goblin Lands.

The Bridge At Londoress

Goblins have overrun the Bridge at Londoress and destroyed it, severing the path to the Goblin lands. From the stronghold nearby they send out raiding parties to ransack the land. Assemble your team of heroes, take back the stronghold and rebuild the bridge.

The Goblin Lands

With the bridge now secured, make your way through these rough lands to the Goblin Capital of Gunula. From there, escort the Goblin ambassador and secure peace. But beware, not all want peace between Humans and Goblins.

Combined these two chapters should provide between 30 and 40 hours of gameplay.

Features:

6 Different Character Classes (Fighter, Archer, Mage, Knight, Ranger, Barbarian)
4 races to interact with (Human, Goblin, Elven, Undead)
Tactical turn-based combat. Take command yourself or let the AI decide
Explore a huge world map 1600 hexes large with unique race-based locations and items
Manage dozens, even hundreds of Heroes
Over 80 skills to teach your Heroes divided amongst character class and race
Trade, loot and gather over 50 unique items
Main story-line quests along with various side quests to fulfill. Quest types include fetch quests, timed quests, elimination quests, garrison quests and more
Perma-death for your heroes until you discover the Undead capital of Kharbharam
Battle Simulator for quick, random skirmishes

Full Character Customization

Gender
Name and Avatar
Over 50 different hair, eyebrow and beard styles
Hundreds of different armor combinations (30 chest plates, 30 leggings, 22 upper bracers, 20 lower bracers, 19 gloves and 21 boots)
Add accessories such as shoulder plates, helmet decorations, elbow and knee plates, ear / nose / chin rings and more
Change skin color, facial hair color, eye color and armor color along with other color options
226 different weapons divided over 12 categories based on character class
60 different shields
Armor and weapons based on character class and level with unique weapons unlocked by skill training and quest fulfillment

Fight a wide array of unique enemies including:

Goblin fighters, archers, heavies and shamans
Undead fighters, knights and shamans
Cave spiders
Ice beasts
Brigands
Golems
Forest witches and guardians
More to come

F-Team on Steam

Ignited Steel: Mecha TBT

Aiming to fulfill its expansion instinct, humanity created an A.I. which controls and manages all necessary resources to expand the human race throughout the galaxy. Soon, a fatal flaw in the A.I. “PharOS” code was discovered: it could not and would not stop expanding.

With the hope to halt PharOS’ expansion, the human race depends on “The Ignited Steel” program, a plan reliant on outdated technology which PharOS cannot control.

Old Mechs from past wars are now humanity’s only hope.

Attacking and moving mechs requires energy and can overheat the mech. If overheated, mechs output more damage while being more vulnerable to enemy attacks.

A key element to gameplay is finding the perfect balance between damage and vulnerability.

Pilots from every corner of the universe volunteer to the Ignited Steel program, each bringing their unique personalities and tactics.

As the Ignited Steel program regains control of the galaxy, new pilots will join the cause against PharaOS.

There’re 3 types of mechs: Juggernaut, Stalker and Javelin, each with their own advantages and counterplay.

Mechs are built using unique modules each with their own purpose. As the Ignited Steel program liberates the galaxy, they will earn and purchase new modules with unique traits.

The galaxy is full of contrasting planets and stories to be told. By jumping from node to node the ignited steel program will discover the galaxy’s stories, and add new modules and pilots to the crew. New planets, pilots, modules, events and missions in every playthrough!

Ignited Steel: Mecha TBT on Steam

Magic of Spring

A card adventure game. Explore a magical island, turn the environment into cards, build decks to overcome card battles, and end the war between spring and summer.

Features:

Grand quest: Play as Aeon the Conjurer sent to the Island of Fate to save the Emissary Kingdoms from devastating droughts and storms.
Free exploration: Find your way through the Island of Fate, an ancient place of power. The Island features open fields, alternative paths, and optional areas.
Card conjuring: Turn trees, spirits, architecture, and everything else you’ll find on the Island into cards.
Deck building: Use conjured cards to build decks and discover perfect answers for every adversary you will meet during your journey.
Magic battles: Defeat runes, conjurers, and deities in over fifty unique battles that will test your skills and decks.
Endless challenge: Push your decks to the limit in the endurance battles to earn a spot in the leaderboards and unlock reward cards.

Magic of Spring on Steam

Magin: The Rat Project Stories

Main features

Adventure game - interact with the environment and investigate items to get a better grasp of the context for the plot.
Emotions mechanics - maintain the emotions of your characters, choose the path they’ll follow, deal with the impact of your choices.
Nonlinear storyline - immerse yourself into a cold and harsh fantasy world of our creation. Follow the main characters through their journey of a lost and redeemed hope.
Card system - build your deck as the story progresses and face stronger enemies. Use RPG influenced elements such as storyline choices or merchants to modify your deck.