1Dimensional Desperado

1Dimensional Desperado

  • BUY whichever Boots and a Hat you like! Don’t forget to check for their bonuses, penalties and price!

  • EMBARK upon a journey along a fully 1-dimensional world! Move one way or the other, there is no wrong choice!

  • EXPLORE every bit of randomly generated world with a single press of a button! You really have to! Or you will lose the game!

  • GET REWARDED with those miraculous, fantastic potions for every brave act of exploring! You’ll need them to face the…

  • DANGERS! Indeed, even 1-dimensional Wild West is not a safe place! Ward them off with one or more of the potions you have or else your hitpoints will take quite… a hit!

  • MONEY! So, you were lucky and/or smart enough not to succumb to previous paragraph? Well, get paid for your hard work! The bigger the world you stumbled through, the heavier will be your pockets, allowing you to go right up at the top of this list and have another go with better equipment and even longer journey!

Challenge your preconceptions!

Your old routines won’t work here, learning from ground up is the only way!

Familiar principles all rolled up in a new form of gameplay!

Brute force will only get you so far!

Pick it up for five minutes!

Pick it up for an hour!

Walk around backyard or marathon through continent!

You are the one to decide the fate of your free time!

Silent gaming era is no more!

Enjoy your hearing being pleasantly stimulated!

Good ol' Western themed themes! Bips and boops from every button press!

Now you know why you bought that 5.1 Surround Sound System!


Read More: Best Perma Death Turn-Based Games.


1Dimensional Desperado on Steam

Cat-o-Combo!

Cat-o-Combo!

Enter the Catacombs!

Funny cat Plexy with his own paws many a time dug up a treasure tray before becoming famous as one of the most legendary tomb raiders of modern times. That is why Professor Kotenhauer turned to him as he found the location of the Abandoned City. And that means it’s time to go on a trip! In the archaeological society there is a purr that countless treasures are kept inside the walls of the abandoned temples. And in the very heart there is the mystical All-Stone with the begging of the Catapocalypse foretold.

Features:

Collect all the treasures - take the challenge of the Abandoned City and put your paws on all the wealth in his fifty tombs. Each catacomb is more complicated than the previous one, and the further you go, the more tricky riddles will be and the more dangers you will face.

Watch your tail! - Kotzelcoatal, ruler of the Abandoned City, was known as a cruel tyrant. According to legends, he never gave his subjects those cat love bites! Uneducated curs believe that the All-Stone magical paw-er gave its owner nine lives! But do not believe these fairy tales for blind kittens! Every decent cat has only one life.

Simple mechanics - extremely simple game mechanics will not let you get lost in control. Forget about jumping, rolling or cat-ching. There is nothing like that – just go and play!

Do it in style - just collecting the treasures left by someone is boring! Do it in style! Combine the crystals according to their colour, do not waste your time and find yourself at the top of the leaderboard!

Pixel Van Cat - catacombs never been so colourful and cute! Purrrfect pixel art immerses you in an atmosphere of not-actually-so-creepy ancient civilizations. Each ear, whisker and tail is made with endless love for kitties.

Touch the classics - a game inspired by the immortal Boulder Dash and Supaplex takes a new form. Experienced players will appreciate the long-forgotten gameplay, and beginners will have an excellent opportunity to get acquainted with the classics. Hello from the 90s!


Read More: Best Perma Death Difficult Games.


Cat-o-Combo! on Steam

Dr Iwan: Evolution

Dr Iwan: Evolution

This is a game about a man being lost in valley after aircraft accident and seeking his friend. And he realizes that everything is unusual around him.

PROGRAMMED GENERATION JOURNEY

All the sites that you will reach, all the enemies that you will meet, and all the abilities that you will obtain are programmed generation. Every journey is a new journey.

BUILD YOUR CHARACTER

  • 7 unique Main Abilities

During your journey you will obtain about 10 unique main abilities. You character can choose one of them.

  • Over 40 Sub Abilities

Augment your main ability builds with a diverse array of over 40 unique Sub Abilities.

  • Same Source As Your Enemies

You and your enemies share same ability system.

BUILD YOUR BOSS

Every time when you end your game, your current character will become final boss in your new plus game. Challenge, defeat the boss that you created and make your character become stronger one.

About Developer

This is a indie game of which system, music and art are created by only one guy.


Read More: Best Perma Death Strategy RPG Games.


Dr Iwan: Evolution on Steam

EatWell

EatWell

Like people say, the gameplay is a weird adaptation of pacman. The engaging mechanic is build up a combo of “dots” (think PAC-MAN 256). Once a certain number of dots in a row is achieved, a random power will drop. Those powers take the form of the roguelike comparison, like Binding of Isaac- random, unlockable new ones, odd effects, some good and some bad. It’s hard to make progress, and it’s a bit too punishing with little reward/incentive. But I find myself keep playing it. Maybe it hits that line of just simple enough to play with just enough complexity in its mechanics

Real player with 8.8 hrs in game

So it’s like PAC-MAN mixed with Isaac, mixed with the aesthetic of Downwell, and I love it for all of those reasons, and more.

I’ve not played as much as I’d like to because in all fairness, it doesn’t play well (or at least for me) on a keyboard, and my 360 pad just died. I will however be picking it up and delving deeper when I recieve a new pad.

Don’t be fooled by it looking pretty basic, it’s incredibly hard (as it should be) and rather than you feeling cheated, you’re more likely to want to just keep trying and persevering with it. At least that’s how I feel about it. Oh and things do get more colourful the further you go.

Real player with 2.3 hrs in game

EatWell on Steam

Dark Gates

Dark Gates

THE LOWDOWN:

Dark Gates is a grid-based party dungeon-crawler, with lite RPG elements. It is essentially a virtual boardgame representation based on the ‘classics’ of many years ago. The objective is to explore the dungeon reach the Dark Gates and destroy the “Unnamed” beast that threatens to destroy the lands.

Exploration take place on a procedurally created dungeon across multiple levels and resembles a grid containing rooms. Encounters occur with creatures that can inhabit a tile. Encounter options consist of either: combat, negotiating or bribing. Combat takes place using WEGO-UGO, otherwise the party can pass unhindered. Characters attack using melee, ranged or magic spells.

Real player with 18.3 hrs in game

Game can kill a few hours. It’s not a total disaster. You pick 6 characters, enter a Dungeon, do linear turn based fights.

Gain experience, up your skills until you hit the Dark gate battle. Break the gates, win. Takes ~2 hours to win. I had no idea what to expect so I did “easy” and won easily. So I did Normal and won easily. So I did hard and won easily.

Dislike: Characters ALWAYS go First. Most of the time, the monsters never get a turn to fight. When they do fight they almost always do 1 point of damage . You’re equipped with basically infinite Heal spells. Speels cost life to cast. So your backline has Heal and can heal themselves + heal frontline. Basically it is really really really hard to die.

Real player with 9.3 hrs in game

Dark Gates on Steam

The Castle Doctrine

The Castle Doctrine

The Castle Doctrine is a creepy and unnerving exploration of the idea of home security and more specifically, the doctrine which it is named after.

You begin with 2000 dollars, a lovely wife, two beautiful children and a wide open empty home. You have a vault that you keep your money in. Everyone else around you lives in similar houses, with lovely wives and beautiful children of their own. They also started with 2000 dollars and a wide open and empty home.

Trouble is, 2000 dollars is not enough for anyone. They’re going to come for your money soon enough. And if that’s not enough, they’ll come for your family and take anything your wife is holding onto for you. You’re the man of the house. It’s up to you to protect the things that matter to you. So you build a security system.

Real player with 85.6 hrs in game

EDIT: This review is obsolete. It describes what the game was like when the community was vivid and bustling (it was a very fun game back then). Nowadays almost no one plays this game and the few houses that remain are very much unbreakable.

–——————————————————————————

In order to enjoy this game you need to accept it’s rules:

*There’s not going to be any hand-holding, you’re supposed to learn how to play the game by trial-and-failure. Some of the best experiences from this game come from experimenting by your own initiative and gradually learning better methods to build and destroy trap systems. Tutorials would only ruin all the fun of learning by dying or getting robbed.

Real player with 62.4 hrs in game

The Castle Doctrine on Steam

The Little Slime

The Little Slime

The Little Slime is a platformer with roguelike elements. It has permadeath, random stage layout, and many randomized power-ups. Honestly, the game is serviceable but there are a lot of subpar features. Every stage has a song that sounds like a 3-second loop. I decided to mute the game and listen to my own music while playing it. There is not a lot of text so the developer should at least translate the menu properly. If you can get over the small problems, the gameplay is average at best.

Real player with 4.5 hrs in game

Review copy provided by developer via Curator Connect

I wasn’t sure what to expect out of this one, considering how manic the screenshots are. Starting the game dumps you out in a pastoral little platform world filled with clouds and trees and produce that wants you dead. Right away your little slime will start accumulating powers, the most useful being weapon eyes that let you shoot fire or ice or other things. You’ll find a ton more items on top of that though, most of them adding extra effects to your attacks. After a scant ten minutes my ice shards would sprout scales, seeds, phoenix feathers, ice cream cones, and tiny ambulatory gingerbread men, all of which do damage to enemies. Needless to say I felt like a tiny, slimy, coked-up god.

Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

The Little Slime on Steam

Tomscape

Tomscape

Boring and grindy, with permadeath. Not much variety in enemies or locations. A hard pass.

Real player with 10.6 hrs in game

I love the minimalist art style even if the contrast between bordering colors can make it difficult to make out features occasionally. I also understand this wasn’t a big budget MMO or even one individual’s personal passion project MMO. I’m completely okay with permadeath as well, even if it’s not a personal preference.

The issue with this game is the complete lack of meaningful gameplay. You heal in water and hit stuff to upgrade stats. If others played, you could all do this together. The battles are your standard time-based RNG style with no real interactivity.

Real player with 2.7 hrs in game

Tomscape on Steam

Dandy: Or a Brief Glimpse Into the Life of the Candy Alchemist

Dandy: Or a Brief Glimpse Into the Life of the Candy Alchemist

Dandy is an auto-scrolling shooter with rogue-like elements such as random items and perma-death. The game is also available on mobile, that explains the art style and why the enemies look rather bland, but trust me, it is a lot better than it looks. The gameplay is simple, you kill waves of enemies, after some waves you get randomized power-ups and eventually you fight a boss.

Enemies:

The strongest part about dandy is the enemy design. Most of the enemies have weaknesses that can be exploited to fight them efficiently without losing health. For example some of the enemies require you to stand still or else you can’t hurt them, while others force you to move or else they shoot at you. These two enemy types can appear on the same screen and lead to difficult situations. Overcoming these tricky screens with knowledge and skill feels very rewarding.

Real player with 15.4 hrs in game

I’ve only played this game a couple hours so far and haven’t even reached a single boss or anything, but I can’t recommend this game enough. Neat art style, nice colors, and gameplay is easy to pick up.

Even though the controls are easy to grasp, this game is unforgiving. It has no problem throwing you in and annihilating you. And levels are randomly generated and sometimes the enemies generated will completely screw you over if you aren’t thinking fast enough.

My only complaint is there isn’t a section giving you information about previously used powerups in the compedium. Minor complaint that doesn’t really matter too much in the grand scheme of things.

Real player with 9.7 hrs in game

Dandy: Or a Brief Glimpse Into the Life of the Candy Alchemist on Steam

Devil in the Pines

Devil in the Pines

I had a lot of fun with this game. Fun game to play in the dark with headphones. Those cursed bear traps kicked my butt for a while. I would recommend being able to map keyboard controls for those who have preferences. Also wish the crossbow would reload faster lol. Great job by the developers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r5paQXBxpc

Real player with 4.4 hrs in game

For just a few dollars, this is a pretty scary game. I recorded all 3 levels of difficulty cause why not, and there are some pretty interesting mechanics and scare tactics and the harder levels have added encounters it seems.

It’s very interesting and worth a look at.

As far as replayability is concerned, I’m never going to touch it again since I’ve beaten all 3 modes, but I am still glad I checked it out to begin with. It’s sort of more of a one off game, or if you do all 3 levels, a 3 off.

Overall, it’s decent.

Real player with 2.2 hrs in game

Devil in the Pines on Steam