Hexa Trains
Do you like trains? Do you like optimizing networks and making trend lines go up? Did you wish Mini Metro was also a simple, Euro-boardgamey economic simulation? Do you appreciate an unusual level of fidelity in orbital mechanics?
Get this game.
– Real player with 11.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Space Games.
Hexa Trains is an interesting and relaxing indie game which you can play through in a few hours. Controls and graphics are not on AAA level, but on the other hand this game allows you to explore an original gameplay concept.
Interesting Concept
You get a planet (+moon) with fixed buildings on it, and have to build tracks and deploy trains in order to connect the buildings and grow the planets economy. There’s no concept of money in this game - tracks and trains are free, and your economy doesn’t grant you any currency to spend. Instead you get a score for your productivity level.
– Real player with 8.8 hrs in game
Overworld - Map Keeper’s Realm
Overworld: Map Keeper’s Realm is your tabletop RPG companion. With it, you can quickly and easily sculpt your world, retain its history, and share it with the players. Overworld’s propagating levels enables you to create and detail your whole world with a single map. Other features like points of interest and searchable notes breathe life into your world. Welcome to Map Keeper’s Realm!
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Building Games.
SkyBoats
Pros:
-
nice interface
-
games done in no more than 30 mins and they’re saved if you can’t finish them
-
2 versions of the game (after 17 hours I’m yet to play the other though will do when I finish this one!)
-
active dev interested in engaging with the community
Cons:
-
you learn the rules as you go and some are not that clear. Fortunately, Inventarius has done a brilliant community guide which helps you understand how to get near his level and therefore play more and enjoy it more
-
once you reach your max level, replayability is limited - you don’t want to lower your level by failing too often. I have more hours in Axes & Acres (48) than I will have in this (probably max out around 25-30) so buy in a sale.
– Real player with 29.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Turn-Based Games.
As always with BrainGoodGames, this game is lots of fun and very challenging. It takes a while to grasp the rules but once you understand them you will appreciate the complex strategies you can use.
The tutorial will get you started but I recommend turning on practise mode to really learn the rules and not lose ranks. The support from BrainGoodGames is great as always.
– Real player with 19.5 hrs in game
Atlas Architect
~ EASE OF PLAY~
🔲 My 90 year old grandma could play it
✅ Easy
🔲 Normal
🔲 Hard
🔲 Dark Souls
~ GRAPHICS ~
🔲 MS Paint
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
🔲 Graphics don’t matter in this game
✅ Good
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece
~ MUSIC ~
🔲 Bad
✅ Not special
🔲 Good
🔲 Beautiful
~ STORY ~
✅ This game has no story
🔲 Like playing Temple Runners for the story
🔲 It’s there for the people who want it
🔲 Well written
🔲 Epic story
🔲 Imagine Kingdom Hearts but on crack
~ PRICE ~
🔲 Free
🔲 Underpriced
✅ Perfect Price
– Real player with 46.5 hrs in game
Would I recommend this game? Yes! But to be honest, there are just about as many cons as there are pros, but first I will go to why I love this game so much -
Pros:
What can I say? I love each new thing added into the game. Every time the dev adds anything in, it seems to liven up my map even more. Things like smoke, water, and flags in the cities will move, and add a bit more life to something basic.
You can view your map in multiple ways, from grids to old time maps to elevation levels.
– Real player with 26.6 hrs in game
Gem Wizards Tactics
Ok, I don’t know how to write reviews so I’ll just tell you an experience I had with the game wich shows why I think it’s great.
My small team of Potato soldiers were about to be wiped out by an overwhelming force of soldiers from the Azure Order. I had already captured three of the four flags I needed to win the battle, but I was getting swarmed and pushed out towards the northwestern corner of the map. And my leader, Andromeda Robin, was already dead. My only chance to get the last flag was to kill an enemy squad leader. Unfortunately the squadleader was behind a ton of spearmen, knights, archers and catapults.
– Real player with 381.3 hrs in game
Exceedingly good and long-lasting gameplay value for those with limited time–each match lasts anywhere from 20-30 minutes at most. The player factions are varied and fairly balanced from my limited exposure of each. Gameplay is simple at first glance, but the synergies among units adds deep, tactical and surprising complexity to the Advanced Wars-like formula.
About the only thing that would add value to an already enjoyable game would be at least two or three more player factions, but the developer has already hinted that this is a possibility. Could we get a robot faction please?
– Real player with 38.9 hrs in game
Spire of Sorcery
A party strategy with its very own style and identity.
The graphics are nice and well designed, and the music is great. Hopefully they add more of it later.
The interface feels like it was designed by a madman that completely ignored everything we know about mainstream gaming interfaces, and just branched it into its own evolutionary path. On the other hand, many games today have an interface that looks nearly identical, and here it’s finally different and fresh.
The spell and combat system is incredibly deep and flexible. You need to adapt your spells to your party, and figure out how to effectively combine them with potions and the environment, and even with other spells and effects. This game greatly rewards experimentation and exploration. There are many insane combinations to discover, and every party requires a different strategy and resource management. A murderhobo group plays very differently from a group that has a pacifist in it.
– Real player with 31.1 hrs in game
A game where you control only mages! If you are tired of extremely generic fighters who smell of sweaty socks and too much ale, and you are a cultured scholar who appreciates basking under arcane arts and good books, then this game might be for you :P That was the reason for me to try demo, then game’s uniqueness made me buy it and keep on journey.
Honestly, even the idea of “controlling only mages” is already so exciting and engaging to me. Now I know that this game is mostly strategy and all but there’s an attempt right here so I must interfere… story is not very infused with the game itself, I’d personally expect more passages that would drag me in. Don’t know what the devs are planning on release, but a good background story would be a huge game changer in my opinion. People who like magical powers tend to care about these, no? If there’s such plan (yes this is a big issue of indie developers but) adding just one voice actor who is going to narrate the story would be very pleasant.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
Hexa
(edit: a patch added a few settings, edited the review to reflect that.)
all you do in hexa is rotate hexagons so the shapes coming out of one side of a hex can reach the end located on the side of another hex. colors matter, so if a circle enters a hexagon on the yellow side, it will leave wherever the other yellow side is. there are also converters between shapes, as well as splitters and switches that unlock blocked sides.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Hexa is a easy to learn puzzle game with a unique concept. Use the different hex side types to get the beams to their destination.
With a simple to use level editor you can create and share your levels with the Steam community.
Key Features:
-
Easy to learn yet complex puzzles
-
Level Editor to create and share you levels on the Steam Workshop
-
Simple controls
-
33 Carefully thought out levels with more getting added constantly
-
Random level generator. Play unlimited random levels!
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
Wizards and Warlords
This is the good stuff. I have 13 hours played and I started playing it less than 36 hours ago. It gets the ‘one more turn’ feel just right, and has enough depth to keep things interesting, but is a bit un-optimized in terms of interface and mechanical transparency.
The Dev (yeah, the one dude making it on his own) is basically the paragon that all early access devs should try to be, constantly pushing updates and tweaks and engaging the community in respectful and productive discourse with humility and ingenuity. His turnaround time on new ideas is alarmingly fast, which is why there are multiple patches every week.
– Real player with 228.5 hrs in game
I very much wanted to this game to be great. The references to Dominion but with a different take on it.
There’s so much in the game, cool thought out magic, cool proc gen world, cool city development, cool leader development. But it’s so shallow. I didn’t care about any of my leaders, all the cities were functionally the same.
And the list of resources is insane. There’s a ton of resources to be gathering, but most have only a single use. It’s annoying to play a Fae wizard, get herbs and fairy dust, and have little use for it. You chase more resources until you realize you have no use for mithril. I’d rather have a smaller more concentrated list of resources that did something.
– Real player with 104.0 hrs in game
Conquicktory
Conquicktory is a minimalistic turn-based strategy focused on top-level decisions in your civilization’s development. You’ll control the diplomacy relations with neighboring countries, declare wars, plan the key strikes and distribute funds to the peaceful/military issues. Your subjects will do the rest of work - there is no need to deeply micromanage all the aspect of your glorious growing empire.
The game map has 3 views:
1. Military view. If you see a spear with a flag over one of your cities, it means that you can create an army in it. Simply touch and drag from it and you’ll see the army path. Army will capture cells around its path. The same dragging way is used to plan the movement of your existing armies. Also you can see the cells defense ratings on this view. Cells are defended by nearby armies, cities and forts.
2. Diplomacy view. Here you can select a country and see its current enemies (red) and allies (green). You can select a country and suggest a treaty to it, or declare war. Also here you can answer the treaties suggestions from other players
3. Economy view. You can see how much each of your cities brings to you, and set the funds spreading to war, peaceful growth and treasury. You can fund new cities and fortresses in this view.
Game features:
-
easy control mode which lets you focus on the top-level questions of you empire
-
simultaneous moves, which are performed once all the players have issued orders
-
challenging AI, which does not cheat but can make clever moves
-
spectator mode, where you can relax and spectate how the AI play (and try to guess the winner)
-
prebuilt maps of the world, continents and countries, which you can conquer
Crowntakers
Crowntakers (CT) is a short rouge-like game, where you traverse 8 different quasi-hex based maps, building a party of up to five members along the way. Each map is comprised of various nodes, where you will search for loot, upgrade your gear, recruit new members to your party (one per map), and of course fight battles. You are tasked to storm the castle and rescue the king in 18 days (yes you are timed even though this is a fully turn-based game).
Pros:
-
- There are 10 different different classes, and each class comes in three different flavors (you pick one “archetype” at the time you recruit each member). These classes are fairly diverse given the streamlined stat system set-up.
– Real player with 46.1 hrs in game
(This game was a gift from a friend)
Before I begin the review, a word of warning to Completists: “The Explorer” achievement is broken in the current game version. There are several instructions on how to download previous versions of the game on the Crowntakers steam forum, but if you don’t feel like jumping through hoops then give this game a skip.
As for the game itself:
Crowntakers is a very simple game. Your adventure takes place on a hex grid where you walk from location to location usually searching buildings. There are a lot of unique blurbs and situations at these locations, but due to its roguelike nature it’s inevitable (especially with how many times you have to play through it) that you will see the same ones multiple times.
– Real player with 36.2 hrs in game