Rezrog
Theoretically, this is a good, simple game. In practice, it’s agony and frustration.
The graphics are nice, the gameplay simple but fun, etc. I wanted to like it - in fact, I do like the core game - but it’s surrounded by so many problems that it’s impossible to enjoy.
There are little things: no documentation, incredibly repetitive music. Some cludginess with the interface that makes inventory management awkward. (Want to see which character needs an item more? Go to one screen to trade the item, then back out of that, select a different screen to compare the stats/equip, back out and repeat 6 more times). But those are tolerable. The gameplay itself is simple and may bore some people, but it was exactly what I was in the mood for.
– Real player with 88.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Roguelike Games.
First off, as of this writing/v1.05: The bugs, personally, have not been bad. In 15 hours of gameplay, I’ve had to abandon just three dungeons due to blocked doors. Good on the devs for working so hard to fix the issues. One does wonder if they beta tested, though.
This is gonna meander, because gin.
Pros:
Having a selectable roster of seven characters is an entertaining spin on the dungeon-crawler.
Fun design aesthetic.
Cons:
Despite how the devs advertise it, Rezrog a rogue-LITE at best. Random dungeons and permadeath do not a roguelike make. Roguelikes are to RPGs as dark fantasy is to fantasy. The roguelike world hates you and wants you not just to die, but suffer and rage as you do. Every unidentified item you pick up should have the potential to violate you in ways that would make a hentai tentacle monster blush. In Rezrog, every item you find is unidentified until you right-click on it; there are no curses or detrimental effects, it’s all just vendor trash.
– Real player with 68.2 hrs in game
Sproggiwood
This game will always hold a special place for me as the introduction of my kids to roguelikes. There’s no auto-explore here, it’s more “puzzle roguelike” than I’d really prefer, but it’s ideal for my 7, 10 and 13 year old to play and get far too much enjoyment out of. Add to that the developers are some of my favorites (I don’t know them personally, but they also make Caves of Qud, a roguelike that I enjoy quite a bit as well) and I can heartily recommend the game to most anyone dipping thier toe into roguelikes without knowing what all the fuss is about.
– Real player with 35.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Grid-Based Movement Games.
THE ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARY…
Okay at best, only somewhat charming, and worth a casual playthrough at most.
[➕] THE POSITIVES
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The MUSIC. Is delightful. If anything, you’ll keep the volume turned up just to hear the cheery tunes as you play.
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ENEMY VARIETY. Is nice! Each level serves as a foundation for the next, so the game is always building on itself all the way through to the end.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
SkyBoats
Pros:
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nice interface
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games done in no more than 30 mins and they’re saved if you can’t finish them
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2 versions of the game (after 17 hours I’m yet to play the other though will do when I finish this one!)
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active dev interested in engaging with the community
Cons:
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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
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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 Hex Grid 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
Radiis
If you’re a fan of strategy games like Risk or Sid Meier’s Civilization series then you’ll probably enjoy this, since it somewhat falls in between the two–more complex than Risk, but much less micro-managing than the Civ games. I think Radiis is a little overpriced, but “overpriced” largely depends on how many hours of enjoyment you’ll get from it. I bought it on sale and have played more than 100hrs, so for me it was a great deal.
The missions are mostly challenging, but the AI could benefit from some tweaks. For example, the computer (NPC) players tend to focus on spamming buildings for added population growth, even when it would make more sense to expand their borders. Also NPCs never save money/tokens; if there’s enough finances to place buildings, it will place them whether they need to or not. And the NPCs boat placements are laughably inefficient.
– Real player with 317.8 hrs in game
I’ve always been into strategy games, but I don’t think I’ve ever found one that I’ve felt so compelled to write a review for.
This game is simply amazing for anyone who likes strategy games! Such a unique and different design. Gotta make sure to go through the campaign maps to learn and understand the different things available to you. There is always a viable strategy to victory in these maps, no matter how unlikely it may seem. Especially that final campaign map, you go into it thinking there’s no way this could be possible… but play it right and play smart, and it’s surprising how it really is doable!
– Real player with 92.9 hrs in game
Axes and Acres
I think this game is fantastic. It takes a while to fully understand it (watch the tutorial video’s but certainly Tom Chick’s video for more info) because the game lacks a good tutorial or manual and the user interface is a bit too minimalistic, but once you get it, you’ll love it!
Update: the tutorial has been completely redone. I have not tried it but others say it is much better now. The developer is really active around this and his other games, he talks to his players and listens.
The game has a leveling system, when you win, your level rises and the next challenge will be harder. I have seen this in more games before, but I have never seen it work so perfectly as in this game. This game really seems to perfectly know what to do to make it just that bit harder for you the next time you play it. Every playthrough, if I won, it was at the last or before last turn. Although it’s a turn based game, I was on the edge of my seat because you think: oh no… I’ll never make it.
– Real player with 336.5 hrs in game
Axes and Acres Review
The review below, and others, can be found in my Announcements page (http://www.mercedesmace.com/announcements/game-review-axes-and-acres )
This is the second game (Steam, Apr 2016) by a small indie developer, BrainGoodGames. (http://www.braingoodgames.com ). They had a great hit with Militia (on Steam Dec 2015), and just released a new game (Skyboats, Steam Aug 2016). I’m a bit behind the Steam release schedule; I only got around to picking up A&A this month. In the past two weeks, I’ve put 46 hours into A&A, and can strongly recommend it.
– Real player with 150.3 hrs in game
Minos Strategos
to give a little back story to new comers, BrainGoodGames has no pushed out their 4th strategie game Minos Strategos, a sort of board game turn based strategie game. While all there games have the same sort of feel as asthetic at the base, they all of very distinct game styles and rules. To give a little feedback on the type of developers BrainGoodGames are, its not uncommon to a player to find a bug and for it to get patched and fixed an hour later. Iv seen people suggest an idea they think would really work in one of their games, just to see it implemented the next day! Iv seen them push a new game out, just to go back months later and push another content patch for all their older games as well, continuing to make sure all their games get tons of love. Its almost as if buying one of the BGGames also comes with a 24/7 Dev hotline ! HAH
– Real player with 35.9 hrs in game
Now that I’ve played quite a few games of Minos Strategos and moved up a few ranks I feel confident in saying this game is another great addition to the BrainGoodGames collection of strategy games.
The tutorial is a bit brief and left me with some questions. Watching a short video that is linked to on the main page of the game soon cleared up the questions I had. There is a practise mode so if you aren’t sure how something works and you want to experiment, you can do so without affecting your rank.
– Real player with 35.0 hrs in game
Overland
Only 69% positive with only 285 reviews? I really feel sad for this game as it only got a Mixed Score on steam.
It’s really actually pretty good but the restriction of Rogue-Like difficulty, Random Generated map plus some designer choice made and many other factors made this game lost a lot of the scores.
The story itself is very basic that a meteorite strike earth that brings an alien specie of bugs that grow and expanded out of control beneath the earth. They are attracted to sound and noises and have infinite quantities so civilizations of mankind brought to an abrupt end with few survivors scattered about. They have to constantly stay moving to avoid the alien bugs and salvage what’s left of the old world to stay alive in a hopeless earth.
– Real player with 81.0 hrs in game
In short
Overland looks beautiful and has a cool concept, but it’s too focused on tedious tasks. It’s also a game that does not like to reward its players, which makes it hard to enjoy.
BTW, the game’s difficulty has been nerfed quite a bit since launch, so disregard reviews about the game being impossible. If anything, it may currently be too easy.
Long version
For me, the lack of fun in Overland starts with the self-contradictory nature of the game. Indeed, Overland constantly offers cool toys, but says NO whenever the player wants to use them. For example, you’d be forgiven for thinking this game was about tactical combat, with weapons aplenty and critters to use them on. Turns out that the game punishes you for killing a critter, as it results in a snowball effect that makes the map harder. You could actually argue that Overland’s core gameplay is to make dumb AI run around in circles, without hurting them, to give your other characters enough time to find fuel. It’s hard to remain excited about such a tactic after you’ve done it 4-5 times. Another example of this kind of contradiction is the equipment system. The game likes to drop all sorts of useful items, be it weapons, fuel, med packs, repair kits, flash lights, and so on. But characters in Overland only have 1 or 2 equipment slots which means you can’t pick up most of the items you find. The result is that you spend a ridiculous part of your time doing things like dropping your flashlight on the ground to be able to carry the newly found can of fuel, while your other character stores his med pack on the car in order to pick up the flashlight you just dropped … you get the idea. None of that is fun; it’s just tedious and annoying.
– Real player with 11.7 hrs in game
Shattered Planet
To put it bluntly, Shattered Planet is one of the worst Roguelike I ever had the displeasure to play and it’s not worth the price at all, even considering this is the first game made by Kitfox, especially when they straight up abandoned it, leaving some items impossible to collect (making 100% completion not achivable if you are into that) and not fixings LOTS of bugs and glitches that plague the experience, either by being a minor annoyance or outright impeding your progress
The premise of Shattered Planet is that you, the clone of a space adventurer, with the aid of your space crew, that is made by the huge number of one ‘nother alien guy, must travel to the now shattered planet of Earth to find a cure to a space disease known as “Blight”, which there are currently no ways to treat it.
– Real player with 702.4 hrs in game
I really like this game!
Jumping right into what you want to know:
Gameplay/Story: Simple; easy to learn very fast. Choose a clone, each with their own skillset and buffs, and traverse the ever-changing shattered pieces of an ancient planet crawling with monsters and tribals, littered with loot and new weapons to help you on your way as you progress onto harder and harder levels that are different every time. See how far you can get before the flora, fauna, or your own mistakes spell your end. You will die. A lot. But don’t worry; your clone can pick up where you left off to start the adventure all over again with all the information and levels that your last one was able to earn before his untimely, and probably sudden, demise. But you’re not always alone in this, you might sometimes also find it in your favor to either purchase or tame a companion or pet to help fight with you on your next trip to the surface. If you’d rather have a goal to reach instead of pushing the limits of your clone endlessly, there are 3 other difficult missions for you to complete with cool rewards for each, but you’ll fare better practicing in endless first! Grab some scrap and crystals (money) in there to buy yourself some fancy murder-tools before pushing your luck in the missions. Travel a lot and you’ll find it lying all over the place!
– Real player with 153.9 hrs in game
Siralim 3
When Zack Bertok of Thylacine Studios launched Siralim 2 in 2016, he was sure there would never be a sequel, at least not in the near future. He began to work on other projects, but the more he did so, the more ideas to improve Siralim 2 he could think of. What was supposed to be a simple expansion kept getting bigger and bigger… and Siralim 3 was born.
For those who are unfamiliar with this series, Siralim is an RPG with roguelite elements in which the player trains monsters to use them in 6vs6 battles, inspired by the Enix game Dragon Warrior Monsters. What makes it different from other such games is the fact that it is virtually endless, which allows players to enjoy the game for hundreds or even thousands of hours.
– Real player with 2273.7 hrs in game
Update 2: Still going strong on this game at 1392 hours. This game is excellent for being able to instantly walk away when you have something to take care of. Been using it as my side game while exploring in Elite Dangerous. The developer has slowed down on the updates, probably working on his next game. Ended up buying a copy for a friend who likes retro-styled indie games. He thanks you for Linux support!
Update: Still a good game at the 200 hour mark. New major updates were released since my review was written. More content and added an asynchronous multiplayer combat mode. You take your team and fight other teams out there. No player-to-player interaction except composing the teams, but I wouldn’t want more than that in this kind of game. The meat of the game is still in advancing incrementally through the realms, gathering loot, unlocking achievements (which increase the loot rate), and so forth. Still an awesome game.
– Real player with 1639.8 hrs in game
Solar Settlers
I got into the beta test for this game after enjoying so many other BGG games in the past. Playing Solar Settlers gives you that trademark BGG feel that there’s always more to discover. The mechanics are simple at first glance. Move your space explorers around an unknown galaxy, collect cards and increasing your population and production, build up enough habitats, and settle enough people before the game ends in the sixth round. Succeed, and your rank goes up. Fail, and all your colonists perish in the abyss of space. More importantly, your rank goes down.
– Real player with 158.9 hrs in game
Compared to the previous games of BGG this is in my opinion the greatest of all. Axes and Acres has always been my no.1 but I think it finally has to step aside for this one. We’ll see what will get the most hours of play time. Only time will tell.
The game is surprisingly simple to grasp but has enormous depth. The tutorial is short and you immediately know how to play the game. This is very different to the previous games where the tutorials were quite hard to grasp (although this has been improved in updates).
– Real player with 97.8 hrs in game