Bad North: Jotunn Edition

Bad North: Jotunn Edition

I’ve heard some negative criticism and some positives about the game and I really want to voice my opinion on this game because I feel like the devs have something really REALLY special here, it’s absolutely worth your time even if you may not get a lot of mileage out of it.

Bad North is a deliberately paced game broken up in to two segments.

  • The action phase of the game takes place on the many procedurally generated islands in the game, you choose which commanders to bring (this usually boils down to the same 4 commanders you’ve sunk all your coins in to, unless you’re going for a specific achievement) and then ships with various viking troops slowly sail towards the shores. There’s a big rock/paper/scissors element going on here where shields counter archers, archers counter unshielded units, and pikes counter… well everything without a bow lol. It’s really fun trying to defend all the buildings on each island. It’s worth noting, your mission on each island is merely surviving the onslaught of enemy troops. Keeping the buildings in tact is optional, although, you should strive to keep every building standing if you hope to get enough coin to upgrade all your units enough for the late game.

Real player with 130.8 hrs in game


Read More: Best Real Time Tactics Cute Games.


A delightful roguelite real time tactics game.

What I enjoy about this game:

  • Cute graphics and sound effect.

  • Remarkable details. See this wonderful article from Rock Paper Shotgun for how the devs design their little soldiers in this game.

  • Very friendly to newbies in RTT games like me. It has only three unit classes and seven enemy types. How each unit class/enemy/trait/item/skill functions are mostly intuitive and easy to understand after seeing it once or twice in real action. Also, you deploy your units on a grid-based map and they plan the route and fight automatically. And the game even slows down time when you select a unit to give you more reflex time. You can almost play it as a turn-based strategy game.

Real player with 43.7 hrs in game

Bad North: Jotunn Edition on Steam

Longphort

Longphort

Frequently crashes, couldn’t make it past the first raid.

Real player with 0.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best Real Time Tactics Building Games.


Longphort on Steam

Magi

Magi

This is an old and fun game that used to be sold by the standalone developer. It’s a shame strategies are not still posted, for it can really be challenging to win. Music soundtrack is pretty iconic… I don’t think the developer supports it anymore but if you’re into magic duels then you’ve probably spent worse money than this.

Real player with 8.5 hrs in game


Read More: Best Real Time Tactics Tactical RPG Games.


It’s “TUG-OF-WAR” with fireballs and techno-liches.

Other games come to mind, like

“Aeon Command” (space battles)

“Samurai vs Zombies Defense” (goofy samurai warfare)

and

“Puzzle Chronicles” (the illegitimate child of Tetris and Mortal Kombat)

These game elements are constant:

  • try to hold the line

  • manage your defences

  • beef-up your attacks

  • spam your enemies to death

In Magi, you start by opening magical “channels.” These channels enable your spells and strengthen them. Then, it’s a real-time battle as you queue-up spells for casting. It’s like the building queue in Starcraft or Civ… only it’s your shield spell, or a magic missile, or summoning an imp. As your mage is casting one spell, you have time to set up the next. And the next. You can plan a bit… or panic. Apparently, I’m still fond of panicking.

Real player with 7.4 hrs in game

Magi on Steam

Brave’s Rage

Brave’s Rage

“Brave’s Rage” is a challenging real-time strategy card game. You can build your own unique deck and team, flexibly use bullet time and perfect defense mechanism, defeat the enemy elegantly and efficiently, and explore the truth behind the princess kidnapping!

【STORY】

Once upon a day , an evil dragon came to Aim kingdom and took the princess away. King managed to rescue the princess by assembling groups of braves, but many of them never came back. With this opportunity , Forces were going to start something again , even Devils and Old ones were involved.

【FEATURE】

  • Classic DBG game with new flavor

You can build your card deck during the game ,and you can also have up to 3 braves of different classes, which is ,double building with card and braves, double the fun!

  • Real-time strategy

You can act whenever you want , and good timing can bring great advantages, such as perfect defending (just like soul-like games).

  • lock-free skill function

You can avoid damage by moving when use cards, and also can hit multiple targets while enemy moves together. This will give you new experience that is totally different from classic card games.

  • Brave’s growth

Up to 10 different classes of braves , each class has its unique talent tree, and while braves upgrade, they will get a new skill from skill pool. This will challenge your statics, good luck!

  • Events and Enemies

You will encounter various of events and different kind of enemies during the adventure, and each new round of game is new experience. Choose your braves and cards wisely.

Brave's Rage on Steam

Hell Loop

Hell Loop

Enjoyable.

Pros:

  • It’s fun to find effective strategies.

  • The “no escape” mode is very challenging and fun.

Cons:

  • Your trap choices can make some playthroughs on higher difficulty impossible.

  • Difficulty levels are hidden in main menu.

Real player with 5.5 hrs in game

The game is pretty great as a tower defense + strategy game. The drawings are perfect and looks pretty great for your eyes, you can’t wait that much from a platformer. However sinners can scream and that would make you feel like you’re a real Evil LMAO. However, traps are pretty enough to kill all the sinners. I had one problem with achievements. I tried many things to solve it but I didn’t had achievements while I was completing them. Contacted developer about that and he said yeah there can be a bug about achievements which will be solved %100.

Real player with 2.5 hrs in game

Hell Loop on Steam

Necronator: Dead Wrong

Necronator: Dead Wrong

With almost 15 hours under my belt, here’s my thoughts.

The game is setup in an RTS meets deck-builder. This gives the game a different feel than your straight up deck builders (like Slay the Spire or Banners of Ruin). Since the battle is semi-automated, you just have to manage your resources. But don’t call it easy, because there is a great challenge sometimes in keeping up with the various levels; especially with the “survive for xxx seconds” maps.

You get commanders with different playstyles. One is a straight-up combat deck and the other is a toy-box style deck with few normal units. You can also unlock alternate decks for the commanders for even more variation at the start. The upgrade paths for the cards can be a bit random, so the rogue-like element is there and can either flummox you or really help you.

Real player with 88.6 hrs in game

Mostly fun game, has some fairly obnoxious/punishing game mechanics.

For starters, there are a decent number of relics (items that effect everything, usually based on some criteria) that give you some strong boosts if you have fielded less than 6 units. Then half the game is spent playing against enemies who get to make a card in your hand useless every few seconds if you have less than 10 (will be lowing to 6 according to the roadmap) units on the field. Do you want to try and field a small but strong elite army if the relics line up right? Good luck when you have to wait for mana to regen and by that point there is a solid chance that your card gets ‘silenced’. Silenced isnt just some minor condition that can be fixed, its a card in your hand that now CANT DO ANYTHING. The only way to get rid of it is to redraw your hand, which can cost from free (if you wait long enough and are playing the toy maker) to 40 mana (of which you only get 100 from the base hero).

Real player with 27.2 hrs in game

Necronator: Dead Wrong on Steam

Orpiment

Orpiment

Choose your knight, earn him the most beautiful and powerful equipment, but above all, surround yourself with the best supporters to encourage you during your fights! In Orpiment you don’t play the knight but the members of the audience who all have their own skills.

You don’t control your knight during the fights but you can intervene at any time by using the special abilities of your audience members. Throw a roast chicken, drop your panthers on the field or steal your opponent’s shield to tip the balance in your favor!

In this rogue-like game where the heroes are the shadowy characters, bring your knight into the story by using the best audience member combo possible.

Recruit new audience members through victories

Get new equipment to replace those destroyed in battle.

Repair your shields and armor at the blacksmith’s, upgrade your supporters at the inns, and buy rare equipment from the merchants.

Progress through your adventure via a procedurally generated map, choose your path amongst the various pitfalls that make up the map, surround yourself with the best supporters and equip yourself with the most powerful equipment to face the Golden Demon and his 4 demonic knights.

Features:

  • 4 knights with different characteristics

  • Around 20 different audience members

  • Over 60 special abilities

  • Almost infinite team compositions

  • Over 80 different weapons!

  • Over 40 different shields!

  • More than 40 different battle armors!

Orpiment on Steam

Duskers

Duskers

If anybody can hear me, please respond.

_I am a sole survivor of the liberty, a long range scout ship on a mission to discover the cause of a spacial anomaly on the edge of this system. My crew is missing and had to re-purpose some drones to make repairs.

Everything that could go wrong has, I have limited fuel, limited resources and have had to resort to explore this sector to look for supplies.

Things turned from bad to worse when I realized that every ship and base I have discovered has turned up empty. No life, nobody. Nothing except some extra scrap and some upgrades I used to further my search._

Real player with 66.6 hrs in game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzVIzZx5if0

So, you wanted to get scared. You wanted to play a horror game. Perhaps a survival rogue-like one? Forget your run-of-the-mill jump scare games, monsters, aliens and other nasties. Duskers will make you fear mere sounds of the ship you’ve docked at creaking, shudder at seeing flashing red doors and jump at simple beeps of your console.

The atmosphere of the game has to be applauded over and over. The graphical nature is simple yet complex. Simple in terms of the console view where you can see the location of your drones, the layout of the ship, the state of its doors and so on. This part is logically clean and very un-Hollywood like, where terminals will be more graphically impressive than any operating system yet look a fraction as useful. The console, coupled with the ambient rumbling of your ship’s engines as well as various blips and blops, will reinforce the feeling of isolation. The feeling that you are truly alone in the cold vastness of space, desperately trying to keep your aging ship and failing drones to keep going as you attempt to figure out just what has happened to everyone.

Real player with 59.3 hrs in game

Duskers on Steam

Number One Rich

Number One Rich

Pretty cool game!!

Real player with 27.4 hrs in game

Number One Rich on Steam

Evertried

Evertried

I’m not actually the biggest fan of Roguelike games, but Evertried convinced me not only by being very pretty, but also really giving this “Just one more try!” feeling a new meaning!

Also the game has relatively little RNG, so 90% of the deaths happening actually are the player’s fault. Something I hate and love at the same time! Being able to either try to go as fast as you can or take your time and think your moves through is a great thing, allowing everyone to learn in their own speed. And the feeling of killing an enemy or clearing a floor that previously gave me troubles for the first time is amazing!

Real player with 39.0 hrs in game

UPDATE : 3 times in a row my “hard mode” run ends after 40 min on some kind of “NullPointerException”. The game is just not tested enough, wait a few months until the game is tested and all bugs are fixed : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1607040/discussions/0/3158706376169597835/

If you like “Into The Breach (ITB)” (best strategy game in 2018), you will like Evertried for sure. Most ITB mechanics are here with a light touch of Roguelite. The additional mechanics are not really useful (at least in normal mode), but they don’t prevent you to play, so it’s all good.

Real player with 31.7 hrs in game

Evertried on Steam