Shackled
Shackled is the type of game that is entirely driven by the player’s willingness dive deeper into the world and uncover its mysteries. If you want to try and speed run the game without learning much about the world around you, you can with much greater difficulty than if you were to involve yourself in all of the side quests, strategic resetting, and world exploration to beef up your character.
Speaking of involving yourself, Shackled has tens of hours of content for a player who is looking to get the full experience per storyline (good, neutral, evil). The multitude of character interactions, environments, and quests questions your character’s intended purpose in the world and how much choice you truly have. Further lore tidbits are scattered around the world and require effort to both find and decode to understand the full story.
– Real player with 7.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Roguelite Dungeon Crawler Games.
Shackled has a lot to offer and is meant to be played several times to find all of the secrets and follow each path of the story. The game is tough and encourages you to find new ways to speed up and improve your character before continuing on to the next level. There are plenty of spells to use, each help out and allow you to adapt a run to a certain play style.
I tested this game during its development which is why I received a free copy
– Real player with 6.1 hrs in game
Timewreck Tales
What happens when you combine a fun narrative RPG with hours and hours of replayability? What about when you throw flaming oil onto a yeti’s cave ruining his carpet? Find out the answer to those and many more of life’s questions in Timewreck Tales.
Fix the Timewreck in this story rich rogue-like RPG. Build up your team and collect time crystals as you battle, outwit, and discover different dimensions as Independent Time Specialists for Chronos Inc. Chronos Insurance does not cover brain warping, injuries from alternate versions of you, or spontaneous combustion in the line of duty.
Features:
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Change the timeline: Explore the different possibilities of the multiverse! Each time you play has different paths, stories, and characters.
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Build your team: Choose your heroes, level them up, and equip them with the best loot they can find.
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Fight: Discover strategic, deep, turn-based combat. Fight your own way with team customization for different builds to take on the Gods of the planar array.
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Outwit: Learn the best way to approach any encounter. Sometimes skills can be more useful than fists.
Did you make it this far? Congrats. Have a hit of dopamine on us.
Read More: Best Roguelite Turn-Based Combat Games.
Wander Stars
Wander Stars is a turn-based RPG with roguelite elements where you make your own attacks by combining words to make your own fighting techniques. Learn new words to collect, combine, and experiment to discover enemy weaknesses, synergies, and strategies that will help you win your battles!
The story of Wander Stars follows Ringo, a young martial artist looking for her brother, and Wolfe, a mysterious scoundrel running from his past, as they join forces in an unlikely partnership to collect the pieces of the Wanderstar Map.
Key Features
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Make your own attacks - Collect and combine different types of words to make your own fighting techniques like a SUPER AWESOME FIRE KICK!
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An anime you can play - Each run plays like an anime episode where you experience the adventure through exciting cutscenes and intense battles.
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Wander into adventure - Explore every place you visit through a randomized map and find treasures, rivals, special events and more!
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Binge and reruns - Replay episodes to learn hidden aspects of the story, find any events you missed, and train to earn permanent upgrades.
Read More: Best Roguelite JRPG Games.
Cultist Simulator
I’m a writer, and I fell in love with Alexis Kennedy’s imagery and lore. I was never into videogames, but the storytelling and atmosphere really spoke to me. I recommend it to dreamers and problem-solvers alike.
– Real player with 1273.0 hrs in game
This game has to be the single most difficult game I’ve ever played, I wont lie.
Like it’s one thing if a game is hard as balls, but this game physically hurts to play.
It’s not even a matter of frustration or anything like that.
All I have to do is look at the game board, and then my head starts to pound.
No game I have ever played before has had me slam my head down on my desk after winning because winning means I don’t have to torture myself anymore …until my brain decides that starting a new run is a good idea, that is.
– Real player with 90.7 hrs in game
XO
(I backed this game on Kickstarter, and helped out with alpha and beta testing…)
XO has a lovely mix of tactics and strategy within a relatively short three to five hour game run. But learning XO well enough to survive that final run will take you much longer. It’s a game to be played many times as you learn more about the ships, the factions, the enemies, weapons and circumstances. Each time you’ll learn how to survive longer, how to make better use of the ships, systems and resources you encountered, and how to better choose through the event paths in order to win faction allies as you go.
– Real player with 89.9 hrs in game
I’ll split this review to what I enjoyed and what I did not.
What I enjoyed
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You really get the feeling of trying to build together a rag-tag fleet of military and civilian ships, fleeing away from a seemingly unstoppable enemy while building up your arsenal, firepower and the capacity to support your fleet. Awesome feeling. :)
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Lots of interesting concepts, boarding, resource harvesting, different kinds of weapons to counter different enemies. Really enjoyed different weapons, upgrades, ship types, keeping civilians in cargo holds (then performing a crew transfer to abandoned/disabled ships) and the ability build up my fleet. :D
– Real player with 51.9 hrs in game
A Night Before the Deadline
This game was more than I was expecting. The atmosphere from the audio in game puts you on edge, the “story” (though I called it early) was something new (although very short). Took roughly 25 minutes to 100%. While the walking is rough and awkward at times, the sprint is bae.
Overall, it was very short, but definitely made me feel uncomfortable with the atmosphere. The mini games were different, and it felt like a good start to something!
– Real player with 3.2 hrs in game
A Night Before the Deadline
Enjoyable for the short time on offer, with just enough variety to keep it interesting. The controls are terrible and the searching is a little tedious. I’d maybe recommend it in a sale.
A Night Before the Deadline is an adventure game set in the IT department of an office block. The deadline for an important piece of software is due for completion tomorrow, and Joe must stay late to complete the work.
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Neko Journey
Neko Journey is an adventure platformer where you’ll follow the trail of an elderly wizard and rescue the kidnapped creatures. Beautiful locations will not let you get bored and make your path truly interesting and exciting!
Travel through juicy locations - from green jungles to cold winter expanses, from underwater and mysterious, to amazing places soaring high above the ground.
Move calmly and carefully, because the journey is not as easy as it seems.
Complete the engaging story, save your sister and all the creatures kidnapped by the old magician.
Customize your character - put on the available outfits. It is also possible to dye hair and body.
Features:
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Boss fights;
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Parkour;
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Glider flying gameplay;
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Runner gameplay;
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Roguelike
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Character Editor
Crawlyard
The performance starts – unending, ever changing, cruel to its actors and viewers alike. Yet you are far from being powerless: you can affect the Mansion’s backstage, send puppets to explore its mysterious rooms and rewrite the play however you see fit.
Every new pattern will bring new opportunities, your bonds with other members of the audience will grow stronger, until one day you finally discover the perfect scenario that the previous owner of the Mansion was obsessed with.
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Card combos: rooms affect each other in many surprising ways. Find out how you can utilize it to develop your own winning strategy or make your runs more challenging. But beware: some patterns may prove to be too difficult for specific puppets.
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Indirect battle system: strategy and preparation are the key to success. Plan your way carefully, exploit the rooms' mechanics, use spells and make event-related decisions at crucial points to end up victorious.
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Adaptability and growth: your puppets already offer different play styles for you to choose from, but with the items found in the rooms you can customize and buff your heroes even further – or uncover new doll parts to build unique fighters.
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Intertwining stories: meet other characters bewitched by the call of the Mansion. Get them to open up to you, learn about their traumas and manias, and affect their future – perhaps in a romantic way. The more you give, the more you obtain in return.
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Choices matter: the others are stuck, but you can still move forward, unraveling the threads of their unfortunate fates. Will you advise your new comrades to do what they want? Or will you suggest they search for what you think they need?
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Reach the Endgame: grow stronger, collect enough hints and find the perfect pattern – the ultimate room layout that will reveal the Wishmaster. Have your desires fulfilled at last… unless you found something, or someone, along the way that made your change your mind.
Going strong! We’re a small indie team, and every wishlist brings us closer to completing our passion project. Thank you for your patronage!
Want to become a part of the growing community and share your impressions about the game? Join our Discord server to stay in contact, learn more about the development process, and get exclusive sneak peeks into the project as it unfolds!
Griftlands
Updated for Flourish & Mettle Update
My opinion of Griftlands is largely unchanged from my original review (below). The combat is tight and you’re frequently just a misplay or two away from losing a big fight, but the RPG elements get increasingly gimmicky the more you play. It’s sort of sad that choosing whether to help someone or not really depends on whether the passive bonus they give for loving or hating you is important or not. At higher prestige runs then you feel somewhat punished for taking an in-character action that ends up giving you a malus - I understand that’s a strategic trade off you have to make, but it highlights where the RPG and strategic aspects clash jarringly in Griftlands.
– Real player with 45.3 hrs in game
TL;DR: Slay the Spire meets RPG. Production values are high but card gameplay is inferior to StS. Not a game I expect to play over and over again. Passable.
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Have you ever played Slay the Spire adn thought to yourself, “Man, this game could use more story”? Well, Griftlands is that game! Narrative, great writing, flavour, design, environment, Griftlands has all you’d want from a card battler rpg!
…Kind of.
I like Klei. I do! Their products, while not always for me, are usually quite innovative and interesting. So I’ve been keeping a close eye on whatever they produce. In this case, they borrowed the card battling mechanics VERY VERY heavily from Slay the Spire, and added in all the essential elements of RPGs and made it well. In these ways, the production value of Griftlands is significantly higher than Slay the Spire.
– Real player with 36.2 hrs in game
Inscryption
Played through it twice, the game is the best of it’s kind, rogue like and incredible deck building elements, this game has that “little extra” that games like this need to be successful.
– Real player with 56.7 hrs in game
great gameplay, amazing story, just wish you could play against the wizard and necromancer too
– Real player with 55.7 hrs in game