Fortress of Hell

Fortress of Hell

Fortress of Hell is an RPG Maker game, but one intended for a mature audience. Its heroes are all grown up, frequently vulgar/cynical, and there will be plenty of sarcastic remarks.Also the theme of the games is quite depraved. While I’m not well versed in the state of RPG Maker games in the 2010’s, the combat system in this game seems fairly good, rewarding the use of buffs and debuffs, and requiring some management of TP/MP. You won’t be able to simply spam skills and spells even in normal mode. Thankfully most of the enemies can be dealt with mere weapon attacks, once your party has leveled up a bit. The progression of the heroes contain numerous points, where you have to choose one talent out of 3 or 2. The description of the outcomes are sometimes too vague, so you might end up with an underwhelming upgrade. Not that it matter that much, on normal difficulty the game can be easily completed even with subpar choices.

Real player with 20.2 hrs in game


Read More: Best RPG Multiple Endings Games.


Aldorlea Games surprised me here with a much darker, even mature, themed game as we are used to from them. And it’s a pleasant surprise. It’s certainly one of their best games.

The story may be cheesy as hell but… cheesy in a good way. And yes the game is dark but it’s also spiced with a lot of humour. The dialogues are, off course, cheesy but that fits very well here.

Obviously a lot of thought and effort went in to this production. The castle just looks wonderful, a lot of attention was spend to the decoration and the looks of each screen and it shows: it’s one of the better looking RPG Maker games out there. Aldorea once again proves that you can make a pretty looking game just with stock material.

Real player with 7.9 hrs in game

Fortress of Hell on Steam

Astrobase Command

Astrobase Command

Salvage the remnants of your civilization by starting anew in uncharted space, with a small crew and the beginnings of an Astrobase. Grow your base by constructing modules on all three axes, put out fires both literal and metaphorical, and send characters with real personalities and emotions on non-linear text-based adventures across a procedural galaxy.

The only mode is ironman and every section, module, deck and crew member added to your Astrobase comes with implicit risks and reward, so choices matter. How long can you keep from succumbing to the dangers of space?

  • Grow - Expand your Astrobase in all three directions.

  • Nurture - Build a home for your crew and their daily lives

  • Design - Layout the Astrobase to counter crises such conduit leaks, compartment failures, explosions, fires, personnel issues, and more

The Astrobase can be constructed along three axes. Your crew can expand the base by building modules or contract it by salvaging them. They can add or remove functionality by building up or tearing down sections in the modules. They can even build ships that lets you explore the galaxy.

You choose what to build and when to build it. The crew needs to rest and they need to breathe, do you rush the construction of the Enlisted Quarters or the Air Pump first? What’s the optimal placement of the new module? Is it better to have the Plasma Reactor closer to storage or to the crew’s quarters? Keep the station well maintained and stocked with supplies or disastrous consequences may result.

  • Characters - Your crew make their own decisions as they interact with each other and the world around them.

  • Full AI lifecycle - They work, eat, sleep, use the bathroom, relax, and socialize all as part of their daily lives.

  • Morale - Your crew can get exhausted, or suffer from low morale which affects the quality of their lives and how they perform tasks.

  • Relationships - Your crew form personal, professional, and romantic relationships. The relationships can be either positive or negative based on how their personalities and actions align.

Your crew live their own lives on the Astrobase. They have things to do and people to meet. Exactly how well they perform depends on how good they fit into their job, what adventures they’ve had, and what horrors they have survived; even how well matched they are with their peers matters, some will become romantic partners while others become bitter work rivals.

You will run into stumbling blocks, maybe your crew is exhausted because you’ve pushed them too hard, or low morale makes slacking off more enticing, or maybe Jenkins and Rodriguez spend too much time arguing while the Fission Reactor goes critical. Figure out your problems and fix them!

  • Explore - Build and dispatch ships across the galaxy to explore planets, fight killbots, extract resources, and interact with other civilizations.

  • Delegate - The ranking officer of each ship will make decisions based on their personality, and take recommendations from their team.

  • Overrule - Change the decisions in the logs they send back, or let them make their own mistakes.

The procedural adventures of the crew assigned to your ships can be read and interacted with in the logs they send back. Carefully handpick the crew for each ship you send out. Monitor their progress or leave them to their own fate. Whatever you choose to do, the outcomes of their adventures will be felt in what resources they get, what injuries they suffer, and in how it changes their emotional state.

  • Assign - Choose the best person for each job based on their stats, personalities, and over 50 different skills.

  • Manage - Prioritize tasks, clear task blockers, optimize the routes that the crew take during their day.

  • Observe - Calculate resource depletion and stay on top of tasks to prevent the reactors from exploding, the conduits leaking, and compartments failing,

The desk is where you design the Astrobase into a functioning home for your crew, promote leaders, manage tasks, monitor resource consumption, read reports from your ships and give them your input.

Running the station means manning your desk. Be efficient, and use your time wisely or take a break and play some Asteroid Shooter.

  • Individuality - Characters maintain emotional memory, and experience psychological growth over time depending on how results align with expectations.

  • Expression - Each character’s personality is expressed in their conversations, thoughts, and ship log entries

  • Story - Over 100 personality traits and 42 intertwined emotions combine to author narratives that reflect how the crew are actually thinking and feeling.

The Astrobase’s crew will have conversations with each other, or insights about their lives. Crew members join the Astrobase with revealed personality traits that drive the emotions that effect their job suitability, choices and actions. More traits become unlocked as they experience emotional growth.

Ensure that your crew’s psychological needs are met and they have the ability to grow as people. When you’re processing recruit applications you’ll want to keep an eye out for personalities that might clash with your existing crew, or will be compatible and create lasting friendships.


Read More: Best RPG Indie Games.


Astrobase Command on Steam

Nuke Land

Nuke Land

Nuke Land is a huge open world with dozens of cities and settlements. As you travel you will meet many enemies, both human and mutated insects. Weapons in Nuke Land are the main argument, but there are not many of them left. However, you can find a weapons craftsman. He will help you restore and upgrade weapons. You have a variety of activities: trade, work as a mercenary, racketeering and other monkey business. Choose what you want to be: a mercenary or a merchant; the mayor of a forlorn village or decide to conquer all the towns and proclaim a new state.


Read More: Best RPG Post-apocalyptic Games.


Nuke Land on Steam

好久不见 - Long Time No See

好久不见 - Long Time No See

I think there’s a bug? I can’t get my bad ending 2 and 3?

Real player with 11.3 hrs in game

Nice mystery and for a good price too! The actors/actresses did a great job acting out their roles. The story plot was really interesting and I love how you can use the flowchart to change your decisions rather than having to restart the game from the very beginning. If you are a fan of mystery games, point & click, and loves a good story, I would recommend giving this game a try.

Real player with 7.2 hrs in game

好久不见 - Long Time No See on Steam

Code of the Savage

Code of the Savage

“Sails on the horizon… Why they came, we did not know… Destruction, chains…"

Code of the Savage is a tale of vengeance and survival. After escaping a slave ship, you have found yourself in chains and washed ashore on the island Kingdom of Daneth. You must find your way in a brutal and unforgiving world where nothing is black and white.

Code of the Savage is a no-holds-barred classic western style RPG. Inspired by the greats from the 80-90’s with a modern flair. There is a strong emphasis on player freedom through social and moral interactions… Will you choose to firebomb the brothel, the church… Or both? Will you do it for money, glory or just because?

In Code of the Savage, you and the main character are totally new to Daneth. Explore the land and discover its rich history and lore.

I wanted to create a role playing game that brought me back to my gamer days as a child on the C64 and MS-DOS PC. There is just something lacking in today’s RPGs that I miss. Tired of micro-transactions, and randomly generated worlds; I am creating a world that is handcrafted with purpose. Essentially, I am creating the game that I want to play.

Code of the Savage includes a great emphasis on NPC interaction. Each NPC in Code of The Savage has their own story, their own character portrait, and a daily schedule. They will, go about their daily lives, going to work, eating and sleeping.

Level up your character and adventure forth to discover the treasures, history, and people of Daneth.

  • Open world - A large open, seamless, non-linear, hand-crafted world for you to explore. Including day and night cycles, and weather.

  • Exploration - Discover towns, cities, hidden caves and dungeons. Unravel the rich lore of Daneth.

  • NPCs with depth - Meet a rich cast of NPCs with a dynamic branching conversation system. NPCs remember your name and react differently depending on the situation.

  • Dark themes - Code of The Savage doesn’t hold back on what some may consider offensive content. If you’re easily offended, Code of The Savage is probably not for you… This is not a “slay the dragon” and “save the princess” RPG.

  • Player freedom - There are various ways to progress through the game, with no right or wrong answers. Morality in Code of The Savage is not black and white. You decide what’s right, and you decide what’s wrong.

  • Adventure - Battle giants, undead and other creatures, hunt to gather resources, or go on a murderous rampage, the choice is yours.

  • Combat - Fast-paced dynamic combat system which is real time with pause. Combat encounters happen in real time, without loading to a separate combat screen.

  • Inventory - An intuitive and easy to use inventory system. Any equipment and armour the player is wearing shows on their avatar.

  • Controls - Smooth grid-based movement. Easy and intuitive mouse and keyboard controls.

Code of the Savage on Steam

Isekai: Reincarnation in a New World

Isekai: Reincarnation in a New World

Just finish the game and loved it. Other than bugs like how we can’t go in the power castle I haven’t seen any other bugs it’s fun if you give it a chance. oh the Reincarnation Requirements after 3rd Gen i can’t see it for some reason. I found another bug where I can’t reincarnate as a wolf.

Real player with 10.3 hrs in game

There has been a patch since my review that will likely invalidate it. However I haven’t had time to go through and try the game again. I will still leave this here for comparison to the current game and see what’s changed and what still needs polish/refinement

Only reason I currently recommend the game is because I’m a sucker for monster MC and can see some potential here.

However, that’s all it has going for it, and it barely even does that, let’s break down what the game has.

Pros:

Reincarnation system- unique from other rpgs I’ve played, offers the promise of different playstyles and advancement.

Real player with 3.5 hrs in game

Isekai: Reincarnation in a New World on Steam

Keeper of the Labyrinth

Keeper of the Labyrinth

Keeper of the Labyrinth is an interactive fiction game about identity, self-discovery and learning to accept and overcome the flaws we find in ourselves.

You:

A young witch who, with the passing of your teacher last fall, must take on the mantle of Keeper of the Labyrinth.

The labyrinth:

A vast being which waits at the edge of the sea. It has been here longer than any can remember, and for as long, it has been the sacred duty of the village witch to explore its depths. But strange things happen within its halls, and that journey is not for the light-of-heart.

The solstice night:

It is the night of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and it is your turn to make the journey. Forced to eschew the festivities, you don your cloak and gather your tools of witchcraft: runes, candles, a piece of chalk, a wand, a knife. What rituals will take place within? What is your quarry, waiting in the centre, that your teacher once mentioned? And more pressing, perhaps: what watches you from the darkness?

Make your choices, find your path:

There are many paths through the labyrinth, many side chambers to explore and twists to find. Many beautiful realizations, strange encounters, and deep horrors await you at each turn. With each, find new truths about the labyrinth through which you pass, and perhaps, yourself. Your choices too, have consequences; are you too apathetic, rushing your task? too cowardly, avoiding difficult choices? or too doubtful, unsure of where you’re going?

Journal:

Retrace your steps with a dynamically updated journal and table of contents which keeps track of your version of the story, depending on the choices you make, and in which order.

Unlock a gallery of more than 14 hand-painted illustrations to accompany key scenes on your journey through the labyrinth.

Content warnings:

Offers a robust system of content warnings to pop up before possibly disturbing scenes.

Carefully crafted prose and music:

Original soundtrack composed by the author to accompany each scene in the story.

Keeper of the Labyrinth on Steam

Misery Street

Misery Street

I’m still not very far into the game, but it’s pretty good.

It runs insanely poorly for how graphically simple it is. I have no idea how a game this simple can run that bad unless it’s doing crypto mining or something.

The PLC-as-currency thing is a little bit “Hey guys, can you tell that I played Lisa?” The EP Snails (is that what they are?) are at least slightly altered while clearly being an Earthbound reference.

The “maybe I should get a job” dialogue with the Hobo Grey kind of irks me. Even if it wasn’t a cliche joke that makes no sense in the setting (he’s in a tiny farming village plagued with both a serial killer and a continuous undead infestation in the fields), it would still be a crass misrepresentation of homelessness fit for the scribblings of an elementary schooler.

Real player with 19.1 hrs in game

Misery Street on Steam

Survive In Russia

Survive In Russia

Gameplay 1/10

Story 2/10

Controls 3/10

Graphics 4/10

Difficulty 1/10

Positive Aspects

  • Runs smoothly and stable. No crashes, bugs, or other major errors.

  • Is exactly what it’s advertised as, no more, no less.

Negative Aspects

  • The music will fade whenever there is a sound cue playing. Very annoying and had me mute the entire game.

  • The stories are a bit dull.

  • The difficulty. You can finish each of the 3 stories in about 10 minutes. You just have to click a few times and make some choices and you’re done.

Real player with 1.0 hrs in game

I kind wish there was more chapters and dlc help support game?? hint to developers.

I played it as far I could stay sitting comfortably by computer.

Like: Doctor story was interesting. I have yet play third time around teacher or rich kid roles yet.

Dislike: one chance encounters end up giving negative influences in your life is dice roll effect, there no character customization/ if characters were different sex?

Doctor character story last time I played it was unfinished. Teacher not sure how finished that was.

Real player with 0.9 hrs in game

Survive In Russia on Steam

Gordon Streaman

Gordon Streaman

I SPENT 4 FUCKING HOURS TRYING TO GET THE CAR

Real player with 10.1 hrs in game

I don’t even know how to play it..

Real player with 4.8 hrs in game

Gordon Streaman on Steam