Tower of Shades
Go up against a giant boss and then die. Over and over. Each time you do, you learn a little better how to defeat them and unlock more abilities and story fragments. Very unique. Never Give Up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOE2QdOb-9I&t=1s
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
Embrace failure on the road to your dreams. That’s the main theme here.
I don’t know. I guess that works ok in video games; not so great in skydiving. So maybe it depends where you fall on that continuum.
I mean, to start with, what are your dreams? Why are they your dreams? Are you sure they’re yours, or are they someone else’s, projected onto you? What if your dreams are misguided, the product of a less-than-noble motivation like vanity or greed? What happens when your dreams conflict with a higher duty, George Bailey-style? How do you know you’re following your dreams and not merely being controlled by your impulses?
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
A Gay Love Story About Gay Love
It is what it is, but not what you actually are thinking about. A Gay Love Story About Gay Love is not shoving it in your face and sets out a story where two men are in love and stuck in a war, where they struggle to keep the love afloat until…
Game play is quite unique along the other games by Sigyaad, controls take a while to get used to but are quickly adaptable in the end, sucks that the dev couldn’t remove the [esc] error the game has. But this game is still heavy on story and not game play, so the simplicity of the fights are nice to have here, just as a quick change of pace before the deeper parts of the tale.
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Short Turn-Based Tactics Games.
A Gay Love Story About Gay Love is probably one of the better games out since Black Ops 1. My friend who practices hot gay steamy sex with men recommended and even went as far as to gift me the game, has shown me a new light in the future of story-driven video games. I couldn’t have been any more pleased with the outcome. I’ve played this game many of times and I don’t think that I would ever stop replaying.
The turn-based gameplay is could not be anymore enjoyable, and the battle(s) are simple yet pleasing to see. The BGM is another piece of the game that will bring tears to your eyes. The “Beach Theme” gives off a classic feeling of how tropical islands soundtrack should sound; giving off an almost bossa nova style feeling. While the “Battle Theme” is and intense mix of intricate melodies and a beat that will have you bopping in an instant. The illustrations and characters have color and life, unlike other games that TRY to be as great.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Ignis Universia: Eternal Sisters Saga DX
This game is awesome. It’s funny, fun and nice to look out. It’s just a little game so don’t expect much but for what it is it is amazing. First off, I love the art. It’s cute and the girls are beautiful. Secondly the jokes in this game are on point and will amuse any rpg fan. They are clever and I laughed multiple time at the self aware humour it provided. Finally I like the game play. It’s not complicated as that’s not what this game is, but as a simple fight system for a simple visual novel it is interesting enough. I spent forever finishing all the achievements but I still had fun. Great game. Definitely check it out.
– Real player with 8.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Short Old School Games.
“Keeki Desu!” - Eleanna
Ignis Universia: Eternal Sisters Saga DX was a really nice surprise. In this game, you play as a Null Brother, a being tasked with finding and bringing all four of the Chosen Sisters together to bring down the evil wizardess Galgatax. At first, I thought it would be another half-rushed VN with thrown in JRPG elements, but I couldn’t be further from the truth. What I got instead was a charming story, funny dialogue, absolutely beautiful pixel art, and a surprisingly competent battle system. There’s a bit of replay value here as well. After I finished my first playthrough, I immediately went back and started another run to gather some of the secret achievements I missed.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
The Black Pepper Crew
Undertake bounty hunting missions while fighting thugs on a city filled with criminals and dubious law enforcement agencies. Manage a crew of colorful characters, hire new ones, equip, loot, all that good stuff!
Bounties will appear for you to hunt down! Choose the crew and gear carefully and proceed to fight bandits on a randomly generated but carefully designed map. Loot, cash and improve your chances for that big bounty!
Every crew member has a set of unique abilities that they can perform. Combine this abilities to perform the ultimate strategy!
New crew members will be appearing to hire, and if you liked them, you can offer them a contract to stay permanently on your crew!
Heal, equip armor or change how the abilities work by equipping different kinds of gear on your characters. Loot will be appearing along the missions, and very special items will be waiting for your crew on each boss fight!
Some things you’ll find on The Black Pepper Crew:
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Strategy its built on thinking rather than recklessly passing through. Characters don’t level up but rely on other crew members and gear to defeat its enemies.
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Each bounty mission has its own location, boss, item reward and the levels are procedurally generated for more replayability.
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The crew has 4 main characters but can be expanded as you permanently hire new members. Each character has its own backstory, abilities and colorful design.
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Lots of items! Heal items, armor, consumables and special gear that change the way abilities work.
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A jazzy soundtrack that takes from several musical genres to add to the atmosphere on each mission.
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This is a game to be replayed many times! Try new strategies, outperform your previous playthroughs, try “no gear” runs, you name it!
Of Gods and Men: The Daybreak Empire
7/10
I have played this game to completion now and even replayed it to toy around with it a bit. Having gotten what I feel is the full experience, now is a good time to reflect on whether or not this game was a success. It is worth noting that this is a first attempt by a team of amateurs, so much of what they did must and will be analyzed from a basic, textbook-like level. Let us start by looking at they did well.
‘Of Gods and Men’ is a war and strategy game that follows the story of girl who conquers a fantasy world. The narrative is simple without being distasteful and is free of pretense. While not the most engaging or thought-provoking, it provides the necessity of a context for the gameplay and a satisfying sense of a beginning, middle, and end. The diversity of characters and locations are a plus to the narrative we are given.
– Real player with 28.9 hrs in game
I wish I could give this game a “meh” instead of a thumbs up or down. Going with thumbs up because you can feel the love the small (and new) dev team put into this game, and I want more game entries in this genre generally. This game reminds me of ye olden game boy/DS fire emblem games.
The good: Enjoyed the graphics, the story (though somewhat short and predictable) has heart, the soundtrack was appropriate, and the gameplay is my preferred mix of turn-based combat and team management. Also some interesting ideas in different class mechanics.
– Real player with 11.1 hrs in game
Catlandia: Crisis at Fort Pawprint
Had a lot of fun playing this! The characters and their unique communication styles really amp up the humor in this game. The conversations had me laughing pretty hard, and all of the outfits you can acquire are hilarious and entertaining. For the price, it’s worth the 4-5 hour journey, especially if you want something that’s fun, wacky, and not overly complicated or difficult. Recommended for something fun to play after work over the course of 1-3 days.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
I love cats. I don’t like dogs as much. Therefore, this game is perfect for a crazy cat lady like me.
Jokes aside, Catlandia is a cute, silly, comical lil game that I’ve really enjoyed playing so far. The combat system is surprisingly good and well thought out, I’ve been getting South Park: Stick of Truth and Pokemon vibes honestly, the story and characters are both amusing and likeable, and it’s well worth the price. The artstyle, music and sound effects are all adorable, too. Would definitely recommend!
– Real player with 3.8 hrs in game
Catacombs 1: Demon War
Just finished the game.
It is short as is stated and contains around 15 screens in total. I thought the story was totally ok and the writing was surprisingly good. There is a lot of variety in monster types and combats are quite nicely executed. The game - while not hard when I discovered I can flee from combats - was hardest in the beginning and I ended tha game at level 5.
The only thing which got more frustrating was that the further you got the further you had to retrace your steps back to town to heal and buy spells. But that was somewhat mitigated by the fact that you could pick up town portal scrolls and also carry a lot of healing potions but most importantly escape combats with good success.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
UPDATE: After this review and the following discussion, the developer quickly released an update to fix the balancing problems. So essentially, I’ve been paying 5 bucks to be his beta tester, thank you very much. The update fixes some of the problems, but not all of them; at least, you can’t get through the game by simply spamming the same two attacks forever. We’ll see what the future holds.
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TL;DR: Don’t spend money on this. It has like 2 hours of playtime, most of it boring grind.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Loser Reborn
What?!
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There isn’t enough variety of class options. There is Knight/Samurai, Wizard/Wu-jen & Rogue/Ninja to bring to a total of six. Problem is there is no differentiation between, say, a Knight and a Samurai. Only the starter skill is different. And the usual normal class traits don’t really apply here–a Warrior/Samurai in Loser Reborn is a “supporting class” and Rogue/Ninja are more of a “attacking class”.
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Throw-away plot with typical plot-holes of anime.
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Equipment Balance Issues: MC can be K’O in one hit. To explain: equipment can be either conducive or combustible–meaning you have to be very careful how much “weakness” stacking you are doing. Combat is about memorization; for example: one class is more inclined to use fire-tribute skills than physical attacks or a foe is more resilient to physical damage but more acceptable to magical damage.
– Real player with 2.7 hrs in game
I can tell that the developer of this game put in so much love and effort into this game.
This short, yet extremely difficult rpg game is basically inspired by the isekai trope of magically teleporting the player into a fantasy world on the brink of annihilation. There are basically three classes: Knight, Mage, and Rogue. The Knight specializes in tanking for his team mates, the Mage uses spells, and the Rogue is fast and focuses on debuffs. The goal of your mission is to defeat the Dark Lord who is threatening to destroy the entire kingdom or world thing. You are assisted by your harem party of brave heroes to defeat him.
– Real player with 2.2 hrs in game
Dice and the Tower of the Reanimator: Glorious Princess
This game is a part of The Reanimator Saga. Some of the same characters appear, but the stories are independent of each other and can be enjoyed separately.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1294380/_/
This work and Case 02: Paranormal Evilwere co-developed by MaouCat Studio and Sounding Stone. These two games share similar gameplay elements but have completely different worlds and stories.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1662340/_/
In this game, you play the role of a warrior who enters the Tower of the Reanimator to search for an elixir. You must use your dice to fight enemies. It tests your decision-making skills…and your luck! Collect equipment to increase the number of dice you can roll. Develop your own strategy and embark on an amazing adventure!
You have a certain number of destiny points (DP). At times when your roll is not good enough, you can make up the difference with DP. This allows you to change your destiny in a critical situation. However, DP are a precious resource: you must use them carefully!
There are many different ways to get through the same stage. You can use strength to defeat enemies, or you can use agility to dodge traps. Choose a gameplay style that works for you, depending on your equipment and preferences.
What conspiracy lurks in the tower and how should you deal with it? There are two different endings available that depend on your behavior in the game.
You can select “Hard Mode” where the dice will only roll below 3 or “Extreme Mode” where the dice will only roll to 1. Prove how good your strategy is when it doesn’t rely on luck!
Element Space
Updated 5/2019 from the initial review.
Disappointing, it clearly has some great ideas but is currently still frustrating to play. Cool xcom type turn based combat game with little strategic choices. Appears to have some fun ideas about combo ablities amongst your 3 characters. While patches have improved the fun, there is still a fair amount of frustration in playing.
Graphics are nice, but there is literally nothing to the game other than the combat grid. You have some time wasting “walk your party through the non-interactive environment until the next invisible trigger” type stuff in between combat in the missions. You can’t re-equip or even swap weapons (like you can in combat) when outside of combat. There is still no documentation in game about various rules (LOS, squad level “one use” items that are actually 1 use per person). The enemy will have various unusual weapons/abilities that show up. You will have little clue about what they are or how they work until it blows up on you (unless they have a passive ability “on” which you can now see a tiny icon next to them that sort of describes it). You are given an ability early on that causes push back, but you will never really know how far the enemy will get pushed (though they did at least add an arrow showing where the enemy goes). The push action will reveal your lack of knowledge about what counts as a “wall” and what is just neutral landscape (ie. elevated railings block LOS but don’t count as a wall for push damage). And since push typically leaves the character standing out in the open, its a crap shoot on when you should use it since you never know if the target will get pushed off the dock or just move a few inches and then shoot you. In my 2nd mission I got wiped out 3 times in a row, as I learned what each of the 4 new unique enemy units would do to me.
– Real player with 64.6 hrs in game
Attractive, compelling, turn-based squad strategy with powerful characters in a science fiction setting with complex worlds, politics and back stories. Likely alienated much of its potential audience because of its unforgiving lack of manual game saving, not providing new players enough training before dumping them into tough battles against ferocious enemies, and a preponderance of game stopping and crashing bugs - doubly frustrating due to the lack of manual saving or in-battle autosaving. Although to be fair, many of these have been fixed by subsequent patches/updates, and the devs continue to work hard on bug-stomping.
– Real player with 45.2 hrs in game