The Hex
I wholeheartedly recommend this, as I did with Pony Island. It’s a fascinating story with twists and loads of hidden secrets to track down. If you aren’t good at examining the meta layers, there’s plenty of people on the Steam forum who’ve done the legwork so you can see it for yourselves.
It’s hard to talk about the content without getting into spoilers, and since so much of this game relies on those, I think I’ll just say this: Not everything, or everyone, is what you see at first glance. A number of things within the game/story can be open to interpretation.
– Real player with 31.5 hrs in game
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This piece of gaming art, a museum piece, that will take you about 6 hours to finish and that looks like it was made by a child manages to pack a lot of fun, a ton of creativity, extraordinary ideas, thoughtful writing, creepy moments and spectacular jabs at the gaming industry and gaming culture as a whole that the entire 3A “gaming industry” couldn’t produce if they hired all the world’s monkeys and resurrected Shakespeare to write them something.
I can’t write a lot in this review because the less you know, the better. The story is very layered through it’s 6 protagonists, residents of the Six Pint Inn, you get to play as, all the genre mashing it does, playing with different game ideas and ridiculing or celebrating gaming tropes in all of them and all the meta, social, gaming culture and industry commentaries it liberally sprinkles through its running time. It’s just entrancing and it’s extremely satisfying getting to the end of The Hex. I really, really can’t write more than this because it would do the game and you, if you decide to play it, a disservice.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
HighFleet
Great game that combines strategic gameplay similar to submarine simulations with tactical air battles between flying tanks.
You command a fleet with the aim of capturing the enemy capital city, while fighting off enemy fleets searching for you. Fleet movement is a game of cat and mouse using a very well realised radar system, aircraft carriers, cruise missiles, intercepting enemy radio signals and much more. When two fleets meet, the game switches to tactical battle in which you directly pilot a ship and fight against the enemy. You can design individual ships in your fleet from the groundup and then use them.
– Real player with 233.4 hrs in game
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The all-time best ever flying submarines in the sky game ever made. Although I have spent most of my time obsessing over ship design, “submarine airship game” is the best description for this FTL-like rogue-like UNFORGIVINGLY Difficult game I can come up with; in campaign, you spend a lot of your time trying to manage 15 different simple things (signals analysis, threat tracking, resources and fleet management, navigation, combat, landing, and then the global story/factions/political overlay of story driven decisions). The ship editor will drive you on the express train to crazytown; every. single. decision. carries huge implications for your campaigns when you start running custom ships, and this gets into the infinitely complex fleet design (what roles do you want your ships to play is critical, and the game lets you figure out your own ways to fail). This is one of my favorite games of 2021.
– Real player with 84.1 hrs in game
Predynastic Egypt
This is a very good turn-based strategy game. One game lasts around 200 turns, divided into 3 periods: the building of the first city, the conquest of the Nile, and a period of great prosperity. During each period, there is a number of trials to complete, and then a series of random events. The main line of the game and the trials follow the historical development of Ancient Egypt, from the times of nomadic hunter-gatherers up to the unification of all lands along the Nile and the first great kings. The developers found a balance between historical accuracy and enjoyment; there is a wealth of information to learn about these ancient times, presented as short paragraphs after events or discoveries. I learnt quite a few things!
– Real player with 217.3 hrs in game
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Because of some really weird coincidence, I’m getting way too many mobile games in Steam lately. Here comes another one. Unlike many others, though, this one is pretty cool. And I’m not saying that because I’m a huge fan of historical games about ancient Egypt (if we can call such games historical with the entire Egyptian history being pretty much a fiction). It’s just… it’s a pretty cute and addicting game, really.
Long story short, it’s a very casual take on grand strategy genre with you dragging and dropping the icons of your workers on different regions of the map being most of gameplay. It sounds simple and, well, it sure is, but like any other good casual game, this one adds just enough complications to make it interesting, while keeping things simple. You’ll be able to praise the gods, there’ll be trials, you’ll be able to build stuff, there’ll be simplified combat and so on. The game also won’t push you and will let you to choose how to approach the other tribes. In other words, you’ll be able to both unite with them peacefully, or kick their buts and see them suffer. Your choice. Naturally, the entire thing is laughably historically incorrect, but again, what is? I mean, when the Impressions Games created Pharaoh (one of the very best games about ancient Egypt, go and buy it now if you still didn’t), the “history” tried to tell us that pyramids were built by slaves. Then boom! “History” changed its opinion. So… yeah. Don’t think too much about the accuracy, just enjoy the overall atmosphere.
– Real player with 33.4 hrs in game
Egypt: Old Kingdom
An interesting game. Not without flaws, but one I’m glad to have played overall. As for people saying that it is boring, I can understand that viewpoint as there is a strong focus on history, and if the player does not happen to care about the history of Egypt at all, this game might get dull pretty quickly as most of the mechanics are based around learning about and participating in ancient Egyptian history. I personally have a near-fanatical interest in ancient Egypt and can devour most media relating to it voraciously, so this was never an issue for me, but I don’t think you have to be quite so fascinated to still enjoy the game for what it is. If you have even a mild interest in Egyptology, you will probably find some value in it.
– Real player with 119.9 hrs in game
Predynastic Egypt was a gorgeous game it was beautiful historically accurate it is the strategy equivalent of an enjoyable Oregon Trail and then some.
This came improves on everything foundational about Predynastic. The graphics are better there’s even more historical information and it really does have a flavor at flare of ancient Egypt.
The game itself starts off right before the unification of the early chiefdom. From my small tribes of about 500. To eventual kingdom of Egypt seeing it through its height and falls and eventually collapse in the first intermediate period. And instead of where your societies ad from Hunter and gatherers to full state. It’s followed by the chieftains Proto kings and the eventual dynasties of the old kingdom. Which all have different goals and agendas.
– Real player with 61.0 hrs in game
Marble Age
TL;DR 5/10 A 1-track forced development of a civilization. Turn-based exponential clicker game.
5/10? That is not great. Why am I still recommending it? Well–I enjoyed myself for what it was.
As another reviewer warned before I played, this game plays like a clicker game, except turn-based. Like all clicker games, the game goes through obscene levels of growth. The result is that all of the action and growth that were done previously are quickly made irrelevant by the present state of growth.
– Real player with 226.9 hrs in game
The gameplay wasn’t bad at first. But when I tried to play as Sparta on meduim difficulty, I found the campaign forces you to play in a very precise way. AND be lucky with the RNG. Otherwise, you’re going to lose every major challenge. Worse still, said required strategy makes a major shift roughly halfway through the campaign. It goes from forcing you to focus on military strength to forcing you to focus on economic strength. And this shift happens in a very short amount of time. It seems too short to make it feasible without plenty of special favors from the RNG.
– Real player with 83.7 hrs in game
One Drop Bot
People do not give this game enough of a chance. I HATE THIS GAME, but thats why I love it. I understand how it feels to be a solo developer, and instead of playing the game for 20 minutes, not being able to get past the first room and then writing a bad review, play the game for a few hours, then write a bad review. This game has many flaws but honestly, once I got past the camera I started to… ENJOY THE GAME! I was so frustrated by the first room I almost did like many others did, I almost wrote a bad review with only 5 minutes of playtime. Then I beat the game after 2 hours of raging and screaming about how dumb this game was, then I gained a new love for this game. I have made 2 games, one solo, one with my friend. These games were better than this, but they were still almost as flawed as this game. With a day or four of work, this game could be amazing. Maybe remove the RNG from the maze, make the first room easier, and I would rate this game an 8/10 instead of a 4/10.
– Real player with 3.2 hrs in game
The game is not good.
Camera is horrible, beyond redemption. Many deaths many deaths. Gets stuck in other rooms. Enemies see you but you don’t see them.
Puzzles are supposed to make a game fun. Not a single puzzle in this game was fun. If it’s not fun why add it? Its like adding ketchup to a milkshake, ketchup is good, milkshakes are good. But combined they are not, and both are ruined.
Bad controls. Game presents itself as a platformer but really its a puzzler and all of the games puzzles are block puzzles or switch puzzles in which you SLAM yourself into the block or switch (did I mention the controls suck?)
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
4K Bricks Breaker Plus
Classic bricks breaker game enriched with weapons and much more. You can decide what features will be added to this game!
If you can’t break a brick using your ball throw second one, or you can shot them using a rifle, plasma gun, or burn down by laser.
To not make your play so easy, there are some enemies waiting for you!
50 levels, and next 50 levels (100 in total) if more than 100 players finish all levels (so if You like this game and want more, share it to Your Friends)
Bonegard
Looks like I get to write the first review for Bonegard, a 2D top down retro pixel action/puzzle brawler. It’s not going to be a positive one.
They chose to use obsolete retro pixel “art” as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It’s unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. While there is a fullscreen mode, the game doesn’t scale properly and just displays in the middle of the screen with bugged out echoes of the game all around it.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Skeletons and Cannonballs.
- Easy completion
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Bronze Age - HD Edition
If your looking for a casual-strategy-minimalist type game this game is for you! Bronze Age is mostly a balancing act. You have to balance your resource gathering with food gathering, building supplies, tech tree and army. The game is very easy to learn but as you move along in your balancing act, things are not so easy. There are two areas/eras to play the game, Africa and Near East both have their own special buildings.
Along with all this gathering, eating and learning you must decide what techs in your tech tree you should grab and what building you should build. For both some techs and buildings you can level up the particular tech and building as well. The game is turned based, as in once you decide where to put any new villagers, what tech to discover or which building to build you must end your turn. Once you end your turn you gain your resources and events can happen. Getting attacked by other tribes, have a hurricane or ice age hit. You can also run into other tribes. These events provide you with different choices you can make that will affect you in a good or bad way. You may at first think this is random, but if you are keeping track of your abilities and read what is going on in the event well, you will be able to make the wisest decisions for your tribe each time.
– Real player with 28.4 hrs in game
This game has fantastic economics of scale progression. It is a surprizing little indie game which you will love if you enjoy resource management games. Warning: Hardcore!
What is this game?
Bronze Age is a brutal resource management survival game. You start with a few tribesmen and try to develop new technologies, farm and expand your population, build improvements all while also keeping an eye on your military strength so that you are not attacked. You will eventually get to have an economic powerhouse of hundreds of thousands of people-or die miserably at 100 to a barbarian raid. But what is certain is the great progression you feel when your population expands and you get new technololies, buildings and advance to new civilization ranks.
– Real player with 15.1 hrs in game
ColorBlend FX: Desaturation Prologue
I’ve played puzzler platformers and I’ve played puzzlers based around colours, but Color Blend FX is looking to combine those and expand it across an expansive Metroidvania with a story to boot. This prologue is a very strong proof of concept.
In terms of an MV game you’re only getting one movement upgrade, but if you’re skeptical about the basics this prologue should have you setting your doubts aside.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
Super fun game and I like the puzzles which are not overly challenging. Great concept for a game which I have never seen. The game runs very smooth and I really look forward to the full game if there is one.
Review at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5tYkH9Mulk
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game