Recent reviews by [TwitchTV] TorNis

Real play time: 15 hours (I am streamer, so hours are inflated + AFK)

Engaging 1 dev (not counting commissions/contractors) tactical hex based game that uses a lot of basics of this genre that just works well.

Short version of my review SPOILER-FREE:

Art / Visuals - Mixed. Meanwhile character art is done by talented artist, CGs (backgrounds) and Icons are AI generated as specified by developer. Visuals in game itself are not impressive and are lowpoly purchased Unity Assets.

Music / SFX - Mixed. Effectively there is no original music, it's all audio library (purchased licence).

Story - Well-written. One of the stronger points of this game. And it shows. Characters feel like characters. There is a plotline. Many side conversations. Life lessons are brought up. Basically, it's totally above your expectations for a "another indie game" plot.

Gameplay (Combat) - Fun, but with it's caveats (please refer to full review in the video below for more details)

Level Design - Mixed. Most of the game is fine, except the last 25% of the game. Level design quality completely falls apart.

Gameplay (Non-combat) - Mixed. Meanwhile non-combat part is quite simple for better or worse, and I like how itemization  doesn't waste too much of your time, but at the same time, there are some caveats, that are a bit unfortunate (please refer to full review in the video below for more details)

Difficulty - Lacking. I played on Hardest / Permadeath 100% all side objectives on each chapter. It's relatively easy to get "GOD" tier status for some of your characters, and there are some serious AI weaknesses. But, it doesn't mean it's bad, many people might find this difficulty just fine.

Depth/Complexity - Basic* (good and bad), please refer to full review in the video below for more details

Game length ~ 10-15 hours (data collected from other steam reviews and my own estimates)

Performance/Bugs - Almost flawless. To my surprise, I haven't really experienced any issues, and bugs/minor issues that I saw, were quickly addressed and reported by me and communicated with dev. In fact, during my streams, dev created fix for the tooltips of abilities which were missing critical information. In 2025, doesn't matter where, AAA or indie, you usually expect a lot of problems with either performance or QA(bugs). Not in this game. I played it 2 months after release.

Is late game engaging? - Unfortunately, No* (please refer to full review in the video below for more details)
 
Verdict: Recommend. I had a good time with this game!

Full review, with spoilers and in-depth on every bullet point with timestamps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDUMFMLT970

As I played more and more, the game shows more heavy inspirations from Into The Breach. Game is more Puzzle than Tactics. But, with the "Run and Gun" playstyle twist.

Missions encourage you to complete them as fast as possible. Not to mention most of them are on hard timer.
Armor (Dodge) mechanic encourage you to move around a lot, instead of camping, and complete missions as fast as possible.
Skills and Specials encourage you go all-in and complete missions as fast as possible.
Even Boss designs encourage you to move a lot and complete fights as fast as possible.
Stalling isn't an option.

Comical/humor pixel sprite work is surely one of the strongest selling points of the game.

After you complete a run or die, you get into "unlocks" menu and similar to Into The Breach, you can unlock new characters, new loadouts, new skills and even character conversations (story).

If only devs had a bit more QA / bug-free experience right out of the box, this would be very solid launch.
Tutorial was softlocked for me, multiple UI issues, tooltips getting stuck, scripts breaking, pathfinding issues (cannot click move to place I CAN move).
And currently, the biggest issue community is having, and I also want to note that: In many places in the game, text is waaay too small, and there is no UI scaling option. Steam Deck users aren't exactly happy either. It's not a dealbreaker for me, but reading small text is quite uncomfortable, in the game where you need to read a lot of text and skills / tooltips synergies.

Also for some crazy reason, game doesn't have vsync option in settings. Sure, you can force it via your GPU settings or your monitor, but it's wild that a game of such budget and PR levels doesn't have vsync (then again, keybindings were also missing completely from review version of the game).

Feedback: please add a keybind for "select next character" (TAB by default), it's a common staple feature of any tactics game.

Looking forward to spend a lot of hours into this one, just like a did with Into The Breach.
Especially if they deal with easy-to-notice bugs, the player enjoyment is going to rise, that's for sure!

If you want to see game in action, here is my first impressions video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPmv9b5hlY4

Heroes of the Magic 3 fans. If you were looking to find similar game to HoMM3, but with it's own modern mechanics and features, you found it! Unlike other inspired HoMM games, which usually deviate too much from the succesful formula, Silence of the Siren takes the DNA of HoMM3 and heavily engraves it.

For detailed review, tips with useful timestamps, please refer to my YouTube review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2gov4e-dFU

Please keep in mind, that game is currently not really balanced (which is a good thing since it's single player focused, there is no online multiplayer, and roadmap saying it's not guarantee either). Easy to break with OP stuff. For fans of the genre, difficulty / AI most likely will be a pushover. But, that doesn't change the fact how fun and artistic this game in various aspects.

I am just worried about longetivity for this title, as usually online multiplayer / pvp is primary factor for constant flow of players and support. Mods are planned to be added in Roadmap, which is very nice factor.

I usually don't write reviews on Demos, but this one caught me off guard.
It's a very polished demo, that's effectively a proper game, just cut in terms of campaign progress (Act 1). As you launch it, you are already greeted with great UI, music and artstyle to boot.
Turn-based tactics lovers, don't sleep on this.

I made a in-depth demo review video, with timestamps if somebody want to see game in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qAHoiTZsqY

Lucy is the cutest!

Fantastic game, one of the best if not the best team deckbuilder with integrated "visual novel" tier story in the market right now.

Here is my full spoiler-free video review after 220 hours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNFbkyaAzw
(with many timestamps/chapters)

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Fumo is pleased with the game

EDIT: Please refer to Andrew's review for what dev did after game's release: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/profiles/76561198031283409/recommended/691790/

I was waiting for this game for many years, following its development on kickstarter/twitter. And now we finally got it.
Here are my first impressions:

- Game is clearly inspired by the golden era of TRPGs, great effort on character sprites animation and music (even though some might find jazzy music to be "unfitting" for the setting of this game which is subjective.
- 4 Classes, each class got 2 subclasses. Some classes got barely any active skills to use in combat, like Warmancer (Mages). They basically get 1 attack skill and 1 channeling skill per element of magic. Meanwhile Apothecary are overloaded with skills, they can do everything in game, buff/debuff, heal, resurrect, attack, aoe. And on the topic of combat, melee seems severely overshadowed over ranged in this game (1 melee vs 3 ranged classes) and as expected from these types of games, ranged is king.
- Expanding on combat, there are many issues, let me start with battle themselves, they feel rather boring to seasoned players of this genre:
-- Flanking system is irrelevant in this game as it only slightly decreases evasion stat, since the start, most of the attacks are guaranteed hits.
-- Combat heavily favors the ranged character.
-- For some reason, obstacles and vertically don’t affect attacks at all, so you can do some silly stuff in the game with ranged. -- What's even the point of melee? You go all-in damage in ranged skills, nuke enemies, try to focus-fire the same targets, take a bit of damage yourself, heal it, repeat a few turns, you win. I really hope that Ronin and Inquisitor (subclasses) are justifying melee, otherwise there is literally no reason to run melee classes outside of class-limited gear you might find. Also, the game gives you an opportunity to respect your main story characters and change their classes since the start of the game, even developers giving you a hint that maybe melee is bad?
-- There is no danger zone feature, a shame, but honestly kinda understandable since ranged units can walk a lot and a lot of their skills since the start can be very long ranged + aoe, so depending on map, danger zone could be the entire map basically.
-- There is no health bars which makes it annoying to double check HP of every character in inspection or try to find it in Turn Order bar
-- Game doesn't tell you what ability is being used. Good luck memorizing all of them when the enemy is using them.
-- You cannot rotate the map. This isn't a dealbreaker, but very strange that's it's missing feature, or lack of ability to remove "levels of height" for better visibility too. I am gonna quote dev's steam response on this: "map rotation isn't possible as it's a 2D game. you require 3D for that feature. 2D means you can have way higher quality pixel graphics, but it does mean you will lack map rotation. to make up for this we've incorporated transparency on all objects that might get in your way on the maps, visually. if you find there is an object visually disruptive to you in this demo please let us know and we can make it have transparency." First of all, I want to say this, you don't need 3D to make rotation. Most of these type of games by rotation, imply 90 degree 4 states of the sprites, and correct if I am wrong, but you basically need to have 2 sprites of each texture, instead of 1, and then you can flip them, so you would end up with 4 sprites for 4 rotations? And about transparency, right away since the start of the game, in prologue, you get these trees, where both me and enemy units got hidden behind them. Was quite shocking to see this, especially after my inability to rotate. But again, battles are usually within a small-ish square-style map, the game is totally enjoyable without rotation, just a bit of a bummer though.
-- There are only 3 real elemental interactions in the game, Wet -> Ice, Wet -> Lighting, Noxious -> Burning. Considering there are only 4 classes, I shouldn't be surprised at this, but I am. Same conditions are transitioned into Weather, Rain -> Wet, Water -> Wet, Noxious Puddles -> Noxious
-- Elevation/Jumping on map mechanic and stat, just as Evasion mechanic and stat feels like waste of investment, mainly because of how flanking and obstacles work.
- Game doesn't have inventory/usable items, you only have gear. Even less customization. UI handling and upgrading/replacing/buying/checking your gear is also a bit tedious, especially because that's the only thing you can do pretty much to upgrade your units outside of skills. And there is no auto-equip/best gear option too.
- Game does have an odd choice of level progression/experience. There is no experience meta plays or playing with less characters to power level or some kind of grind/exp feeding. Each character in the battle automatically gets level no matter what. And you can hire new characters at any time to your current max level, to try different builds/skills. So there is no punishment if leaving on bench non-story characters, you can just create new ones.
- If you followed this game via Kickstarter since 2016, you would know that this game had many different ideas/mechanics prototypes that are not the final game. That's totally normal, except that some of the included features would make you sad that they are not in the final game. One can speculate that it's due to funding issues, I mean, the game was also delayed heavily before.
- UI/UX consists of different fonts, overlays and while many of them look beautiful, when you open for example Skill Tree, you see the game is using like 5 different fonts on the same page which is not pleasant to look at. The worst offender is the font used for Skill category naming, it's barely readable on Full Screen. So many different pixel fonts on the same pages in my opinion looks pretty bad.. It also feels like the game has assets from different development eras.
- Game doesn't explain 80% of the game to you after the official tutorial. I strongly recommend going into the "Tutorial" Menu after prologue and read almost every page, you will be surprised how many important mechanics are not explained, like Command Points (which is a special shop basically where you can get permanent upgrades too), which is in the Recruiter menu.
- Skills slots (Support, Reaction, Movement) that each character has is nothing to be excited about, it's just a minor passive you can equip from your skill tree. Most of the time (at least in basic classes), it's just between choice of A or B, and A might be objectively best in slot depending on your playstyle, so again, there is no choice really. You fill that skill slot, and forget about it.
 - Keyboard/Mouse control scheme has its ups and downs, it's working, except sometimes it feels like my click isn't getting registered. My personal complaint is how you cannot scroll a map with a mouse with edge scrolling (of course also for that you need cursor lock feature). Again, nothing too bad about it, just strange how the game allows you to use a mouse and not scroll map. I haven't tried but I feel like the controller is best suited for this game.
 - Honestly, one of the biggest motivations for this game is gonna be the story and what happens next. I am personally not impressed with many of the game features and lack of QoL.
 - Price point is pretty high, it's a niche genre and there is already plenty of solid competition.

Really hard to recommend this for TRPG/SRPG fans in current state. I was asking myself during my gameplay a lot of same question: "Why is it like this?".

Oh, and I will end on a bizarre note, saying that the game doesn't have credits (in the menu).

First impression video featuring all points discussed in this review and discussed in video too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp_OiBPvOmE

P.S. This game is 6.3 GB btw. Pretty wild.

Shardpunk: Verminfall 🐀 - New 2D tactical game that XCOM fans gotta love!

It's basically designed for turn-based tactics enjoyers. You have your XCOM gameplay, you have your "rest/camping" gameplay between stages with resource management like Darkest Dungeon or Star Renegades, and no meta progression, instead, you get achievement/unlock system, like Into The Breach, where you expand your options on how to start/create/manage your party, rather than getting powercreep. If I am gonna call a direct game comparison, Pathway (and Halfway to a degree too) is the closest, and as it turns out after I asked the lead dev the question of inspirations, Pathway was correct!

Not gonna cover the game balance as I am not that deep yet for that (and something tells me, there are gonna be some broken combinations of abilities/weapon upgrades as expected), but the gameplay loop itself isn't that complicated, so don't worry about experimenting, you will always get resources, especially if you follow game's mechanics of Combat Tactics. Besides, it's all about fun, don't worry about balance, just kill as many vermin as you can, and try again if your party falls.

I also had Lead Dev on the line with me when I was streaming, if you want a deeper look into the game, check out the video below. I am gonna be doing a Hard difficulty series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnU2G6Oxv3I

Megaten veteran here, been excited to play Souls Hackers 2 since it's initial announcement and the fact that it's coming all platforms, except for Switch, which is actually amazing fact, no more hardware bottlenecking (just look how fast they developed this one, don't have to spend 5 years optimizing for Switch, and it will still lag at the end). This is also the first time, megaten game is natively supported on global release for PC, which is a great trend I can get behind. Graphic settings, 60 fps or above and no hardware limitations.

Gonna write short review/impressions after playing for 12 hours: I hate to admit this, but the story of this game even at the beginning already beating SMT V one, SMT V bland and forgetful cast with no exposition is easily beaten by Soul Hackers 2. Loving the presentation/UI/aesthetic of the game, digitized, triangular shapes and fancy designs. Music is hit or miss, some are bangers, some not so much. PC performance and controls are flawless, no complaints (just make sure to change in-menu loading screen settings to hide or advance with a button so load times are instant instead of 10 seconds). Very Hard difficulty is surprisingly pretty challenging, especially before you get access to Fusions, glad they included it, very hard it also bans the usage of use items in battles which is basically a custom megaten youtube channel challenge run of itself.

Now, the DLCs...This time it's not only "ATLUS tax", but they literally put Day 1 cut story content and most insultingly, they put iconic end game demons and game's special Jack Frost variation behind a paywall. Yep, demons like Mara or Satan. Obviously it doesn't stop me from enjoying this game that's many ways ahead of their previous major release of SMT V, but keep in mind the price + dlc situation of course.

If you want to see the Very Hard gameplay or me ranting about DLCs, checkout my stream series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zck3TF6MKmc

I am not gonna write a huge essay on this one, but just gotta mention that while the game's visuals and sprites are pretty respectable for 2D JRPG, this game has completely failed in gameplay and story.

If you want to have a good laugh from a bad writing, I guess that can be one motivation to play this (your heroes massacre villages just for the heck of it, I am not kidding, it's actual part of the plot)