Recent reviews by Tenoshii

Most certainly is channeling the Majesty franchise vibes and inspiration. Unfortunately it feels a bit foundational at this point. Though it does have the potential to innovate on its predecessor provided some notable unique flavor is sprinkled into the mix.


- Tax Collector doesn't seem to unload from the Inn.

- Interesting that you can see enemies on the mini-map as red dots even if you don't have the fog of war cleared (light grey shading). As a result, when you scroll down to look at the area you can't see exactly what's there until a unit provides vision.

- Had some situations where a hero just stood still in an area in a status of "Fighting" when there were no enemies around or incoming.

Great example of a game blending a handful of genres into one gameplay experience.

Visuals, animations and effects are excellent.

Very satisfying strategic gameplay take on the survivors/auto-battler genre.

Excellent design of information presented to the player so they know how well their build is doing. Get to see DPS, a codex with details on what everything does and other visual indicators so you can fully appreciate what's doing well for you vs. what's underperforming. Though I will admit it took me a while to realize where the "Level" of a spell is displayed cause I was wondering why one of my abilities wasn't combining.

The various mechanics at play between all the different items/gems and effects the player can accumulate makes for an excellent combat puzzle for theory crafters to solve.

However, for those of us that have been trained by MMORPGs to "not stand in the fire" might get triggered by watching the champions stand in the red circles because they don't have any movement based abilities.

Instead of experiencing the game within a 2D, isometric or 3D world, you do so with many cards on the screen. However, not in the way you'd play a card game like Slay the Spire or Hearthstone. Instead, literally everything you do is based on the interaction between one or more cards (i.e. talking to NPCs, exploring zones, crafting items, harvesting items, receiving quests, resting, etc). There are even "tutorial" cards that provide the player with tips!

- Card art is fantastic.

- Got good medieval music melodies.

- Did a great job with tool-tips and icon/card descriptions.

- Progress is in real time but allows pause and fast forwarding.

- Timing of actions is displayed in seconds on the respective card, sometimes even a progress bar along the edges of the card.

- No decks to build that a game mechanic draws from over time.

Game plays like a colony simulator first (i.e. Banished, RimWorld, Stranded: Alien Dawn, etc), everything else second.

The more experience you have in colony simulators the less surface level criticisms you are likely to have of the game, especially when it comes to controlling colonists and managing production chains. Your frustration levels are also less likely to reach maximum salt and trigger a ragequit.

Don't expect floods of colonists coming in your direction like you do in a city builder or RTS. After all, the game is meant to "simulate" managing a colony of survivors trying to find safehaven a world riddled with darkness and death around every corner, not a band of well funded and supported heroes conquering lands eager to be settled by a nearby kingdom.

The better you manage the automated priorities the less hassle you'll find in getting the villagers to do what you want. If you get to the point where you master the manual ones too, you can control your people with near surgical precision to the point where resource gathering and production chain management are largely hands off until you inject a new chain or new resource type into the mix.

For example, if you find that your villagers dogpile on resource gathering too much, it's probably because your gathering/hauling are too high priority. Try putting hauling/transport at the very bottom and then gathering one step above that. Reason being, everyone tends to be able to gather, but when it comes to the activities that involve workbenches and stations, only one person does it at a time. So if those activities are prioritized, only your "extra" villagers will go gather meaning that you will nearly always make progress on a variety of activities rather than only being able to do other things when everything has been gathered/hauled.


Graphics are nice. Blends a vibrant art style with the sort of grim setting by having the tones necessary to visually display both.

Tutorial does a good job of walking the player through the various game mechanics as well as a logical progression through spells and the technology tree. I would highly recommend this for players that are relatively new to colony simulators.

Nice immersive touches on the weather. For example the wind actually causes the trees to sway and the rain impacts the screen visually with minor splotches of blur.

The short range teleporting during building construction looks weird.

Nice to be able to have a button to "sprint" while panning the screen.

The fact that doing things in the forest triggers it to attack you reminds me a bit of Valheim and Wayward. Both games have consequences for resource gathering in the environment which generally leads to the world becoming more hostile to you.

Wasn't able to take a Steam Screenshot with F12 even though I didn't see a button assigned to F12 in the game settings.

Was getting screen tearing even while Vsync was enabled and wasn't able to change the frame rate limit to anything other than 60.

Linking warehouses to production buildings through contact is pretty handy.

Was surprised that you can't give your units movement orders via mini-map. Would be really nice to have your military be able to scout around the map w/o having to issue them commands from the main screen as that requires quite a bit of manual panning.

Quite interesting that since you aren't materializing military units out of thin air you actually need to pay attention to the attributes of the villager that you are "training" into the military unit. Their attributes/bonuses will actually impact the final stats they have as a military unit. Will admit though, it's pretty funny that the "Strong Stomach" bonus makes for a unit that takes less physical damage.

I like that the defense aspect of the game is guided by a blood red trail to show you where the next attack is coming from.

Game does a good job of letting the player click on things to see stats and details, especially when it comes to enemies (even provides enemy ability tooltips) and their lairs.

Would recommend some type of significant audio cue when a villager is available for recruitment. Could easily miss it when doing other things on 16x speed. Perhaps have some sort of auto-accept threshold that the player can toggle on or off? After all, I don't know many scenarios where I'd opt to not recruit someone for the settlement.

I like the more streamlined take on managing combat gear in that you don't have to individually maintain equipment to gear up your military units with (i.e. directly craft and store it as an object). Instead, it's just as simple as converting a villager to a warrior.

While the game doesn't let you seamlessly switch between villager and warrior, at least warriors don't require many of the "survival" needs that villagers do.

This is definitely a colony simulator worth keeping an eye on. It's got meaningfully designed and sastisfying mechanics from a variety of genres to give the type of variety that tends to keep the player engaged with familiar gameplay loops while presenting it in a way that's gives off a different flavor. So while there may be areas that don't have the depth of some other games that only focus on a subset of this game's mechanics, it's the combination of all those elements that gives this game potential.

Quite a fun twin stick shooter. If I had to sum it up in three words, it'd be: "Simple yet effective."

- Sometimes those lootable metal wall containers blend into the wall. Good thing the scanner catches them.
- Needs more tilesets, decorations, rubble and object types within areas. Each zone looks more like a randomized space warehouse or unfurnished office with crates and barrels rather than derelict space stations.
- Shooting and melee feels snappy and impactful with very clean animations.
- While nothing was too fancy, flashy, or groundbreaking the experience was still satisfying and engaging. Just clearing a level and seeing what kind of devices/gadgets/upgrades I could find was enough motivation to keep going.
- Did feel mildly lackluster to have so many destroyables that didn't drop anything though.
- The loadout system is a great way for players to manage their "build" based on the gadgets they've found so far. Doing a good job with this providing a variety of playstyles that can even synergize with team play is going to probably be what makes this game shine in the long haul.
- It's an interesting choice to go with a health pip system based on simply getting hit rather than devising a system based on damage, armor, shields, etc.
- I could see a portion of the playerbase not necessarily being a fan of how certain gadgets are tied to basic abilities like jumping or the ability to pick up turrets. Probably won't be a big deal provided the loadout point cost is reasonable.
- It's growing on me that turrets can't shoot 360 degrees. Actually requires a degree of strategy to place them effectively rather than just spamming them down for the free DPS.
- Nice touch that you can see and destroy the portal that enemies spawn out of.

Honestly pretty solid for a twin-stick shooter rogue-like. Might not have the flashiest powers and upgrades to select from, but the shooting and dodging feels quite fluid and enjoyable. I particularly like how dodging through enemies pushes them away from you slightly.

Can feel a bit challenging at the very start until you get the timing of dodge rolls down as well as knowing just how far enough you need to be from the nearest enemy to get a full reload off.

Shame the demo doesn't let you purchase some of the other weapons once you've obtained the appropriate currency.

Plays like V Rising but has a gameplay loop that gives off serious Voidtrain vibes. When you meld that with a Lovecraftian theme, you've got something that makes for an interesting combination and encourages the player to explore and see what kind of shenanigans they can get themselves into.

Looks like inventory management is going to be a thing, especially given the variety of stack size counts vs. how common certain resources are.

Curious to see how meaningful the hunger management will be (i.e. if there will be buffs and such associated with food).

The madness mechanic seems interesting, especially since it can obfuscate key elements of the UI over time. Will be interesting to see if it ends up amounting to more than that.

Active abilities and perks will hopefully keep combat interesting all the way into the end game.

I wonder how many different environments and POI configurations will exist in the full game. If they can present a solid variety of settings with a diverse set of goals/objectives for the player, exploration is going to be a blast.

This game was clearly inspired by the movie Inception.

Gameplay gives off similar exploration vibes as Starcom: Nexus and Starcom: Unknown Space.
- Main quest with some light elements of world building involved.
- Travel a world map exploring POIs.
- Encounter RNG based encounters resolved through text options, some potentially leading to combat encounters.
- Ability to trade goods through a simple yet dynamic trading and market system.
- Ability to unlock and receive goods from towns with production facilities.
- Real time combat with slowdown based on both auto-attacks and special abilities.

Game also has a nice map UI where you can click on the various towns to see who/what you currently have stored at their warehouse.

Another thing I liked was that some useful bonuses/abilities stack when it comes to equipment and gear. For example a nice early combo is two stun weapons in the special slot and two ram damage boosting items as equipment.

As it relates to fuel and how fast it depletes... You can somewhat exploit the "out of fuel" mechanic to save on fuel costs when scouting the map. For example, the penalty appears to only cause the player to drop all their cargo and spawn a wreck at the spot where they ran out of gas. When you respawn (at the nearest town) you get a full tank of gas (but rig durability doesn't get filled) and time does not appear to pass. You then have the ability to go pick up your goods from the wreck. However, this only works if the closest town you can spawn at isn't already max distance from the wreck. Keep in mind that if you run out of fuel again before you collect your previous wreck your new wreck replaces the old one (and you lose everything that was in the old one).

In summary, there is currently very little penalty for running out of fuel provided you don't currently have cargo. Use that to your advantage when it comes to scouting out nearby towns and potential POIs. However, the RNG events that can hit you while scouting may cause you to inadvertently obtain cargo you don't want to risk dropping, thus encouraging you to safely store/sell it rather than risk leaving it behind in a wreck.

I think these things might be nice to have:
- More of a visible indication when there's an area on the screen where your rig will lose durability for traveling there.
- A toggle key to see how far your rig can move on the screen based on current fuel level.
- Ability to see what goods are for sale when looking at different towns on the map.

No idea how this demo got past my daily browsing of indie games and demos...

That being said, this is yet another excellent base defense rogue-lite strategy game:
- Nice pixel art visuals even with limited animations.
- Satisfying multi-angle gameplay loop (economy, troop numbers, troop quality and playstyle).
- Some pretty unique cards like the demon altar and the turret that eats adjacent armies.
- Simple yet satisfying music/tunes and sound effects.

Some potential "nice to haves":
- A way to see how many killing blows each army/tower got per Year, especially since there are cards that make more sense to use based on this.
- A damage breakdown each Year so the player can see how much damage each "enhancement" is doing. Kind of like what you see at the end of the match in a "survivors" game.
- Would be nice to see stats on the enemy units at the end of each Year.