Recent reviews by Rob

Only a couple of hour in with my partner and can already see this is great game for couples. Remote play over network means with only one copy and with one of our laptops being very under-spec'd we can still play fine. I sometimes ruin the co-op experience by playing ahead and with Ship of Fools that's much less of a temptation.

Anyway 3 hours deep : 10/10 saved my marriage

First 2 rules for narrative entertainment: start strong & end strong. If you like the demo then go ahead and buy the game because they REALLY stuck the landing.

Heads up regarding grind/difficulty issues : the game has the most flexible difficulty options I've ever seen and there's nothing wrong with tweaking certain features towards casual especially if your leisure time is limited.

Pixel artists and fans can't pass this title up. Monsters have silky animations at herculean resolutions/frame counts and all with fantastically rendered lighting and textures. The environment work is also brilliant and complemented by an excellent soundtrack and level design. Overall, they simply did not need to go this hard artistically, but they invested so heavily in the visual presentation that I doubt we'll EVER see an entry in this genre/style that will even attempt to outdo it.

My single reservation is on behalf of Pokemon fans who are looking for cute characters above all. We get a good share of cute little guys, but overall there aren't as many you can form an emotional bond with. That's just what you get when your focus is on how the characters work as part of a game as opposed to a merchandising empire.

In case anyone was concerned about the game's EA status: I've noticed many small touches which are tedious to explain, but which give me confidence in the developer. Stuff that you just can't get without proper foresight, experience, and communication. The safest bet I could make is that Core Keeper will hit 1.0 without succumbing to any of the standard early access pitfalls.

Held together by challenging combat and character build varieties.

Main issue is in the interface. Menus take too many clicks and the ratio of screen space used to pertinent info is not very well thought out.

Still its a solid showing for the price.

Wonderful title for anyone who can get into what passed for grand strategy in the SNES days. Its its own kind of beast for sure and you'll definitely get a good feel for whether its for you or not in less than 2 hours. Would appreciate if campaigns didn't drag on after you're obviously on top of things, but that's a problem nobody seems to have managed in single player strategy games. Also this title does a great job of making it possible to win even if a larger empire is snowballing ahead of you. Love the variety of units and how much variety the dev gets out of a small number of characteristics combined in as many ways as possible.

Title track is an absolute banger. Sure the rest of the positives have been mentioned in other reviews.

Mechanics are simple but deep. Theme and narrative are fun and original. Great presentation. UI not quite up to modern standards. UI is an element of game design I'm neurotic about (also color theory, nobody seems to get it), it takes a really special game to get me to ignore those sorts of details and Chroma Squad is one of those games. Really interested in checking out their other titles now.

Finished with one character standing in negative HP 10/10

Civic-specific council positions are a great addition.