Recent reviews by BananaDealer

There's a giant bear form space that crashes into the planet, where a farmer with a dead kid and a princess with daddy issues go after a band of gladiators on a shuttle, meet a hardcore Demi-clops, a cupcake (named Gluten), who heals you (with its' own frosting), and a strange Spanish lady with a fetish for netting people, help a guy poop in a town shaped like a giant toilet where pooping is banned, take part in the revolutionary war against the damned R3D C04T robots, save a burning town from the dreaded Fire Men so that it can keep on burning, find an orphaned baby leopard and return it to Dave, the Leopard Master, who doesn't like leopards, and generally enjoy a wondrous romp around a weird world full of nonsensical creatures and characters.

Made by The Behemoth. Yes, THE Behemoth, not just a Behemoth... THE!!! Behemoth, capital E!
From the same guys that brought you the co-op, cat-ertainment and spectacle-puzzle platformer BattleBlock Theatre and ridiculous side-scrolling adventures of CastleCrashers, comes Pit People, a "baby's first tactical game" with enough character and humour to finally fill that empty void inside!
But what do I mean by "baby's first tactical game"? Well, Pit People is a tactical arena fighter wherein you have several pawns with different abilities, strengths and weaknesses, which you move around on a hex grid in a turn-based fashion. Think XCOM.
But unlike XCOM you don't really have absolute control over your pawns. You can't really tell them what to do, only move them around (hopefully) "strategically".
This makes the game somewhat more straightforward and easier than your average, XCOM-like turn-based tactical game. It does however present some difficulties XCOM veterans won't be used to.
For one, since you can't tell your pawns what ability to use or which target to attack, you're pretty much left to the mercy of whatever Nuffle-worshiping algorithm decides that. More on that later however.

In general, the game is pretty easy to grasp, the RPG aspects are limited to mainly just customisation options. While there is a ton of crazy loot, there's no plethora of uniquely different items with different stats- a tall shield is a tall shield, whether a garden fence or a giant beetle. However, within each item category there's the odd "special item" that sacrifices some of the normal stats of that category for a particular bonus. Want a shield with some fire resistance? Well, that comes with less blocking power, though not enough to make too much of a difference.
Different character types (Cupcake, Cyclops, Demi-Clops, Human, Pixie etc.) have different proficiencies and characteristics, making them more or less potent with different items and loadouts and in different roles.
There's no skill tree or talents (currently, as of Update 1, though that may also be planned), so every level your pawns gain is just a straightforward increase to all their stats, though not a major one. So there's no need to worry whether a 3% crit chance is better than a 1.5% increase to rate of fire. A level 10 character will always be objectively better than a level 9 one from the same type.
In fact, the game (again, currently, Update 1 did make some stats clearer) makes very little effort to let you know what the exact stats of your pawns are. There's a bunch of nicely stylised bars - LBS (how much equipment a pawn can carry, since, as you can imagine, a tall shield is heavier than a buckler, which affects their movement and agility), DMG (how much total, maximum damage a pawn does, based on pawn type and equipment), RNG (range, for ranged pawns or ranged abilities like cage-throwing, each level on the bar represents a hex), DEF (defence against melee attacks, usually determined by helmets), BLK (ability to block arrows and other projectiles, usually determined by shields) and DODG (dodge chance, the lighter the equipment a pawn carries, the higher their dodge chance, based on pawn type), that give you some information on how powerful a pawn in a particular loadout is, though, save from the damage value, it's not particularly clear.
There's also a range of icons for the different abilities and resistances pawns can inherit based on their type and equipment, though those provide little identification for what they actually stand for (since Update 1, the percentage chance of a particular ability to take effect is displayed below the relative icon, though that doesn't help much). Unfortunately, there's really no indication of a pawn's weaknesses, except maybe a vague footnote in your Recruitment Book (written and kept by the aforementioned Spanish lady).
This may be a deal breaker for min-maxing nuts who care only for the most optimal approach to things, but in the spirit of this game, it's a well implemented system that takes little effort to get used to and navigate. Also, if you're one of those nuts, get out of here! This is a casual game, go back to your XCOMs!
It also works well with the games' combat mechanics, or really lack thereof. Combat is determined on a rock-paper-scissors basis. A helmet blocks a sword but a mallet trumps a helmet. The UI is quite clear in this regard - if your pawn has an advantage against an enemy, there's a Facebookish "thumbs up" over that target, if it's weak or less effective, it's a "thumbs down".
Attacks and order of operations is somewhat weird however. As I said above, the action and target a pawn picks is pretty much random. To a point. You can, and in fact have to, in order to make the most of every encounter, position your pawns in such ways so as to "guide" their algorithm.
For instance, if there's two or more targets your pawn can reach, it will most likely spread its' attacks between all of them (or several of them, depending on how many attacks the pawn can make). If it has an advantage against one of them, it may favour that target with more attacks, or it may not. Moving your pawn to a hex where it makes contact with only one target makes it attack only that target however, giving it all its' got.
Ranged combat is somewhat trickier however. Pawns with ranged weapons will always attack all enemies within their range for as many attacks they can make. They also attack in melee however and in fact prefer melee if they're "threatened" (have an adjacent enemy). They also usually have a "dead zone", a range of hexes below which they won't be able to fire at range.
All of this makes combat both straightforward and engaging. Yes, all you're doing is moving chess pieces around, but much like actual chess pieces, your pawns have certain rules they follow when attacking/performing actions and you need to think about their order of operations and placement. Movement time is something you also need to consider as pawns that don't move/finish their movement first will attack/do their action while those still moving are still... moving, making for some unexpected results of potential targets getting flung out of reach of that perfect surround you had planned, just because that Hair Troll attacked first. And you can't simply overwhelm your enemies with numbers and brute power. Sure, larger pawns are more powerful, but they also usually take up an extra space on your team, so there's also that to consider. It is in fact you who would most often be outnumbered, since you'll often be engaging groups with more enemies than your team (even in co-op, the game adjusts accordingly).
There's also no permanent death in this game, unlike other games of the kind, like XCOM, Darkest Dungeon etc. When a pawn dies in combat, it remains unavailable in your team until you return to town, after which it's as good as new! (scars and PTSD notwithstanding)

As for the world and story... Oh boy, are you in for one wicked whirl!

(Continue reading in the comments, this is a long one)

When about half of the UI buttons are greyed-out and read "COMING SOON" and your game is missing one of its' major mechanics (the Diplomacy in its' entirety)... Yeah, I'm sorry Stardock, but you don't get to call your game a "beta" yet. Late-alpha at most. Certainly nowhere near beta.
When the chance of getting the game running off the bat is something of a 50-50 due to a graphical bug that can render all UI text invisible, you're not a beta.
Now, I only recently got into the Gal Civs 3 "beta" but from what I've gathered on the game's forum, that little issue has been around since the last apha build. So there's that to look forward to if you just got the game.
The issue's "easily averted" by telling the game to not use your dedicated graphics card. And once you're past that, well then- Welcome to Gal Civs 3: COMING SOON. Ok, I won't rip on an Early Access game for not having all its' features present. But really?
"Beta" implies you're "feature-complete". I.e- you've implemented all of the major mechanics and features you intend for your game and are balancing and tweaking them for best effect, along with dusting for the odd bug.
The current state of the Gal Civs 3 "Beta 1" is missing all sorts of features. From tactical combat to the above-mentioned Diplomacy mechanic. Instead, once you meet another faction you're immediately considered "at war forever", which makes playing against more than one opponent tricky at best since they will all kinda gang-up on you. Even if they them selves are technically at war with eachother, the AI will much prefer targeting your ships and colonies over other factions'.
Targeting ships and other stellar... targets (wow, such vocabulary) in itself is kind of underwhelming since fleets in themselves aren't really a thing yet either. Meaning most of the combat will involve single ships. Winners are auto-determined by a stat-check and apparently nobody bothered telling captains that retreat is an option.
The game also seems to have a hard time letting go of its' pre-made ship designs. It generates a "new version" of the stock designs every time you unlock a new technology (even if it had nothing to do with spaceships). What's either sadder or funnier about it (also irritating) is that they're not even slightly different than the previous version it gave you. Unless you've unlocked a new module, that Corvette M1459 will be the same as the Corvette M1458. It just adds the next number up after the name of the design. No, game... I know you spent many a sleepless night over those blueprints but why would I use designs that are inferior to the ones I come up with. That and mine are inspired by Star Trek... Yours look good and all, but again... Star. Trek. (I mean the designer literally has all the parts you need to make your own TOS Enterprise or TNG Warbird.)
Speaking of the ship designer. Who's the genious that made the background pitch black and then gave the parts' no lighting effects when viewed from below? I already wear glasses. You're not helping, game... The camera controls are also glitchy at times and somewhat frustrating, but that can be deat with. The designer also fails to tell you what direction is forward. Or to give you a unified indication of which direction you're augmenting a part (dimensions are relative in space). So if you ever wanted to see how the USS Enterprise moves in reverse... You can do that...
Other than that, I don't have any major complaints. Some part models are missing thumbnails and the player-made ships don't have thumbnails as well, but at this time, that's a non-issue.
The designer is really impressive, quirks aside. Other "reviewers" compare it to the Spore one, since I'm guessing the one from Gal Civs 2 is before their time. But to compare it to its' past iterration would be like comparing a crossbow and a rifle.
Although not that graphically advanced, the fidelity of the game's textures is impressive. I can see why they're going for the whole "64-bit development only". And both the devs and I do mean it- if you're hoping to somehow frankenstein this on a 32-bit machine- forget it, the warning at the top of the Steam page is there for a reason. Even the smallest maps available are quite big and the game renders everything at all times. Ship icons on the map are the fully-rendered model of the ship in question, rendered to its' fullest. There can be a dozen black holes on the map, all animated and spinning at all times, as well as stars with planets and moons; and although planets don't spin around their suns (yet?), the moons do. There's also nebulae, dust clouds and asteroid fields, as well as randomly generated wormholes that can be used as shortcuts around the map (if you don't mind not knowing where you'll end up). And everything's always on. For all factions. The game doesn't drop a single model off memory.
Which means that A) It runs like a truck. Alt-Tabbing is guresome, albeit not impossible, even when running it in a window. Loading times are also a pain. With optimisation it's probably gonna get better. But then again B) The actual in-game response is really nice. Once everything's been loaded at least once, the only long waits you're gonna have are if you're loading between multiple saves. You'll still get the odd stutter but that's usually when the game autosaves and takes only a second.
The technology and ideology trees are vast. Really, really vast. If you thought the "tech-web" from the upcoming Civ: Beyond Earth was staggering... This might just one-up it. While not an "interconnecting web with randomised technologies" and still sticking to the tried-and-true linear tree, each faction gets its' own, separate, technologies with different benefits, increasing the variety available to the player. The whole "age of expansion, war and ascention" thing means that at certain times, different techs will cost more or less turns, depending on what tree they're from. Since the ages actually progress as you research technologies under them, it also means that you can't actually research every single technology (as far as I can assume, haven't gotten to the end yet; will change as I do).
The ideology system is equally interesting, albeit as of yet not fully-featured. As you colonise worlds you'll get events with a Pragmatic, Benevolent or Merciless resolution. Each adding to a pool of points you can spend towards some form of passive benefit. That's pretty much all there's to it right now but I'm intrigued at how they advance this feature.
And that sums it up, for now. The AI is from what I can tell limited to "expand as much as possible and produce as many ships as possible" which usually means they have control of about half the map by the time you encounter them and from then-on you get regularly assaulted by the stock "bomber" ships of the faction of your choosing, only later, and then still rarely, being "graced" by a larger vessel's incursion. Imagine someone releasing a swarm of mosquitoes that only comes in small waves and you have a bug-zapper and infinite supply of repellant. Not really a challenge unless on higher difficulties but I'm expecting that to change once they add Diplomacy and fully-feature the tactical combat.
Other than that, I have nothing else to say about the Galactic Civilisations 3 "Beta".
Due to Steam insisting on the "yay-or-nay" system, I'm going to "thumb up" this just because I have faith in the franchise.
However. I will insist on what I said in the begining. A "beta" is "feature-complete" and Gal Civs 3 is anything but that. Do not buy into it at its' current version ("Beta 1"/Ver 0.40) unless you're absolutely OK with not having a fully-featured game. As a long-stanging Kerbal Space Program fan, I can deal with that. But you need to answer that question for yourself. Think before you buy.

Addendum: I would strongly recommend the opt-in patch.

Another good example of why Steam needs better QA. Don't get me wrong, BROFORCE is a great game- incredibly fun, well-paced with solid mechanics (although the movement controls on keyboard may be a bit clunky) and just the right amount of cheesy to make you want to play more of it. The small problem is that the Steam version seems to crash, without fail, every time you try and hit "play". Go and buy this on the Humble Bundle store. It's both cheaper and actually works. You get a Steam key as well (like with all HB games).