Recent reviews by Cablenexus

This is a glorious review from a player who loves the game, but thinks the developer and part of the fanbase is the most unfriendly I ever experienced on Steam.

I’m glad I can separate the game from it’s creator. As well I can separate music from the artist and movies from the director. If you don’t want to read about all the drama, feel free to scroll to the review below.

A few days ago I discovered this ‘total’ pack of all games in the series so far in my Steam feed.
I went to the storepage and was a bit surprised by the triple A price-tag.
Well it’s not my business, so I really don’t care and if the developer thinks his work is worth it, he’s free to ask what he wants. Since I already own all the content released so far I was expecting the series merged into a complete pack automatically.
This is my experience with all other games with many releases and dlc in my library, so I expected it here. But this wasn’t the case. Even while I already own 10 out of 10 games to make the pack complete I had to pay 33 Euro for it. Advertised as an immense discount for owners of the previous games.

I went to the Steam forums to complain and calculated that who paid full price for previous games and dlc in the Steam store for the current listing price without discount invested between 70 and 140 Euro in total. Including the newly released ‘total’ pack that’s a huge amount of something between 103 - 173 Euro’s.

Not buying ‘total’ excludes you from experimental beta content in the ‘total’ pack and you were forced to pre-purchase his upcoming 5th game in the series.

The developer could respond in a fair and professional way by replying that most of the players bought the previous games on sales and that it justifies the price-tag, but he did not.
Within some comments back and forth, accused me of being a troll, a liar, someone who intentionally coerced a developer and being redirected to Steams’ refund policy. When I refused to proof the developer my purchases in return for a free key, I was perma-banned from Age of Fear forums and all my comments were deleted shortly after.
Via the ban forms he demand my personal details to take actions against me. What kind of actions, smart enough, he didn’t mention.

I think this is a developer in need of some help and some love. I understand the imho partly aggressive fanbase isn’t the regular paying customer on Steam so income is probably minimal. Maybe he’s addicted to something or someone that cost lot’s of money.
I don’t know, but I want to ask to everyone who knows this developer personally give him some love and buy his games! Even when you already own them and have to pay twice, and even when he offers to refund you outside Steam in exchange for your personal details. He’s not only representing his own company, but the whole indie scene he told me.

The developer dislikes most of his own playerbase. Those faulty players buy games in bundles outside Steam legit or non-legit (which I also disagree with btw), they play his free version too many hours, they complain in forums about pricey offers, they do not use the refund option enough and more. You can all read those aggressive, totally absurd replies in all forums of the series and in reply to many of the reviews. Oh and before I forgot. When he perma-banned me from the forums, he deleted some of my comments. In the ban message above he wrote:

Cable, stop deleting your messages, I want to expose you!

Trying to make me personally responsible for his miserable sales by my forum comments.

Now to the review:

Age of Fear series is a long going series, almost completely developed by a single developer who support his many games and dlc’s over the last ten years. Gameplay and developing wise he is willing to listen to real fans and deliver a very open, wide, fast-paced, turn-based, one of the very few grid/hex-free, fantasy strategy games around. It has many (procedural) random elements, combined with story elements and tactical battles, inventory management and crafting.

The UI is really aging. The text is very small and you cannot set custom window sizes and fonts. Java is also slow even on modern hardware and sometimes the game simply feels too rough around the edges imho.

In return you get loads of content in terms of items, weapons, units and story elements which is pretty cool. I also can appreciate the artwork since it is at least custom made and not re used from Unity store assets. (It's a Java, not a Unity game btw).

Also the random elements they added in the 'Free' version and now also populate the world map in the story modules are both a bless and a curse. There is handholding at one part of the game, but no handholding or world progress on the other part (the random part) which can result in unpredictable rogue-like gameplay for what the game isn't designed in the first place. I simply follow the star system on the random quests until I feel strong enough to do a story quest. But always it's way too simple or too difficult and I quit the game.

I always have to ask myself two questions while playing. Am I holding up against my opponents? And what is the overall progress I made so far? In short, I always keep wondering if I don't go to fast into the story modules before I even experienced everything the game has to offer? (For example the crafting part) or do I have plenty of time to do side quests? Is the game ever ending? What happen when I accidentally finish the story module to quickly? I don't want less procedural content, I don't want more handholding, but a simple progress in percentage towards campaign conclusion could be helpful imho.

In fighting I do not experience so many units that are underpowered, but I experience some units that get so strong early that I can tank opponents with some tank units while I keep my weaker units in the back.

'Total' brings experimental features like open world maps that combines the many factions of the previously released games and some extra’s like never released content and all upcoming content. That includes the upcoming 5th game and eventually more to come, looking at his track record.

Overall the game has its charm, freedom, content and is old hardware friendly, addictive indeed until I run into something unexpected what is way too easy or way too difficult.

I think the game is in need of an urgent overhaul and needs a marketing department that respects paying customers.

This might be the strangest review of a game you ever read, that’s ok for me, since it’s my full right as a paying customer to raise my voice about the dark side of the developer and part of the fanbase.

The comments that will follow by the developer in reply to my review will proof my point.

-edit-

One of the more important parts I forgot to mention, because I never really pay attention to it in other games, are the sound effects. The voices of soft bleeps on 'to hit' in fights are really nice and addictive, even as the dramatic demise of certain units. Well done!

Enjoy!

Without doubt game of the year release candidate #1 for me personally.

Age of Wonders wasn’t my first strategy game I bought in the small electronic shop in my city after I bought my first Pentium Desktop. It was Warlords 3 Darklords Rising that connected me to the world of turn-based strategy games and soon I discovered Homm series, Disciples series and of course the Age of Wonders series. It was Shadowmagic that I played countless hours on multiple pc’s I bought over the years. Many years carrying the CD-ROM version with me to install it everywhere, later on Steam and GoG. Playing it in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2020 and will probably launch it again sometime soon.

Age of Wonders IV is absolutely created with the same love and dedication the older titles are and is fresh, graphically outstanding, UI-wise top notch, brings new meta-game elements to the strategy genre, stay true to the original image- and story wise, has unlimited replay value, isn’t streamlined in a dumbed down way and offers such a wonderful fantasy ambience both in terms of artwork, music and lore.

I try to keep it short so I choose to only add information in this review which is not already on the storepage or visible in screenshots.

Meta game

There are mechanism in the game that makes it a layered experience that unlocks new features based on the progress you make. Rallying units from friendly city states is a nice example. A layered kind of tech tree that you can really customize to your own liking instead of predicted choices. And the overhaul of the research and tome system.

Modding

The developer already added a modding guide and modding examples to the guide and workshop section of Steam. So everyone can start modding. On Itch I already found a random faction generator to play with yourself. But also bigger map sizes and even the creation of new magic tomes.

Overworld map and combat map

The overworld map that uses hexes, also use a section layer known from Dominions and PDX titles like EUIV and CKIII. So it really matters where you place our cities, what you build around them and how to eventually defend your empire.

Story and lore

Everything in the game has lore text, story text, tooltips, explanation and unique artwork. Multiple objects on the map that creates story elements, the city states that creates quests and the many ways to communicate in diplomacy screens. It has an identity and feels alive. You can even play against procedural generated AI factions.

The battles are way more tactical. There are many skills now with group effects and there are less units that can kill units with one or two shots. Placement, skill- and magic use and units working together is essential and interesting to experiment with and terrain elements with positive or negative traits are a nice add-on.

Verdict

The first one or two hours I was sitting in front of my desk with my mouth wide open. I have to limit myself to launch the game when I have other things to do the same day. I can’t really find negatives, but to be fair I read some on the forums and from Steam friends speaking in chat.

So here they are:

No way to select size or map type. You are given a map based on amount of factions and distance between them. There is however an editor and a mod available and I think this will be addressed in any free update or expansion soon.

No huge campaign story. The procedural generation and layered storytelling by playing was the focus for this version, but again I believe with the announced expansions and way the game is designed we will see campaigns in the future.

Personally I miss a random button in the faction selection screen and a random button for the pages to setup your custom faction. You can play on a map with procedural generated factions as opponents, but you can’t select a procedural generated faction to play with yourself. An oversight I hope.

Oh, and before I forget, Woman elves can't have beards while customizing, but it's being worked on I heard.

If those elements are added the coming years it can be the first “perfect” turn-based fantasy game created. Without those elements it’s the most complete, custom, open, modern, best looking fantasy strategy turn-based game ever made. That’s my verdict, and I played them all.

The best way to describe this game is "Dreams". When you sleep and dream you combine multiple figures and story elements in your brain without knowing the outcome of where it led to. In AI Roguelite you actually do the same so you can call it a Dream Engine I think.

If Steam was using any intelligent AI it was showing me this game in my news feed instead of the multiple free MMORPG’s I never play at all.
Unfortunately Steam did everything possible to hide this game for me since March 2022 and so did Steam to my other 200+ Steam friends. It’s not on anyone’s wishlist or library, which is absurd.
While I have a 2000+ games library with RPG’s, turn-based strategy games, rogue-lites, likes and dungeon crawlers, AI Roguelite never appeared in any feed, which means Steam’s intelligent software to determine what I probably like to play isn’t working at all.

Anyway, I’m finally aware of this amazing and cheap application, thanks to one Steam friend who picked it up recently and when reading the storepage I was interested instantly. After picking it up I played 6 hours straight until morning and then I was too late for my real life job…One more turn…and one more…

What you see is what you get. You first have to change some settings in the options screen which text module or graphics module you want to use. You can use a (paid or not) cloud based service like Koblin or Novel AI to connect with the game, or simply your own GPU for text generation. The last one (4 GB version in my case) works better then the cloud one since it generates incoherent text. The GPU one is slower, but shows very realistic outcomes.

Same for graphics. If you have any NVIDIA GPU you can let it do the image generation for you (4, 6 and 13 GB version). I only tried the 4 GB version and Wombat so far. Wombat is the fastest (free cloud based) and the 4 GB GPU version somewhat slow (Wait time is minutes per image), but the results are amazing. It simply generate custom images based on text input on the fly and with some exceptional quality. The high quality images are 512 x 512 pixels and can have 40 or more literation’s so the images are true to the text description always. You can add multiple prefixes to the image generation. You want them sketchy, oil painted, blue or yellow only? It’s all possible. You have all freedom in whatever prefix you want to use (yes, also adult ones).

When everything is setup properly you can let the game generate a starting setting for you with locations, names, factions, stories and whatever your own imagination can think of or you fill in the start game form yourself with your own keywords. Everything is possible.

And when you click play you are in your own RPG game, with your own story, the generated images (can take a while to load them all per level), stats, skills, items and locations. From here you can do whatever you want. You have choices, fights, locations to visit, skills and items to use that are all generated on the fly. And whenever you want you enter free text to any NPC, the world itself or whatever you can think of and the game delivers instant and endless fun to your liking.
This is an amazing experiment and shows an AI is capable of generating stories and graphics based on players input on the fly. This already is and will be a huge part of game design in the future and to see this simple tool working so well makes me happy for what comes next.

I did not much indepth research about the developer and studio (yet), but I believe originally it’s a music composer who designed this game (tool). And to be honest the soundtrack while playing is very nice to listen to.
I hope my review will give some more, well deserved, attention to AI Roguelite. Thanks for reading.

This game deserves a review for the fact that it’s one of a kind in the genre. It combines roguelike, 3D, turn-based and fantasy style dungeon crawling in a simple way without being too streamlined or too casual. Another reason is that many of the comparable indie games use the same assets we can all buy in discounted Humble bundles. You might like or dislike the graphics in this one, but at least they are natural and unique.

In active EA development for over 3 years now you can say the developer is dedicated to the project. There are clear goals, there is content added, you can post ideas, suggestions and bugs in the Steam forum and you get a realistic answer. Sometimes it change the game for the good, sometimes it’s a no and sometimes it’s not now. Which is completely fair since only those games with realistic goals and without unrealistic promises will get a launch one day. I believe this one will be launched one day.

The game itself is very open in structure in nature. You can set size of the map, amount of parties you will play the game, there is city building like in the original Homm strategy games, there is inventory management and lot’s of skills and stats you can alter your heroes with. The dungeons and generated encounters are huge and the gameplay is pretty straightforward like the Homm RPG games. You can use the standard grid based gameplay, but you can also use your mouse to normally look around and encounter secrets, traps and monsters.

The UI, with the big crystal images is criticized by many, but it’s not the priority for the dev to change it anytime soon. I don’t think it looks that bad myself, but many of the UI elements around are not fitting the theme, is W(ork) I(n) P(rogress) or simply very low resolution. There are many art styles combined in this game and I see the logic from a developer perspective here. The 3D mazes are designed in a casual comic style like Blizzard games, the monster models very generic (could be standard assets), the character portraits randomly generated 3D images in a mediocre style but with some comical and unique or absurd results and the world map is more hand painted boardgame style.

The amount of content, size of the maps and dungeons, the replay value, the endlessness, the open world, the freedom of character and party building and the addictiveness of this game is the strong part. The storytelling, the UI work in progress and the somewhat slow development the weak. The barrier that prevents attracting more players to get into the game is the price I think.

At the moment of writing ‘events’ are added to the game. And many settings to customize your encounters for more randomness. I don’t have experience with them yet so maybe the game is even better then I describe here.

I played a few hours of the game after picking it up last weekend for a curator review and I'm somewhat pleased and somewhat disappointed at the same time. That should mean that the game is mediocre at best. Is it?

The production value is ultra low. It's almost all generic Unity work with assets from the Unity assets store and use of 3D character modelling software with some generic characters, plants, buildings and even the music tracks I already listened to in multiple other indie games. (Best reference here are the 3.99 dollar Shieldwall Chronicles series of games here on Steam).

The developer is very transparent about it, so it's clear for eventual buyers.
The dev is transparent that he don't like his own (homemade by the dev himself) monster models so much and also he ask for input from EA players to improve the game.

The Game Loop

One can compare the game loop with what we know from other Gladiator games. You are in charge of a roster you can fill with monsters or humans. Humans you can buy at the periodic market or you rent them. Monsters you can buy as well, you can breed with them or buy eggs that results in monsters later on. You buy equipment, you train them and you buy potions or ingredients to make them stronger or your opponents weaker.
You can eventually craft your own potions and equipment with characters who don't participate in fights.
After your roster is strong enough and you are ready for the next turn you go to the (simple) map overview to select the fight (tournament) you want to participate in for this turn. The (again simple) TBT hex map opens and you can control your characters to fight the group of opponents.

The Fight

Going into any fight unprepared, results in a total overwhelming and unfair game one directly want to rage quit. Everyone you bring into the arena you have to check stats, how can they handle a sword or a bow? Are they not too heavy weighted? Are their skills powerful enough? Did I eventually equipped some healing potions? How am I performing against different kind of creatures? (for example humans, insects, carnivores).
When you suffer a hard defeat and you fight the same arena again prepared, then you have a change to win.
Winning involves defeating all opponents creatures, there are no other goals or variation so far as I can see.

The Highs and Lows

A good bunch of different species and characters to experiment with and many of items and skills of different quality are at your disposal. None of them are exceptionally unique, even not the crossbreeds. They diver in stats and somewhat different textures, but the models looks pretty much the same. In between turns you select your own fight from the map. They are all unconnected, individual fights without story elements. The only part that counts in them is to select the right fight for your prepared group and the money involved when you loose or win. You always get some money for participating. Even when you loose, but when one wins the fight one get the reward.
It makes it also a bit of a grind for me. Or your progress goes slow (when you loose fights) or it goes faster (when you win fights). But actually it never goes fast enough and it's always a slow grind. Eggs takes 9 - 12 turns to hatch. Monsters need food and shelter and being tame otherwise they can escape. Humans cost monthly rent. So you keep fighting to buy a very small amount of improvements on different periodic markets every turn, while you never really make a huge progress at once.

What was really problematic the first few runs for me personally was the fact that all my humans missed all attack rolls every turn even at 95 % hit change. Arrows flying around the arena except on the opponent and spells who made zero damage what makes my mages useless. Then when the enemy group reach my heroes they were able to kill them with one direct hit doing 14 out of 20 damage in one turn. Making my characters energy drawn and was guaranteed a loose. It has to be said that there are countless skills and equipment you can use to make your characters better and that's the key here. You will have to micromanage.

I had to learn the hard way that every small detail of equipment, stats, counter stats, abilities count and that you really have to prepare, pick the right fights, do not forget anything in prepare mode and eventually have a change to win the game.

What was problematic as well that I did not see any difference in hitting anything with 7 % change or with 97% change. I always had more misses, but even that much hits with the 7% change. It feels very unbalanced and what worries me is that the effect of breeding mechanism, use of (eventual toxic) ingredients on eggs or crossbreeds only influence the stats so little while the difference between those stats in fights feels horribly random. It takes the reason away of upgrading since the random effect stays in place. This needs much work in balancing I think.

The aesthetics part also have some lows. Some later implemented elements like the battle logs and the victory overview makes use of very -out of theme- fonts and colors. That makes the already somewhat generic game uglier then it should.
Most Asian translated games have this problem as well. The standard Unity font is really nice to use in any Word doc, but not in every piece of art.

Verdict

The review so far has to be taken with a grain of salt. I was not being able in the ten hours I played so far to breed one creature myself and make it a killer machine. I was able to win a few fights and make some money I directly overspend to buy potions, better equipment and ingredients I was not able to use since the only alchemist I had was bad in making all kind of potions.
The constant misses in early fights at beginners level made me left frustrated.
The miss of customizing hotkeys (I was not even able to rotate the view with Q and E, but this is corrected since EA release) and the camera constantly following opponents move out of view (without an option to turn it off) and the low production value in all aspects left me with a somewhat bad taste.
At the same time do I understand all of it from the devs one man perspective and do I really want him to succeed the EA period and improve the game. Since I like the concept, the theme and the passionate work already put into it.
In the forums he already mentioned that he want to invest in better 3D models when the game is successful, but I worry more about hundreds of small quality of life improvements more. Tooltips everywhere for example and specially when crucial -not able to find elsewhere- rules about game mechanism are a must. Rotation view and being able to stop the camera following enemy movement is highly needed. Explanation or more transparency about hits and misses is welcome.

When I was younger and without countless bills and a full-time job I was provide more feedback to the dev. For now I don't have the time, but I provided some feedback at his Discord he already actively picked up.

I will keep playing a bit more to find out if there is a raw gem inside somewhere that I miss out of frustration so far. Frustration of generic assets, not enough info in the tooltips and horrible hits and misses in fights. But at the same time a 3D monster breeder, very low on bugs, an acceptable game flow and clearly made with passion and ambition. It needs a player base now of players who like the Gladiator genre, like micromanage all aspects of humans and monsters, don’t fear to loose early on a lot since your humans and monsters are really weak and like to experiment since not everything is clearly explained with tooltips. The thumbs up is mostly because the dev deserves it, the game is working how it’s supposed to, being advertised, not too expensive and not finished yet.

At the moment there is a turn-based rogue-like game release every single day. Some better then others. Some totally useless, some release a second version which isn't that smooth as the first one (mostly when converted from 2D to 3D, I don't call names here) and some are worth to play even in EA.

The Doors of Trithius belongs to the worthy part to start with.
It's a game that doesn't really stand out from any other fantasy (daggerfall/morrowind themed) game in terms of originality. You met rats and goblins, find gold coins and swords and wandering around in dungeons and cities to buy and sell stuff between them.

But it's all done in a good way in terms of quality and respect to game rules and respect to the player of the game. The clicking on the map to walk is done accurate, the UI is easy to use, there is mouse over info on everything and colored hyperlinked tool tips with even more info.
There are many different characters to choose from and they all differ from each other in play style.
They all have different skill sets (while weapons are the main focus, expect not that much magic, lockpicking or traps yet) and it all plays smooth, the information on the screen is clear and the map makes full use of the whole screen. You can even hide all UI elements.

Graphically the objects, tiles and characters in game are done in okay pixelart style (It's good, I'm just very critical here, I know smoother pixel art games, no offence), with the currently equipped gear presented on the main character. Again it's done well in a meaningful way with attention to detail.

What I like less are the colorful skill icons used from which I think they don't fit the tiles, pixelart and UI that well. They are very generic, but I understand that this is not a big dev team with artists who can create hundreds of new skill icons.

The same is true for the different dungeons and tiles used. It feels a bit generic. Purple walls and brown floor texture everywhere. I'm getting a bit bored from it already. I hope I will be surprised spending more hours in game with more variation in the end. What I like is the procedural generated room setup with rooms of different sizes, corridors, good door placement and a clear overview of the map due to zoom in/out options.

The review is already pretty long so I have to sum up some parts of the game I didn't even mention. Like there is an overworld map you can choose the next location yourself. In cities you can visit over 15 different kind of shops, there are really a lot of items in game. There is a crafting system based on skill and also recepies you find and ingredients you find or buy. There is hunger system and there is skill involved in playing the game. Lots of loot, lots of content, good working UI and clear rules and playfield.

Last but not least, when I enter a new room I always have that Hero Quest feeling. There are some bookcases and rats in one room and some orcs and chests in another. The big and colorful tiles makes that experience even better.

One more part I have to add. The dev is listening to suggestions and eventually (try to) implement them if dev agree with them.

I'm triggered by doing a short review for the game for multiple reasons. The first is that many of my Steam friends put the game on their wishlist and some already asking my opinion about it. The second reason is that it has mixed reviews around release week, which is bad. The third reason is that I think the mixed review is totally fair for a finished game, but not for an early release. One cannot review a game about the future.

For many of us this game was hyped over it's early design documents and WIP screenshots many years ago. The ambitious dev team clearly wanted to design a complete fantasy, magic, open, turn-based and authentic game but had to take a step back in terms of reality versus ambition a while ago. It was simply too ambitious. Everything procedural generated and open sandbox style sounds great, but it's hard to get the gameloop working if you are so early in development. We can see this in other games as well. For example Glorious Companions and Elementals (before Fallen Enchantress).
The game was so hyped that I even received a gold/red metal badge in a real world envelop from Russia to Holland for visiting a stream about the game. They invested over a million in production (terrible word in game design as a work of art btw). It's together with other collectibale items staring at me for the last four years while I'm playing other games.

And then there was silence...

And they came back. Less is more they told us. They had to redesign many parts of the game to be able to create a playable version so they did.
They left the so called ghost ship, started to create a real design document with goals, rules and gameplay, but they also had to leave most of their initial plans. Which I can imagine must be a hard time for the designers.

Anyway they did it and released a promising game in 2021 in EA on Steam with a medium pricetag and a clear warning that this is not a finished game.

- The authentic and original artwork in characters, opponents and environments is still there.

- Procedural character generation is still there both in faces and stats.

- The open world game map is also procedural generated, but at this moment with the same chapters and side quests every new game you start. There is very little room for starting setup like size of team, difficulty, size of map, amount of objectives and length of the game session. It's very streamlined now except the random placement of map elements, opponents and resources you find on the map.

- If you finish the game once, your second playthrough is practically the same. Even with some random elements, the core objectives and endbosses are the same and if you know how to beat them the first time (everything is added to your discovery book) you know it for your next playthrough as well.

- They designed a very nice gameloop (even in other negative reviews the gameloop is what is praised now) with a never before seen combination of card game, tactics game, teamwork, planning, resource and item usage on the fly. The resources are your cards so you never know exactly what you get in your hand, the spellbook is the counter for (hidden) enemy stats and you have to plan carefully to keep your own stats up and the enemy stats down. It's all very well executed, bug free, animated and rewarding to play the card game (the fighting part).

- I was able to play the game and understand the core mechanism (except some details) in an hour or so without having to watch any tutorial and normally I'm not that bright. I don't think the game is utterly complicated as some other players stated. It's done in a different way as other games so you have to change your own tactics and mindset, that's all.

I think they set a very stable foundation for a very deep and fun game in the long run if they don't have to quit because reallife issues, money or negative reviews. I'm a fanatic Thea, Homm, Fallen, Imperiums and indie turn-based strategy fan and I can see and taste a lot of potential here.
The dev team hopefully can fill the gaps of the too strict design document they use now and tighten the rope a bit to make more elements surprising instead of let us play the same game over and over again. Only the future will tell us if this is just because the amount of content is not enough atm or that is has deeper problems.
In short Spire is promising, stable, authentic and has a nice fresh game loop. It needs content (it's barebones now), variety (while characters are procedural generated they miss meat of background, themes for magic use, special abilities that makes them stand out), diversity (the main quest and side quest, even the revealed position on the map is the same every run) and settings to play with various sized groups, interaction with objects on the map and give us at least some experimental crafting, alchemy and spell setups instead of knowing everything at forehand since you first researched it.

A lot to offer and a lot to do at the same time. I still think players who are really interested to follow development and eventually give feedback should pick it up. In the end it's absolutely worth the 20 bucks which is two packs of tobacco for me and even makes me more healthy instead.

The Alexander mod dlc is an interesting scenario with plenty of room to discover different factions in the period that Macedon conquers the world. You can play as Macedon, but also as Rome of Persia and another 10 - 20 factions you can set your own goals on the huge campaign map or play on a generated map.

Like in previous games (Aggressors Rome and the Greek Wars) you have all the freedom to play the game how you want or you can guide your faction through a set of custom made objectives per faction (optional). Building road networks, conquering specific cities or build a stronger army for example, but also more detailed objectives like capturing specific objects or places.

Since Imperiums is build in a custom engine that is in development for many years you can change all settings to your liking. The faction you play, the difficulty or resource distribution, morale bonus or starting population. All is possible to edit to your liking. But also in the game you can alter almost every aspect from terrain saturation, colors, unit sizes and game speed. It's a complete open sandbox playground in ancient times and even after 2000 hours combined in the different games I find out new mechanism or features.

The game is huge, there is a variety of units per cultural faction and they can be upgraded while playing. Some just by research, others just by war experience. The AI always plays with the same rules as the player so there is no cheating in making war or using diplomacy. The AI uses the same rules as the player. The diplomatic options are very detailed and you will be surprised how the AI will react since it takes into account the whole game and history. Diplomacy is not a minigame at the side of the playfield. It's fully integrated and smart.

That counts for all mechanism in the game. Nothing is just there as a filler. All mechanism, from building roads, mines, upgrades, units and even the control of birth in cities is connected in one way. It makes you really feel in touch as a leader.

But to find out what this game has to offer you will need to learn the ropes on easier difficulties. There is so much going on that it can feel overwhelming at first. You often should use the ingame hints, ingame manual or > 200 page pdf manual to discover all the game has to offer. Otherwise you will find yourself playing a game of Civ in a different engine with different outcome. This is not a kids game, but a real historical adult game which requires trial and error.

Some new features are economic upgrades, reserve system for armies and many new objectives and a new map.

The dev is the best dev of the world in terms of listening to feedback and replying and being active in forums since release of Agg many years ago. I think he put many years of effort into the game to make the ultimate Rome turn-based warbox with hopefully many mods/dlc's to come. Also this dlc was in the works for almost a year.

The pricetag of the game is a steal compared to 90% of what is offered at Steam. Everything is custommade, the artwork, the engine, the mod possibilities are endless and you will not find a single asset used in other games on Steam.
Also the released dlc is made after the main game was released. It wasn't there at forehand to release later for some extra cash.

Hopefully the game will get a much bigger audience and more attention from YT fandom in the future. A game made for gamers by gamers following all the old skool rules of why my generation started gaming at all should be praised.

Let's keep this short. Legend of Keepers is another high quality game from Goblinz Studio. Successfully launched after a decent period in EA.

Since you play as the bad guy there are plenty of monsters and traps you have to place in dungeon rooms. Every dungeon has around six or seven rooms that can be used to place traps, monsters or bosses. A group of heroes enters the dungeon and your task is to kill them or let them flee before they enter the final boss room. Otherwise you have to use your boss to fight them off before your hitpoints hit zero.

Your boss has a skill tree, but also the individual monsters you can place in rooms can level up and get tired so you have to manage the roster. This is all done very user friendly with help from a very clean and responsive UI and game design. There is a constant gameflow, that is addictive as well and fast paced for a turn-based game. But never action paced so you can play as fast or slow as you want.

The pixel art is very well done. The backgrounds are full screen images with moving parts that responds to special effects and fighting combo's, the diversity is huge and themed in many different settings. And even the monsters, traps and effects on hit or death are very well integrated with the background landscapes so they don't feel static.

Not only the main mechanism is original, but the choices, themed monster sets are highly original. Bone bulls, Marionette skeletons and chainsaw traps that cause bleeding effects. It's all there. And they slowly unlock after every successful encounter so you keep playing to discover them. It's great for the one more turn feeling.

The individual game sessions can be played with 15 minutes, but the maps are setup with 52 generated dungeons each, and all of them has around six or seven rooms so you can play for hours to unlock eventually a new boss or a new position on the main map. The campaign map. And every of the three main bosses has their own campaign map. High replay value for money. In my 14 hours playtime at the moment of writing I only entered act 3 of the first main campaign.

A very good entry in the genre that has an ideal mix between not being too casual and not overwhelmingly complex. There is just nothing to complain about this title.

The strategic part is mostly placement of the monsters in the rooms and keep attention to the monster skills and heroes weaknesses while placing them. You get better as you learn about stacking bleeding and poison effects and many others, and when you think it's getting too easy you can set some difficulty options with sliders before you start a new world. For example heroes difficulty, game length and amount of gold you find in game to buy, heal or upgrade monsters and traps.

It all fits together and works fine for me. I don't do reviews that often lately since I'm very busy with real life, but this one deserves a good one! It's easy to get into, of high quality, I did not encounter a single issue in my play sessions and all authentic. No copy pasted assets here. Well done!

Nominated for Labor of Love award.

The first time I read about this game, many years ago, I was obsessed by the promotion on the publishers website directly.
Randomly generated alien worlds combined with RPG and rogue elements and the knowledge you can play as long as you live without playing the same game twice. Ideal combination.

But the game was offered only at an obscure website of a company that didn't felt the urge in 2020 to develop a user friendly website, not offering their games at Steam or any other client, set a ridiculous price tag for the game of around 40 dollar.

Anyway I was so tempted to play the game that I bought it and over the years I earned back this money in terms of time vs value. A lot.

The game is constantly surprising, always different in atmosphere, has many items and monsters, has a progression system that feels rewarding, plays like an authentic rogue like game where every step counts and dead is always on the corner.
Both in landing on alien planets and flying around them. Diplomatic and crew options are included as well.

Short review I wrote for TBT group on Steam:

“A nostalgic gem returns with fresh art, modern UI, improved algorithms and a world of infinite possibilities. Explore planets and space stations before falling oxygen levels lead to sickness or death.”

So what actually happened is that the developer not only got his game back from the publisher after many years, added some Steam functionality and made a quick cash grab over it. No no. Not at all.

He added the game to Steam at day one full with new features, easier to use UI, improved information, better algorithms, improved UI graphics, custom key rebinds, new resolution options and a lot more.
And after release he's still updating the game on a frequent base (I guess it's weekly atm) with new mechanism and even complete new features like transforming landscape and missile objects to name just one.

But not only that, he contacted the artist again and he did a complete repaint of the textures and objects in the game.
A big risk since the game has a huge fan community who is used to the old graphics. But it's done so well and with respect to the historical artwork of the game that everyone loves it. I like it as well. It's fresh and authentic at the same time. A bit more colorful and that's good on those dark times at our own planet.

In short: It's a complete game played many years by thousands of players. It's a complete game with a lot of extra's. It's a complete game that is updated frequently. It's a game that's still in EA haha. So what to expect when a complete, complete, complete game isn't EA any longer and will be released??

It's a game I probably come back to every once in a while as long their exist devices to play it on.
The dev probably develop this game till he change Earth life to after life.

A real labor of Love it is. I'm looking forward to what is next.
(btw also check this devs other titles, they all have their own charm).