Recent reviews by Klokinator

I've only played a little bit of VA, but it's pretty alright so far. My biggest complaint are simple UI/control issues. They're the sorts of things that can be fixed easily, and I've already passed my feedback on to the developers in their discord.

Games in this little niche genre are vanishingly rare. I really like the ability to attach custom UI to the ships, and watch them battle it out auto-battler style. So far, this game has a lot of promise and I look forward to seeing what it becomes.

I cannot believe how good Slay the Minotaur is. If you judged this game by its number of reviews, you'd assume it was just some crappy knockoff indie game with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanics and graphics or something.

But it's not.

StM is a fantastic roguelike game with NO permanent progression, which makes it a true Roguielike. You enter a labyrinth with the same basic abilities of a crappy basic sword and a dodge roll and a weak little jump every time. Your starting location is always the same. The items you find will be a bit randomized, but there are preset locations where you can get some powerful items in this huge sprawling Labyrinth if you know where to look.

A few examples:
- Poseidon's Trident launches a burst of water that one-shots basic enemies. Very strong.
- Zeus's Trident launches a bolt of lightning.
- Demeter's Harvest replaces your dodge roll with a heal-over-time effect
etc...

The only equipment you can wear is a weapon and a helmet. No body armor or other such items. I kinda wisah we had more variety, but these two items prove to add enough variety to the formula to add tons of replayability. I only just now, after 17 hours, got my first victory over the Minotaur final boss with an A-rank. It was exhilirating learning all the nuances of the game in my desire to crush it. I could become even better over time and I may even do that, as I've become hopelessly addicted to the cycle of loading up the game and trying to kill that Minotaur faster and faster while taking fewer and fewer hits. Maybe one of these days I'll get a perfect victory!

Genuinely such a good game. Worth a buy at full price! It's only $5 so get it!

Edit: Note that the dev just added Random mode recently, which makes the Labyrinth's items way more variable. The Labyrinth itself is preset in design though, so the hallways won't move around or anything.

I put over 100 hours into MG1, and I've played a bit of MG2's beta release before it went live here.

Now that I can play the full game, I'm gonna give it my (at the moment) tentative thumbs up. Here's why.

1. The enemy AI is so much smarter than MG1 it's insane. Every enemy has a rating at the bottom right of their stat screen from 0% to 100%. Enemies at 0% are like dumb toddlers that run into walls. Enemies at 100% are like Grand Admiral Thrawn outwitting Luke Skywalker by seemingly peering into the future. I really feel like a chess noob playing against a grandmaster when the lategame 100% AI enemies come rolling in.
2. MG2 is a big step up from MG1 in a lot of small but important ways, such as the types of random events you encounter (which feel WAY better and more fun to pick from the options) and the equipment diversity / end-of-battle rewards. The way you build characters is a lot more fun in this game, because when you level up you can sometimes get to pick from one of three passives rather than simply getting one assigned and hoping it wasn't crap. You can even skip them if they hurt your character, but they almost never do.

But MG2 is a step down from MG1 in a single crucial way. The progression layer of the game is worse.

In MG1, you had a 'home base' screen where you could hire new gladiators, visit the shop, and equip your people. Then you would choose to go to the Arena and pick from one of three fights. The fights told you exactly what you were in store for, and you could see what rewards you would get. After the fight ended, you would get a fresh new batch of gladiators you could hire and the store would restock.

Good stuff.

But in MG2, you play on a Slay the Spire-like map. You progress upward, one node at a time.

- You can't see what the enemy nodes will give you, so you don't know what rewards you'll obtain or what enemies you will face.
- The shops only give a vague indication of what's inside via showing you 3 of four icons. If you need to recruit more gladiators but no shops spawn with them, you can end up in the final act with a team that isn't even full.

This is basically the only real flaw I've identified. I don't like the big downgrade to the progression layer, and I made a suggestion to the dev on how to fix it. It's pretty simple: Just copy Vault of the Void's map layer and show the player what every node does. You should know what enemies will spawn, what equipment they'll have, and at least vaguely what additional challenges you can opt into as well as what rewards you'll obtain.

If that gets added, this becomes a potential GOTY for me. I mean, it'll have to compete with Streets of Rogue 2, but that game isn't out yet. Who knows how it will play?

Man. I don't want to leave this negative review, but here I am. I sort of like this game. I have one BIG reason why I like it. But I have a hundred small reasons and a few mid-sized reasons why I don't.

So, let's start with the thing I like. In fact, it's the thing I love. This game has one of the best character creation choices on game start, and the best level up system in a roguelike that I have played in my life, and I have played a lot of them. Character creation is a lot of fun. Each species plays completely differently from the others, and each species has a great variety of playstyles with the classes you can choose. If you want a pure warrior, mage, rogue, archer, you've got it. If you want a hybrid, you've got it.

But it's the leveling system I really enjoy. When you level, your stats all go up a large predetermined amount depending on your species and class. For example, a Troll Warrior will get a bunch of HP, CON, STR, etc. You also get to pick from one of four minor boons, ranging from +1 to STR or CON, to maybe +2 (there are sometimes higher rarity boons you can get here that are +2 or even +3 to a stat) as well as a chunk of gold, maybe a couple of mutation potions, it's your choice, and it's semi-random. Personally, I love taking double mutation potion or +2 Fate Points on a level.

After you pick a boon, you then get to pick one of three (or four, if you're a human!) powers. These can be passive or active skills, like a heal that charges over time and can restore a fat chunk of your life, a massive damage attack, or passive abilities that give a big boost to your resistances and other such things.

I love the level up system. It beats the hell out of a skill tree, allows me to improvise, but never feels hollow or BS. You can get any random ability from a huge pool of species and class abilities, and almost all of them feel good and viable. Sometimes you're wielding a strong 2H weapon, but you only get offered 1H options or a shield/ranged option. That kind of sucks, but you can just switch to something more appropriate!

...

Well. That's it. That's about all the good I have to say about Rogue Empire.

The character creation is great. The leveling up is great.

...Now for the bad stuff.

- The maps are boring, repetitive, and samey.
- The enemies are boring, repetitive, and samey.
- The equipment is boring, repetitive, and samey. You can find legendary items sometimes, but it never feels impactful. You can play for two hours and get 20 levels deep into the challenge dungeon and the items appearing don't feel all that much stronger than those from level 2 and 3.
- Enemies go from dying in one hit in the early game to taking FOREVER to kill in the mid and especially end game. If you get some ability that deals 4x damage, it goes from a powerful ability to snipe elites and bosses to an ability you have to spam 2+ times to kill one random mook in the hallway. God forbid you NORMAL attack enemies. You'll need all day to kill a half dozen of them!

I hate the UI in this game. It's hideous. It's huge, clunky, and hurt my eyes. It feels kind of plastic, too. Like it's just a bunch of JPEGs smashed together, or as if it was made for a sideways phone screen.

The UX isn't great either. It's easy to misclick enemies, to accidentally wait in place instead of running away, etc. For some reason, the UI is HUGE but if you right click on terrain, some teeeeeeny little buttons and words pop up.

The game allows you to set higher frame rates. This is good.
But the game CHUGS on the most random stuff. For example, if you go to the Controls screen, the game LAGS when you try typing in a word to search, such as 'auto' for auto-attack. The game will lag for 3-4 seconds while it searches the 'massive' list of, like... 30 commands. Why the hell does the control menu chug like a Bethesda title? What lack of optimizations are going on under the hood?

In conclusion, I wish this game was better. I could see myself sinking time into a game like TOME, DCSS, or some other roguelike if they incorporated the character creation and level up system from Rogue Empire. It's a shame such a great system is wasted on a game with such middling gameplay.

Edit: You can join the game's Discord here: https://discord.gg/PtUdDzcnJZ

I haven't been following PoA for a long time. I'm not a diehard supporter, having only heard of it two weeks ago, but it has SWALLOWED my BRAIN. SEND HELP. I can't stop thinking about PoA. I can't stop optimizing my builds. So many classes! So many cultures! So many gods, and skills, and weapons, and prestige classes, and combinations, AAAAAA!

PoA is almost like a beautiful response to games in the AAA space. So many games are all about vomiting story and exposition and long cutscenes and other bullspit at the player, but PoA says NO. "You are a nomad. There is a flood. You are trying to outrun it. Now move from left to right on this world map and kill a morbillion enemies to beat the final boss to save the world or something! Who cares? Make a dude/dudette and bash some heads!"

The game is far from complete, with the lead dev Ulfsire (You'll hear his name a lot) having posted all sorts of plans for what to add in the future. Even so, what is currently in the Steam EA is already more than good enough to give you tens of hours of fun replayability as you try to perfect your builds and climb the difficulty ascensions. It was good in the demo, and I still haven't had time to swallow the HUGE amount of additions he made to the EA release.

Cultures, classes, and gods in the demo:
https://i.imgur.com/fktaegL.png

Cultures, classes, and gods in Steam Early Access:
https://i.imgur.com/S4XZVso.png

Skills in the demo:
https://i.imgur.com/s8eXtj5.png

Skills in Early Access:
https://i.imgur.com/FtDEPSm.png

He also added a bunch of new weapons and items, a few Prestige classes for when you hit a certain number of skill points assigned to specific nodes...

This game is all about customization. You build a starting character, assign stats to them, equip weapons and armor, and try to build a powerful synergy that will ultimately win a run. A typical run usually takes me about 40 minutes, so it's not a big time commitment. If you want a quick game you can play on your lunch break, this feels perfect. You can also save a run and close the game, then reload it to get right back to the monster destruction.

The game isn't perfect. I've already brought a lot of balancing concerns to Ulfsire's attention, and he will be working on adding lots of new features and other such things to address these concerns. In no particular order:

- Runs can be a bit RNG-based, especially at higher ascension difficulties. If you need a core item to get your build working, but you don't get it early, you'll die in the first elite fight.
- Is your character weak to a certain element type, like Astral? Too bad! Here's a forced Astral node where all the enemies deal +100% damage to you!
- Did you build your damage around fire or some other specific element? Here's a node where all the enemies have 90% fire resistance. Whoops!

Most of the time, if you're going to die, you'll die early before your build takes off and you get your key items. This is always frustrating, but at the same time, it's only 5-10 minutes lost and you can restart a character and try again quite easily. In time, these balance issues will be addressed.

PoA is not perfect, but it really stands out in a sea of AAA garbage and steam shovelware/mediocrity. For a first time developer, this is a stellar game you won't regret buying. And it's only $10! What a steal! I'd have paid $15 for it, easily!

If you want to get more good games out in the world, SUPPORT GOOD DEVS! Don't complain about another failed Star Wars game if you're not actively looking for and buying the good stuff!

I'm a long time Deadpan enjoyer. I have 150 hours klokked in for their previous title, one of the best platformer roguelites in existence, and certainly my most favorite. Caveblazers is fantastic.

I like Wildfrost a lot. But I don't like Wildfrost in its current state. This review is temporarily negative until the issues I bring up get addressed. A negative review should indicate the game is not enjoyable in its current state. It should not mean the game is bad, or garbage. The issues in Wildfrost are fixable, but that does not mean they WILL be fixed. So until they are, this review will remain negative.

My issue with the game is not its difficulty. My issue is that it quickly becomes boring, RNG driven, and unfun. When I play Slay the Spire or other deckbuilders, I feel that I am building a deck. You know. Deckbuilding. In a deckbuilder.

In Wildfrost, this is not the case. Let me give you a series of examples as to how a typical run will play out.

First off, when you start any run, you are given a choice of three randomly GENERATED Leaders. By this, I mean that the game does not have X number of premade Leaders it pulls from randomly, but instead, it builds three random Leaders from some unknown combination of traits.

The three Leaders you are offered, out of all the runs I've seen, are 90% trash. You cannot reroll them unless you start a run and immediately end it. You are either offered three very boring and uninteresting leaders, or one of them will clearly be better than the other two. Here's an example of the latter:
https://i.imgur.com/pFGT17y.png

In the above example, Junk is the only good leader here. He smacks back, deals a little bit of damage, and also applies Snow. You can try to synergize him with other characters and items. (Note that I said TRY. This will become relevant later.)

The other two Leaders have serious issues. Snudder deals a lot of damage, but he's aimless, which means he attacks one of the enemies in his 'row' at random. This means he'll be annoying to aim and predict. Plus a 5 turn activation cooldown is slow, and his 6 HP makes him extremely fragile. If your leader dies, your run ends. Therefore you should NEVER pick a low HP leader.
Oakbark is the same in that regard. She only gets a benefit if she kills an enemy, and with her base 3 attack, it'll be hard to funnel kills to her. Her ability grants her one instance of full damage resistance if she kills an enemy, implying she should be a Tank, but since she only has 6 HP, she will make for a poor tank.

When you pick a Leader, you are given a premade, possibly _slightly_ randomized starting deck. I have no idea what that deck will be, since I'm fairly new to the game and don't quite grasp which factions have which decks. Either way, the decks are not a factor for picking the Leader when you're new to the game, as you won't know what the decks are.
SUGGESTION: Let players pick a starting deck pack, OR let them see what deck the leader will start with.

...

After you have picked your starting Leader, you get to pick a starting Pet. If the pet dies, they will be readded to your deck in the next fight, but they will have half HP. In the beginning of the game, this is NOT actually a choice. You get Snoof, and nobody else. I've put 5 hours into the game and only unlocked Booshu, who is just... he's terrible. Extremely long cooldown, weak damage, poor HP, and the fact he 'restores' instead of 'adds' HP means his ability has no effect on allies at full health.
https://i.imgur.com/fOCq4N8.png

So that's it. Those are your two starting choices. A usually weak and ineffective boring Leader, and a starting Pet that is either mediocre or outright terrible.

Once you start the game, you have to fight a mandatory Basic Battle at the start of every run. In STS, you get to make an interesting choice about which of the X number of starting paths you'll take, all of which branch out toward the first boss. But in Wildfrost, that choice is made for you.
https://i.imgur.com/Ubbd640.png

I really hate this starting battle. It's mandatory, it always plays out exactly the same way, it's boring. In STS you have many different starting fights, like the Louses, the Jaw-worm, etc. There's a pool of 'easy fights'. But in Wildfrost, the first battle is a very long slog that will take upwards of five minutes. You can also lose to it very easily if you are not actively paying attention.

In fact, while writing this review, my Snoof died, so that means he's going to suck for the next fight. Off to a great start... even a single mistake will quickly compound in your Wildfrost runs.
https://i.imgur.com/Xgj3pOE.jpeg

After you beat the first fight, you get your first real decision point in the game. The Leaders weren't really choices; they were damage mitigation. You try to pick the least bad of the three options, because Leaders are boring. But once you get to a path split, you get to finally pick an option for what to do next.
https://i.imgur.com/lzlx9bc.png

Here, we have two branching paths. The top path is:
1 of 3 Item Cards
50-70 gold.

The bottom path is:
1 Completely random Charm (Not 1 of 3, you have no influence over it and you can very easily get a useless charm)
1 Companion character (If a companion dies in battle, they come back in the next battle at half HP and weakened.)

And finally, the two paths connect, giving you 1 Companion, and then the next Fight.

In addition to the options presented, you COULD also get...
- Delete up to two cards from your deck for free
- Visit a Shop, where you can pick from 4 cards shown at random (1 of which is always 50% off), 1 random Charm for 50 gold (The price increases by 20 gold if you buy the Charm and try to but another Charm afterward), as well as a Crown for 80 gold, which lets you start battles with additional characters or items in play.

Here is the problem with this setup, which repeats over and over until you finally face the last boss: If you are given a 'choice' between two options that don't do much for you (You have a BUNCH of gold but no Shop is offered, for example) then you are going to walk into the next fight much weaker than you did the last fight. And keep in mind, fights get more and more difficult FAST.

Wildfrost does not give you enough options. In the above map example (https://i.imgur.com/lzlx9bc.png) taking either path is 50% RNG-reliant.
- In the top path, I will get a sum of gold I cannot spend before this fight. That means, for this next battle, I will be crippling myself by only actually getting two ways to improve my deck.
- In the bottom path, I have to pray the random Charm offered to me is useful. Let me tell you, I've obtained so many useless Charms that don't synergize or improve my deck in the last ten runs that I've truly grown to detest the Charm system.
Only the Companion and Item nodes offer me an actual 1 of 3 choice. And they might also not be good. PLUS, you cannot skip to take a companion/item if the three choices offered actively work against your deck's synergy. You can't reroll them, either!

Suggestions for improving the map:
1. Add a third random path the player can take after each fight.
2. Instead of two unique nodes per path, make it 3 unique nodes.
3. Change Shops so that there is ALWAYS a shop offered before each fight. There should be three paths with three unique nodes that converge onto a final 4th node that is always a shop.
4. The gold given by Gold nodes is not enough. By taking a Gold node, you are weakening yourself before a fight in the hopes of finding a future Shop that will make you stronger. But if the Shop's offerings are bad, your run is basically over. TL:DR, add more Gold to these nodes.
5. Allow players to reroll and skip companions/items. Even if it costs like one point of a unique currency per run, or some of your gold. Take a cue from Vampire Survivors here, which is much more player-friendly in this regard.

These changes should improve the game dramatically.

God tier game. Just leaving a review because I absolutely should.

Okay. I'm going to tell you right now. This game, like Redbeak's previous game, is tons of fun, simple to understand, and very unique in its execution. Absolutely worth a buy.

BUT.

Boy do I wish it had speed-up options. Characters talk slowly, animations are slow, the intro to each 'battle' is slow. To Redbeak, please add a speedup function, I beg of you. It's like playing Slay the Spire without fast mode. I can't take it for long!
UPDATE: Speedup options added! The game plays way faster now!

A 'restart battle' button would also be great.
UPDATE: Battle restart added!


Update after several hours: Still recommended! Very fun game and I'm really enjoying myself. However, I have a lot of criticisms mostly involving minor UI flaws that need addressing.

- Rotating rooms isn't snappy. You rotate them pixel by pixel, even though there are only four valid positions. This needs to change to a snap-rotation with a single button press.
UPDATE: There's a 90-degree rotate option in the options menu, I just overlooked it.

- Rooms should preview-snap into place when you're preparing to place them down.

- Sabotage weapons should clearly show the rooms they will or might affect. Right now, the laser sight can look like it's going to hit an enemy's room, but come up three pixels short.

- It's also somewhat hard to tell at certain points which rooms belong to which players, perhaps all room clusters should have a highlighted border going around them relating to their owner? You can hover over the other players' names to highlight their stuff but that can feel a bit tricky. Also maybe hovering your mouse over any individual room for a second will pop up the owner's name?

One really cool feature of this game: If you buy a copy, you can share custom games to anyone on your Steam friend's list, even people who don't own it! A great way to get people to try it out before they buy it!

So far, a solid 8/10 game and very unique in its premise! I feel spoiled. This is the second unique game I've bought this month, including Backpack Hero!

You know. I love games like this. The problem is, there are many other 'games like this' that do what Endless Sky does, but better.
Here's your first tip: Just play Starsector. It's very similar to Endless Sky, but it's actually good.
In Starsector, you start with a tiny convoy of ships, or perhaps even only one ship, depending on what you choose. You have the option of immediately doing many different sorts of things to earn money, the galaxy is fun to explore, and the systems you enter don't all feel exactly the same.
In Endless Sky, you start with one of three basic and boring ships. Picking the fighter-type ship is stupid because you will lose every engagement against the tiniest of ships, so why even bother? Obviously you should pick the crew transport or the cargo hauler and just do those very basic missions.

The combat in Endless Sky is mind-numbingly boring. I actually enjoy outfitting my ships, that is fun enough, but everything feels slow, sluggish, and it takes HOURS to get any sort of decent fleet going.

Meanwhile, over in Starsector, you can work your way up to terraforming and owning planets. You can fight off pirate raids and harvest their ships for scrap or make them your own. You can do some of that in Endless Sky, but it's far hollower.

Slow. Plodding. Boring. Lacking Features.

If these are the words that describe your ideal spaceship game, Endless Sky will probably be fine with you. I mean sure, it's FREE, but wouldn't you rather just pay $15 and get a far, FAR better space sim experience?

Skip Endless Sky. Buy Starsector instead.

I consider there to be five core games in the 'huge expansive space simulator with loot collecting fun' video game genre.
1. Starsector.
2. Star Valor.
3. Approaching Infinity.
4. Star Trader: Frontiers
5. Endless Sky.

All of these games feature, to varying degrees, different emphasis on specific types of gameplay.

1. Lots of ships to choose from.
2. Lots of customization for those ships.
3. (Usually) Fleet Building.
4. Loot Collection, often with randomized stats or just a lot of neat loot in general.
5. Big expansive and often randomly-generated maps with lots of nodes to visit.
6. Skill growth, leveling up, or some sort of RPG system.
7. Diplomacy, often in a very general sense. If you're big on space diplomacy, consider Star Traders especially as it's the best in this category.
8. Crafting things!
9. COMBAT!

Of the five above mentioned games, Star Valor is stellar in several categories.

-Ship Choices: Tons of ships to pick from, and while you do generally scale up to bigger and bigger ships in the endgame, you can also choose to pilot smaller and nimbler ships while leaving huge ships to your fleet officers instead.

-Customization: The way you upgrade your ships through the 'number of gear slots' per ship is a lot of fun. I always enjoy choosing whether to stack a crapload of shields, energy generation, engines, weapon rate of fire, or other such things.

-Fleet Building is a lot of fun in Star Valor. It didn't really exist much until 1.0, but now that it's here, it is SO much fun to build fleets. The only game that does fleet building better is Starsector. But even if it's only slightly-not-as-good, Star Valor is still a different experience and unique in its own right.

-Loot Collection: Loot in Star Valor isn't Diablo-style with random modifiers or anything, but there are tons of upgrade modules and different types of modules that you can equip on your ships to vastly alter their performance. It's super fun! The officers you recruit DO have randomized stats and bonuses, so they mostly count as the Diablo-style 'loot' in that respect.

-Big Maps: The galaxy-map layer in Star Valor is sort of like Starsector's map, but it's also a bit closer to Star Traders. Once you visit a map node, you end up in a star system with lots of randomly placed planets, space stations, asteroids, and other such things. I enjoy traversing the map, and seeing the leveled zones makes each new node a tense and exciting discovery!

-RPG System: Your main commander has three main skill trees to progress in. Honestly, I think this part of the game is only adequate. The stats you can level are diverse enough, but I feel that Starsector does a lot better in this regard. Heck, I even like Approaching Infinity more.

-Diplomacy: This system doesn't really exist in Star Valor. I think Starsector does a much better job, and Star Traders is clearly the frontrunner here.

-Crafting: This game has a REALLY fun crafting system. The weapon customization and how you can tweak stats and armaments is one of my favorite parts of playing it. You won't really start crafting until the midgame, after you've collected the best crafting resources, but when you do, it opens up a whole new dimension of play.

-COMBAT! Star Valor's combat is real-time, asteroids-style flying and shooting. It's fun! I think Starsector is superior here as well, but Star Valor has its own flavor and it's plenty of fun in its own right.



Overall, if I had to only pick one of the top five games to play, I'd pick Starsector. But Star Valor is not a chump, and it pulls its own weight. Why play just one game when you can play all five? Buy them all if you like this genre! You won't go wrong!