The game is good, you have to create biome, add animals, stones or plants and have synergies, which is hard to understand at start, but after some time become clearer. You have human to satisfy and ages with different scenario that you can choose from (make more food, ensure all the cities are equal, ...) Which is funny. The game is quite relax and chilling, you rarely have time pressure, but you have a limit amount of action before ending the age, so choose wisely in harder level. However It's keep bugging and bugging again, the game stop react once I try to pass age. Maybe I have something wrong, I don't know, but sometimes I need to restart 3-4 times before I can finally pass the age. Now on my last try (pyramid) it cannot do anything, so I can't progress further. It's seem to be an old bug, and possibly it is fixed in newer version? I have the offline 3.8.1 installer.
The game is quite casual, not punishing if you make any error. Enough content to decorate your restaurant, but some weird things, like wall don't really matter, for instance for the toilets, which works very fine in the open. You can do very small things like Izakaya with 3 seats or massive restaurant with >100 customers. Lack of content, not that much scenario, employee have 3 stats. Nice to relax an evening where no reflexion is needed, just making things beautiful for self, not for the game.
I buyed this game on itch.io. It is basically a roguelite with permadeath, with dice-building and deck-building mechanics, which differs a lot from card-deck building. There are on the market very few dice-building games, which is a nice refreshing form of the genre. Runs last 1,5-3 hours if I properly remember Here you draw some dice from a bag (deck building), roll them, and apply the effect in the order and target you see appropriate. However, you can change the face of the dice later in the game (dice building). You don't like the dice face with penalty? replace it with a group attack or an healing action, your decision. Also here, what damages your enemy heals you, and the other way around, so you have some interesting combinations. There are 6 classes which plays very, very, differently. You usually cannot mixes the advantage of one class into another. The lore is okay, what is interesting is that there is some kind of corruption around which turns things into monster, and that when you die, you become a monster yourself, though no impact in the later game. And you will fight corrupted version of the heroes in harder mode. Music and graphics are nice. The minus is that you have to unlock every step of difficulty by beating the previous one. In some way it is thought as "you don't do what you are not able to do", but when you re-install the game you have again to unlock everything, which is boring. Don't expect to do 500 hours here, but do a run beetween other games from time to time, and you will be smiten by the deepness of this one. Don't do if you don't like roguelite, expect a twist story, or if you hate when the randomness kick your butt. This happens, but if it really kills you, then you failed strategic decision before. Do if you like fine games mechanics, like in complex board games.
Good game based loosely on Age of Empire I, with its own ideas and impreovement. For instance, tech management: You start as a generic bland tribe, and then you decide to become a specific civilization (Egyptians, ...), when you reach the age. Either annihilitation or Wonder victory, but you can also accidentally loose by starving, which happen way easier if you don't balance your economy. And also a "Horde" game where you fight growing waves of invaders. Well the problem, is that, considering for a very small team, they managed to implement a full RTS, which the mechanics can challenge way bigger RTS, the energy hast to be cut somewhere else, meaning there are very solo few missions, and nothing more than 4 players/AI on the biggest map (it have co-op tho. And only 3 civilization. And the AI is not very challenging once you have understood. In the state I will recommend it for a nice cozy afternoon, or to play with a friend. A bit of polishing and content could be better than some big RTS around. For instance, I had a mission with a timer which does not trigger, and I had to quit and restart the game to do it. I hope there will be a DLC.
If you're the kind of person which first choose a game in normal, and then increase the difficulty, here you can't. I recommend really to choose not normal if you're used to game slightly challenging, no need to be hardcore gamer. On the game itself, good concept, mitigated realisation. The planning walk and hike is very nice, with anticipation on your ressources. Basically, if you go straight, it's maybe faster but you will loose way more energy, as if you plan an alternative route with less climbing difference. The level and XP system may sometimes trigger a run to side event to collect XP and items instead of focusing on the best route, because a leveled character is way stronger than a basic one. The story is average. I enjoyed getting lost by night in a storm and walking in the wrong direction, because everything in the screen was dark. I was disappointed that a alledly deadly avalanche is like "oh you lost 10% of HP". Level are different in the sense they challenge one or two ressources more than the other, and different events, but no new mechanics. Characters when leveled up are weirdly strong (I need oxygen, let build a bottle from scratch, but very different. The terrain is at start very hard to read, but with a few hours of play you quickly recognize a route in middle of dangerous tile. I whish there was some kind of "endless up to your death" mode, with level one after another. It is a good change to dungeons and space for a turn based roge-lite. The mountain can kill you (at higher level) if you don't pay attention. And that's the good in it.
Well, the main points of the game are: * Talk to people get quest * click on some objects/ressources (hidden in the scenery) to collect them (collect mushrooms, ...) * do some trade to get some objects/ressources you need (exchange x mushrooms to get x gold so you can buy a weapon) * do some action by spending objects/ressources to solve a quest and/or get other ressources (spend X hearth and have a weapon to kill a monster) In addition, you have some cute old school graphics with globally greeny fairy scenery, relaxing and not oppressing, even the goblins are somehow cute. About the story, it is bland and very family friendly, no big twist, no dark or horrific moment, some bad guys dies but no good guys, no marvel movie jokes (thanks god), nothing which will give a kid a bad moment, enough to have some nice dream of a small isometric kingdom. If the ressources trade part was not so tedious, I would have said this is recommended for 5 years old, but sometimes the economy system can block you hardly, and also there is no questlog, so you can quickly forget were you are if you are not playing the game in a single run, so maybe 8 years old (I personnaly played C&C and Warcraft II at this age). Or maybe it is good for you too, when you are in the plane, or had an hard stressing day. Do not expect something awesome here, it is polished, relaxing, no surprise game. And this is why it is good in this category.
Lakeburg legacy is basically a small management game where you have to ensure that your villager are happy and manage to date and love each other. For the economy part, although not fully clear, it is simple, you have ressources (wood, vegetable, socks, ...) that you produce to cover both your consumption needs and your needs for purchasing bulding/upgrades. Some worker are more efficient at some task than some others because of their stats, and they progress. For the live/love management, your peeps have some taste they use for dating, where YOU have to check the peeps talk about the right thing to create a couple. In addition, the peeps will develop relations (romance, rival, ...) with others, which may influence their work, and may lead to some scene where for instance one offer the other to quit is partner to form a new couple. In addition, the villager receive properties (sick, loss of faith, ...) which influence their working and social stats. Lovers may get some kids which you can train for their adult time. And people die, and are to be replaced. This social part is based on a good idea in itself, however, it is wuickly overcomplicated when you have 50+ peeps, and YOU have to organize all the single dates and replacement. And the UI slightly helps you, but really needs improvement in readibility, no way to sort your worker by stats for instance when you need to replace your deceased thief. In addition to this there are some weird tweak issue, for instance with the faith: * Either you don't care, and some random villager will lose permanently lose stats * Either you keep in check (what the game make you think is the right choice) with your brothel, and as a side effect several villager will lose permanently intelligence, or you manually bug exploit by emptying your brothel once in a year * Either you do church which are not as efficient as the brothel, leading to the first situation In it current state it is not bad for a short game once every 6 month.
I buyed this game on itch.io because it was the only way to get it DRM free at the time. It was long time I was looking for a RPG with use of comic stripes, or even thought of making one for a game jam, and so my expectations for Wildermyth were high, and I was not disappointed. What you will find in this game: * comic strip style dialogs and story sequence * half procedural campaigns (I insist on the plural): you have a main story (fight against the cultist) and side stories with single event (will you pillage this old grave?) or multiple event (a friend of one of your character passed away, the character have to mourn) * a surprising solid writing considering the level of procedurality * re-use of your favorite character from a campaign to another * event which will help feel the character development (a character may get a tree-pet from a tree giant, another get a crow head for laughing at a weird prophet) * an overworld with some taking over by some monster progress * tactical RPG fight (like shadowrun returns or X-Com) * half-random level-up from 3 classes (you have to choose from 3-4 skills at each level up), meaning build from a same class vary * sad moments when a character die, but well integrated death mechanic * the possibility to play with up to 5 player, with each taking decision for the choices related to his character. And it is old school IP-Adress, so no platform limitation, but maybe headache with old school firewall/version. What you will NOT find in this game: * hardcore difficulty from the fight (if you like challenge, don't be afraid to raise the difficulty to max or one lower) * story defined playable character. However they have their own personnality * high tech graphics (the characters don't move hands or legs, but you have to see it as a statical comic picture) * lots of music (I think there is maybe less than 6 tracks in the game) * complexes stories with conspiracy and betrayal twist I personally recommend, but not to anyone.
I have read a lot of review comparing this game to settlers & age of empires. Settlers: Similarity: cute villager doing their job, map divided in regions, villager task Different: no complex economy (no ressource transformation), no logistics (common ressource pool) Age of empires: Similarity: send your villagers collect food & wood, and later stone & metal, build buildings, assign worker, different clans with common basis and slight or big differences on specific points Different: few units types and small armies, building limits. Actually, nobody explained that he emphasis of this game is building & worker placement, like in several board games. You have a limited amount of building slot per region, and some regions have specific ressources (stone, fish, ...), you need to expand to get new regions for new buildings. You also have a certain amount of worker available at some point, and you can re-assign them to task according to your current need: You have too much wood? let's convert your woodcutter into miner or warrior. In addition to this, you have some ressources (food, happiness, ...) which are critical for the stability of your village, and some other which helps to improve (metal, science...). In the case you under-evaluated your needs, or some event happens, you can be short on a vital ressources, and all your economy crash down: did not plan enough food for winter => people are unhappy and less productive, and could also hunger and are even less productive or die. No hardcore survival game here, but it happens sometimes and it is fun. Oh, the winter, an interesting game feature. Few strategy games included interesting cycle management (day/night by warcraft 3 meh). Here you have once a year (12 minutes) 3 month of winter in which your consumption of food and wood increase drastically, and your army attack capacity drop down. Last point, the games are usually 45-75 minutes, but you do not feel under time pressure for micro management or whatever.
If you are looking for something complex/challenging in term of fight, story, puzzle or crafting, do not buy it. To put in short, this is a light RPG, for beginner people, or for people who just want to have a easy game. Considering I have seen the review, I have set the setting to hard or very hard, and there is no big challenge. But, I enjoyed it anyway, Because: - The ambiance is good (remind me of LBA2 in some way) - Gameplay is easy to master - Story is ok and easy to follow (no "wait who is is this guy?"), even some few originality - It is light hearted - Puzzle never requested to go and check on internet, managed to find alone the solution - There is a bit of crafting (potions or arrows) but it is not too invasive - it is 10-12h long - you can pause anytime I will not recommend this if you are looking for diablo 12 or divinity OS 5, but if you look for something easy, or somewhat to recommend to some friends which are not nerds or new to video game, this is a good game.
