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(Review copy supplied by third party contact)


Clandestine should be held up as an example of "Games the world needs more of" in terms of original, creative ideas. It's a two player co-operative game that is highly asymetric, yet both parties are effectively co-dependent on each other to make the mission a success. When it goes right, and you have two players who know what they're doing, Clandestine is quite possibly one of the greatest spy thriller games around, even making allowances for the numerous faults. When it goes wrong, and it's mostly due to those faults, you'll be ripping your hair out and wishing that the developers, Logic Artists, had more of a budget.

In Single Player mode, where I spent the bulk of my time preparing the review, the game works just as well, allowing you to zip between the two viewpoints, as long as you plan your moves ahead of time, it becomes a game of cat and mouse, moving Katya into cover to allow Martin to work his magic in peace and quiet, before having Katya on the ground do her thing. If you're forced into panicked movements, then the illusion falls apart somewhat, because the game doesn't quite react so well to things happening at speed.


Without spoilering the story too much, the game focusses on the cold war, and the remnants of it, along with a secret department which has been formed to work out where leaks are coming from within the intelligence community. The plot itself is very much late nineties spy story stuff and the kind of thing you'd readily find in a nice thick book with a bullet and a rose on the front, usually with the authors name in big letters on the top. It's not quite Tom Clancy levels of crazy, but it does get pretty serpentine.

Less welcome is the late nineties level of voice acting and the late nineties level of animation quality. This is where the lack of budget begins to show, noticably. The game most definitely had lofty ambitions, and mechanically it does succeed to varying extents, but some of the animations are -painful- to watch, others are missing altogether, and as for the voice acting? I'll be kind and say "It's not quite World of Warcraft circa Cataclysm" but that's really not saying much for it. This brought me screaming back to the late nineties in all the wrong ways.

This also goes to some extent to the controls, which did have a nasty habit of glitching, there'd be occasions where they'd lock up or highlights would get lost in the mess of context sensitive information (such as picking up an item would be mixed in with mantling an object). Again, this all points to a game that quite simply didn't have -enough- money to fully achieve what it set out for itself. A very ambitious title, and when it comes together, if you squint your eyes, you can see the game it's trying to be, and that is a game that would set the standard for spy games to come, but it needed money, more of it.


Clandestine stands out to me as a diamond that never got fully polished. That's how it should be viewed as, it's a game that should be held up as something we need more of. If there's -ever- a sequel for it, one with a bigger budget, it'll be an amazing follow up, because the gaming world needs more games like Clandestine, games that change how we play, and view games. If however this is a one off project, then this Tiger will be a bit saddened, because in Clandestine lies a lot of unrealised potential, but as ever, it would need an almost Ubisoft like budget to make the reality match the concept it was trying to achieve.


It's a bold game, and a game that could have been something truly original. It is a game that does stand out from the crowd in that awkward hipster way, which is a damn good thing, but if you get into it, know that it's not a hundred percent polished, and that it's probably never going to be entirely smooth. There's a lot to love about a game that tries something different, and I can almost, almost forgive the flaws, but that's as a reviewer. For a consumer, for someone who will be paying hard money, that's a much tougher choice.

Verdict : Cautious Recommendation - If you're looking for something -different-, this might be it. But know that it does have it's share of rough edges. If you're unsure, wait for a price drop or sale.

Once upon a time there was a game called Kingdom Rush, it was popular, it was popular because as Tower Defences go it was polished, easy to get into and well balanced, whilst at the same time maintaining a solid, and interesting set of upgrades as well as a good set of unique twists that made the game genuinely great in it's own right. There's been other genuinely excellent Tower Defences as well (Defence Grid : The Awakening being the prime example), however, these are few and far between. Most of the time, you get "decent" attempts, or ones that are just forgettable...

... until now.

Take a bow Evil Defenders. Please, come forward onto the stage, and be showered with roses and cheers, for you are most definitely one of the greats, and deserve to be welcomed and feted. Now that's not going to be unreserved praise. There's a few things I will take up with you, but considering you get so much right, I think we can get along just famously. Evil Defenders doesn't do anything particularly new or novel, it doesn't break ground in any significant one (save for a minor twist, which is actually rather neat in it's own right), but what it does is take what exists, and it applies polish. It applies polish over and over, until there's this worn in lacquer that's almost, almost Blizzard worthy. At a price point that makes this a real bargain.


Now to be fair, the first impressions are going to have you sit back in the seat and make you wonder if the game really is all that. The intro video screams "Mobile game, Clash of Clans, Free To Play", it's got -those- kinds of vibes about it. The options menu is utterly bereft of anything bar a couple of sound sliders and a toggle for health bars over the tops of things (Really? That needs to be an option? If it was a choice between bars and numbers, that'd make sense at least...), still, you fire up the first map and then things begin to look up, there's a set of difficulties (some locked off) and a challenge mode.

Normal mode to begin with is merely the appetiser, it's generally pretty easy as long as you don't fall asleep at the wheel or make entirely dumb choices, as the tower positions are fixed all you need do is make the "correct" choices as to what goes where. However, there's another -four- difficulties after that, going all the way to inferno at the top which throws a marathon number of waves, comprised of advanced mobs from later maps and forcing you to adapt and improvise, taking lessons from much, much further in, and applying them to your earlier levels. Things begin to look up...

... and then you open up the upgrade tree.


Ohhhh lordie lordie. The upgrade tree is -massive-, not only does it branch like a massive set of snaking vines, along multiple paths, with individual paths for each tower and power type, as well as a utility tree for things like "Bonus bounties" from killed mobs. But you can level the upgrades iteratively, so buying the same upgrade multiple times improves the bonus it gives. This means setting up specialised builds is a thing (at least before the eventual maxing out of -everything- if you're OCD about minmaxing your towers).

The game goes from being this rather generic looking tower defence to being this amazingly polished and genuinely deep tower defence that offers real replayability and a serious flexibility in how you design your defences and how you guide your playstyle. The level of customisation as a result is absolutely incredible, not counting the sheer level of upgradability in game (each tower has three tiers of base upgrade, followed by their specialist three tiers depending on the path you pick). On top of this, each level has a landscape feature that may help or hinder you to some extent, learning how to use this to your advantage can be critical in helping stem the tide (the prime example is the oil river on the desert map that can be lit up to cause DOT fire damage).


There ARE complaints though. First, no endless mode. For me this is a minor issue, but one that should be noted nonetheless. Some people might care about it more than others. Secondly, the game can feel grindy at times, you will need an awful lot of souls to max out your upgrade trees, but again, that's only an issue you intend to minmax the whole lot. Finally, the game, whilst amazingly polished, doesn't do -much- to move things forward, but then this is one of those "reviewers" things, for most people this isn't even going to be a consideration. If you're looking to try something really -new-, this is something to bear in mind.

These are however, in case you've not already noticed, nits. Minor complaints, these are small hitches in an otherwise stellar presentation of Tower Defence, and easily one of the strongest TD's since the likes of Defence Grid and Kingdom Rush. At the price point it's pitched at, it's a very, very easy sell.

Verdict : Highly Recommended - Particularly to people looking to get into Tower Defence games AND to TD fans alike.

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!

Craft the World is for want of a better term "My first Dwarf Fortress". It's Dwarf Fortress made accessible to the market, and it's about time someone actually got around to -doing- this. Initially released in Early Access, this title has been something of a rough gem that has, over time steadily been sanded and milled into a shining diamond, just waiting to be plucked from the dark underdepths by grubby, stubby hands and long, curly beards.


Dwarf Fortress is a very "marmite" game, because in part it's one of those games that requires the kind of in depth understanding of all the systems and sub-systems that go into it that usually come along with multi year degree courses. Not so in Craft the World, no, whilst the Dwarves do exhibit elemental stupidity in buckets, much like their DF cousins, they are quite able to follow simple instructions and they are able to manage their tasks in a vaguely dwarfish manner. Those skilled in their jobs will prioritise things accordingly, and the dwarves with weapons will actually kill things, as opposed to stabbing themselves in the foot. There's none of this "Fey mood" malarky either, thank dieties. Instead you'll be dealing with nightfall bringing undead knocking at your door and ghosts who wreak havoc with your stockpiles.


Whilst the tech tree was "servicable" to begin with, now it's a monolithic thing that requires time and effort to unpick, with dwarves being forced to live in fairly basic digs with leafy beds before they are given homes suited to their dwarfly status. The game systems now support farming, fishing, and a full complement of other activities, so provided you can keep your dwarves alive, you can eventually have a busy, thriving little fortress, able to stand up to the worst that the world throws at you. Well, most of the time...

Throw in trading with the locals when you acquire precious gold coins, skill books which teach your dwarves such vital skills such as how to climb without plummeting to their doom and a simple RPG-lite system of skill building and you've a recipe for quite entertaining gameplay. It may not have the absolute depth of Dwarf Fortress, but it certainly will slake the thirst of anyone wanting to get -into- the DF genre, and in that, it serves as an excellent introduction.


The graphical style is well thought out, opting for a very cartoonish and well furnished design that uses sweeping colourful flourishes and a wide palette, ensuring that there's always something interesting going on, and that the dwarven holdings -look- the part. Furniture goes from being something that shames you to being something that shines. Enemies range from comical looking skeletons to nasty beholders and trolls and goblins, all well thought out and whilst not perhaps going to win awards for animation, they -do- look well designed and everything in the world is consistent.

The sound? Well. I'll be diplomatic. If I hear dwarves snoring one more time... *eyetwitch*


It's "My First Dwarf Fortress", and it's a very good place to start, there's been other efforts, and those have done pretty badly in comparison, this one however nails the mark, striking a good balance between being accessible to the newcomer yet offering enough of a challenge to keep experienced players at the whetstone long enough that they should feel suitably stretched out enough to consider graduating to the 'real' Dwarf Fortress, if that so pleases them.

Verdict : Recommended - Especially to fans of Dwarf Fortress, or to people looking to get into the DF genre.

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!

Sound of Drop - Fall into Poison, which I'll shorthand to Poison from here on out, is one of those rare VN's which I took a keen interest in long before the release, I tend to steer clear of VNs on account of them being pretty sugary affairs on the whole, and not my bag (I don't waifu, yo). Poison however is a horror VN, and much more path based, having echoes of the highly acclaimed 9 Doors series that featured on the NDS (which I was a big big fan of).

After much pondering and considering, I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and shelled out on Poison, because I felt it was worth a punt. The game touts a lot of bad endings compared to good ones, and it doesn't disappoint one bit. For four "good" endings, there's a sum of twenty seven "bad" ones. This is getting on for Long Live the Queen territory, and some of them are pretty brutal, others are downright creepy (we're talking Elven Lied levels of ick, whilst it's not overtly graphical, the descriptions allude to enough to put the idea in your head).


Protagonist Mayu is well written, played out as something of a weaker main character who over the course of the novel (depending on the path you take) becomes either strong as a team leader of sorts, or strong in herself, and depending on the choices you make, the paths -will- diverge pretty significantly. There's some pretty big storyline branches which lead towards the various ending options, which lend themselves well towards replayability, with the nice touch that you can skip at near lightspeed over passages you don't feel like re-reading if you're simply playing to discover a new ending that time around.

Her counterpart, Himeno, is immediately likeable, and there's a very clear sense that the friendship has the capacity to develop into something much deeper and more real depending on how the evening plays out in the aquarium. The stage sets up early to indicate that you'll be spending a lot of time together, only for the story to then switch directions back and forth, I won't spoiler much beyond this, because it's hard to explain without giving tons of the plot away, but suffice to say, you'll be confronted with Mayu facing some deeply difficult emotional decisions, and forcing her to be logical even when her heart is trying to make her pick up the idiot ball at times.

(side note, feel free to pick up said idiot ball when fishing for the bad endings, some of them are ... well... *shudder* )

The rest of the cast are minor part players, with the antagonists being somewhat tangential because of the way the plot is structured, but you'll come to -really- dislike at least one person (and the way they've been written, that's by design), another will in one path be quite likeable, and in another will probably have you wanting to strangle them through the monitor, and so on. Suffice to say, it's a good sign when the writing makes you want to root for characters and feel satisfied when the conclusion has been reached.


Particular merit goes to the sound and graphics, which are practically wallpaper worthy in many cases, the sound design too is of an absolutely excellent standard, with the music very clearly and beautifully conveying both emotion and tone all the way through the novel. This is a game where everything "fits", which is a rare treat. Considering how rarely I do these VNs, and so often I've been disappointed by the lack of quality production, it's been a treat seeing just how polished this particular one has been.

I -do- have one minor complaint though. Just one. The endings are gathered together in an unlocked grid for your perusal, however, that grid isn't clickable so you can't revisit them seperately. THAT is an annoyance, perhaps something that could be fixed, because it would be nice to revisit those endings (both good and bad) just out of curiosity, as well as being able to revisit areas of the story (there's a generous number of save slots as well as a quicksave option provided, so you can bookmark just about everywhere, thankfully).


I don't do VN's. This might be the only review for a VN I ever write, which should give you an idea of how much of an impression it's left on me. It's been such a departure from the norm for VNs, and with it's horror theme and unique take on things. Mechanically, it's a path based VN, and I'm sure that's not going to be new for anyone, but the high production values, the original setting, the quality writing, all add up to a quality product.

Verdict : Highly recommended - Especially to fans of Horror stories and Visual Novels

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!

Awe. It's an emotion one expresses at something that's hard to describe. That's actually a pretty accurate description for this little... thing. It's very cheap. So cheap that you'd be forgiven for thinking it was knocked together off the back of Unity Personal, and it probably was. However unlike most of those sad little products, this one is a diamond in a sea of very brown and stinky sewage. It's not particularly difficult, it's not particularly mechanically challenging, it's not going to blow you away with graphics.

... but it is going to chill you right out.


You start simply enough, with a slowly spinning planet, a mellow ambient track, and a set of coloured triangles you're supposed to hit. Create those combinations and you're rewarded with new assets to plop down, fill the coloured circles representing those assets and you'll get to move on to the next planet. Slowly and gently you'll end up moving towards more complex reactions requiring three steps, then four, and the chains will become obscured, so you'll have to explore the planet, testing the colours to see what reacts with what.

It becomes a mellow puzzle, without ever becoming overly challenging, and always offering you the chance to start again. It gives you a very gentle, exploratory, and relaxing experience where nothing you do is really wrong, and you have the chance to create planet designs of your own style, with each planet looking significantly different by virtue of the puzzle layouts from the last.


Married to this is a gentle, swirling ambient soundscape that never invades, never presses down on you, and will put you at ease with the game, clicking on the planet surfaces and dropping assets will result in soft chimes, and it's quite easy to set up melodic harmonies quite by accident when you're creating reactions. You wind up smiling as you're working your way through the planet as you hear these gentle, encouraging chimes as the planets become more and more colourful.


Considering the price point? This is a no brainer to recommend to people who are interested in relaxing puzzlers. It's not going to stretch the gray matter, but if you need something that's going to help you wind down after a hard day of gaming? This is the gaming equivalent of a glass of red wine.

Verdict : Recommended - Specifically to people in need of something relaxing.

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!

Time was spent on the headstart version


This hurts me. This really does. Neverwinter Nights has been around for a long time. A really, really long time, so long in fact there's persistent worlds that still exist to this day that are run by skilled, experienced DMs with running rulesets that you can join and over time become an integral part of the lore if you put the time and effort into. However, Neverwinter Nights -is- getting a bit long in the tooth, the tools were designed for the previous generation, so was the code. As you can imagine, code that's not maintained gets pretty rickety.

So when it was announced that there was to effectively be a "new" asynchronous DM / Co-op experience where people could gather round and a human Dungeon Master could author their own modules and parcel out rewards, experience, and create their own dungeons. People rubbed their hands in glee, this could well be the answer to the prayers that had been left unanswered since the fateful days of Neverwinter.

Sword Coast Legends does not answer those prayers on any level.


The game feels ... stodgy. I think that's the best description I've been able to coin for it to date. It's a bit like eating a very bland meal, made of very bland ingredients, that has been prepared by a very bland kitchen and served by a very bland waiter. Everything is design by comittee. There's a very, very bog standard single player campaign where you save the world from an unspeakable evil and it pretty much hits every fantasy cliche along the way without being even remotely memorable. Pillars of Eternity had scale and detail going for it, Original Sin had pants on head silliness, Wasteland 2 at least has BUGS... this? Nothing. I cannot sum up an emotion to express the feeling it elicits. Which is possibly the most damning criticsm of the lot.

"Meh"


Then there's the dungeon authoring mode. If this was fully fleshed out and offered the kind of freedom Neverwinter did, then this would forgive a lot of what's been presented. It would forgive the horrible stodgy clickfest UI, the merely servicable graphics, the merely "slightly above average" singleplayer campaign. But it falls down because whoever designed it decided that DM's are 5 year olds. They can only handle predesigned modules where they can plop down monsters, text, scripts and traps.

Spoiler alert, DMs are not 5 year olds. DMs use things like tabletop simulator. They have ... wait for it... an imagination.

The reason for this cut'n'paste approach? Obvious. DLC which they will no doubt sell in bits and pieces to monetise down the line. "Here have a nautical themed set of modules" "Here have an underground set of modules" , etc, etc. It's lining itself up for the slicing up and selling of what was previously, a market that was not constrained by how big your wallet was, but how big the canvas was in your mind.

This is not a game that immediately fosters imagination, it fosters the nagging feeling that you're going to need your credit card at the ready, if you want the full toolset, which is, as of the games' release, sadly lacking.


I came into this game wanting it to be so much more. I wanted the Neverwinter for 2015. Instead I got something that wants my money for very little value. Something that offers less for more. As a result I cannot in good conscience recommend this at any price right now. Maybe down the line I can, when there's more modules and they decide that it should be more sensibly priced, along with steep reductions in the invariably pricey DLC. But right now? Steer well clear.

Verdict : Go back to Neverwinter, there's nothing to see here.

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!


Firstly, I thank you for taking the time to answer the review. However, there's some key points you fail to address. Whilst you set out to create something that didn't *require* coding or scripting experience to be able to use, the lack of such facilities severely hamper and limit the flexibility of DM's to create truly custom and unique experiences.

Furthermore, the maps provided are not blank canvases, rather, they're premade fabrications and all you can do is seed them with doodads and the like. As you've already stated, -you- have to provide the locations, rather than providing the facilities for DM's to generate their own locations and settings. This severely limits the uniqueness of the setting and the overall ability of the DM to create interesting events.

This is something that has been highlighted before, and is something that cannot be addressed without a full implementation of scripting and a complete revisit of how buildings are developed (e.g. moving from pre-prepared building assets to a grid system that allows players to set down scriptable walls, furniture, interactables, mobs and doorways with their own characteristics which is much closer to how NWN worked).

The core SP campaign might not be salvagable, but the DM mode and co-op gameplay that stems from it -can-, if you're willing to change tack and listen to your players. Right now what you're offering is a far cry from what the playerbase wants. I leave it in your hands where you take the Sword Coast Legends.

EDIT : After reviewing your plans as regards ongoing development, you're going -some- of the way, but only some. I'm not sure it will be sufficient, because without at the absolute least some kind of pseudo-scripting system (by this I'm talking some kind of visual building block kind of code approach that allows people to assemble parts of a script, jigsaw like together) that allows people to construct their own event triggers and so on, you're going to limit what people can do to what is prefabricated.

The kind of complex, interesting, and varied interactions that people were able to create with the NWN toolset were precisely because they had the canvas available, people were trusted to be able to create things and were treated like adults. Skyrim enjoys similar longevity for the same reason. I understand you want to allow approachability but in this case you've traded away too much to get there, and that compromises peoples' creativity.

Take Starpoint Gemini 2, Freelancer, Elite Dangerous and the worldbuilding of Starcraft 2, throw into a foodblender. Put on high for two minutes.

*WHIRRR*

This is the result. A gorgeous, whisky-soaked blend of a game where pilots drink greel distilled alcohol, where antimatter specks are used for deviant practices, and where combat takes place on a horizontal plane straight out of Assassins' Creed : Black Flag, on crack. All handled with the colour and panache of the original Torchlight, which exploded out of nowhere and revitalised the Dungeon Crawler genre. This promises, and mostly succeeds in doing the same for space exploration.


In the time honoured tradition of all space exploration games everywhere, you are thrown into a starter ship, in this case, a dinky little corvette with a few broadside cannons, a few turrets, and a hull made of papier mache and shields made of soap suds. It is your job to find your Aunt Juno, who so very kindly left you this ship, and find out why you've been dragged out to the tail end of space, which is full of the scum of the universe, and work your way up the foodchain, blowing up said scum and villainy, and eventually become owner of a pimped up ship of doom and destruction. Depending on your playstyle this may be a top notch destroyer, with speed and agility and tons of guns, or a dreadnaught with a horrifying number of broadsides, or a heavy hauler with enough armour to qualify as having it's own gravitational pull.

Or, y'know, you could buy a strike craft and try to outrun bullets, but that's for the clinically insane. Even top level shields and good guns won't allow you to toe it with the enemy dreadnaughts for -long-, but hey, whatever flicks your switch!


Rebel galaxy gives you a very, very diverse set of tools to work with, you can tool up for mining with lasers and fault scanners, or you can go full out commodity trader, and the economy is set up enough to actually handle that, with system averages and station histories that actually work properly and can be scanned from out of station across the system, allowing you to set up profitable trade routes back and forth. This can pay off very nicely once you have a high capacity hauler, particularly if that hauler has one of the contraband cargo expansions which means you can facilitate life as a smuggler on the side.

Or you can just blow things up, because explosions are pretty. Blowing things up always work, and there's a terrifying variety of weapons, not just purchasable, but also lootable unique variants which can be discovered in the world, in loot crates or from the hulls of pirate lords, if you feel like converting them to scrap metal.


Rebel Galaxy offers a -lot- of activities, and offers enough in each activity to have you happily whiling away your time, moreso than Elite Dangerous did (and yes, I know many E;D fans who are going to burn me for that, but it's true), the mining is more sensibly handled due to the tractor beams, the combat is more visceral and less grindy, the trading makes more sense and doesn't require an excel spreadsheet to get the best out of. There's a real economy, and you don't need to be online to get the most out of the game.

There are -two- buts to this rather delicious soup.

One : The factions - They are present, but they're rather bland. More time and depth could have been put into them, faction exclusive ships for each faction would have been glorious, along with modules, as well as faction exclusive bases that you could dock at, along with missions and different reactions based on standing, as well as more complex interrelations between said factions. Right now you basically have only two paths you can follow. If there's anything that could exponentially increase the lifespan of this game - Faction DLC would do it. This would convert a 20-40 hour game to a 200-400 hour game. No joke.

Two : Whilst the activities are good, they all tend to peter out once you get out past the destroyer mark, and the fact you can only hire gunship level mercenaries puts a hard cap on the kind of fights they can throw at you. Hiring capital level mercenaries would have solved this. Again, faction DLC for the win here.


Do these two issues stop this game from being anything other than excellent? No. It's still a bloody great game, and for the price point they're charging it's an absolute steal. It does however prevent me from slamming the "Essential" badge on, because I know that the devs could quite possibly get the Factions some love, and make this "the" game to beat. Hint hint. It does, however, easily merit being a game that people should look into, especially if you're someone who loved Freelancer, or similar games.

Verdict : Highly Recommended

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!

(Clarification : Since some people wonder how I know so much about the game - I owned it prior to the steam release, so I've booked in quite a chunk of playtime, some 50 hours, outside of it's english release. Therefore I know whereof I speak.)


Dungeon Manager ZV, which I think I can sum up best by saying it's FM2015, but for someone who wants to design, and manage their own dungeon, their own monster roster and carefully balance the growing needs and desires of the adventurers they are luring into their dungeons with the promises of untold lewt with the need to protect that loot and therefore placing big scary monsters in the way. Put too many big and scary monsters in the way, the adventurers will take one look at your dungeon and go "NOPE.JPG", but make the dungeon too easy, and they'll walk out with your lewt, and you will fail at managing your dungeon. It's a curious beast.


The game visually is ... not the worlds most stunning presentation. It's going to send you back a long way in time, I actually had to look up the kind of resolution it was using (1024x768 in case anyone wondered). The art style for what you get is consistent and well drawn, though ye gods could it have done with high res artwork for current gen monitors. The music too, has that kind of castlevania style theme, that sort of off kilter japan orchestral horror they do reasonably well. But beyond the somewhat shonky presentation lurks a really, really brutal game. DMZV is to dungeons what Football Manager is to the emerald turf.

Oh it starts innocuously enough, giving you a nice 3x3 grid of rooms you can build out into, one of which will have your stairs to the surface world, in these rooms you can fill out each room with a selection of zombie minions, along with a larger "foe" of sorts, be it a slime, a golem, a demon or if you've been stirring up some kind of hellish creation, one of the monster mixes available (G-Golems and Zombie-Demons are merely the start of the chaos available...), once you start working your way down through the floors, you'll start to appreciate the subtleties that come into play, such as being able to set elemental affinities on a per floor level, which confer bonuses either to your monsters, or even to the heroes that walk the dungeon (in exchange for bonus resources should you kill them!), setting up your zombie minions with their own attack and defense levels mean that some rooms will be tailored to dealing with specific classes of hero... and that's when you realise that you're going to be sinking a lot of time into this one.


The hero roster is -extensive-, no less than 23 or so classes with a few unique versions and a final "boss" of sorts await you as you work your way through the game, ranging from the simple Novice, who wanders in with little more than a sackcloth and a pointy stick, all the way up to Valkyries, Samurais and Knights that can actively change the element of the floor they are on and really ruin your day.

Juggling the monster strength relative to your fame is the key balancing act here, as you'll want to keep the two running along the knife edge to get the maximum inflow of adventurers (and occasionally an escapee to relate his experiences of your fine establishment), so in terms of mechanics, there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. It would be lazy to spam the strongest things you could field, and the game -will- punish you if you do just that, by starving you of heroes, and then eventually steamrolling you with something far beyond your capabilities. It reacts to your playstyle, and will chastise you for being a poor designer. However, play it's game, and it will reward you with an experience that is very much the Football Manager of Dungeons.


Therein lies the nub of the review. This is a very niche game. If you're seriously considering buying it, and you've done your research, then my advice is to take the risk, the chances are you're already aware of what you're letting yourself in for. Strap in and prepare for something very much unlike you've played to date.

If however you're even remotely unclear on what you're getting, if you came here from a recommendation, if you just came to this game from idle curiosity and really don't have the first clue as to what is going on, or you do not have an abiding love of very heavily text based and very japanese influenced bizarro games that don't want to make sense, and ask you to manage a -dungeon- of all things. Then I would tell you to turn around, and walk the other way, otherwise you'll be making a mistake, and you'd do the game a disservice as well.

Verdict : Highly recommended -but- only to the people who know with absolute certainty what they're letting themselves in for. This is a niche game in the truest sense of the term, and as a result will appeal to a very narrow, and very odd demographic. If you enjoy solving rubiks cubes in the dark, this may just appeal to you.

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!

Deathwatch - Enhanced Edition represents Rodeo Games first "in house" port from iOS to the Steam Platform. It's their first serious go at converting a paidmium title from IoS into a truly premium experience that doesn't necessitate further payments on the Steam platform, and in doing so they've rebalanced the economy, converted the graphics engine over to UE4, given the graphics a serious spitshine, as well as gone over the various UI systems to make them keyboard and mouse friendly.

In Deathwatch you control a team of five marines (Stop me when this starts sounding familiar), trudging down narrow corridors, setting up killzones and killing tyranids who charge into your firing range as they swarm towards you en masse, praying you mow them down quicker than they spawn towards you, and they will come in floods, so eventually you'll be overwhelmed. The trick is to finish whatever the mission is before you end up as Tyranid nom nom. All of this happens in a top down, turn based singleplayer environment where you spend AP's on each marine setting up overwatches and taking shots at opponents using probability to hit.


So. To recap. Small team of heavily armoured SPESS MAHREENS. Narrow corridors. Tyranid threat. Chance to hit. Turn based. Swarms of them. Few of you. Sounds like Space Hulk doesn't it?

That's because barring a few changes here and there, you'd be forgiven that you were playing a very polished version of Space Hulk, at times you're more or less doing exactly that, just with a mixed chapter of space marines and without a librarian or psyker to back you up (which sucks). The marines move pretty slowly and are clunky buggers, with overwatch limiting them to a ninety degree cone of fire. Setting up overlapping killzones is order of the day and making sure their backs are protected so tyrannids don't -eat them- is sortof vital.


Unlike the Space Hulks that are already on steam, the levelling system has a little more finesse, taking cues from Dark Souls, where here you won't permanently lose a marine if he's downed, but you WILL lose any unbanked XP, it's a clever system, ensuring that you're always balancing risk with reward, and as the later levels get tougher, you'll need to string together multiple wins in order to power that marine through the later stat boosts. Additionally you can further customise the Marines through their wargear choices and their weapons, the latter has a noticable visual effect which is a nice flourish.

Marines too, visually distinguish themselves from one another, with higher tier marines having more detail than their cannon fodder baseline cousins. The loot system is all held together by a "card" system which awards you cards for missions completed, and the chance to earn points which can be spent on card packs of three which can yield some very high end gear and marines for your deathsquad. All of this hangs together well, and gives both a sense of interest and progression, since there's always the chance of landing a high tier marine that could really help your squad or a really neat bit of loot that you can equip.


However, counter to this is that the game has a really perfunctory mission structure, with short, mobile focussed missions that are very, very bitesized. I got through the better end of twelve missions in an hour, only to be stuck with a bug that locked me up for ages and had me sending mails to the developer whilst I waited for my save game to get sorted out. This is NOT a long game, and worse, there's no random mission generator as there has been in say, Rodeo's other games (Hunters 2 springs to mind), so the longevity of this title as is, is deeply suspect.

Then there's the so called enhanced content, which includes additional marines from the other chapters, except it doesn't really, because they've only included tier 1 versions and a tier 2 veteran along with tier 2 loot for one item. In short, for building a high end team, you won't be using the enhanced content for anything other than flavour, it's a stunted, unfinished tree that desperately needs fleshing out if it's to feel as complete and as enhanced as Rodeo claims on the advertising blurb.


This game is tricky. Part of me wants to like it, because there's the soul of a good Space Hulk game in here, but as it stands? It's not -good enough- to recommend to the public as is. Therefore I recommend with strings attatched. At the price point being asked, I would wait, because they're asking too much for what's on offer. With the enhanced content fully fleshed out, that would justify the pricing, but it's not, so right now this is strictly a "For the fans" game. Otherwise, hold fire, wait for the inevitable discount.

Verdict : Wait for a discount to hit, then get it. This particularly applies if you do NOT own Space Hulk and would like to try out a Space Hulk type game

Writer and columnist for Just Reviews, where you can get similar fine reading material. Join our group, follow our curations, and throw me a like if you would like to keep up to date with our efforts!

Disclaimer: I was a low level backer for this game, however, this does not affect my stance concerning the review, as I've kept distance beyond offering some feedback on ideas and suggestions. Read on good people!


Cole Jeffries, a.k.a, Cole Powered should be held up as the model of "Kickstarters done right." He asked for the most modest of sums. A trifling £3,000 to cover art, asset, voice and pre-production costs for the spiritual successor to the fairly successful mobile game Megacity. He had a prototype ready to release to backers, so anyone who pitched in would get to tinker with the core gameplay loop and see what was on offer, and as far as tiers go, this was impulse backing territory. In the end he got over £13,000 from a core of dedicated fans of all shapes and sizes, enough to substantially expand the game, furnish it with various flourishes, but at the same time he stuck rigidly to his project goal. To make Concrete Jungle happen.

What came out of that £13,000 was glory. A simple, yet absolutely devious and devillish game that epitomises the concept of "Simple to grasp, hard to master", there's an awful lot of high level play, especially when you get into the versus mode (oh the shennanigans you can pull there). But more on that below. Over the course of the kickstarter, Cole communicated clearly, posted progress reports in a timely manner, ensured that fresh betas were made available, so backers could provide feedback, and a lot of suggestions were folded into the final product.


Megacity was a really, really good mobile game. It could easily swallow hours of your life, and there's an awful lot of love for it, but there was a sense that some strategies could eventually allow you to keep ahead (at least to some extent) for quite a period of time. With Concrete Jungle, Cole Powered has had the opportunity to revisit the core formula of megacity, and then take it apart, looking at the concept of deck building and turn it into a fully fledged card game a-la Ascension, Chronicle of the Godslayer, where you start with a set of starter cards, and as your city evolves, you purchase progressively higher level cards which permit more advanced strategies and combos.

In addition to this deckbuilding concept, Cole also introduces the concept of "One shot" cards, disposable cards which when used, are destroyed and no longer recycled within your deck, forcing you to make hard decisions with each of your card purchases, because powerful cards are often "one shots", you're forced to decide between building an expanded pool of weaker, but more stable cards, or buying those powerful one shots, and then falling back on your base cards when they're spent.

As an alteration to the core game mechanic, it's genius, it instantly turns the deckbuilding into something that fosters a level of strategy and planning, and your purchases become the material of much headscratching as a purchase early on may have repercussions some fifty or even eighty turns down the line. You're no longer reliant on the old mobile strategies that pervaded megacity because the old strategies no longer -work-.


On top of this is the cast of characters, all voice acted and in the campaign, brilliantly narrated, with dry british humour interspersed with some PG-13 rated jokes that even in the early stage got a wide grin from this tiger. Cole has managed to create a story that whilst it's no Lord of the Rings, it'll keep you amused as you work your way through, unlocking the various characters and winding your way through a set of maps that have their own unique challenges and trials. Puzzles that will test your brain to breaking point.

Even when you've finished those, custom games await, and versus mode, where you can play the AI or even other real people in a battle to see who really is the king of the jungle. The gameplay in the Versus may prove yet to be Concrete Jungles' finest moments, the level of potential chicanery and backstabbing that you can achieve by clever use of buildings that have negative effects is -beautiful-, provoking strategies that normally would otherwise not even be considered.


It's been a long time since I've used this word on the end of a review. But for Concrete Jungle, I have no other word I can use for it. I absolutely insist people try it out, and I entirely recommend to any puzzle gamer, or strategy buff, that they immediately make space in their gaming budget, and make a few good evenings with a hot drink ready. This game deserves your time, your attention, and your brain.

Verdict : Essential

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