This is a pretty good roguelite that leans more into the arpg side with randomizing loot and upgrading gear. It isn't particularly deep, but what is there is really fun. It reminds me of an ancient game called Darkspore. I love that game due to a huge roster of characters with very different abilities and the ability to bring and switch different characters every run. Shape of Dreams with its skill tree and ability to swap out skills reminds me of it greatly, as well as the ability to loop endlessly to see how far you can push your build. Coop works very well, and the ability for anyone who dc to rejoin the session is a godsend. Combat is very fluid and feels just right, not too spammy but not too sticky either.

The biggest con for me is simply that there isn't more content. I wish there were more than 8 playable characters. I wish there were more than one end game boss. I just wish it was... more. This is why I spent as much time talking about Darkspore as Shape of Dreams in this game. The gameplay and gameplay loop is amazing, but it is also very limited to the available memories and characters. This is genuinely a very good game, better than Darkspore in many aspects. At the same time, I find myself wishing for some mechanics that are in Darkspore like taunt, different movement patterns, elemental resistances, etc. Right now, everything pretty much boils down to damage, shield, and heal. There really isn't much to distinguish between using a fire build and a light build mechanically other than that fire seems to have straight up better items for it. Hopefully this game is still in active development. Playing this just makes me glad this style of game is alive and kicking, but at the same time very sad that EA killed Darkspore along with its glorious, convoluted bloat of interesting mechanics.

This is the best turn based war game I have played in a long time. If XCOM and made out with a starcraft disguised as a civ in a 40k universe, you'd end up with this game.

So, what is 40k Gladius? It's a turn based war game where your goal is to kill off every other faction on the map. You build bases, gather resources, do researches, all for the sake of producing more units to help you conquer the map. If you are old enough to remember the Warlord series, the gameplay is very similar. Another good comparison would be a turn based version of Starcraft with more diverse sets of factions. There are a ton of comparisons to Civ, but honestly there is very little similarity. You start with a single base and that's where the similarity ends. It'd be like saying Starcraft is similar to Civ. If you start playing expecting a Civ like experience, you will be very disappointed.

What's so great about this game? Well, it's got a very good blend of strategy and tactical game. You would think the two genres go hand in hand, but it is actually quite difficult to nail it just right. If you think of the most popular franchises (civ, xcom, total war, etc) they all do one exceptionally well, while the other layer often feels like a tack on. While Gladius doesn't really bring anything new to the table, it takes some very good mechanics from the two genres and simplify them to complement each other. From the strategy side, you have tech trees and resource management, which have traditionally been used to fuel the expansion, aka "make big numbers go bigger." In this game, they are used to unlock new units and help you build more units for the more tactical fights which in turn helps you expand, bringing to a full circle.

The tactical combat is immaculate. There is absolutely no randomness involved on the tactical layer - layer is probably a bad choice of word. Combat takes place on the same map as the strategic side. If you got a squad of half strength guardsmen firing into a gun drone under forest cover, play it a thousand times, you will always do the same amount of damage. The "randomness" comes from strategic choices. How will the AI respond when you set up a line of devastators on long range overwatch? Should you go for the high threat target, or should you kill off enough low value targets in hopes of shaking enemy morale? There are a lot of number crunching behind the scenes, but at no point will you feel cheated out of a victory due to a bad dice roll.

There is a rock-paper-scissor of sorts between unit count, armor, and high hp pool and corresponding weapons. Guardsmen may be the trashiest of the trash, but they have 8 individual men in each unit, making it hard for someone with single weapon to kill off. Conversely, flamer is great for trash with high unit count, but does next to no damage to armored units. Melta weapons shreds armored unit with ease, but doesn't do all that well against high hp pool. There are a variety of other mechanics like height difference, cover system, overwatch range, and hero abilities that keeps the combat exciting and make every new unit unlocked feel like a new toy in hand.

In short, while it doesn't bring much new to the table, the game knows what it wants to be and no parts of the game feels unnecessary. While there are a few flaws, they are not gameplay related. Like many other indie games, this game lacks good documentation. Many things are trial by fire or looking things up on the wiki. UX could also use a lot of work. There is no way to show all your current units, or a way to find out what queued orders you are about to execute, among other things. Thing that like taken for granted in other tactical and 4x games are not present.

Additionally, the game has cut out too many rng elements. I absolutely love the fact that combat values are predetermined and that I don't have to deal with civ and xcom rng ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but Gladius has pretty much removed any and all rng besides initial map generation and starting locations. Some flavor events that temporarily buffs certain units or decimates certain regions would spice things up, for instance. Finally, and this is more of a nitpick than anything else, I wish the heroes are more unique and diverse. While heroes are more powerful and can equip items, you can produce multiples of each and every faction has access to the same set of items. In practice, this makes them rarer specialized units and lacks the impact you would expect from... well, heroes.

All in all, the complaints are pretty minor for the most part. It has been quite a long time since a game held enough interest for me to do 5-6 hour sessions for days on straight. If you are a 40k or wargame fan, don't miss out.

Tl;dr - An addicting wargame disguised under its 4x skin
+A diverse set of factions and playstyle
+The ebb and flow from the resource management and war creates a very dynamic playthrough
+The tactical battles are really satisfying
+No rng.... NO RNG. NO RNGGGGGGGG. No more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 99% misses or spearman killing a tank. A guardsman unit will never take down devestator marines or a wraithknight in a straight on fight. Ever.
-UI needs work. Missing some basic quality of life features like army list and easy way to find queued unit orders.
+/- The removal of most rng elements means the battle outcome is largely determined from the strategic layer. Tactics can only get you so far in face of overwhelming odds.

For the emperor!

The core gameplay loop is pretty good, but this game is too buggy for me to recommend.

Deathtrap is a arpg / tower defense hybrid. You get to control a character with skill level ups in an arpg manner to defend against hordes of monsters. You can build up towers in preset locations to help with the defense. The game strikes a pretty good balance between the arpg and the tower defense portion. For the most part, unless you are massively over leveled or geared, you cannot rely on one or the other to beat the game, requiring you to be fairly active to complement your defenses to survive each map. You get rng chests at the end of each map and rng shops to keep the endorphine going and I can definitely see people mindlessly grinding away to chase better items for their optimal build.

There are 2 or 3 flaws with this game in my opinion. Unfortunately, one of them is so severe I cannot recommend buying the game.

First, the game is broken for those with AMD gpu. Once you make it past map 8, your game will always freeze no matter what you do. I got around this because I have a nvidia laptop, but most people aren't going to be rocking 2 PCs. This is a deal breaker and seeing as how development has died years ago, I must repeat, don't waste your money on this game if you have AMD gpu. You will not be able to finish the game!

Second, the multiplayer portion of the game is pretty broken. Pvp matchmaking does not work at all, period. I have tested this with other people online. For coop hosting, I was able to join and host on my desktop, but on my laptop, other people cannot see my game when I host. It might be a port forwarding issue, but that is not something we should have to deal with in this day and age.

The last few things are more personal preferences. Character control feels clunky. Skill casts often get wasted and nothing happens. Not enough variety in tower types.

All in all, I enjoyed the time I spent while I played the game, but I cannot recommend it to others in good conscience.

This is a pretty fun game hamstrung by the fact that it was made into a mmo and suffered numerous delays. The reason I say this is because while there isn't enough contain to sustain it as a mmo, it is perfectly fine to treat it as a regular game. The international release has been tuned to give free premium currency and exp/gold boosts so you don't really have to grind that much to unlock troops and skills.

At its heart, this game is a Dynasty Warriors clone with slightly more complicated control and the ability to lead up to 3 troops with your character. The first 45 minutes is pretty typical (boring) mmo tutorial fetch quest fare, then you get to command some troops to follow you around and kill stuff. Nothing will really wow you, but it's a perfectly fine 7/10 game. When you want to mow down hordes of enemy or play a light real time tactics game, this one will scratch the itch. I got it as part of a bundle from Fanatical for $5 and feel like I got my money's worth out of it.

This thumbs up is really more for the thousands of Terraria mods available. Props for making it easier to load the mods but those mods da real mvp. Calamity basically doubles the boss count and make for more viable classes. Really dig the music too!

This is probably my favorite indies game of all time. Excellent, excellent coop title. I feel guilty for not leaving a review earlier. Hopefully this will get some people to try and buy this great game while it's on sale.

Dungeon of the Endless is a very hard game to describe. It's got familiar elements borrowed from every genre under the sun, but I have never seen them blended together seamlessly quite this way. It is easily one of the most unique games I have played. The premise is pretty simple. You are in an escape pod that crash landed and must make your escape by reaching the top of the pod. A nice backdrop for a roguelite game.

The way you progress through the game is by opening doors and climbing floors to the top. Every time you open a door to a new room, there is potential for enemy waves to spawn. The game has its own system of letting you power up rooms and build up modules and turrets. When you decide to make the escape to the next floor, all hell break loose and monsters flood in from all the unpowered rooms while you slowly carry the power core to the next floor. This adds the tower defense element on top of the roguelite premise.

Instead of most tower defense games where you buy and upgrade the turrents through money or some currency, the game borrows the FIDS (food, industry, dust, science) from developer Amplitude's other 4x strategy games in their Endless series. If you want a new module or upgrade, you got to research it with science. Need to place it in a specific room? Need enough dust to power the room. To build the actual modules, you need industry. Food is used for everything hero related. The building and resource management part of 4x is actually quite important for make it far in this roguelite tower defense 4xlite game (so far).

As you progress through the floors, you will encounter new heroes and items. You can have up to 4 heroes at any given time and they all come with their own unique set of skills. Some are focused on increasing your resource output, some are good at fighting, others are generalists or speed oriented to add some flexibility. This rpg /tactics lite combined with everything else ensures that this rogue/4x/rpg/tactics-lite will never play out the same way. Like all games, there are cheese tactics, but no two games really has to play out the same way.

Stylistically, the game is simply phenomenal. The pixel art is gorgeous and the animation is simply sublime. Just look at this sexy video of Gork running around

gorkspeed

The 8 bit music tunes are excellent. I actually set the title music to my morning alarm clock, and I have listened to it outside the game on occasions. It reminds me a lot of elevator music, which is hilarious to me since you spend your time waiting between each floor on an elevator. No doubt intentional on developer's part. The game is full of tongue-in-cheek type of humor like this, like naming the difficulties Too Easy and Easy. It's pretty hit or miss, but I like them for the most part as the game already oozes with charm. Just as a heads up so you don't ragequit, when you have certain 2 characters stuck on the elevator for too long, they will try to kill one another for "story reasons."

All in all, I would urge everyone to give this game a try. It's only 3 bucks, you got nothing to lose.

Oh and PSA for all the people hosting multiplayer lobbies, if you are not willing to have randos in your game or take 2 seconds to invite them on discord, PLEASE set your game to private. Nothing is more annoying to finally see and join a multiplayer game and be kicked in 5 seconds. Thanks all and hopefully see some of you in game!

This review is written for people who have played Nation Red, the previous game from this developer. For those that have not played either game, I will recommend this game for people who like a twin stick coop game with light tower defense element.

The gameplay is decent enough in its own right and different from Nation Red, but I find it to be a downgrade compared to the previous games. Many of the same mechanics are still present but barely improved. You still have classes that get perks as you level up, kill hordes of zombies and bosses with a bunch of powerups along the way. All of that is already great in the original game, but it hasn't really been improved at all. By and large, you have the same weapon selections, same perks, same zombies, you get my drift. The differences are so minimal they could have came out as an update to the original game.

To big addition in versus squad is a light tower defense element, and I have to put a big emphasis on the word light. There are a total of 3 turret types and and handful of mines, rest are all barricades designed to slow or block enemy. For me, there is simply not enough addition here to make a more interesting game. Furthermore, the map design greatly suffers in part to accommodate for this this game mode. Maps are now smaller and more claustrophobic. If there were just more to the tower defense layer, I feel like there could be more variety and better map modes.

All in all, this is an ok game in its own right that can serve to kill some time. For the purpose of this review though, the ultimate litmus test is whether I would play this game over Nation Red. Unfortunately, it's a sidegrade at best and I just prefer Nation Red more.

This game is really fun to play, but it's really not much of an improvement from the first Warhammer Total War. Siege battles are still terrible, many of the new factions are similar gameplay wise to the ones in the first game. Battles are still too fast paced and melee-centric in my opinion. I would suggest waiting for a sale if you want to buy this game.

Which probably has you scratching your head on why I gave this a positive review and the original Warhammer TW a negative one. There are more cons than pros honestly, but for me the pros outweigh the cons.

+Mechanics of new factions might be similar to old ones, but more unit diversity is always a good thing.
+Mortal Empire gives you a huge map and have all factions in one map.
+Mods have come a longggg way and is probably the biggest difference between WH1 launch and current state of WH2. There are a ton of content driven and QoL mods. They are doing the lord's work and I probably wouldn't still be playing the game if I was restricted to vanilla.
+Combine all of the above and you have a very decent campaign layer, I would say the best in TW series.

-AI has not evolved one bit and in some ways have regressed. Probably the result of unit diversity.
-DLC policy has gotten worse not better imo. It's one thing to continue developing and releasing DLCs, but now we are getting factions that are ALREADY DEVELOPED gated behind paywalls. To me, WH2 itself should have been an expansion type DLC, and those faction DLCs just need to go away, or at least sold in bundles. Why is blood dlc still a thing?
-Siege battles blow now. It is so bad that even mods can't fix it. You can see in modded maps that AI glitches out because clearly siege is an afterthought and CA only programmed the AI to handle their ONE SINGLE SIEGE MAP. Even with the braindead AI I play with the siege map mods. That's how bad vanilla siege battles are.

+/-This one is subjective, but battle tuning is worse than before. I actually look forward to Shogun 2 fights. Here I just auto resolve them unless I absolutely need to fight it out. I think they really destroyed the delicate balance between battle pacing, morale, and unit composition/formations (or there lackof). There are a ton of units and fancy spells now, but they all lack the impact and oomph of FOTS riflemen, or even many Rome 2's units. A lot of the focus on battle now is using long cooldown spells and kiting with lords because the actual fighting has been simplified for the worse in my opinion.

If you are looking to have a great 3-4 people third person shooter coop, buy this game now.

I was not a big fan of the original Risk of Rain since platformers are usually not my cup of tea. The jump to 3D in this sequel however is a game changer. The gameplay transitioned so well Risk of Rain 2 instantly became one of my favorite coop games.

The best way to describe the gameplay is a hero shooter/MOBA that is fully tailored for PVE with traces of arcade elements. You pick a survivor (hero/class) and kill hordes and hordes of monster. Along the way, you will obtain/stack a bucketload of items to help you survive as long as you can. The items are really the star of the show here. The first time I picked up the extra jump item felt like the first time I became a flying racoon in super mario world. There is also an item that allows you to create a quantum tunnel to help you quickly traverse a map. All in all, the dozens of items have a good balance between fun and synergy to make each survivor feel unique and engaging to play.

I also really dig the aesthetic and music vibe from this game. Maps are huge and expansive. Models are clean and simplistic that evokes the N64 nostalgia in the best way. Music is ambient soothing, almost elevator music-esque, but just enough to keep your on your toes. It perfectly complements the chill playstyle for this game. There are also unique audio queues for many of the items and abilities. This becomes quite significant as some maps can seem crazy and disorienting once enemy spawns have reached critical mass.



All in all, I am very impressed with this especially for an early access game. It is a very polished and feature complete experience. To be sure, there is plenty of room for additional quality of life changes, but it is great fun and highly replayable as-is.

The gameplay is really fun. It's a good blend of twin stick shooter and roguelite/wave based that has all the right ingredients for great coop fun. Class balance might need a bit of fine tuning but the items, powerups, and weapons are all great fun.

Unfortunately, the game is just a tad too buggy for coop currently. I know it's just one person developing the game, but I went through 4 patches in a matter of 2 weeks and we have been unable to finish a single coop game. My coop partner has basically given up on the game already, but hopefully I can convince him to try it again if the multiplayer ever becomes more stable.

Edit: The developers newest patch fixed the stuck camera bug! Haven't gotten far enough to the boss we got stuck on before, but two thumbs up for trying a bunch of things to quickly to finally fix the biggest issue with the coop game