Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel - Roguelite gem in the genre sea

 The roguelike and roguelite genres have had a ton of games released, especially survivor-likes, since the success of Vampires Survivors.  Jotunnslayer succeeds in laying a great foundation for a hit.  Released in January this year, and their first major update out just a couple days ago, I'd say it's in my top roguelite games to dump a ton of hours into and get that Perfect Game for 2025.

Karate Survivor is a fantastic, unique roguelite experience!

Karate Survivor is a fresh take on the survivors-like roguelike genre, and a VERY welcome one. Jackie Chan style combat in unique locations, using whatever you can find as a weapon, flipping over counters, pushing crates into groups of enemies, and more. Very true to it's source material, and challenging at just the right times. I hope the developers continue to add more content in the near future, or even a small priced DLC with more maps, characters, even more great music, and moves. I'd love to see things like judo moves or throws, where you can throw enemies into groups of other enemies, and other moves that break up the hit queues a little more. Thank you @alawar for a great game and hope to see more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQSSv97-Iug

Drone Strike: Engineer Simulator - Not bad for .95 cents!

 Hi everyone! Today I played a game called Drone Strike: Engineer Simulator!

First, when I think of a drone game, what comes to mind are those videos of people doing stunts and all kinds of crazy flying in abandoned building.  This is not that.  This is more of a secret mission style game. You're taking photos of people, stealing items, dropping off packages, and even doing assassinations.  

Vampire Hunters Delivers Guns - Lots of Guns

Vampire Hunters delivers a crazy fun arena FPS experience!  Roguelike, small arena maps, hordes of enemies, bosses galore, and TONS of unlocks and achievements make this a must play and one you can dump a lot of hours into if you're a fan of the genre.

 

Space Marine 2 is so awesome!

Space Marine came launched yesterday (pre-orders have been played for 4 days already) and it is absolutely awesome!  After the controversies with Helldivers 2 and its loss of player base over the past couple months, this game is a much needed breath of fresh air.  Not only is Warhammer 40K such a great source of risk lore and possibilities for new content, it separately needed a big success in the gaming space.  

Years ago I was a huge fan of the first Dawn of War game (real time strategy), and have always been around people who played the tabletop game, as I myself had a lot of Eldar minis.  The first thing you'll see about Space Marine 2 is how they absolutely nailed the ambiance and the overall feel of the W40K universe.  Every single location, scene, character and detail oozes the grim dark attitude it should have.  It's complete jammed with lore that hasn't been present in other games, which my co-op gaming partner pointed out in my YT short (over 260k views across multiple platforms!).  IMO, everything looks absolutely perfect.  

The gameplay is also incredibly fun.  The campaign story is engaging and cinematic at the right times, flows really well, lots of "40K" moments, and connects the rest of the game modes in new ways.  Aside from the campaign, one of the brilliant ways they tied it together are the Operations.  In these modes, you play what I call the B team.  As you go through the campaign, there was frequently another team of 3 Space Marines that were doing other objectives aw you played the story. Ops mode puts you in their armor and you get the chance to do what they did.  This mode let's you pick from 6 classes, gain experience and unlock perks and weapons, and customize the look of your space marine.  This is also co-op for up to 3, and each mission, 6 of them, have 4 difficulties.  This whole idea really created a whole new level of engagement with the campaign and opens a lot of ideas to bring new modes.

There's also a 6v6 PVP mode, with 3 modes and 3 maps available at launch.  It uses the same classes from Operations, just on a different experience and rank track.  My first impressions that it's incredibly well-balanced for a new game.  I personally like Sniper and Heavy the most, but everything shows a lot of promise.

Well done, devs.  This game is GOTY material for sure.

Fantasy Map Simulator is out! War on!

Fantasy Map Simulator released in Early Access today! The game is a lot of fun to just watch and see how the wars play out. We're streaming it daily around 9AM EST for anyone to chat, root for your favorite nation, or just hang out to make your work day go a little quicker.

The devs have done a great job so far from demo to EA. We've seen new settings for the look of the map - 8 options for overall map look, color adjustments, text and army size, etc... -, all kinds of new stat views like Population, Power, current war statuses, Economy, and religious power, more map creation options, more speed settings, and one of the best things, Steam Workshop support! We've already seen a ton of custom maps uploaded and have tried a couple on stream.

The dev has a pretty active Discord to share creations, suggestions, and other feedback, where I've made a few posts based on my viewers requests. Here's some things I'd like to see changed in the game:

• Constant War Setting - I'd like to be able to set a map to have all nations constantly be at war with at least 1 other nation. No peace time allowed.
• Fleet Gathering - One thing I've noticed it fleets moving across water tend to go in a single file line. The result is they land individual and frequently get demolished by armies waiting for them. I think it would make more sense if some of these armies traveled and landed together across water.
• More speed settings - They gave us up to 5x, but I think 10x would be great for when I just want a map to end. Rebellions cause a lot of near wins to reverse.
• Map Themes - Custom maps are awesome, but I think different themed maps would be awesome too. Cyberpunk futuristic, apocalyptic, anything to make if feel like we're on a different landscape would be fantastic.

In game they have a pretty full roadmap with a ton of great features. I'm especially excited for the ability to upload images to make maps since I'm a terrible artist. So many funny maps we could make!

Check out the game here!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3035500/Fantasy_Map_Simulator/

#fantasymapsimulator #gaming #earlyaccess

THE ROGUELIKE TO WATCH FOR THIS YEAR - KARATE SURVIVORS

 

Like Vampire Survivors?  Do you also like Jackie Chan?  Old Kung Fu movies?  This is one of those games that is completely unexpected, but a total breath of fresh air in a genre that can get a little stale when no one is innovating.

This survivors-like roguelike is basically an 80s/90s karate/Jackie Chan movie made into an action roguelike.  Collect sets of martial arts moves and use them in combos of your choosing, upgrade them, and then take bonus skills and stats both inside and out of runs.  Pretty standard sounding for a roguelike, right?  Here's the difference.  In addition to a phenomenal theme, music, and overall look at feel, Karate Survivors adds in all those crazy moves your favorite martial artist does in the moves.  Smoothly pick up and throw plates, boxes, and bottles to beat down attackers.  Kick large items like shopping carts, pallets heavy stuff, freezer doors, and knockdown displays to crush groups of baddies.  Grab a baseball bat, broom, lamp, and other common melee weapons to show them who's boss.  Unlock special moves to automatically leap over stationary items to get away from threatening groups and closer to the ones you want to teach a lesson.  This game holds all kinds of secret goodies to Jackie-chan your way through the levels.  

Right now it's in Playtesting (at the time of this article, you could request access and get in immediately), and it's well worth it already.  Tons of fun, and the amount of unlocks and maps they're teasing to be adding to the full release looks amazing.  If you want a new roguelike that will keep your attention for a while and adds a ton of fresh ideas, try Karate Survivors now and wishlist it on Steam!  

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3027930/Karate_Survivor/

#karatesurvivors #roguelike #beta #gaming #keymailer

Time Treker - Very impressive rogulike!

So time to talk about this one. I'm gonna do a short review on this game soon, cause I think they've got something really good going. It's still in Early Access, so I'm totally OK with there being drawbacks like few characters, limited maps and missions, and things like that. Time Trekers is a survivors-like roguelike that I think pulls a lot of great stuff together into a great theme (Time travel with a goal of altering bad timelines). Here's some things I think it does really well:

- Dying does not mean failure! A lot of survivor-likes, although they have an upgrades for more lives, usually when you die, it's done. TT has a system where through the 4 sections of the map, you nee to hit an Impact number. If you fail a mission, you're pulled out and can keep moving forward. If you complete a mission, you gain better Impact and open more spots on the map. I think this is a really cool system, because it eliminates most of the idea of RNG killing your build. - Multi-level in battle upgrades. Obviously roguelikes main focus are making your build. Plenty of roguelikes have things like weapons partnered with upgrade items, or some version of them. TT has weapons, which are upgraded as you go by finding more of the same weapon (similar to other games), however each weapon also have 4 slots to add additional upgrades to create unique versions of that which (AND these upgrades can also be upgraded), AND you have equipment type items that give bonuses that are separate from weapons and can be upgraded, AND an additional layer of upgrades that are separate from all the rest and aren't upgraded. And then you upgrade base stats outside of missions. My point is, multiple layers of upgrades in game, on top of the out of game upgrades. - Characters with different abilities - While I've only unlocked 1 extra character, I thought it was interesting how the first one had a dash ability, which is very common in roguelikes, but the next one had a triggerable artillery attack. Not too many roguelikes do this, the one that comes to mind the most being Crafty Survivors. - No Easy Overpowered Builds - Dont get me wrong, I like a good power build. I have videos for Vampire Survivors where I can just set the game sit and it'll never die. Nearly every extra gun and upgrade to them feels like just enough to keep it challenging. Partnering this with dying not meaning failure, it becomes really interesting. You WILL start to feel the challenge weigh heavy on you if you fail too many missions, because you won't be able to branch out into the map much for extra upgrades. Some things I think they need to make sure and address during Early Access: - More characters, with a lot of variety. Looks like they have 6 planned right now. I think they should aim for 12. - More mission variety. The missions aren't exactly the same, but not much different either. The maps have similar structures and things to find on them, and the objectives for missions are repeated a lot. While I don't feel this took away much from my gameplay, I think a lot of people will get bored with it by the 3rd portion of the map. - More guns and more unique items. I think the gun variety they have are good, but there's probably room for more. First, put in some more visual differences of the guns. This will help create a feeling of variety. I had a hard time seeing some of the guns at work. Second, I'd really like to see a new level of triggerable weapons. We do have the ability like the dash and artillery, but I think it'd be great to have a triggerable like grenades, mines, or anything similar that's more massive impact, but add to your personal tactics. That's it more now I think. Awesome job to the devs on this one. I really look forward to seeing updates. Thanks for reading and watching!

Retro DOS Review: Hero's Quest 1

So you want to be a hero?

Never underestimate the mod community..

 LOL - That was quick.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/doom/stray-mod