Reigns Review

Reigns is a game where you sit on the throne as a benevolent (or malevolent) medieval monarch of the modern age and swipe your royal controller either left or right to impose your will upon the kingdom.

Gameplay is very simple, a card is drawn and each situation can only be resolved by two choices. Your ultimate goal is to remain in power as long as possible, balancing the four currencies of your kingdom: Church, People, Army and Treasury. If at any moment any of these reach one of the extremes, either full or empty, you will suffer very abrupt and life ending consequences.

Perks

As you progress through the years of ruling, you will discover some secrets and unlock new interactions, growing your deck of cards. Some of them will allow you to acquire some kind of perk either temporarily or until destroyed, like building a tower to prevent invading armies from taking over your kingdom.

I was good to them!

Reigns is a short, simple and entertaining game. There is an ending to it, but it can be played simply as a challenge to remain in power for as long as possible. Or maybe you just want to die having being a good ruler. Whatever your goal is, reigns show how some creativity can give rise to interesting choices, and how ruling is not as simple as it looks.

bit Dungeon II Review

bit Dungeon II is a pixelated rogue-like action adventure game. Your goal is to return the soul of your "loved one" to her grave.

The life of a newbie.

Gameplay is extremely simple, you just move around and as you touch the enemies your character automatically attacks. The only other thing you can do is holding a button to block and activate your weapons power. Power aside, when health is limited blocking becomes fundamental to survival. It is also not a procedural world. The world itself is fixed, only the enemies and loot are proceduraly generated. Dungeons are randomly picked from a set of layouts.

Huge level and attribute gap,
but still better due to the bonus.

Speaking of loot, as you slash the creatures in your path you will rack up experience and tons of loot. Rule of thumb is that the higher the rarity of the item, the better it is, even if of lower level. If you manage to reach the final boss you will get one or two drops of the very best rarity of the game, which is the only place where you can get it. Fret not, once you beat the final boss you will go to back to the beginning of the game for a repeat. You can keep this cycle until you die, leveling up and getting better and better gear. Unfortunately there are a couple of items that have secret attributes or the display just doesn't scale with how powerful they are. So make sure to thoroughly compare rare items.

Black Coin trader.

To lightly wrap things up we have the Black Coins that you will gather from defeated enemies and crates. You can only use them to buy gear and is the only thing in the game that remains after a full death. So if you had a good run and accumulated plenty of coins, you can kick start your next run by buying near state of the art gear.

Overall is a great little game that can entertain for couple of hours or dozens of hours depending on how power hungry you are. A great feature that it has is that you do get ONE chance to die and not loose your progress. If you manage to reach your death spot you can gather your life again and keep that peace of mind for some more time. The art style is simple but well done, with decent soundtrack. There are many quality of life improvements that could make the game better, but the one thing that really lacks is a clear explanation for the bonuses. Even the community couldn't figure out what Super Proc is. Simple yet enjoyable, bit Dungeon II is a great example of a neat game that a small team can produce.

PS: You can lock your inventory so even if you are frenetically pressing the button, you won't swap gear by mistake. Took us a long time to stumble upon it, but definitely made a much more enjoyable experience. Open your inventory and press "X" on the controller.

If you'd like to explore more on item rarity and bonuses we definitely recommend reading the guides on the Steam Community page. One of them we used as a base to make our own path run map that we share with you all. Enjoy.

Path Run Map

And here is our best run so far, we dare you to beat it:

Tower of Guns Review

Tower of Guns is a simple rogue-like First Player Shooter. You move through randomly generated stages until the final boss. ToG is one of the few games to explore this niche of FPS + Rogue-Like games.

Bullet Storm!

Unlike most shooters nowadays, the game has a simple gameplay. You can only move, shoot and jump. With the occasional item usage, there isn't much more than shooting endless robots, going through the stages and repeating. Although simple, it has very demanding action with a lot of bullets flying everywhere. If you are not familiar with FPS games, we highly recommend using the perk that makes the game easier.

Our best run. Lots of badges!

Speaking of perks, let's talk about the progression systems in the game. They are fairly straight forward: You move through the levels until you reach the final boss. There is an endless mode where you repeat endlessly after defeating it, if you so desire. As you defeat your enemies and explore the stage, you have a chance of finding Badges. Badges are a secondary form of progression that usually increase your characters attribute in any way. It is as simple as more health/damage/speed/jump etc, but when fighting an infinite amount of bullets, every little bit helps!

As you defeat enemies you will gather "experience" which will make your weapon more powerful. Beware, as taking damage will decrease your experience and level down your weapon. The final method of progression is unlocking weapons and perks to use in your run. These are permanent unlocks by simple challenges like destroying an enemy a number of times and defeating the final boss. Perks are mostly variations of starting bonuses like extra jumps, luck, health, etc... A couple of them offer exclusive modifiers, like having infinite jumps but receiving damage if you touch the floor.

Item Station.

As you wreck through enemies you will drop gold. The gold can be used to buy upgrades in a random item station. Usually you will find badges, but very rarely you can find guns! Beware though, it might not be a good one.

Tower of Guns is an interesting game, rough on the edges but still enjoyable. Many things could be improved, like having an option to come back to your 2 hour run at a latter moment. If you enjoy rogue-like and FPS games alike, you might just find a sweet spot in this fast paced shooter.

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist Review

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (ufff, I know!) is a single player story game. Very simple, straight forward and very short game (about 20~30min). All you have to do is move around and interact with the indicated objects to move the plot along. Saying anymore would spoil the game.

We recommend this game despite its lack of mechanics not just for being free, but because it has an original approach. It is a great example of how a little bit of creativity can give you a very interesting way of perceiving a game.

PS: You can read our previous review on another game by the same designer, here: The Stanley Parable.

Bastion Review

Bastion is an action game set in a lush imaginative world, in which players must create and fight for civilization's last refuge as a mysterious narrator marks their every move.

Gameplay is very simple, you can carry two different weapons at any moment and one choice of a special skill. While moving around the terrain you will fight the remains of what used to be your civilization, acquiring Stray Fragments and leveling up.

Distillery.

As you progress through the story obliterating anything on your way and accumulating those experience points, you will level up, opening a new slot for distilled drinks. Think of them as special modifiers to your character. You will also find different choices of weapons, skills and deity modifiers that can dramatically change the way you play. That also means you have a wide array of play styles to choose from. Each weapon can be upgraded up to five times by collecting upgrade materials scattered in the remains of the world.

Stray Fragment market.

To wrap everything together we have those Stray Fragments. As you defeat foes and destroy structures alike you will gather enough to pay for weapon upgrades. There isn't much more to it than that, plain and simple.

With well paced content, great soundtrack, a mysterious story and responsive controls, Bastion is definitely a great game that you should play. It is quite short in length, but it is not the length that makes great games. And this one placed Supergiant Games in the spotlight of indie developers.

PS: You can read about their second release in one of our early reviews: Transistor.