It's always nice when a Kickstarter delivers and one did today (well, actually two have today!). Sentinels of Freedom is a turn-based tactics game based upon the Sentinel Comics world, made popular by the Sentinels of the Multiverse card game.
I've uploaded a video of the first hour or so, which highlights a couple of tutorial levels and the hero creator system. I then die embarrassingly in what might actually still be tutorial... So far, I've enjoyed it, though it does throw a huge number of mook enemies at you - area effect attacks seem the way to go. I'll do a full review when I've played more of it, but if you're curious about it, you can watch the start at least.
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There are loads of articles out there about massive games that people now, apparently, have time to play because they aren't needing to go to work at the moment. That's all well and good, and I hope those people are enjoying their new-found gaming time. What I've seen a lack of is how to deal with isolation when you aren't alone, or are still needing to work from home. Reports that I've seen indicate that many people working from home are needing to work all the harder, because the IT systems aren't up to it, or things aren't quite as convenient, or any number of other reasons. Similarly, if there are children around, that makes everything that little bit harder, unless they are old enough to entertain themselves. So, here I present a handful of different games. These aren't sweeping epics that will take 300 hours to complete - they are games that follow a few simple rules:
Do you have any others to recommend? Slay the Spire is available for PC and Switch. Each playthrough can be completed in about an hour (less if you are good - there is an achievement for completing in 20 minutes), and the art style is nice and cartoony, so no problems with people watching. It's a rogue-like deck-builder, where you need to climb the Spire to eventually defeat the bosses and, if you want to push yourself, the Heart of the Spire itself. There are four character classes (I don't think the fourth has been released on Switch yet) and you can play through 21 escalating difficulty levels with each. Each plays very differently, and requires very different strategies. You navigate a map fighting enemies. You have a deck of cards, from which you draw some each turn and choose which to play, spending from your energy resource. Different cards might attack the enemy (or enemies), setup defence for any attacks that come at you, buff you, give penalties to your foes, give you extra energy or card-draw, or lots of other options. When you win, you get a reward of choosing a new card to add to your deck which, of course, gives more more options, but can also dilute your deck so that you are less sure about what might come up next turn. The brilliance of Slay the Spire really comes from the fact that you always know what the enemy is going to do - you get icons above their heads to tell you. So you know how much they are going to attack you for, and therefore how much defence you'll need. You know if they are going to do something else like buff themselves, so you can let loose. There is more complexity to deal with outside of battle - you can choose your route through the Spire, so that you can avoid some fights if you want to, aiming for shops (to buy new cards), campfires (to rest or upgrade cards), or aim for Elite battles, which earn you better cards and relics, which give you permanent changes to the rules and can drastically alter your playstyle for the attempt. Dicey Dungeons is available on PC (and later this year on Switch, but not there yet). Again, it's a rogue-like, but this time the action is dice based, rather than cards. You pick your class when you enter which gives you a starting ability and then head off. Each playthrough lasts about half an hour. As you go along, you'll battle enemies, pick up new equipment and so on, this time with a levelling mechanic which gives you more dice to roll each turn, more health and so on. Gameplay is simple - you roll your dice (two when you start, getting an additional one every few levels) and try to play them into your equipment and powers. Some of them have restrictions (only dice lower than 4, for example, or only odds), some require lots of dice to go in until you've put a certain value in to make it trigger and a few other ways to shake it up. You need to balance out your options through the equipment you've picked up and hope you can do well against the various enemies. As you go through, you'll start to learn more about the enemy figures, so you can predict what will work against them (you can see what you're about to fight on the map) so there is a level of strategy as well as the in-battle tactics. Again, a nice cartoon-y style makes for easy viewing, and the different classes provide replayability. Each class also comes with six different scenarios which change the rules a little (for example, one of the fighter's makes all of your equipment, including anything you find, automatically be upgraded, but you lose 2maxHP each time you level up) and can lead to vastly different strategies to win. Book of Demons (as far as I know, only available on PC) is an action RPG in the vein of Diablo, Torchlight and similar. The art-style is paper-dolls, again making it unproblematic to walk in on and if you've played this style of game before, you'll know whether you like or hate them.
As is fairly typical, there are three classes to choose between (fighter, rogue, wizard), and you collect equipment in the form of cards as you go along, unlocking slots for those cards as you level up. It can get fairly tricky in places, especially once you unlock higher difficulty levels. To be honest, it terms of pure gameplay, it isn't as good as the games it is clearly based on, but still very enjoyable if you like the style. However, it gets a mention here because of one fairly unique feature. Each time you descend into the dungeon, you can choose how long you want the level to be and it will give an estimate of how much time if will take. If you only have twenty minutes to play, you can set that up and it's generally pretty accurate. You don't descend to later levels until you've achieved a certain number of points in each, so you'll be playing it more times if you choose shorter sessions, but you'll still advance through. And this kind of feature is an absolute godsend in the current climate. The 2nd Edition of 7th Sea was released a few years ago and I really like it. I'll write more about it in the future, but for now I'm publishing some additional options for the six core sorceries in the game.
The general theme of the additions is to add more options for play at sea, but some additional basics were required for some of them before I could reach the point of those specifics. You can find it here - I hope you enjoy it! Hi everybody!
Welcome to my little home on the internet. For those that don't know, my name is Chris, and I'm a writer. I live in the north-east of England with my wife and young son. My first novel is currently undergoing editing, and my work is being published in Parallel Worlds magazine. You can my first article here, and my series on being a better RPG Gamemaster is being published monthly from April's issue onward. I've been roleplaying for over 20 years, starting with 7th Sea (1st Edition) shortly after it was first released, and have spent most of those years acting as Gamemaster. I've run lots of different styles of games, from 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings, Dungeons and Dragons (3.5 and 4th edition), Fate, Cortex and many more. I've made most of the possible mistakes and have, hopefully, learned from them. At the moment i'm running a campaign in the 13th Age system. I'm intending this page to be part blog and part repository for my work. I'm going to be writing reviews of popular fantasy and science-fiction, roleplaying materials and some fiction. Hope you enjoy what you find here, and feel free to drop a comment on any piece. |
AuthorChris is a writer currently working on his first novel. His work has been published in Parallel Worlds magazine and more can be found here. Archives
February 2022
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