Introduction: When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In

Long time readers of mine will know that I am supposed to be retired from the satanic hobby known as "gaming". As relayed in my prolific and highly influential review of Blood West (available to read at rpghq.com FOR FREE!), few things capture my interest these days as far as gaming goes. The influx of remakes, remasters and inspired-bys have greatly diminished my enjoyment of a hobby that has, in retrospect, ruined my formative years.

Thankfully, there is a place in the world where freedom, creativity and ambition are nurtured and allowed to produce new sorts of games that alleviate my chronic boredom. That country is of course RVSSIA, and the game I'm talking about is Highfleet, published by the reanimated Microprose, forcefully pried from its grave by foul necromancy.

Here be spoilers, deal with it or get out.

What Fresh Hell is This

Highfleet is, in its essence, a ship-building, -flying and navigation simulator. All three of those things form the core of the game's experience. Its setting is a peculiar pastiche of Russian central Asia in some version of the future, where wars are apparently fought in large flying machines fueled by methane. You take the role of the last surviving member of an empire's ruling family, whose capitol got nuked by rebels. You and your fleet are the last remaining bits of the regime's army. You plan to fly to the enemy's capitol and capture their vital nuclear reactor, thus forcing a peace. So you pick a couple nice looking ships and make your way there, with frequent stops for gas and looting leftover nuclear missiles, as you would on any given road trip.

Gameplay

The game's heart, in my opinion, is the very in-depth ship builder. While the game provides you with many blueprints you can choose from, you are greatly rewarded for experimenting with the ship builder in order to come up with your own designs, or modify existing ones. Learning the ship builder is almost essential, since knowing how a ship works and can be improved will make winning the campaign a lot easier. However, if you are an absolute genius (like I am) and are willing to put some time into creating the ultimate battleship, certain parts of the game are trivialized, when they really are not meant to be. More on that later.

That's not to say that something like the ship shown below is unbeatable and overpowered. As you can see, it is well armored, but is very vulnerable on the top due to lack of armor plates. The fuel tanks are also close to the exterior. You have to play around this, while also exploiting weak points of the enemy's ships.


The ship builder is not exactly balanced, but it would be a lie to say that certain components are unviable. Every piece of equipment can have its uses and may be better in certain situations than others. Weight, fuel usage, speed, firepower and stability, placement of fuel tanks or ammo caches all have to be taken into consideration when designing a ship. The variety of building blocks provide something that you can really sink your teeth into like little else on the market.

Once you've built the ultimate battle cruiser/fuel tanker/flying satellite dish, you're ready to begin your campaign. The campaign screen looks like this:


What may first look like an animated page out of those old children's PC games, where you have to find certain objects hidden in a pre-rendered background, is supposed to simulate your ship's cockpit. There's your radar, radio, ELINT detector thing and much more. Thankfully, the game explains these components very well and I personally never felt overwhelmed by any of it. You may be wondering why you need all this stuff. Well, you see, the rebels are patrolling the routes between cities with big ass combat fleets that will tear you apart, if they manage to find you. So you use all your equipment in order to estimate their position and avoid them.

That's the intention anyway. As alluded to earlier, if you manage to build a good enough battle ship, these patrols are no threat - avoiding them is no longer worth the trouble. In addition, the game undercuts its own design at the very end; if you capture the rebels' capitol, all the remaining strike groups are armed with nukes, which they will aim straight at your ass. In addition, the game spawns 3 additional fleets, also armed with nukes. As you may imagine, nukes are bad news and you're much better off mopping up the enemy's fleets before they get 'em. One part of the game's design tells you to avoid them, the other says to destroy them as early as you can. The contradiction is obvious, and the developers should have noticed it.

When you engage in combat, you enter a different screen that is 2D and separate from the campaign map. The controls are simple; you fly around with WASD on a 2D plane and use the mouse to shoot. Speed, handling and of course the type of projectiles you shoot are entirely dependent on how you built your vessel. Seeing your design do well in action is fun and very rewarding.


However, the AI has an overreliance on using homing missiles. In effect, this means that for the first few minutes (or 20, depending on how many ships you're facing) you'll be doing little else other than avoiding or shooting down missiles before they hit you. This also has the inevitable effect that every ship you design must be able to deal with missile spam, limiting the amount of viable ships you can come up with. This isn't great. I think a game that provides you with such an elaborate ship builder should encourage experimentation as much as possible, not limit it.


In total, the gameplay is original, inventive and interesting. But Highfleet does have flaws that hold it back.

Miscellaneous Stuff

The game does have a story, if a simple one, and decent writing and characters. On your way, you can find and recruit different officers, so-called Tarkhans, via a neat little dialogue minigame. They can offer interesting bonuses to you but are in no way necessary to beat the game. None of this is the game's selling point though, and I can't come up with anything interesting to say about it if I'm being honest.


The soundtrack is very good and completely underrated the way I see it. One track has gained some fame via some weird memes, you might have heard it before:


The other tracks are good too, mostly ambient but unique, much like the rest of the game.

Da Conclusion

IN CONCLUSION, I very highly recommend Highfleet, if only for its utter uniqueness in a sea of samey tripe. Some potential is sadly wasted - the game itself is quite short, and not exactly replayable. However, I'm sure you'll have a great first playthrough, and if you've really caught the bug, the ship builder can occupy you for days, months or even CENTURIES. At least until the war ends and the devs return from the front to make a sequel.

Deathless: Tales of Old Rus is a roguelike collectible card game with turn-based combat seamlessly combined. It is created by 1C Game Studios.
They are known for the recently released Caliber and their flagship franchise "IL-2 Sturmovik".

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World and Lore

Our adventures are set in the world of Belosvet. You play four heroes that patrol the lands to help those who are in need and dispatch those that seek to subjugate those too weak to defend themselves. The further our heroes go, the clearer their goal: To defeat Koschey and save Belosvet!

There is not a lot of lore, but the "Lore Corner" has a list of all cards you collected, information and snippets about the monsters you encountered, and also every consumable and relic that you came across. These combined tell the lore, but dialogue from the heroes and their enemies also gives you an insight to the world. It is also somewhat similar to Witcher minus the well.. Witchers. The game is less drab and moody though; it is quite colorful to the point of being cheery.

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Gameplay

This game is all about building up your deck of cards by progressing through a map.

How it works:

You select your Hero, then have a small introduction, and the game welcomes you to the map menu where you can select from three directions. Each of them have positive and negative modifiers that are randomized throughout your journey. Positives can range from additional loot, enemies getting debuffs to meeting a merchant after the fight, while negatives can range from no loot at all to stronger enemies or even facing a boss. Everything you might need to know before engaging in a fight is neatly shown on the Map Menu. Your health, your wealth, the number of battles fought in the this journey so far, current consumables, along with the current difficulty you play on, your deck, and the Hero's Path. Each Hero's Path has a unique storyline and you will need to walk all paths in order to reach Koschey. Some of the directions are marked with an exclamation mark, indicating that they advance the main quest. After all, the goal of all four heroes is to defeat Koschey the Deathless!

The combat is a delight to play: using your cards correctly to see the enemies getting debuff after debuff and then finally dying is a satisfying feeling. Similar to Slay the Spire, Darkest Dungeon and other games, your party is on one side while the enemy is on one side. Both player and enemies have a set amount of "Armor" and "Health". Armoris basically protecting you from damage. If for example an enemy attacks with you with 5 damage times two and you have 11 Armor you will not take any hits to your Health, it works the same for the enemies too, you will need to remove their Armoror do more damage than their Armor number.

Something I quite like about Deathless is the fact that enemies have "Intention," which shows you planned enemy actions for the next turn. This lets you anticipate their moves and plan your strategy accordingly. For example, in the image below the Ukodlak (a vampire with sword and shield) will deal 7DMG and also inflict bleeding on Varvara, while the two-souled Bosorka will just do a 4DMG ranged attack. The Bebok's grey icon means he will move forward and switch places with the Bosorka. The Skeleton Archer does the same ranged attack but also gets the Reloading status which means he has to reload before attacking me again.

You have a hand of cards that changes every turn, and a fixed amount of AP, although you can increase them with cards or relics. Your deck can be improved by upgrading your cards, and change by transforming existing cards in your deck into random cards from the same category, it is also possible to add more by clearing battles with the corresponding modifier (choosing cards).
Each playthrough is called a "Journey".There are 6 quests steps for all heroes, you won't reach the end in one run. Each run builds on the previous, meaning when you reach a certain step, your next journey with the same hero will start from the last quest step you were on. Every time you successfully end a Journey, you get EXP to unlock cards for your hero. And if you play on anything other than cakewalk, you unlock Feats of Glory that add more challenge to the subsequent runs you do with that hero.

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Difficulties and Gameplay modes

The game offers multiple difficulties:

• Cakewalk is for those that are new to card games
• Hike is meant for experienced card game players.
• Feat of Glory 1-10.

It also offers three gameplay modes:

• Normal
• Hard
• Heroic

"Feat of Glory 1-10" are additional difficulties, that make the game harder but more rewarding. Example:For example, in battles for relics or boss fights foes gain increased Strength (attack damage).

Maps

The Map is a never-ending stream of three directions; left, right and onward. Occasionally there is a single node to take which either means you have reached the end and the end-boss of the Journey or another important story point to get you further. I like this system because it isn't expansive or restrictive regarding choice, since every node has it's benefits and drawbacks.

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Enemies

The game features a variety of enemies, all of them from Slavic mythology and folklore. There are human enemies like bandits along with witches and sorcerers, but also the classic undead like revenants and skeletons, to beasts like basilisks and bukas.

A pleasant thing I noticed was that most female enemies are quite beautiful and the male enemies look intimidating and towering or grotesque.
They all have their own buffs, attacks, and tactics to keep you on your toes.

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Player Characters

Vasilisa: An elemental sorceress who can summon nursemaids to help her in battle, or she can dish out damage herself depending on how you build your deck. She does a lot of passive damage and can recover AP.

Dobrynya: A Bogatyr from Velikograd and one of the strongest in all of Belosvet. He carries a sword and a shield covered in dragon hide that is able to defeat his foes with a fiery beam. He is a tank, which is evident in his cards and relics going towards armor accumulation and buffing himself. He prefers to do direct damage.

Varvara: A treasure hunter and has a pickaxe and an enchanted braid. The braid obeys her mental commands and can assume different shapes. She evades damage, can ignore armor, and can debuff enemies with slow, stun, or control.

Alyosha: A hunter from Kitezh and the youngest Bogatyr; he wields a starsteel sword and a combat wand called Spellbane. He has an aggressive combat style and can target specific enemies with Spellbane (which is shaped like a pistol).

Out of the four playable characters, Varvara had the playstyle that was the most fun for me. Somewhat aggressive with her cards since they build off of you debuffing enemies while evading damage by using dying enemies as shields.Very fun.

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Cards, Relics and Consumables

Cards are divided into four categories:
Attack - These are used to attack your opponents, some doing simple damage while others inflict debuffs or even giving you an edge by making you attack twice AND moving the targets around while inflicting debuffs.
Skill - These do a variety of things from debuffing enemies, giving you buffs, armor, or even letting you pick cards from your deck to then activating them.
Boon - These are situational cards that activate when certain things happen. For example, one card gives the ability to inflict a debuff on enemies every time you play a base attack card.
Grace - There are three Grace cards and each is based on luck. For example, if your hand includes "Aid from Kitezh" on a turn you can draw one additional card and you also get seven armor.

Each Hero has unique cards in his or her deck. You'll always find cards for your hero without having to fear that you'll get a card for the others. You can upgrade your cards, randomly swap cards for other cards of their category, or even remove them from your deck completely.

During normal gameplay enemies are also capable of debuffing you by placing a negative card on your hand. Some, are removable for 1-4 AP but others are permanent.

Relics are powerful items that can give you quite powerful buffs but some come at a cost. Some are even very situational and useless unless you face a specific boss fight. A really cool feature is that there are relics that specifically target Koschey that can lessen one of the debuffs he can give you or completely negate one of his abilities.

Consumables are one time items you can use without spending AP during combat. Some are defensive, some are offensive, but they all are very handy to have.

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Sound

There is no voice acting in the game, but the soundtrack is well-composed and comparable in quality to The Witcher 3. The sound effects are appropriate, matching the actions they represent. For example, the magic from Alyosha's sword, which blinds enemies, has a sizzling and ethereal booming sound. A sword strike feels solid, like hitting metal on stone. The sound of a shield activating to indicate an armor boost is sharp and clear, with a subtle popping noise as the points are added to your armor.

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Visuals

The visuals are highly polished and professional. The card artwork and models for both players and enemies are clean and of exceptional quality. While some might consider them overly polished, I appreciate the look of the enemy models. As mentioned earlier, female enemies often appear beautiful until their masks slip, revealing their true nature, whereas male enemies tend to look either ordinary or grotesque, towering brutes. Also, some art is traced from pop culture references and memes.

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Negatives

Perhaps the only negative I have so far is the difficulty as it seems that the game is too easy no matter which difficulty you play on. After playing a while you figure out how the cards work together and it becomes a well... cakewalk.

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Conclusion

Deathless: Tales of Old Rus is an engaging and polished roguelike deck-builder that captures the charm of Slavic mythology while offering accessible and enjoyable gameplay. Its combination of well-designed mechanics, vibrant visuals, and an excellent soundtrack makes it a solid entry in the genre. The variety of heroes, cards, and strategies ensures replayability, while the nods to folklore and clever card art add a unique charm.

While the game’s difficulty might be too forgiving for seasoned players, it remains a fun and rewarding experience for newcomers and casual fans of deck-building games. With a few adjustments to the difficulty scaling and potentially more content to deepen the lore and gameplay, this game could become a standout title.

If you’re a fan of games like Slay the Spire or Darkest Dungeon, or simply enjoy a fresh take on mythology-inspired gaming, Deathless: Tales of Old Rus is well worth exploring.

The game key for this review was provided by the publisher.

New Arc Line, a turn-based role-playing game set in a world of conflict between Arcane Magic and Steampunk Revolution, launched in Early Access on November 26, 2024. While the initial release provided a preview of the game's potential, it was evident the full experience is still under development.

With only two classes, roughly 10 hours of gameplay, and some systems not fully implemented yet, the current build was quite limited. Additionally, the combat and story, at the time of this review, were underwhelming. Despite those shortcomings, the exploration aspect of the game was quite enjoyable. Overall, New Arc Line showed promise but will require significant improvement to reach its full potential.


Before you begin your journey, you must create your character.

The Early Access build's limitations revealed itself quickly. You can only choose between two clases, Diesel Engineer and Voodoo Shaman, and two races, Humans and Elves. Either combination will affect your stats and skills. You receive points to put into six different stats and 18 skills. You're free to select all 18 skills for your character, as there are no trees or other conditions that must be met to unlock a particular skill. Lastly, you can select a trait to further modify your stats or skills. However, none offer unique abilities.


You find yourself thrown into a dying world filled with chaos. Houses lie in ruins, the ground is crumbling, and total destruction is near. Awakening in nothing but your underwear, your first task is to find your equipment. This initial area of the game acts as a tutorial, guiding you through the basics.

You soon find the exit, and you're transported to a courtroom. At this stage, the reasons for your presence are unclear, but it quickly becomes apparent that you stand accused of causing the chaos you just witnessed. After a futile attempt to defend yourself, your real journey begins a few months before your court date.

You arrive in Tatterhold, a bustling city that serves as the gateway to the New World, where a conflict between Arcane Magic and the Steampunk Revolution is in full swing. You possess a mysterious artifact that must be delivered to a man named Mr. Simon. From this moment on, you can explore the vibrant streets of the city.


One thing you quickly notice is the abundance of skill checks throughout the game. They occur in dialogues, during exploration, and while interacting with items. Unfortunately, these skill checks are open: for example, as you approach a point of interest, you'll often need to make an Observation roll. A successful roll will highlight the point of interest. If you fail, it won't be highlighted with a blinking effect, but you can still find it by exploring the area.

In dialogues, opportunities for skill checks are also common; they are not only open but also display the target number you must reach. In most scenarios, failing skill checks does not have negative consequences.

For instance, even if you have only a 10% chance of avoiding a fine, you can roll for it and pay the fine afterward if you miss. The same applies to stealing: You can always attempt to loot the chest next to the merchant, who won't care if you fail and will continue minding his business.


Tatterhold is home to merchants, thugs, and citizens, all of whom need your help. The game included two main areas: the arrival port and the slums, both of which offer multiple side quests to supplement your main objectives.

Some side quests are merely brief stories that require little time and reward you with a small amount of money instead of experience points.

In contrast, other side quests are more substantial, providing valuable loot and experience. However, these quests are often not creatively designed and can be characterized as straightforward fetch or kill quests.

A positive aspect of some quests is they often provide multiple solutions to a challenge, some of which can influence the game state through the Magic vs. Technology level. Each region has its own balance, and shifts in that balance impact combat strength for that particular style, as well as other elements. However, in the current version of the game, those effects were barely noticeable.


Another issue with the often lackluster quests is the rewards.

You start the game already overwhelmed with equipment and, in particular, money, which you can use to easily pay off any thug or bribe any merchant.

Most items, except for weapons, only provide stat boosts or skill modifiers, and you have plenty of options at the beginning. As a result, there's little excitement in finding loot or receiving rewards because you’re fully equipped from the jump.

While you might improve a certain skill by a few points, that's about the extent of it. Additionally, there is an abundance of random junk to loot, and, after a certain point, I stopped bothering to sell it because I didn’t need the extra money, nor did merchants offer anything of interest to my party.


You can recruit up to three companions in the Early Access build. However, each companion joins at level 1, regardless of your own level. While companions offer typical banter, they lack extensive backstories or personal quests. They react to some of your decisions, either positively or negatively, but these reactions don’t impact gameplay.


The combat system is turn-based, and each character has a pool of primary points for abilities, such as attack abilities and spells, as well as secondary points for complementary actions, like throwing grenades. You'll also need to manage your pool of movement points.

The order in which you expend these resources is entirely up to you. Your primary abilities have cooldowns, with some being so lengthy they are only usable once per encounter. In a pinch, your companions can lend you their weapons in combat.

One notable feature is that each character on both sides rolls for initiative individually in the classic manner.

While the developers wisely chose not to fix a nonexistent issue here, they have implemented a somewhat unusual armor system: the impenetrable armor of both sides refreshes every round. Before you can deal damage to a target's health, you must chip away his armor. So far, these armor values are not massive, but depending on the enemies, the first or second strike each round may not inflict any damage. This also means you need to estimate the damage of your final strike. If you can't defeat the enemy, you may as well take any other action instead.

Combat can be approached through two distinct methods: Magic and Technology.

Currently, players have limited insight into the variety of each approach. For example, for Magic classes, you can only choose the Voodoo Shaman, which is a hybrid of crowd control and damage dealing, and the only other magic user available, a Celestial Mage, isn't recruited until late in this version of the game.


A major difference between the two approaches lies in access to skills and spells. For characters focused on Technology, your weapons determine your attack abilities, making it beneficial to equip multiple weapons for each character.

In contrast, players can combine magic cards found throughout the world to create new spells. The game highlights which cards can be combined and even provides a preview of the resulting spell.

This also means that you cannot acquire talents or spells as you level up, which weakens the character progression system. Each time you level up, you allocate a limited number of skill points, and, every few levels, you choose a perk. However, these perks only enhance existing skills or stats and, as mentioned earlier in this review, don't offer any unique features.


Using magic also raises the Magic Corruption level. However, the effects of this increase remain largely unclear. Upon reaching Corruption Tier 2, I had to choose one of three effects. While ambiguous, they seem to be debuffs for a particular area.

Overall, combat was exceedingly easy. With the exception of one fight, I used the same strategy in every encounter without ever feeling at risk.


The overall presentation of this game felt quite AA.

While Tatterhold featured some visually appealing areas to explore, certain aspects such as animations, lighting, and facial expressions were clearly constrained by the budget.

The musical score followed a similar pattern: while it generally complemented the atmosphere well, the transitions into combat or conversations were rather clumsy.


New Arc Line is an Early Access title, and a very Early Access title at that.

It crashed frequently, had numerous bugs, and suffered from poor performance.

Additionally, its very limited scope in terms of length meant that many gameplay systems did not come into play. For example, the Magic vs. Technology level and companion reactions had not been properly implemented.

Because of these issues, I am not optimistic about the final result. The main story is uninteresting, and I found myself more focused on exploring Tatterhold than progressing through the main narrative. The combat lacked depth and consisted of easily defeating each enemy group within two or three rounds. The game's strength lied in its exploration and the flexibility to approach various situations.

For the developers, it will be a significant challenge to bring those unfinished ideas together, polish the game, and improve what is already present.

Ultimate Zombie Defense 2 is an indie first-person cooperative shooter game created by Terror Dog Studios. In it, you survive against zombie hordes while building defenses.

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World and Lore

"The streets of modern day Europe continue to be plagued with zombies, all efforts to contain the outbreak have failed. They're killing everything in their path and swarming their wave of death upon every living being. This type of destruction will soon destroy humanity as we know it." ―Steam description

That's about it, lorewise; you don't need more. Zombies are there. Kill them and you're superior. They kill you, they're superior.

The game's atmosphere is somber and bleak, good for a zombie survival experience.

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Gameplay

This game is all about surviving waves of zombies while building your defenses. How it works: you start with a basic gun (The Viper 9mm) on a map of your choosing. There's a counter in the corner that shows the current round. Soon, a horde of zombies will come after you, trying to break through the barricades. Your job is to take them out, which gets you credits for weapons and upgrades for them. Weapons can be purchased at locations around the map marked by wall scribbles. If you're feeling lucky, you can also try your hand at the mystery chest, which gives a random weapon. After a few purchases, it will disappear and appear somewhere else on the map; look out for the ray of light that marks its new location. You can also use your credits to buy perks and clear obstacles.

Every fifth round is a special enemy wave. On every tenth round, you fight a boss or a miniboss, which are tougher, but you can see their health bars, so you will know how well your weapons work against them. Each run lasts as long as you can survive. There is no fixed endpoint.

The structures you can build are varied. There are spiked barricades both large and small. You can build chainlink fences to make the zombies follow a certain path while using electric grids on the ground to shock them, letting you shoot them while they are stunned. There are barrels, one with hazardous content and one explosive. There's a laser fence, but be careful around that one since it also damages you. There are turrets both manned and, if you don't want to get your hands dirty, automated. Portals are placed in pairs and let you jump between them. There are two Tesla Towers: a normal one and a highly expensive one ($66.666) called the Terminator Tower. I think these do area damage, but I haven't tried them yet. That was just a quick sampling; the game has even more structures to build.

Pretty solid so far. You immediately understand how the game works even if you have never played a wave-based survival game.

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Game Modes

The game offers three modes:

• Just Survive, featuring round-based zombies and defensive construction;
• Just Survive (No Building), a variation without defensive structure options; and
• Defend the Objective, in which players safeguard a military radar, constructing and strategically positioning defenses to delay the approaching hordes of zombies.

I like that the game offers a variety of experiences. For those who enjoy Call of Duty Zombies, there's the Just Survive (No building) mode. I played a couple of matches in all three modes but had most of my fun in the No Building mode since that one was the closest to Zombies: nothing to worry about other than dodging zombies and knowing where to run next while getting better guns and perks. Just Survive, the mode with building, was just too janky: you have to be careful where you place buildings because they also block you, which makes it even harder to evade zombies since you can't jump in this game. Defend the Objective was better. You had something to defend, so building around it to prevent the zombies' reaching it was not as big of a problem as building in Just Survive: you can run around killing zombies while the defenses keep them away from the objective.

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Maps

As of this review, three maps are available:

• Airport Terminal: A well-designed, atmospheric airport in a German-speaking country. It's spacious enough to navigate around zombies while providing strategic spots at which to set up defenses and slow them down.
• Cemetery: The Cemetery has a lot of tight spaces and a few more open spaces to evade the zombies. It seems inspired by "Nacht der Untoten" from World at War. Wall weapons and perks are spread evenly across the map, meaning a new weapon is only a few steps away if you dislike your current one.
• The Bridge: Very lengthy map. The bridge looks as if everyone deserted it in the middle of something, and it also has what appear to be CDC checkpoints. Good atmosphere.

I appreciate the diversity in map sizes, as each one offers a unique visual experience.

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Enemies

The game features a variety of enemies, mainly zombies and demonic beings, each with their own dangerous quirks. Regular zombies range from rotting carcasses and burned corpses to zombies so recently turned they still appear living. Invisible ghost witches disorient you, making your screen all wobbly and your slowing your movement. Another enemy variation is the brute with a cleaver; these do a lot of damage. Snatchers pull you towards them so that other zombies can swarm you. Hazmats spit toxic goo at you; if the goo misses, it will stay where it lands for a short time, creating a damaging zone. There are also Hazard Bomber zombies that run up to you and explode.

It's a nice variety of enemies. They add to the challenge, but I have one complaint concerning the Snatchers: their hooking you and pulling you towards them feels too sudden and janky.

Every 10th wave, the game offers you a Hell Challenge. If you decline, a miniboss is sent to your current map. If you accept the challenge, you get sent to a boss arena. If you defeat the boss, you are rewarded with an opportunity to upgrade your weapons. The very first upgrade you choose is free; every upgrade after that costs credits. You should usually be able to upgrade your primary weapon to tier 2 or 3.

There are a few boss fights in the game. They are set up similarly to those in other games you may have played: you fight them in a special arena; they are usually bigger, stronger and faster than the normal zombies you have encountered so far; and there is a visible healthbar. The first boss is a huge demon in an arena with pillars all over. You bait him into running into them and then knife him; repeat until healthbar is empty. Very boring. The arena was cool, though. Generally, if you try to kill the bosses by just shooting at them, you'll have a hard time because they absorb a lot of damage, so figuring out their gimmicks is front and center.

During one playthrough as three players, we made it to the 10th wave, at which we accepted the Hell Challenge. The boss spawned, and we engaged in battle. Unfortunately, our combined damage was so low that it took an excessively long time to defeat him, and we only managed to do so because one player somehow ended up on top of the boss, out of its reach, allowing him to shoot without being hit. When I was playing alone, I figured out that you had to let him charge into those stone pillars all over about the map. The game hints at this by giving the pillars a red hue.

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Weapons, Perks, and Skills

As you can see below, there is a broad selection of guns, some very good, some a waste of your money and time. To give my impressions of a few of them:

• The flamethrower, from my experience so far, is a waste of money and time which ultimately cost me a run. Enemies burn, but you need a lot of fuel to actually kill them, and letting them burn and die from passive damage takes too long. Guns are faster and less dependent on damage over time. I'd avoid it in the future.
• I disliked the VAL on my first time playing but came to appreciate it upon further testing. At first, the recoil was tough to handle, but once you get a feel for aiming with the sights, it's actually really fun and easy to take down enemies. It also becomes a good weapon for later rounds if you upgrade it.
• The AA12 is by far my favorite weapon mainly because of its damage and magazine size. If you get the perk that gives you double the magazine size, it gets upped to 64 bullets, and, upon further upgrading it at the Pack-A-Punch machine, it gets even more bullets and damage. Very recommended!

As mentioned above, you get an opportunity to spend credits to upgrade your weapons, and thus their damage, after successfully beating each Hell Challenge.


There are a number of Perk Machines, which allow you to spend credits on buffs that lasts until you die. So far I have found:

• Phoenix: When you die, you come back with 50% of your max health. You still lose your perks.
• Fortress: Boost all buildings within a 10-radius of your presence, enhancing their damage output by 25% and durability by 25%.
• Rapid Reflexes: Reload faster, reinforce defenses faster. Reload speed and barrier repair speed increased by 200%.
• Blood thirsty: With every strike, you have a 17.5% chance to replenish 2 health.
• Brain Buster: Consecutive headshots amplify headshot damage by 10%. If you miss, it resets.
• Lock and Load: Magazine size and max ammo increased by 200%.

Fortress becomes pointless in (No Building) mode, but most perks are very useful. Rapid Reflexes, for example, makes reloading almost instant even when you use LMGs. Most perks seem to be 1:1 copies of those of Call of Duty Zombies, which is fine, as this is an homage to it.

There are three skill trees planned, but only two of them are implemented as of this review:

• Engineer: This is the tree for building. Skills here increases durability of buildings, lower the price of the buildings, and also making certain buildings more effective, such as giving barrels a wider area of effect.
• Scavenger: A more action-based skill tree with abilities that reduce prices of weapons and mystery box as well as giving you an ability that saves you from death once in a while.
• Slayer: Not currently available.

At the end of each run, you gain points that can be spent on skills. As of this review, points may be spent in both the Engineer and Scavenger trees simultaneously, but after the game leaves Early Access, you will have to choose one of the three.

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Sound

Weapon sounds are 50/50, and not in a positive way. 50% have sounds that seem very amateurish and low quality, and the other 50% sound fine but are still not what one would expect. All of them have something in common: sound mixing issues. Some weapons far too loud and can damage your hearing (not even joking), while some are so quiet that you have to turn the volume up to hear them. Only LMGs are well-mixed and sound as they should. Reloading sounds are fine, as is zombie audio. The music is consistently good and very reminiscent of Killing Floor and Killing Floor 2 with its metal soundtrack.

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Visuals

The visuals are quite nice for a small indie developer. The marines look detailed, and their gear looks like the real deal and not tacticool stuff from military movies and other media that like to give soldiers nonsensical equipment. They fit well with the world, as do the zombies.

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Art Direction

The art direction is quite "realistic", meaning most places look like real places you could find somewhere on Earth. The only place that looks straight out of a fantasy or sci-fi horror flick is the demon plane:

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Player Characters

The player characters are nameless soldiers from various armies, nothing fancy. I do like that they are just soldiers and not special OC Donut Steel characters.

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Negatives

The core concept of the game is solid, but, unfortunately, some aspects fell short in execution. Building is a great idea, but structures can confuse the enemies' pathfinding: zombies will sometimes attack nearby structures even when there is a clear path to the player. A lot of the weapons just have bad sound mixing and are too loud or too quiet, and some sound very amateurish. The ability to place defenses seems very limited: you can't always place them everywhere you might want to, such as flush against walls or in corners. You can't walk through your own structures, and there is no jumping, so it's easy to accidentally trap yourself and die.

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Conclusion

Fun with friends, but generally falls flat. Playing it alone gets somewhat boring. Building is a good idea but very rough. As this game is still in early access, everything described here is subject to change. As of now, I would not recommend the game unless you have three friends with whom to play it. If you are planning on solo play, don't bother.

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Should this review prove compelling and prompt a purchase, please do so from the provided link:

Ultimate Zombie Defense 2 - STEAM

Passageway of the Ancients is a RtwP isometric RPG that aims to evoke the spirit of 90s classics but ultimately falls short in many areas. Although considerable thought has gone into the story and worldbuilding, the game unfortunately fails to create an engaging experience around that narrative. Many ideas seem either abandoned or underdeveloped, resulting in a confusing and often frustrating experience for players who find themselves questioning the original concept of the game.


You play as a Dragonkindt, a race often unwelcome in the human realm. To navigate interactions with strangers, you need to adopt an alternate persona.

To start, you will create this alternate identity. You can choose from three races - Human, Elf, or Dwarf. These choices are purely cosmetic and do not provide any traits or bonuses. The significant decision lies in selecting one of five classes: Rogue, Mage, Sentinel, Paladin, or Cleric. Customization of these classes is accomplished through skill trees. However, each class provides only a limited number of skill trees, which may allow players to max them all out by the end of the game. Furthermore, some skill trees are not exclusive to a particular class; for example, both the mage and the rogue share two skill trees, including one focused on picking locks and setting traps. Finally, you will distribute your attribute points across seven attributes. You can either let the game randomly generate your attributes and distribute 3 points freely, or you can manually allocate 28 points. There are no specific requirements for particular classes or races. Each attribute must be at least 8, but there is virtually no upper limit. For example, you can create a Mage with the attributes 8/8/8/36/8/8/8 if you choose. At this stage of the game, there are no skills or talents to select.


Your parents were murdered, and you are determined to find the culprit. You begin your investigation in the Gatehouse, where you will soon meet your first companion. From your very first interaction, it becomes clear that this companion's role is to provide backstory and guide you toward your next objective. Throughout the game, you will add two more companions, resulting in a total party of four. You do not have the option to choose your adventuring buddies; instead, you will have three pre-determined choices. All three companions share the same role as narrators and quest markers. However, this often feels unnatural and clunky, as one of your traveling companions will always seem to have a crucial insight to share at just the right moment.


If none of your companions provide insights, the rest of the story is primarily conveyed through your father's journals. As you read these entries, it's clear that significant care and thought went into crafting an interesting, unique world. Although the plot may not be particularly original, it develops well and consistently provides the party with reasons to advance, while also enriching the surrounding world. However, the issue lies in the fact that this narrative unfolds almost entirely through text, which ultimately fails to create any meaningful engagement.


You are retracing your father's steps, starting from the Gatehouse, in an effort to unravel the mystery surrounding your parents' deaths. While the Gatehouse initially appears to be a typical, peaceful residential building, it is actually teeming with monsters. After battling through the Gatehouse and its cellar, you use a teleporter to reach the Family Chapel. Naturally, one would expect a serene environment, a priest to heal your wounds, and a bed to rest in—but instead, you find yet another dungeon filled with monsters. In addition to this surprise, you are introduced to another hallmark of this game: excessively bloated levels. The so-called Chapel consists of over 20 rooms in a sprawling mega-complex.


Combat in this game is real-time with pause. You can choose a basic attack, allowing your character to automatically and relentlessly attack, limited only by the combat animation. Alternatively, you can select a melee skill or magic spell, in which case you will be limited by either Mana or Stamina as resources. Before entering combat, the game recommends that you configure your combat options. There are two available styles: melee and magic. For each style, you can choose from various settings, such as the stroke of your melee attack (Thrust, Slash, or Cut) or the phrasing speed of your spellcasting. These settings affect several factors, including attack speed, damage, and armor class. You can customize the settings for each character or let the game select them automatically for you. However, the automatically selected settings may not always be optimal, as different enemies have unique weaknesses to these settings. Using the wrong options can result in your characters frequently missing their attacks. As you engage in more battles, the bestiary fills with detailed information about these weaknesses. In theory, choosing the right combat options is crucial; for example, aiming high to kill spiders will often lead to missed attacks. In practice, though, I found that using medium settings for all fights worked just as well.

Another interesting feature is the ability to individually select the aggressiveness and maximum attack distance for each character. Although this setting is intended to enable a more automated combat approach, characters frequently refuse to attack, even when set to the most aggressive levels and when enemies are within striking distance.


Once you are engaged in an encounter, you will have the typical options of melee attack, magic, or support. In this game, skills and magic spells function similarly; they consume mana or stamina and have cooldowns. Most skills or spells you can learn are actively used, with the majority being damage-oriented. However, the game only allows you to equip four skills or spells at a time, which significantly limits your flexibility in combat unless you are willing to manually swap them frequently.

While this limitation is puzzling, I didn't feel particularly restricted during my playthrough. My melee fighters performed well with basic attacks, and I found myself using the same spells repeatedly for my mage. Although a variety of elemental spells are available, there are no elemental resistances in the game. Ultimately, using area of effect damage with lightning or fire didn’t seem to make much difference, so I stuck with my initial spell choices all the way to the endgame.

Combat in this game tends to feel automatic, with most encounters concluding in just a few seconds. The lack of positioning and crowd control options causes all characters, both good and evil, to be lumped together, making it difficult to understand what is happening on screen. I typically found myself sending my four characters directly into the enemy mob and letting them handle the situation on their own, including boss fights.


There is no need to worry about your defense either, as there appears to be no backstabbing, disengagement, range penalties, or other factors to consider. Although the game provides numerous consumables and spells to remove various status effects, you probably won't get hit with your first debuff until the late game.

Another poor design choice is the use of consumables. Players can use any potion or herb without penalty and as many as they like during pauses. Additionally, these items can be shared across different characters. This essentially makes your party unkillable, as you can pause the game and continuously use healing potions until your health is fully restored.

And you will have plenty of those in this game, as there is no shortage of any loot. The mega mansion levels mentioned earlier are actually rather sparsely populated with monsters. Much of your time will be spent searching a ridiculous amount of crates, shelves, flowers, pictures and so much more in otherwise empty rooms.


Most of the loot consists of junk, including consumables that you will likely never use. Even magical equipment does not significantly improve from the very first starter level. The one exception to this are equipment sets, which are scattered throughout the levels. Be sure to check every chair and bed for parts, as these sets are far superior to anything else you can buy or find.

You can sell your loot and make purchases at various stores. However, most of these stores are only accessible through a city map and cannot be found while adventuring. There are no settlements or non-hostile areas apart from individual shops, which means there are likely only around 10 NPCs in the game with whom you can interact.


Overall, the world feels strangely lifeless. I've lost count of the number of deserted taverns I've discovered. At one point, I even stumbled upon a large underground city, complete with typical buildings. However, you cannot enter most of the buildings, and the entire city is a ghost town, populated only by a few monsters.

This feeling of emptiness is exacerbated by the uninspired presentation. It resembles an asset dump, where developers have indiscriminately placed numerous assets in each level without any underlying concept or design. Although some individual elements are visually appealing, they rarely come together to create a cohesive level that I found enjoyable to explore.

The background music does little to enhance the atmosphere. Each level features a single track that plays on a relentless loop. There is no battle music, and even during moments when the game pauses for your character to reflect on their memories, the music continues unabated. This can be distracting and even irritating. Additionally, the few sound effects that do break the monotony often feel out of place; for example, in the only outdoor level, your footsteps sound as though you’re walking on wood despite the fact that you’re traversing grass.


Passageway of the Ancients is a unique game, but not for the right reasons. It claims to draw inspiration from classic titles of the 90s and early 2000s, yet I find myself questioning which elements in this game truly reflect those eras. It's unfortunate, as the story and world show potential and are well-written. However, the game fails to create an engaging experience, with many design choices falling flat. Ultimately, you'll spend the majority of your time navigating vast dungeons in search of the exit while resisting the urge to loot every single container.