Children of the Zodiarcs is a pretty cool tactics game where you use dice and cards to attack, use special abilities and defeat enemies with a group of interesting characters in a neat setting. Card and dice customization is a big part of the game, and most of the time is spent fighting, leaving some small interludes for story between each mission. I had a good time with it, but at some point it felt like I wasn’t engaging with the game mechanics anymore and just cruising through the game and that lost my interest.
Book of Demons is a pretty neat roguelike heavily inspired by Diablo 1 with a paper / card aesthetic that I really enjoyed where you must go to the bowels of a dungeon to defeat a big devil. Choosing from three classes with a bevy of items and skills, you click away to walk on predefined paths, dodge attacks, perform small minigame-like tasks to overcome enemies, come back to town to cash in rewards, and restart that loop until the end.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns is an amazing anomaly; something that flew over my radar so hard when it came out that I picked up on a whim (while it was free), but it truely made me wish I would’ve bought it on release. I really had no clue what to expect, a card-based RPG featuring Marvel characters made by the XCOM team? I had the (wrong) idea that there would be dating elements too, but chalk it up to superhero fatigue or a lack of interest specifically for deckbuilders, I had ignored it then. Playing it now - with the DLC and all - was a really fun experience.
Griftlands is a pretty meat roguelike deck-builder RPG where you adventure across a small part of the world, completing quests, negotiating, fighting, improving your abilities while trying to defeat a powerful boss at the end of a few in-game days while unlocking new cards for your next runs whether you fail or succeed. I had a really good time with it, even tho this kind of game isn’t entirely my cup of tea.
Playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 after Baldurs Gate 3 gave me a deeper understanding on the trajectory that Larian Studio’s games have taken over the years. This is a fine RPG with a deep, engaging storyline and complex systems, but in my tastes it had too many rough spots that could’ve been sanded out a little to make it truely shine. Perhaps the way I’ve played it - multiplayer co-op - didn’t lend itself perfectly to a first experience as well, but that was the way the cookie crumbled!
For The King is a neat boardgame-like role playing game where you move characters around the world, complete quests, fight monsters, improve your gear, conquer dungeons and level up. I was fully on board for most of the game, really enjoying the battle system, the style and the overall progression, but ultimately didn’t like the board game concept of moving slowly on a huge board over a certain period of turns by throwing movement dice around. I’m not sure if there would’ve been a way to do it differently, of course, so your milleage may vary!
I don’t really consider myself a big Baldur’s Gate fan, I had dabbled in the first two game in a very limited capacity, but I was too young to really enjoy these at the time and couldn’t wrap my head around the THAC0 systems and other intricacies of dungeons and dragons. I had always heard that they were good games, but as the times went my bread and butter was more like the Dragon Ages and other more action-RPG oriented titles. The allure of playing one of these games in co-op really drew me in, and the buzz was positively glowing, so I went into Baldur’s Gate 3 a bit unsure. The uncertainty didn’t last long, this is an amazing game.
Dicey Dungeons is an amazing roguelike where you play a Dice adventurer going through a few floors of a dungeon, fighting enemies by throwing dice and using equipment via the numbers you’ve thrown, getting new stuff, improving it, using special character powers and limit breaks in order to overcome a wide array of colorful and sometimes tricky foes. A great game with really good music and mechanics, I had an absolute blast with it, even if I regretfully couldn’t stomach taking the time to do everything in the game.
Tyranny is an amazing RPG in the vein of Baldur’s Gate and other Infinity Engine classics where you play the unusual role of herald for the evil overlord trying to take control of the world. In a world where I would have infinite time and no other obligations, I would’ve burned through this game in its entirety, but sadly I only managed to play through the first chapter. I really enjoyed what I saw, still! With a very interesting world, mechanics and characters, I’d feel really comfortable suggestion Tyranny to RPG fans.
Stuck In Time is a game that tries to be an idle game with the twist that you constantly loop, moving your character around, fighting enemies, leveling up, collecting items and mana, all to stay alive and have the longest loop possible until you eventually run out of power and need to restart all over again, keeping small incremental upgrades and familiarity with the map in order to make further loops easier. It’s also a neat-looking world that is like a big puzzle to solve. Sadly, for my tastes, it fails in both aspects.
Kaiju Attack is a fairly simple match-3 game where you fight off various Kaijus using tanks, planes and other tiles with various effects. Based on your success, you get money after battles, which you can use to upgrade your special weapons and other stats. There isn’t much else to say about it! I enjoy premium games without ads and there seems to be a good chunk on content in this one, but it got fairly repetitive and stale for me kinda quickly. Pretty neat game, still! Love the monster design.
Roundguard is an interesting peggle-like with RPG elements; You shoot your round hero around, hitting enemies, breaking pots to collect gold, use skills and items to get stronger and clear the rooms until ultimately you manage to save the king or die trying and restart, unlocking new powers and challenges to make your next runs different. I had a good time with it, although I’ve found the game a bit too punishing for my tastes.
Micro RPG is a neat core idea bogged down by the banal horrors of mobile game development. A simple main mechanic about your character spinning around using different weapons and you needing to tap to attack enemies moving in and out of your range in order to defeat them, but encased in a pile of premium currencies, timers and lootboxes filled with cards used to level up things. Needless to say, I wasn’t a huge fan past the core concept.
Dawncaster is an amazing deckbuilding roguelike where you fight monsters and build your character using a ton of different cards, powers and strategies. It’s the kind of game that really sucked me in and I would still be playing it right now if I didn’t feel like I had to try other games constantly. I had a great time with it and the sheer amount of content to unlock and ideas to test out makes the purchase completely worth it. Being a premium title, there are no ads or annoying microtransactions as well, another great plus in my book!
Kingsway is an RPG with an interesting concept; What if everything in the game was represented by Operating System elements? Bags as folders, different pages of the UI (stats, skills, etc.) represented by various programs on your desktop; Blue screen when you die, and more. I wasn’t entirely satisfied by my experience, feeling that the core gameplay loop wasn’t satisfying enough and that the whole “OS RPG” paradigm wasn’t pushed far enough for me.
Get In The Car, Loser! Is an amazing lesbian road adventure RPG with great characters, music, story, lore and mechanics that I blazed through and enjoyed thoroughly, both with the story that made me want to know what was going to happen next and the battle mechanics that made every encounter interesting and satisfying to play. It’s free (with paid DLC that I immediately bought to support the game’s creator) so I recommend it without reservation.
SNKRX is a neat game where you control a snake made of different heroes that automatically attack enemies in multiple waves of increasing difficulty and complexity. The only mechanics you have during gameplay is to make your snake turn left or right, but otherwise the complexity lies in the hiring of heroes to compose your party, upgrading them and choosing power-ups after you’ve completed a few rounds. I had a good time with this game even if the difficulty felt a bit random at times, so I recommend it!
Disco Elysium is an incredible story and world crammed into a very interesting RPG held back by some frustrating and obscure mechanics. Taking the role of an amnesiac detective with a lot of internal thoughts on everything, you try to solve a murder case over a period of multiple days in a small fictional village in a fictional universe with enough parallels to our own world to make it truly fascinating. I managed to get to the end of the game almost by forcing myself to play through it because at some point I just felt I was stuck on everything and spent so much time wandering around aimlessly that my fun with the game was sucked away. It is nonetheless an incredible thing.
Loop Hero is a really neat roguelike that has you automatically loop around a track, fighting monsters, collecting gear and items and placing cards around the map to create forests, villages, deserts and rivers, all in order to help - and sometimes hinder - your hero get strong enough to defeat the boss of the level. With a really interesting art style, good music and some nice progression elements, I really enjoyed what I played of Loop Hero even if my interest for the game fell off near the end and I couldn’t get past the last bumps in difficulty.
Dungeon Falan is a game I feel like I’ve played a dozen of times so far in my long iOS journey; You fight enemies by sliding your finger across tiles that can be swords, shields, money or potions, accumulating resources, leveling up and damaging foes along the way. You have a wide array of stats, skills and items to help you, but ultimately your foes will overwhelm you and you’ll have to start over. This is an okay one of these, which in those times of idle games is a breath of fresh air, but some of the design decisions they took were a bit weird for me.