MENACE wasn’t on the radar for me initially but we went ahead and took a chance on it just before it’s early access release. I was skeptical going in and then unimpressed after the first few hours. Thankfully I gave it enough time. ...
The Last Starship officially left early access and reached version 1.0 and my first exposure to it came after it hit it’s full release. I completely missed this game during it’s development phase and came in knowing two things. It was made by the original Prison Architect developers and it had the same top-down looks. Ok, I knew it was in space two. ...
Deep Fringe emerged to the surface from early access airlocks with a solid and promising combat loop. The bones are there — turn-based combat with it’s own unique focus on using, and manipulating, the terrain around you. The feeling of being overwhelmed and your tactical choices keeping you going. A fun combat loop. ...
Craftlings released recently as a pixel art, side-view management experience clearly inspired by the classic design of Lemmings. The premise is simple in structure: guide small Craftlings through the multi-level maps while assigning roles, gathering resources, constructing infrastructure, and defending against threats. On stream, the systems proved solid and well done. It felt very much like a puzzle game at times trying to get the pixelated workers going to the right places without a ton of micro. ...