Recent reviews by VDZ

The Hundred Year Kingdom is somewhere between a resource management-focused builder game and a puzzle game. You have 100 turns (each of which consists of only one action) to build and upgrade buildings in such a way to generate as many resources as possible. While simple on the surface, it requires a lot of thought and planning to achieve good results. Highly recommended for people who like planning ahead and watching numbers go up, but people who want something more sandboxy may want to look elsewhere.

The gameplay consists of taking one action per turn on a 6x6 grid of tiles (each turn representing one year, hence the name). During each turn you can activate an unused tile, build something on an activated but empty tile, evolve a building into a more advanced building, upgrade a building without evolving, or destroy the building on a tile. After taking your action, all buildings on the map produce their resources, which are then again used to build and enhance structures. At first the challenge will seem to be in sequencing these actions to make optimal use of your resources, but once you have the basics figured out the focus will be more on understanding the map and conceiving and executing a long-term strategy. Powerful unique buildings (legacies; most games would call them 'wonders') provide incredible synergies you need to plan ahead for, while certain special terrain tiles greatly improve your yields if you take them into account when placing your buildings. Furthermore, most unactivated tiles are also not simply empty tiles, but will start with a building on activation (with a cost to match!) meaning you can greatly benefit from incorporating them into your strategy from the start if you can, instead of spending turns and resources to clear and rebuild them.

At the end of each game, you see your scores and get a ranking; this information is then saved and visible on the world selection screen, providing an incentive to improve your scores. (Sadly, there are no online leaderboards to compare your scores to others'.) There are multiple worlds (maps) you can play on which are unlocked as you play. Be aware there is no proper 'randomly generated map' option; there is one map which has some degree of randomization, but it tends to feel very samey. (The non-random maps do provide a good degree of diversity.)

Throughout the game there is always a waifu on the screen who will say something every turn (text only, no voice). While cute at first, this is irrelevant to the gameplay beyond providing some tips at the start and the novelty wears off after your first run with each of the five Oracles. (There is no way to interact with her or anything like that, she just stands there and talks and occasionally interrupts your gameplay to gift you a negligible amount of some resource.) Mechanically, your choice of Oracle is a bit like choosing leaders in Civilization, granting you a passive ability (typically extra resources per turn) and access to a unique legacy structure to build (eventually multiple unique legacies). These abilities - and the strength of their unique buildings - level up and grow stronger the more you play with them. (Grinding is however not mandatory; S ranks are very feasible with low-level Oracles and legacies.)

Finally, it should be noted that there is some learning curve to this game; not so much because the game rules themselves are so complex, but the game does a poor job at explaining its mechanics and details, and the degree of planning ahead requires you to thoroughly understand the game systems and values involved to not get blindsided by technicalities or small misunderstandings. (The game has no undo button or easy save reloading; with only 100 actions per game, each mistake has a significant impact!) I have written a guide on the game mechanics and made building evolution charts (both found in the Guides section) which should hopefully be clearer than the in-game information and make getting into the game easier than it was when I started.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic game, but be warned that it may not be for everyone. The pure solo gameplay and lack of conflict may have some casual appeal, but if you want to actually get good results rather than just placing buildings haphazardly for 100 turns, the game is rather hardcore and unforgiving and requires a lot of thought and planning. (Personally I've printed out the building evolution charts for reference and use a calculator to accurately plan out total yields; I'm probably an extreme case, but it's indicative of how important planning is in this game.) If carefully planning out your building placements and order of actions to make numbers go up as much as possible sounds like a good time to you, you should definitely give this game a try.

One Way Heroics is a Mystery Dungeon-style roguelike (that is, similar to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Chocobo's Dungeon, Shiren, Izuna, etc) with an open world that constantly scrolls to the right, meaning you have limited time to spend in each place and you have to keep moving forward to avoid death by screen edge.

Gameplay is standard Mystery Dungeon-style roguelike fare; you have an attack button, inventory with weight limit, three pieces of equipment, some basic stats, everything is turn-based, the usual stuff. Unlike other Mystery Dungeons the world is open (though you can't go back, obviously) with mini-towns and dungeons spread throughout the map. Objective of the game is to level up and get good items to defeat the Demon Lord.

Items can be passed to future characters after your run, and you get a score in points which you can use to unlock classes, unlock perks or expand your item storage. Character creation is limited to picking a class and a bunch of simple perks. Various difficulty levels, and a 'Maniac mode' makes the game harder by disabling the item storage. Unfortunately there are perma-saves with no mode for a no-save run; not saving is entirely optional and only gets you a few extra points.

Definitely worth it for the really low price.