Recent reviews by Alex

Lots of potential, but missing some crucial elements to really stick and needs polish. Love where they're going with it though.

It's an interesting game to start with, but eventually hits that all to common boring plateau that all these resourcey-villagey sims reach.

Also could do with a lot of optimizations and perhaps some ways to more easily understand what's going on in my economy and supply chains. Many UX consistency and responsiveness improvements would go a long way as well.

It's not a horrible game, it just feels like there is a missing dimension to get the replayability up there.

Fun little discovery and building game.

It would be nice if they focused on doing their best to assist with Proton compatibility. The era of Windows domination for gaming may not be over, but it is definitely waning.

After playing many hours of this game, I think my only complaint is that it gets a bit repetitive. There's not enough depth to any of the options. Armies don't vary enough, the 4x aspects are very flat and I think once you've played a few rounds of this game, you've seen most of what it has to offer.

Would love to see more customizability, even down to a per-unit level. Ranks just don't give me enough of a reason to really care.

Love being able to tinker with fantasy policy.

Really fun game, has a neat aesthetic and sound to it. I like that they're introducing not just a large variety of units, but also a lot of depth.

My only complaint is that I can't run it on Ubuntu/Linux.

Lots of depth to this game in the variety of cards available. I hope they continue to add to it over time as I love games that give agency through a selection of units. Beta Dwarf really knows how to strike a nice balance in visuals and depth, giving their games a very distinct feel.

One thing you're going to see throughout all the reviews so far are that people really enjoy this game, despite not liking the payment system. I wouldn't let complaints over the purchase model sway you away from trying it, though. It's something easily changed and I'm sure they're taking that feedback seriously.

My suggestions would be:

- Persistent elements of some kind. Either per-player or even with the cards in their collection, still waiting for a game to go down that path and this seems like a great place for it to happen!
- Clean up the UI when not in a game, having my arena is okay, but it feels cluttered at times.
- Add polished transitions between UI-mode and actual game mode.
- Add multiplayer modes where I can play with a specific friend, not just random matchmaking.
- Add different types of and larger maps. Not just the two-bridge design.
- Clearly this game would be awesome on Android and iOS!
- Address peoples' concerns over the pricing model. I'd hate for all these negative reviews to sabotage this title as I would like to continue playing it!

Again, these suggestions take what is clearly a solid concept for a game and would make it twice as compelling.

Forced Showdown comes in strong as a title that can solidify Steam as both a platform and a console alternative. What I find appealing about this game is that it is strongly character driven, but works hard to give players agency in-game.

If you miss the days of people betting big on their game ideas and coming out ahead, pick this game up and give BetaDwarf what they need to continue doing what they do best.

Like so many games, binds to the wrong monitor in dual monitor mode on Linux. Basically unplayable as the frame becomes un-interactable and un-closable. Mouse doesn't map to the correct position even in the weird chromeless window it puts on the wrong monitor.

Games that don't have these kinds of things sorted out just can't be considered polished enough to play.

Very fun game with some neat concepts, unfortunately they refuse to add Linux support in Steam. Not sure why, it can run, they just don't seem to want to do the release/integration. So I can't use my steam-account based characters on Linux...