Recent reviews by ScrObot

Another indie ARPG? Yes, but this has a lot more going on under the hood than your average game, and is a really fun experience because of it.

If you played any of Soldak's previous titles, you know what you're in for -- an addictive Action RPG experience, lots of loot, and actions (yours, other clans, and enemies) having tangible effects in the world. If you just sit around doing nothing, the game world continues; other clans will be out there solving quests, making and breaking alliances, and probably causing trouble. Enemies will be getting more powerful, even banding together into intimidating groups. Diseases and curses can run through towns. Your clan members can get in fights with each other and/or get married. Vendors occasionally wander through the world and sometimes chill out in your town for a while. You may get attacked by other clans, or sieged by monsters. And then you starve.

This is basically a sequel to Depths of Peril, with the same living world and clan warfare aspects, with the additional polish and hybrid classes of Din's Curse, some interesting things from Drox Operative, all with more refined and hands-on clan management features.

Honestly the zombie angle doesn't add a whole lot by itself, but it's another ingredient that makes it unique (and can be turned off if you don't like it). Soldak continues to offer lots of options to tweak your experience and/or offer up more of a challenge. And it's easily moddable just like their past titles. (Check out the modding forum on the developer's site: http://www.soldak.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=39 )

No, this isn't at the production level of Diablo 3 or some other AAA titles, but there's a lot of love and interesting things going on in here, and it is a fun experience that I keep coming back to. The developer is also highly responsive and open to suggestions.

This is a decent tower defense game, if you're into the genre. I got it in a bundle, I would not recommend it at full price though.

There are only 10 levels, but a global upgrade system and 3 difficulties reward extra playthroughs. There are 5 items/abilities that have cooldowns which are very helpful. To be clear, this isn't on par with something like Defense Grid, but it was still fun.

Some negative points that stood out to me:

Restrictive tower placement options along sides of pre-determined roads/paths -- no creating mazes here
There's no indication of a tower's footprint, so finding the closest you can place towers together is trial and error (and you can inadvertently block a preferable tower placement with a nearby tower)
Only 5 types of towers and no customization options (beyond special attacks that happen at random)
Minor UI annoyances -- upgrade notices hiding behind the tower's current rank, hard to see upgrade notices with all the weapons firing, tower types are hard to differentiate
Lack of at-a-glance information such as how much a tower costs to upgrade and/or repair, and what an upgrade will change
Poor English translation
Little to no battle sounds when zoomed out to any reasonable degree
Hard to tell when you lose a tower vs. an enemy unit blowing up
If you don't spend an upgrade point right away, it disappears and you'll have to replay the level to get it back
The annoying "sell everything during the last wave to get money" tactic

Despite all of that, it was still a pretty good game. It's not best in class, but it's nowhere near bottom of the barrel either. The visuals are good for a tower defense game and it doesn't feel like it belongs on a mobile device. I can't imagine playing this over and over again beyond the 3 difficulty levels, and there doesn't appear to be modability or additional maps available.

I took me around 3 hours to get through the 10 map campaign on Normal difficulty, which included a couple of the "minigames" (the same maps with specific restrictions, but you can earn cash to bolster your population).

Despite the title, this game has nothing to do with Minecraft! This is the first game I've bought in a long time at full price, and it's worth every penny.

Creeper World 3 is a pausable RTS-type game with aspects of tower defense at its core, combined with a physics/fluid dynamics twist. The game is very well done, challenging and packed with a number of game modes, along with a powerful integrated editor. It's not ridiculously complicated with dozens of units or a mad clickfest where you need millisecond reaction times to survive -- those games are not really my style, but Creeper World 3 is very satisfying. It can get hectic, but there's always time to pause and breathe.

Terrain (including terraforming), energy networks and advancing your weaponry all play huge roles, and you will definitely be pondering strategies on every map. This is not a puzzler, there's not a single "right way" to win each map; given enough time, often times even poor strategies can grind out wins. That translates to a lot of flexibility and support for different playstyles and setups.

As the title suggests, this is the third entry in the series, so there's a level of polish and streamlining over the previous titles. There are a huge number of community-created maps, variable-driven procedurally generated maps, and advanced scripting options available in the editor to create a large variety of scenarios beyond just basic maps. You could basically play this game for the rest of your life and always see new content. Steam cloud, achievements and online leaderboards round it all out.

Try the free demo at the developer's site to see if it hooks you like it did me: http://knucklecracker.com/common/demo.php

This is a short but enjoyable Mega Man-esque platformer with some humor and a little bit of variety. The hybrid 3D/drawn style is well done, along with the Old West styled music. Some levels and bosses can be hard until you learn their patterns, but the game is forgiving with infinite lives and saving. Three different characters are available along with legit achievements.

This isn't your mother's relaxed session of Candy Crush. Things get hectic during the match 3 based battles, and an added layer of spells, items and supporting troops with specific abilities makes it a much deeper experience. The varying board layouts and boss battles up the challenge, even for a match 3 veteran, and that's just at the Normal difficulty.

The citybuilding and RPG side are light, but a good way to break up the battles and give you options on what to unlock and upgrade. The endless tower mode keeps things going past the story and allow you to continue upgrading your city and unlock the top level spells and items.

FrogDice has really upped their game with this one, and support their products well post-release. I was a Kickstarter backer on this and played quite a lot during the beta phase, so I have a bunch more hours in this game than Steam reports.

Some call this Diablo in space, some call it a sci-fi ARPG with a 4x game running in the background -- I call it a lot of fun. It is both of those prior descriptions, and a lot more. I have even more hours in this game than Steam reports, going back to the beta, and find myself coming back to it over and over again.

It's got the crazy clickfest, inventory and item management and satisfying loot grinding of good ARPGs. It has a deep 4x system running in the background which you can directly affect, but you're still just one ship against fleets. It's got mod-ability, and even those tasty achievements.

The Invasion of the Ancients expansion is highly recommended, as it adds a lot to the game, including "chips" for customizing your equipment, special racial services (adding slots for chips, lowering power consumption, etc.), additional playable races and sub-races, and more.

Soldak has a great stable of games, and this is the best looking of them yet. Din's Curse and Depths of Peril are also a lot of fun, check them out as well!

This is a fantastic tool to learn songs with, or to mess around in Session mode with a very customizable backing band. I'm less crazy about the "lessons" or minigames, but the core gameplay is extremely solid and tons of fun. Lessons from an outside source are necessary to really learn. The game does introduce techniques to you and has lesson videos, but they're somewhat shallow and don't really explain the "why" of things, nor can it critique your technique or correct bad habits. I highly recommend it for learning songs and as a practice aid, as long as you're coupling it with at least online tutorials, though actual lessons are always preferable. Yes, it requires Uplay, but it's pretty transparent. Once the new song format is figured out, community-built custom songs will make their way in again and unofficially expand the song library by a large amount.

A couple years in development, Desktop Dungeons has finally gone gold, and is a ton of fun to play. It's a unique mix of a light roguelike with a puzzler, and definitely exercises your strategy gland (that's a thing, right?). Each level is pretty short, ~10 minutes, so it's good in both short and long bursts. Tons of unlockables, immense replayability and staying power, light kingdom building aspects and lots of strategic depth add up to make this one a winner. The developers continue to improve upon it as well, which is always a good sign. The free "alpha" version on their website is basically the precursor to this game, but the basic gameplay mechanics are there. (Note: I take no responsibility for any headaches resulting from the optional puzzle levels or challenges.)

Another gem from Arcen, highly recommended if this genre is up your alley! Bionic Dues is a turn-based strategic roguelike where you control four exos (remotely piloted mechs, basically), only one at a time but hot swappable, through a variety of missions towards a final showdown with the enemy robot force. It shines in all the right areas: intelligent randomization, loot, equipment options, a variety of different mission types, lots of different weapon types, exo specializations and commander perks, plus a bunch of achievements. Individual missions are typically pretty short (5-10 minutes tops), so it can be played in short bursts if desired. I've already sunk a ton of time into this, with much more on the horizon. It can be challenging, but good strategy will usually bring you out on top. A demo is also available at Arcen's site. http://arcengames.com/

It's like Borderlands 1, only better! It's the same general game as the first, with additional polish and refinement, bells and whistles and a deeper story this time around. It retains the same twisted humor along with a bunch of memorable characters (both new and returning) and environments, and the great run and gun "diablo as a FPS" system that made the first one so fun. Claptrap continues to be awesome. As before, there are some tedious fetch quests and such, but they are largely optional -- and if you do ALL the side quests, you'll find yourself overlevelled too quickly anyway. The icing on the cake are the many laugh out loud moments, including the wonderful "Bonerfarts" bit near the beginning.