I’m a big EDF fan; Fighting hordes of bugs and monsters in corny scenarios with increasingly ridiculous weaponry and machinery is something that is fun with friends and I’ve played my fair shake of all the entries in that franchise, usually in local co-op. I was cautiously optimistic when World Brothers was announced, because it looked like it would shake up the EDF formula, at least a little and go in a different direction. On the other hand, EDF spin-offs (Iron Rain comes to mind) are often weird on both their tone and mechanics. After having completely played through EDF:WB, I feel like it was a good attempt, bogged down by stereotypes (if not borderline racism) and some weird design decisions about the progression systems.
Infinitode is a free tower defense game on iOS that boasts huge maps, a large skill tree with tons of upgrades, and a good number of tower and enemy types. I think the core idea is pretty interesting, but the monetization system kinda ruins the whole thing and makes it an extremely grindy endeavor that could’ve been better served in the game design sense if the game had been premium with tweaked balance. I had an okay time with it, but I just couldn’t see any light out of the grinding tunnel - and the progression was just so slow - that I stopped.
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.
Star Vikings Forever is a strange little game that felt like it was tiptoeing between being a puzzle game and a strategy RPG. You go through grid-based maps of enemies, traps and treasures, surmounting considerable odds by using your party’s skills and the enemies own attacks against themselves, while leveling up character, recruiting new ones and getting gear for them. I wish it had chosen what it wanted to be more definitely. As it stands, it was a bit frustrating no matter which way I would approach it.
Torchlight 3 didn’t grab me at all like Torchlight 2 did. I tried to enjoy it, I gave it time, but it ultimately felt like a pretty bland by-the-numbers action rpg experience that I probably won’t play again, which is a damned shame. It doesn’t really do anything new or different, and what slight deviations from the genre it does do not bring anything really fun to the genre. I still went through the game once, but couldn’t even do that a second time.
Territory Idle is a idle/incremental game where the core mechanics is growing an island by buying or fighting for tiles until you can sail away to another continents, accumulating various upgrades along the way. With plenty of systems working on top of each other, Territory Idle kept my interest the whole way - I managed to beat the game, in a sense - but ultimately I was left disappointed by the strange balance, lack of quality-of-life features, a few small bugs and a breadth of options that weren’t really all equivalent.
Lucifer Within Us is a puzzle game that delivers a twist on the Phoenix Wright style of investigative mystery inside a strange cyber-religious setting where you play an inquisitor tasked of finding demons possessing. The game has some neat aesthetics and good writing, but it overall left me a bit perplexed, as much on the ultimate finer points of the story, the difficulty and overall length of the game and the core mechanics that bring everything together. I still had a good time with it and blasted through the whole thing in one sitting, so I’m overall appreciative of what they did with it.