Recent reviews by Disastercake

A very fun, and extremely challenging, real-time strategy game where your goal is to build a city that can withstand waves of unrelenting zombies. The game captures the fear of a zombie outbreak perfectly: every day is a rush to fortify against the impending horde, and if you let even 1 zombie slip through your defense then your entire town will turn against you as it snowballs into a zombie horde itself.

Like most RTS games you have various resources you must harvest to support your growing army and buildings. There is also a fairly non-linear research tree that allows you the choice of when to research certain buildings for optimization of time and resources.

Speaking of time, They Are Billions puts the pressure on you by telling you exactly which day the enormous, final horde will come. While each wave is a challenge in itself, all of your work should be in preparation of this final day. The difficulty spike for the final day is nearly insurmountable for a new player.

The game itself seems very stable, though to support this many A.I. on the screen at once a very inaccurate pathfinding algorithm is used. This means some units get stuck on walls or take strange paths, but a little micro management on the player's part can fix the problem. The upside to this is that zombie hordes are very predictable, generally bottle-necking themselves into tight spots that you should take advantage of (though watch out for the occasional strays).

There is also a noticeable imbalance between certain building costs and unit strengths. Take a look around some guides and you'll see certain troops and buildings that should be avoided.

Overall, highly recommended if you like base-building defense games.

As an indie game developer myself I am very proud to see the Something classic team complete such an amazing game that captures the polish and soul of the classics that inspired it so well. If you’re a fan of classic JRPGs of the SNES era, I think you’ll love Shadows of Adam. And at $15 it’s an absolutely great deal for the quality. If you’re still on the fence, here’s a more detailed review:

Shadows of Adam (SoA) is a game inspired by classic JRPGs from the SNES era. The closest game I can think of that resembled SoA would be Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest.

Shadows of Adam has great music, beautiful pixel art, and an interesting a succinct story. You start off with a warrior named Kellan (male) and a sorceress named Asrael (female). A darkness called the “Tangle” is taking over the world and has reached your secluded town named “Adam”. Of course, it’s up to you to stop it! Later on you’ll get two more human members to your team: a dark-skinned monk named Curtis, and a red-headed thief named Talon.

Shadows of Adam’s controls require either full keyboard or full controller. I played with an Xbox 360 controller, which required no additional setup and worked perfectly.

You can move in 4 directions similar to classics like Final Fantasy 6. There’s a run button that you can hold to run, which you pretty much do the entire time as there’s no real reason to walk. Luckily you can go into the options from the menu and turn on “always run” so you don’t have to be bothered holding the button your entire playthrough.

This is probably my only complaint about Shadows of Adam: My personal preference is that a game on the PC should be playable with a mouse, though I do understand that a classic game like this really is better with a controller.

Later on you acquire an airship which you can enter and explore similar to Final Fantasy 6. This of course helps you travel the rest of the world you normally couldn't on foot.

The sprites are beautiful, but in lower resolution to have that classic feeling. I first started playing Shadows of Adam at full screen on a 1080p monitor, but the lower resolution made the graphics look too muddled. I switched to windowed mode and felt that it was much easier (and better looking) to play on a lower resolution.

Bosses have multiple forms depending on their current HP percentage. This adds a nice effect to show you’re near the end of a long fight, and the boss may start to look more angry or more tired.

Spell effects are beautiful and fun to watch even after the 100th time you’ve seen them.

There are no random battles. Instead, enemies are engaged by bumping into them on the exploration map. Once you do, you’ll be whisked away to the “battle zone”, which has the enemies and protagonists lined up on opposite sides of each other to combat. Enemies will respawn when you exit and re-enter the dungeon, which you’ll need to do sometimes to rest in town.

Combat is turned based based on character’s speed stat. This means you select the actions for all of your characters at the beginning of the round, and then every character, including enemies, take a turn in order based on their speed stat.

Shadows of Adam has replaced the traditional Mana resource for a rechargable AP resource. All of your skills take a percentage of your AP (e.g. 40%), and then your AP regenerates either by using certain AP regenerating skills or naturally each turn.

Abilities are earned by leveling up through gaining experience in combat.

Note: If a character dies they do not receive EXP.

Equipment is set up into 3 basic slots: Weapon, Armor, Artifact. Weapon and armor contribute pretty much to what you’d think they would, while artifacts can contribute in different ways depending on the affixed stats.

The stats are simpler than some complex RPGs, but maintain variety.

• Atk - Attack determines how much damage a physical attack does.
  
• MAG - Magic determines your magic powers.
  
• DEF - Defense determines how much physical damage you reduce.
  
• M.DEF - Magic Defense determines how much Magic damage you reduce.
  
• SPD - Speed determines the action order each turn.
  
• LUK - Luck determines both Crit % and accuracy (you can miss with some basic attacks).
  
• Crit % - Critical strike % determines your percentage chance to land extra damage with skills and attacks.

The level design is very well done. Each dungeon has its own puzzles that significantly add to the atmosphere and spirit of the scenes.

There are many hidden treasures, making exploration very rewarding and fun. The treasures range from equipment to items like any good RPG would do.

Also… I’m a secret boss in the game! Come get a slice, baby! But watch out; this cake bites back... <3

Still working my way through it, so I’ll update on this when I finish. Overall I’m very happy with how polished Shadows of Adam is! I would dare call it a proper love letter to the classics that inspired it.

Heavenstrike Rivals is a standard free-to-play (micro payment) tactical mobile type game but on the desktop. It's a fun experience that will have you planning each move carefully. It's free, but as with all of these types of games you can spend money to get more units or make them stronger. Also like other games of the genre, the game locks you out from playing after a certain amount of energy is spent. You must wait for the energy to refill or spend money to refill it.

A game in a similar vein to Hearthstone, but with the addition of placement on the battlefield driving when and who a character attacks. There are 3 lanes and your units automatically move forward in the lane you chose to move them in, with the possibility for you to change their lane on your turn as well (if they're not taunted). There are many different units to choose from (after you've collected them), so the strategic options seem very vast. However, as with all these types of games, I'm sure time will end up with certain builds dominating the arenas.

• There's a story mode and PVP mode.
  
• Music with some short motifs from the Final Fantasy series, though mostly all original tunes.
  
• The character designs are interesting, and the item get effects feel rewarding when acquiring new troops.
  
• A helpful, if not long winded, tutorial at the beginning.
  
• The world map where you pan around to find different events on it.
  
• The story dialogue progresses very sharply, but is enjoyable. It's obvious the focus is more on the collect-a-thon and not the story like most SquareEnix games do.
  
• Some very strange UI layout decisions that I hope will be addressed in the future.
  
• Some of the animation transitions aren't very smooth, like zooming back in and out for enemies with multi-strike skills.
  
• Response of the game in general is kind of laggy. It would be nice if delays between actions and animations were shortened much more.
  
• The game favors certain units over others. If you're lucky enough to get a few good ones from the store, set the best as your captain and you're good to go for quite a while without extra thought.
  
• On the note of favoring units, don't bother to PVP until you have a full squad of legendary units, otherwise you're just cruisin' for a bruisin'.
  
• You get loot as rewards after combat.
  
• Most of your character recruitment is done through points you can earn. These are randomly chosen characters, and you can't choose manually without money.
  
• Daily login rewards, which can be increased if paying cash for "monthly tickets"
  
• Different difficulty modes to choose from for better rewards.

I love to share good games with other RPG fans! If you'd like to keep up on RPGs that I create or review, please follow my curator group here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/disastercake#curation

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Overall a very enjoyable romp through a colorful dream world where you can fly!

I completed the game in about 10 hours.

The battle system is heavily inspired by Grandia's active time combat with interuptions coupled with Final Fantasy 10's feature to swap team members in and out whenever you want. In addition it has the twist that you can hover over a single enemy and click to "slow" them with light.

Some notes:

• Pulls a lot of similar classic JRPG inspirations as my own game, Soul Saga.
  
• Plays and feels like a polished indie game, but was actually created by Ubisoft, a rather large AAA studio.
  
• An interesting european take on the JRPG genre.
  
• Beautiful water color styled 2D graphics.
  
• There are 2 difficulty modes: Easy and Hard. I played on easy and, to be expected, it was quite easy. I never tried hard.
  
• Healing is done in a unique way where you find glowing bushes that spawn a series of orbs you then move your cursor over in the correct order to spawn healing orbs.
  
• Classic European evil godmother and step sisters type fairytale story (with its own unique twists) that takes place in a surreal dream world.
  
• You can fly early on in the game, making exploration quite fun.
  
• Clever and interesting puzzles in the level design related to your light creating cursor and flying ability, though the puzzle variety is very limited.
  
• No equipment, instead you combine gems you find to determine stats.
  
• A few quick side quests (12 total), but mostly just a linear main storyline.
  
• All of the characters talk in rhyme. Apparently they designed the game to be like an interactive fairy tale poem.
  
• Some weird uPlay login system, apparently a secondary DRM.
  
• No Steam achievements as of this review posting. Apparently the uPlay thing keeps its own achievement records.
  
• Took about 10 hours for me to do a nearly 100% playthrough. (missed one side quest)
  
• There's some sort of new game plus, but I haven't looked into it as I felt satisfied with the amount I played

A small critique, but it feels like the ending is a little rushed compared to the pacing of the rest of the game. By just my intuition it seems like there might have been one last dungeon planned but got cut out for the scope. Perhaps related: apparently the art director passed away a year before the project launched. At the end of the credits his name, Thomas Rollus, appears as dedicated to. As a game developer myself I was curious to know more about how an interruption with such a critical role affected the project, but couldn't find anymore information. If anyone knows, please feel free to share.

Curator Page: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/disastercake#curation

Eternal Senia is like a free sampling of Cake!

A FREE cute, simple, and fun indie turn based strategy RPG where you control one character. The game took me about 4 or 5 hours to beat to 100% completion, though I did take a sneak peak at some guides near the end to figure out the rest of the treasure hiding places.

Eternal Senia delivers a story about a younger sister searching for her older sister in a mysterious power. Over the course of the game, the player is taken to several varying landscapes as the background and the characters unfolds through flashbacks.

The game is a turn based strategy style where you control your single character and "bump" into enemies to exchange blows with them. There are occasions where some strong enemy skills are telegraphed and you have time to avoid them.

There's several pieces of puzzle variety that progress in difficulty, but none get very complex.

There are several large bosses that vary in fighting styles, each with its own types of challenges to overcome.

There are NPCs at the end of each level that help track how much of a completionist you are so you can do the OCD hunting!

Likes

• IT'S FREE!
  
• Polished controls and gameplay.
  
• There are some well structured goals and completions.
  
• Multiple endings.
  
• Likable characters.
  
• Well structured goals.
  
• Puzzle, level, and enemy variety.
  
• Difficulty level options on bosses.
  
• Variety in boss fight mechanics.
  
• Cute visuals.
  
• Completionist tracking and motivational reward system.
  
• Equipment upgrades through a simple item grind crafting system.

Dislikes

• No steam achievements.
  
• Very little variety in the way of main story NPCs.
  
• The balance on the hardest difficulty does not seem to be ironed out (but that may be by design).

Eternal Senia is not the most robust RPG experience, but what it delivers is polished and fun. For delivering several hours of enjoyment it's definitely worth more than the free price that it's offered at!

Curator Page: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/disastercake#curation

An award winning open world RPG that is to be expected of the Elder Scrolls series. Almost the exact same gameplay mechanics as its predecessors, but a lot prettier. Start in a small "tutorial" dungeon, and then get thrown out into the giant open world to explore and progress through the sidequests as you wish. Literally hundreds of hours of content for a completionist.

The biggest difference is in the way the stat progression works. As in previous Elder Scroll games, there are no classes. In Skyrim, you will progress through skill types by using the actions related to that skill repeatedly, like lockpicking and 2 handed weapons. As the skills level up, your character's base class also levels up. These are all familiar to Elder Scroll fans, but the new addition is a skill tree for each skill type that allows you to enhance your skills such as not having lockpicks break (for lockingpicking) and area of effect sweeping damage (two handed weapons).

Expect a lot of bugs, some big - some small, but fans of the Elder Scroll series should be pretty much use to these by now.

Curator Page: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/disastercake#curation

A fun and unique RPG where you are constantly moving to the right, running from a consuming evil from the left, to grow in power and defeat the evil lord that eventually appears to stop your progress.

Note that when the evil lord DOES appear, it will be too early for you to face him head on. Your goal is to find ways to slow him down and whittle away his huge HP while still moving right to eventually grow in power to defeat him.

A very challenging, simple, and fun indie experience.

Curator Page: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/disastercake#curation

A very interesting mix of genres that defines a completely new one. You travel through a world map at an eagle eye view and fight battles from a third person perspective.

There are many frustrating things about this game, but I think in the end that is what makes it good. It's at just the right balance to feel satisfying once you've mastered the seemingly clunky and slow-responsive controls.

The most satisfying experience is that when you start the game, you are pretty much bullied by every bandit warband in existence. You slowly grow your army and become stronger yourself, and eventually go from the raggedy, penniless wretch you started as and end up as the King / Queen of your own nation, and eventually the Emperor / Empress of the entire continent.

Curator Page: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/disastercake#curation

A very well polished, cinematic, open-world experience with a satisfying amount of choices. The only downside is you have to play as the main male character and there is no meaningful customization to his appearance. This is offset well by the amount of choices you have in the game where you can define his personality anywhere between a kind hearted stranger, to a mutant with anger management problems.

Make sure to play with an Xbox controller, because the mouse and keyboard controls are pretty wonky.

Curator Page: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/disastercake#curation

Shovel knight takes the best of classic platformers and polishes them up a bit for modern day gaming.

Highly recommend to play this with a controller, as the keyboard controls are much more difficult to manipulate.