Recent reviews by Endlave

TLDR / compact list:

pros:
- Amazing gameplay blend between a tactical RPG and a king of the hill styled horde survival.
- Has puzzle/problem solving elements when it comes down to "how can I best decimate the horde with the resources available to me", forcing the player to think about how to use their AP/movement points and skills effectively. it's very satisfying when you finally get a horde to stand just right to make devastating damage with your powerful AoE skills.
- beautiful pixel art and super crisp UI. Game feels very polished as a whole.
- AMAZING soundtrack
- various weapon types to customize your heroes' skills. Some might feel better than others but every one feels viable.
- a great amount of enemy types, including elite variants. Every time a new one showed up for me, I couldn't help but go "what the HELL are you?!"
- the AI isn't bullshitting you. Aside form the bosses that are really annoying to deal with, every enemy can be reviewed to check what they can do and how they will behave. See a new mob? Check its stats and you will know what it does and what it prioritizes.
- really cool worldbuiilding. Want to know more about the history of the map you are playing on? click on some tile that interests you and read up on it. Interested what the lore for an enemy is? click on it and read up on what it probably used to be in life and how the mist affected it.
- The meta progression feels rewarding. As you grow stronger, you even learn more about the two goddesses aiding you on your quest to end all magic. I enjoyed finding out more about them on the side.

neutral:
- I personally loved how fiendishly difficult this game is but I understand how that might not be a pro for everyone. If you dislike having to play a level several times to finish it, perhaps this game might not be for you, despite how fun and unique it is.

cons:
- the boss mechanic is absolutely anti-fun and counter intuitive. It changes the rules of how the game is normally played and forces the player to play a different and stressful/annoying game instead. Where the game normally is about surviving an onslaught of seemingly endless but ultimately finite hordes of enemies, during boss fights, the horde becomes infinite and forces you to deal with a HP sponge with its unique gimmick. Without knowing of it in advance, you likely won't win the fight, forcing you to restart. It is immensely annoying to botch a perfectly fine run where you managed to survive the horde effortlessly until the last night...just because a bullshitty boss changes the games rules on you with you having no choice but to learn them through trial and error. Absolutely loathe that mechanic
Other than that, I would consider the game perfect. It's only other flaw being that it eventually ends :D

Here's to hoping that there will be more quality games like it in the future. Quality gaming isn't dead, people. This game proves it.

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written out review:

easily the best release of 2023 so far. I actually was wondering if there were still devs making good games anymore. Then this dropped and boy do I love it.
The game idea is like playing final fantasy tactics, only that your heroes are immensely OP but have to fight seemingly endless hordes of magical zombies.
The goal is to kill all zombies before they overrun your city which reminds me of old Starcraft missions in which you had to hold out until extraction during the campaign. It's seriously a great mix of genres and feels really unique.
I also love the pixel art and world building. Any enemy or object in the world can be clicked on, offering some lore snippets which is such a neat detail, really. It makes this apocalyptic world on the brink of collapse actually feel like something that had been alive and thriving once, making it all the more sad that this is now the last stand. The UI is also very clean and pretty.

As much as I love this game, however, there are things not everyone will like. While I loved how challenging it is, I can completely understand that it might be devastating to lose a long run and therefore waste up to 12h depending on how slow/fast you play the game. The game seriously doesn't ♥♥♥♥ around when it comes to how it needs to be played. You either drop enemies fast and effectively, or you lose. Play subotimally and it will cost you dearly.
I personally also despise the boss mechanic of the game as a whole because it changes the rules of how the game is played during the last night of each level. Normally your goal is to keep the hordes at bay which I consider immensely fun but once the last night of a map starts, a boss spawns which forces you to do its gimmick in order to win while enemies spawn endlessly as long as it is alive. It is utterly unfun and goes against anything you have learned about how you should play the game. I would have rather fought an impossibly hard (but finite!) wave of monsters than engage in a weird boss fight while having to juggle infinite hordes of mobs on the side. It is really tedious and basically forces you to do stupid things you would never do outside of a boss fight, thus being very counter-intuitive and frustrating. It also basically forces you to have at least one hero specced for single target damage which makes said hero basically useless for every night except the last one.
That being said, with how difficult the game is, it really feels very rewarding to beat these annoying bosses once you eventually know what to do. After learning from my mistakes of Lakeburg, I basically always built an Isolation-based hero on the side and managed to win the following maps on the first try (although I DID abuse the alt-f4 trick that lets you redo a night. I simply didn't feel like replaying 10+ nights to have a second shot at a boss just because I didn't know their gimmick from the start)

I really can't comprehend the negative reviews.

I bought this game to play XCOM. I got to play XCOM. Better yet? You actually get characters with personality and unique skills to command arround. Far better than what XCOM 1 and 2 used to give you with its generic and expendable soldiers.
Ever got pulled in by those snake aliens in XCOM2 and wished you could just do the same? Bam. Meet Torque. She does just that.
Ever saw those scary Mutons raging around and charging you, followed by asking yourself why you couldn't have one of those? Well, now you can. Meet Axiom, the charging, raging Muton who now uses his anger issues against hostile aliens.
It's awesome and a lot of fun.
Sure, people seem to bemoan the fact that you no longer get to name and personalize your own squad but to hell with that when you can actually get characters with personality instead. They interact with each other and feel very much alive, unlike the lifeles soldiers you got to play in previous titles

What else is awesome? Breach mode. It's a lot of fun to enter a battle guns blazing and actually get a nice pre-emptive strike in. It's kind of what everyone did in XCOM 2 by sneaking around and setting up an overwatch trap on the enemy, but now you don't actually have to do the pesky sneaky part.

Also: The entire game takes place in a city, so no more generic and boring forest/jungle maps. Speaking of city, there are multiple factions you can fight. Tired of just fighting aliens all the time? How about humans with psi-powers and hybrids as well? Cool stuff. I generally like the tone of the game as well, seeing as to how this game takes place after the events of XCOM2 and people are trying to build a community that cooperates with aliens and hybrids alike. Interesting concept and definitely a fresh approach from the typical humans vs aliens approach.

People also seem to be upset that there now is a turn based system in place instead of the entire squad taking a turn. Honestly? The game is more fun like that. It's interesting to pick off targets that would be up next in the turn order just so that they don't get to act, resulting in a free turn for you. Makes the game a bit more about taking out priotity targets instead of setting up your soldiers for Overwatch so that they can pick off enemies during the enemy turn like in XCOM1 and 2

What isn't great? Well, Overwatch as a whole is a joke now. The cone is tiny and everything breaks line of sight. I found myself only using it if attacking directly wouldn't have made a big dent anyway.

The save games for battles seem to be broken. Upon loading them, the turn order might be changed or even entire enemies seem to have vanished altogether.

The research tree, while not bad, isn't particularly interesting either. It mostly revolves around unlocking certain gear and then upgrading it to the next tier. There is no real flavor or sense of accomplishment from finishing those but it serves a purpose and upgrades the characters.

15 Hours in and the only thing I am really missing is a character that is able to hack Mechs or turrets. I might just not have unlocked them yet or maybe the hacking was left out entirely since there don't seem to be that many mechanical units around anyway. Still, a shame that I no longer can have my hacker take control of enemy units. But, I suppose that's what Verge is for. The Sectoid kinda guy who messes with the minds of enemies. Also something I used to think would be cool to do in XCOM 2. MInd control.

All in all, as a huge XCOM fan, I really enjoy this game and hope elements of it find their way into the next XCOM game as well. I would consider it a huge improvement over XCOM 2 which already was a fantastic game, too. I can recommend it wholeheartedly, especially since it's not that expensive for an XCOM title.

I am a bit conflicted about this due to my personal gripes with this game's story. Don't get me wrong, the game's story is awesome, but only the Princess/staff aspect of it which feels well-fleshed out and intriguing. Sadly, though, the actual continuation of Geron and Nuri's story from the previous game feels like a mere distraction happening on the side. As someone who mainly wanted to play this game to find out how their story continued, having to realize that both of them seemed to merely have gotten a side-role as supporting characters felt really disappointing to me. Not to mention that Nuri's condition kind of broke my heart slowly due to the dev's just having to add some high fantasy version of Alzheimer's in there which just slowly kicks in.)
Yeah, I admit, I might be a sucker for tragedy and bittersweetness, but this time it just made me sad, rather than the usual mix of sadness and happiness/enjoyment. Maybe because Nuri's condition pretty much invalidates the first game's whole plot which sits badly with me. But the way she is written due to her condition is really well done, though. Every time it gets worse, it somehow hits you right in the feels.

Other than that, the game is just as good as the previous one was. It works the same way, has the same challenging puzzles and intriguing storyline and new endearing characters to add to the cast.

Like I said, the only gripe I have with this game is everything they did to Geron and Nuri. Especially the nerve to give us two endings (one bad, the other worse) and then actually trying and guilt-trip the player for picking the slightly less heartbreaking one. I mean, what gives? If that's how it's gonna end, I think even leaving it at the ending of the previous game would have been more satisfying than doing THIS to them. And why does the princess and the staff get a better ending than the original couple anyway? Especially since the staff, despite being quite the gentle guy, was enough of a scumbag to deny Nuri's treatment for selfish reasons such as Geron having to solve a puzzle which doesn't even have any relevance anyway. If you think about it, Nuri pretty much had to forget everything for no reason at all. If the staff had just asked of Geron to figure out the truth of the princess in exchange for him turning Nuri back into a faerie, I am pretty sure he would have done so. If not initially, then at least once the dreams of her eventually kick in.

*sigh* regardless of that, the story itself is good and I enjoyed it. I definitely recommend the game.

This game is really good. And this means something coming from me, who doesn't even enjoy point and click adventures and puzzle games. That's because, even if you don't like the genre, the story and characters are still good enough to keep you interested regardless. But then again, I might be biased because I got lured in by the trailer depicting a story of a guy and a girl setting out on an adventure and falling in love. Being such a sucker for romance stories, I was sold right off the bat and luckily for me, the trailer wasn't one big lie for once in my life, like it usually turns out to be. With this game, you get exactly what you see. A point and click game in a high fantasy setting with a story of a couple who has to overcome some hardship. If you don't like any of that, you might as well just turn around and leave, but if you enjoy what you see, then good news: This game will be to your liking.

Here is what's good about this game:
- Memorable and likable characters with their own personality and growth
- A big world/universe that feels developed enough to actually make you feel like it might exist somewhere out there (I mean, it doesn't feel like a fictional construct that was awkwardly put together by some novice author who wanted to make some quick cash with his game. You may laugh, but that's what most video game universes feel like to me these days)
- Intriguing storyline and worldbuilding with some nice plot twists to keep you interested.
- awesome OST
- Romance for all the Romance-geeks like me (even if it's just a little bit due to the not-all-that-long story)
- No handholding. Challenging puzzles (although that might just be me and my inability/unwillingness to solve them). They make sense for the most part, except for one part of the game in which logic as a whole gets disabled (Mild
spoiler)(I am looking at you, faerie world. Such a bizarre place...)
- And the very best thing for me personally: (Mild spoiler)No cliche happy endings which always feel way too forced and unrealistic. Might be just me, but as a sucker for tragic/bittersweet endings, this game's ending got me right in the feels and thus made me a very happy man with just the right amount of pain in my heart. Seriously, that's what I am looking for in stories. Well done there.
- And well, there is a sequel, too. For those guys who think the ending left off at a bad spot (which, admittedly, it did with its rather abrupt cut-off.)

Here's what the game doesn't do so well:

- The voice acting is terribad. At least the English one is. I usually avoid the German VOs, but given how this game is actually made by a German studio, it might be better to just listen to the German voices and use English subs. The main reason is that Geron, the protagonist, is unable to show any emotion aside from boredom in English, except for maybe a bit of annoyance here and there. He was that monotonous that at the one time he actually DID express anger , it actually felt so out of place for him that I felt genuinely shocked. Yes, that bad.
- The animation is quite rough and stuttering a lot. While some folks might be able to look past that and even see it as the game's very own charm for following its own art style, I can definitely see a lot of people being turned off by it as well.
- Weird graphic bugs kept happening for me throughout the game. The background kept flickering with black boxes every once in a while. I ignored it, but it certainly hurt the immersion quite a bit.
- Some achievements are just diabolical. Having to repeat a certain pointless act 100 times was really unnecessary and annoying. Sure, it was done in five minutes but it felt neither rewarding nor was it fun to get it, let alone a clever easter egg of the developers. It was just downright a waste of time to get it. Plus, getting separate achievements for finishing the game on easy and hard mode for a game that has basically zero replay value is pretty stupid as well. I mean, it's a puzzle game, the fun is in figuring out the solution. You won't get the same kick out of it when you play it a second time, right? Since you already know the solution and all.

All in all, I can really recommend this game, even if you don't like puzzle games. Just open up a walkthrough of the game and merely enjoy the story which is definitely interesting. And if you liked it, there is a sequel, too, which is called Memoria. (Memoria is a good game as well, although maybe a bit of a disappointing sequel in regards of Geron and Nuri's story, given how they get treated like side characters there. But that's just my opinion)

Got the game because it looked interesting and cool. Well, it DOES look cool. However, interesting it is not. This is probably a small project of an even smaller dev team trying to experiment with a neat idea, but nothing of substance came out of it. They just programmed a gimmick and tried slapping a story on top of it. As you would assume, slapping a story on something never works. There is no beginning, no middle and no end with it. You just walk through the level and wonder why you even bothered.

I have changed my review to positive for now because it IS a good game. However, the points I raised in my original review still apply.

Original review:

I love the game in every aspect and would normally recommend it with all my heart for being fun, interesting, challenging and having lots of replay-value.

But then there are these DLCs and their prices...and damn, I just cannot recommend such a fiendish policy. The DLCs of this game are fairly important. Even so much that certain elements become downright no fun without them. This causes players to be forced to fork out hundreds of € for a game that is worth 60€ tops. Yet the base game "pretends" it's cheap with its price of 10€ only to let customers wake up to quite the horrible surprise once they realize they just merely bought the framework of the game like it is meant to be played.

It's like as if a salesman were to tell you he is selling this awesome sports car for 100 bucks, but after you bought it, you realized that the engine is old and needs replacements, then you also need some special tires because the basic ones only work for racing tracks and then you would also have to raise the whole chassis because of traffic regulations. And blah. Blah. Blah. You end up forking over more for that car than a regular one. Same deal with this game. Sketchy as hell.

"So just wait for sales", you say? Well, BAM, there you go. Devs raised the prices. Right before the summer sales. Now ain't that nice of them?

Beautiful game with wonderful music eventually ruined by bad game mechanic which punishes players for following their instincts and forces them to memorize the level to clear it perfectly.

The game is basically saying "Look at how awesome I look and sound. Wait, what are you doing? You can't play me THIS way. Don't you know that you have to do it THAT way? Restart now! We will be doing this until you are finally managing to do things MY way."

I know arcade elements such as high scores aren't really cutting it these days with kids not really seeing the incentive to beat "high scores" which are only abstract numbers in the end, but you can't just make an arcady game and slap a Pass/fail criteria on it. This only turns this game into a memory game instead of a rhytmn one.

Well, in my humble opinion anyway.

I booted this game up expecting some kind of audiosurf with pretty 80s themed visuals. What I got was a version of it that had been butchered by the fun police.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward. You have a ball and two platforms. One at the top and one at the bottom of the screen. With them, you are supposed to bounce the ball back and forth to destroy all objects on the field in between. It's nothing new and pretty simple. You could get countless other clones of this game in better quality for free on a flashgame website.

I suppose it's okay for the price, but it still annoyed the hell out of me. The "ball" you have to bounce back every time behaves in weird ways, bouncing off the walls in really stupid angles. I even managed to get it stuck by making it bounce off in a perfect 45° angle, thus making it fly HORIZONTALLY between the left and right boundaries of the field. Without an ability to reset it, it`s pretty much Game Over at that point. And since the only way to actually forfeit a game is to close the application and restart it anew, you can pretty much guess how much fun that is.

There is also no option menu, making it impossible to change the resolution or turn off the music and sound, thus even making card-idling incredibly obnoxious. To add salt to injury, you need to idle for about 5 hours to get all cards. Good luck with that, soldier. If the bugs won't turn you insane, having to hear the music for 5 hours surely will.

This game is only in EA and still way better than most games get after release. I love it and can fully recommend this game, even if it were to stay like it is now.

Pros:

- Objective based levels which are randomely generated
- Multiple classes with special traits
- Factions (some AI characters can either become your friends or foes. They can also start fighting each other)
- Countless different (interactive) items and consumables
- Different possible approaches to clear levels depending on character played (kill everyone in your path, stealth your way through, clever use of items, piting two gangs against each other, ect)
- Unlockables
- An amazing OST
- Beautiful pixel art
- Smooth and easy to figure out controls
- Multiplayer (haven't tried that yet, though)

Cons:
- I don't really like the special random levels for each third floor (bombs fall from above, radiation, chased by a killer robot, riot). It sounds funny the first time you see it, but most are just annoying. The Ai also goes bonkers on those floors too because it doesn't understand what's going on.
- Currently it's very short (but it has many characters so it has a great replayability value)

TL;DR:

The good:

- Nice multiplayer Snake-gameplay
- Good graphics
- Many game modes and maps
- Quests for when you get bored from playing the game normally
- Progression system in which you get to upgrade your train with coins won in-game.

The bad:
- Barely any players online. Most games filled with very dumb bots
- Gamepad controls too sensitive. Kept registering movement in the main menu even though there was none. Fixed by the devs.

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Addictive and fun multiplayer Snake game with multiple game modes and quests. I feel like I can play this for hours and not get bored by it. The graphics look great, the gameplay is fun and the controls...work.

To be honest, my controller kept moving into directions even when I didn't press anything which kind of sucked. Might be too sensitive since even the slightest touch gets registered. Navigating the menu becomes annoying that way, but ingame, it is quite fine. This is no longer an issue.

Would be cool if there where more players, though. There are so many maps and a lot of gamemodes, but half of the teams are filled with dumb bots because no one is currently playing. Makes me sad. If you get bored from playing the game normally, you can do the quests to earn extra coins in order to upgrade your train or buy cosmetics. A nice progression system to keep you motivated to play, even if just a little.

Verdict: You should definitely try this game out. It's a lot of fun if you can get to play with real people and not just bots.