If you go into this game expecting a grand and complicated experience, you'll probably be disappointed. The Nightmare Cooperative is a compact game, a roguelike distilled to its base elements. You won't find complex skill trees, or a multitude of loot to collect and equip, or expansive environments for you to explore and perish in. That's not a bad thing; if you're looking for something simple but challenging, simplified yet also strategic and tactical, The Nightmare Cooperative excels.

The set-up is simple, a framework for the action rather than an extended narrative. Your village is in disarray; go out, gather gold, fight monsters, survive. The core of The Nightmare Cooperative is its gameplay and that aspect proves to be much deeper and more engaging than the story. If you've familiar with Michael Brough's 868-HACK, you'll feel right at home among Nightmare's enemy-filled rooms. Similar to that game, your goal here is to amass a high score, the amount of gold you collect equaling your final score. Opening chests rewards you with gold and spawns enemy so choosing whether to rush for the exit or increase your score is a crucial choice. Enemies move when you move so each step forward is a strategic decision that, when combined with the game's mechanics and varied foes, gives The Nightmare Cooperative a methodical, puzzle-esque vibe.

You don't control a single hero in Nightmare, but rather an entire group at once, each hero moving and using their special abilities simultaneously. Each hero is unique and positioning and formation is important since their abilities are only effective under certain conditions. The Archer can only shoot enemies directly ahead, the Mage can hit enemies on diagonals, the Warrior can perform two strikes in one move, the Ninja can pass through enemies, and so on for the other seven heroes. Supplementing these abilities are items that provide special perks, such as extra life at the expense of mana or not spawning enemies when opening a chest.

The enemies you face are equally varied and cement the game's strategic puzzle atmosphere. Some enemies travel along predictable paths. Others mirror your movements or move extra spaces in a turn. Turrets rotate and fire in intervals. All this knowledge is always at your disposal and define how you position your heroes, which heroes are best for a given room. Managing four heroes at once, while timing and syncing your movements to evade enemies or get into formation to attack a desired enemy with a specific ability, is a satisfying challenge. It's best to approach each move in The Nightmare Cooperative slowly and carefully, taking the time to plan out your next steps, thinking about where you are and will be in relation to enemies and hazards. A poor decision can easily find your heroes scattered across a level, cornered, a beneficial move for one character being dangerous for the others.

The colorful distinct art style rounds out this compelling package. The Nightmare Cooperative is all about the gameplay, the turn-for-turn decisions that make the best roguelikes so satisfying. Those looking for something with more depth may find the game lacking, but the strategic gameplay, varied heroes, and one-more-go appeal makes The Nightmare Cooperative a worthy addition for fans of the genre. The developers plan to add a challenge mode that will feature rooms with predetermined heroes, enemies, and layouts designed to test your strategic prowess. A mobile version is also in the works, with an estimated release time frame sometime later this year.

Note: video review embedded below.

The saddest thing about The Nightmare Cooperative, is that it's only real use is as a starting point for getting people into other games.

It's a turn-based roguelike that simplifies genre staples into something far more accessible than the genre is known for. You only have the ability to move and use a special attack, there are no stats or leveling systems, equipment is barely present, and the game only ever exists on a single screen. And all of that is great because it means people who have shied away from roguelikes do to their unforgiving difficulty and complex systems are going to have a much easier time learning The Nightmare Cooperative, and then might be compelled to try something with a larger scope to see why games like this have become so popular.

But that also means that there's very little to actually keep you busy here. After only 30 or so minutes I'd already seen just about everything in the game, and an hour later managed to clear it all together. With how basic the mechanics are, each of my runs felt all but entirely indistinguishable, and there was never the sense that I was actually getting much better at the game or had any way to do so. And that's perhaps what's most frustrating about The Nightmare Cooperative. When your means of interaction are so aggressively simplified, it can feel like the game is playing you as much as you are it.

The Nightmare Cooperative has a bad habit of putting you in situations which feel based entirely on luck. I consistently found myself locked into corners at random, already able to see my imminent death as I began to walk in circles prolonging the moment, and that's immensely aggravating because it seems like you have no control over whether or not you're going to get screwed over and have to start again.

I enjoyed The Nightmare Cooperative as a brief, lightweight entry into a genre that's often far too intimidating, but it gave me little cause to spend anymore time with it. If you've never played a roguelike but are interested in giving them a shot, this probably wouldn't be a terrible place to start. Just know you'll be wanting to graduate to something more advanced fairly soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8GbKtV6tf0&list=PLmaGkDQUd2inWbUZoSoB7v2zcJ_cJ0VGA&index=2

Take the addictiveness of 2048, throw it into a roguelike game, add some terrain, baddies, and environmental hazards and you have The Nightmare Cooperative. The game deviates from the standard roguelike path by adding more of a puzzle vibe. Like in 2048, you control your units by moving in one of four directions, all units move at the same time in the same direction each turn if able. Of course like any good dungeon crawler, there is no lack of enemies and other hazards to slash your way through or sneak around. The end result is some really fun gameplay that requires lots of foresight if you wish to make any real progress. It's simple to learn and easy to play nature notwithstanding, it offers a nice little challenge.

Cute graphics
Turn-based
Random loot and heroes
Low starting health
Insta-death
Small Dungeon Floors--Short Game

This is a strategy rogue-like. I haven't played much but I like it so far. After seeing some of the negative reviews I feel I have to defend it a little bit because I think some people expect it to be something that it's not.

There's a lot more strategy than at first glance because all your characters move at the same time but they are on different spots on the grid. So if you move a wizard up to get him out of the way of a monster, you also move your barbarian or whatever other characters you have, and they might end up in danger. You have to really plan your moves if you want to get lots of loot and kill monsters. You could just rush straight for the exit and beat the game in no time if you prefer, but personally I'd rather get most if not all of the treasure first.

Each character has a special ability that can be activated if he has a potion (the blue bottle). It's a one-time use, so there's more strategy for you. So far I've had 3 different characters: and Archer (special ability is to shoot across in a straight line), Wizard (special ability is a magic attack diagonally only), and a Barbarian (I think he could beat a monster in one hit instead of two).

You start out with one character with low health. Each monster takes 2 hits to take down so you can lose health quickly. There are heart potions that you can grab to increase your health. You gain extra characters by finding them in levels and going up to them. But you can only choose one character per level, so if there are two available on that level the one you didn't choose with disappear.

There are also special items you can grab that do special things. I can't remember what they are called exactly, but they are like artefacts.

OH, and every time you open a treasure chest more monsters appear!

The Nightmare Cooperative is a dungeoning crawling game that seems more fitting for mobile devices than it does Steam, but still a solid rogue like nonetheless. With a simple premise, the game is about surviving a dungeon with multiple units on screen. Similar to dungeon crawlers like Legend of Grimrock or Quest of Dungeons, you move one space at a time, and so does the enemy. A singular command makes all of your units move, thus the "Cooperative", which is where the real challenge settles into the game. Making decisive moves to help all of your units survive is vital, yet very hard to master.

For more information, gameplay footage, and more, check out my commentated video review here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS5UW3k-9vo&feature=youtu.be

It's a decent little puzzle rouge-lite, but I won the game on my second playthrough and after less than 2 hours I had done everything there is to do. It's the sort of game that's fine on a phone, for when you want to waste a few minutes, but there's just not enough content on PC to justify the cost.

Simple, fun, cute, fast & short turn-based rogue-like. Starts easy and becomes a bit challenging at the end. Great as an introductory game for the genre. Worth every cent.

A simple, challenging and fun game, its turn-based and you can control up to 4 characters at the same-time which wont be a picnic, levels are small enough to fit the screen, and filled with enemies, traps, allies to recruit and pickups.

+ Good character design, nice music and soundeffects.
+ Plays nicely although its rough but its really about strategy and planning.
+ about 4 dungeons, each containing 4 levels that can be beaten in seconds, but they're hard and gets harder and rushing will prove fatal.
+ A few characters to unlock each with their own special ability, a small set of monsters and items.
+ Simple to understand harder to handle, plays quickly and doesn't feel slow or sluggish at all.

- I got 2 levels so far that had their exit blocked by a wall so I got stuck and died... twice only and I played a lot.
- It does not have as much content as you'd hope, and after beating the game once it doesn't really give you a good reason to replay it again, unless if there's one last character you haven't unlocked, but the game's price is decent so whatever.
- The tutorial was good but should'v explained how some characters use their ability.
- I reached the point where I just use the ninja character to run through levels and screwed over my allies, I mean the game's basic purpose is to reach the end, doesn't have a real story or anything else.


Rating 6/10, If you're into simple turn-based games that looks like this one, you'd find it mildly enjoyable and tricky to beat....The game's name is weird though.

This game would be amazing if it were finished... A nice puzzle game (not so much strategy). I wanted to like it. Complete negligence from the devs with no updates. Don't buy.

UPDATE:
Due to my OCD about finishing games it did take me a bit over 6 hours to unlock all the characters on the game. I guess for that time it is worth the price. Unfortunately, had I known a lot of this is based on ure luck, it would have taken me way less time. It took me a long time to realize there's no real strategy, but if you need to finish with one character (for example, to unlock the Builder you need to finish the game with the Barbarian), all you need to do is ignore the other characters and basically use them as human shields and only focus on the Barbarian. That feels cheap to me on a game which setup looks a lot like chess...

Simplified to a fault and overly small. What mechanics are there do allow for some interesting interactions and planning, but the game doesn´t feel worth it to spend the time to figure that stuff out. Probably reasonable on mobile but can´t say I cared.