P2W loot boxes in a buy to play game, avoid.

Also this is free on mobile.

p2w microtransaction in a pay game 凸(ಠ_ಠ )凸

INTRODUCTION:

Little Lords of Twilight is a wonderful little gem I recently discovered on Steam that I find myself returning to whenever I have a free moment. LLoT is a PvP based game that magnificently combines turn-based strategy, with a fun card collecting combat ''MagZik'' (magic) system. You can use 4 characters (heroes). Each one has their own unique abilities and 2 minions to battle for them.

GAMEPLAY:

In short, the gameplay of LLoL is where this game really shines. The turn-based strategy system mixed with unique character abilities and a card based magic system works very well to make LLoT a simple to grasp yet complex to master game. I could tell from the start the developers (BKOM Studios ) really put a lot of love and effort into this game to make sure the ''genre mashing'' of the battle system works flawlessly together. Speaking of the battle system...wait there is more! In a lovely twist a day/night cycle is added which alters character appearance and abilities. This adds an interesting twist to the player's strategy. Wait, there is more still! Each player has 45 seconds to complete their turn requiring the player to develop their plan swiftly. I love this time constraint. This truly makes for intense battles where one mistake can cost victory.

STORY:

LLoL's atmosphere is immersed in a day/night cycle that tides the balance between good and evil. Where our heroes do battle in the realm of Zikverländ. The tides of day and night (SunPop and NighFall) fight for control over those trapped here and it is up to you, the player, to see who emerges victorious!

GRAPHICS:

Is this game alive? When I look at the animation-esque art style I often think that. The characters appear to be hand drawn and move just as you'd expect them too. Veroline is especially beautiful to watch. Her ''Raggedy Ann'' doll movements are as authentic as you would expect from an animated doll. A wide use of the colour palette makes the battlefields of Zikverländ look lavish amidst the day/night cycles.

SOUND:

Erie and spooky. Mystical and and quirky. This is where LLoT gets to show off its sense of humor. The musical scores fit each battle stage nicely. The heroes sound effects help give each one their own distinct personality.

CONTROLS:

You would be hard pressed to tell this is a mobile to steam game. The controls were implemented perfectly to suit a mouse and keyboard. Hit boxes of clickable items are precise so you don't waist valuable seconds of your turn trying to enter commands.

OVERALL IMPRESSION:

I love a good PvP experience and LLoT nails it perfectly on the mobile platform and as I said before it transitions to steam wonderfully. Players have so many strategies at their disposal none of the 30 + matches I have played have been alike. I have played some matches that were over in 2 minutes and others that were a 20 minute strategic grudge match. With close to 100 MadZik card spells it is assured that no 2 players spell layout will be alike. I highly recommend LLoT to everyone, not just fans of PvP. This is the perfect game to have a quick match with a friend while you ride the city bus or at home gaming.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT:

There is only one thing that I feel really could improve the LLoT experience overall on Steam. That would be implementing a feature that allows you to play with your steam friends. As of now, you can only play your friends via your Facebook friends list.

TLDR: Don't buy this, it's free on mobile and mediocre besides.

Beyond the appealing visuals, this game doesn't offer anything that isn't being done better in Duelyst. This is a vanilla RPG-style tactics game where your spells are random via a 10-card deck of singletons. As you level the characters, you unlock new passive and active abilities, and there is some customizabilty in that you sometimes have to pick between two abilities, although your ability choices can be changed between matches. The object of the match is to either kill the other character, or perform the equivalent of a touchdown by passing through their starting point. There are a few buffs around the playing field (HP, MP, Movement Speed), as well as some obstacles that you must walk around. You may also summon one minion per turn, having up to two minions on the battlefield at any given time. This game is pay/grind to win, in that you purchase booster packs of new spells with an in-game currency that you can of course purchase with real money, or earn by playing matches and completing daily quests.

Frustratingly, there is no way to get more information on anything mid-match. You can not check what your spells do once the match starts, you are only given a thumbnail image to guess by. This is often problematic, as my beginning deck had multiple cards with different images of lightning bolts, all doing slightly different things. You would think with the extra $10 I payed to play this game on the computer, they would at least add some features that are commonly found in similar games like Hearthstone, Duelyst, etc. This lack of information extends to the items you pick up on the battlefield, enemy player and minion stats, the specific details of status ailments, etc.

{Edit}: There are ways to access information in-game but they are rather unintuitive.

Another large gripe I have with the game is the lack of character diversity and depth. Among the 3 starting characters, the only differences I could notice was that one was able to move an extra space every turn, one could fly over obstacles, and the third had one extra unit of range. All characters have the same health, all do 1 damage per attack, and all are only able to have 2 minions on the battlefield. The minions are also virtually identical in function. As far as I could tell, each character's card pool was identical. No class specific cards like in Hearthstone or Duelyst. This game also enforces an arbitrary turn order, without warning you about skipping steps. You must move, summon a minion, attack, then cast a spell. If you do anything before you move, you can't move during that turn. If you attack before you summon a minion, you can't summon a minion that turn. Their FAQ said this is to prevent "unfair" hit-and-run tactics. In my opinion, limiting minions on the field, restricting turn order, and other hand-holding tactics inevitably lower the overall amount of strategy in the game.

But the most frustrating thing about this game is that I paid $10 for a game, only to find out it is free to play on mobile, and utilizes microtransactions. I had to check their FAQ for rule clarifications, and that's how I found out I had been bamboozled. I'll probably invest a few more play sessions of this game over the next couple of days, but I fear that it will be hard to forgive the game for essentially tricking me into buying it.

I got this game on mobile before buying on Steam, mainly because my phone isn't that great and can't really handle 3D very well. The Steam version is an exact port of the mobile version, right down to the UI. While the mobile version is free to play, the Steam version charges $10, but you do get 50,000 of the in game currency and a free hero (Herk).

The game itself is really simple, but it forces players to think very quickly since each turn only lasts 45 seconds. The tactical aspect is quite significant, since bad positioning will generally cost you the match. Players have to take into account not only the enemy hero and hirelings on the board, but also the enemy's mana reserve. Going head to head with an enemy with full mana will easily see you taking 2 damage the next turn just from spells; in addition to any damage from the hero and hirelings.

That said, there's really not enough explanation on spells and unit abilities in the game. For example, Veroline's Gnome hireling can attack enemy units without line of sight, it has a range of 2 including diagonals suring SunPops, but a range of 2 in a straight line during NightFalls. This kind of information isn't shown anywhere clearly and you won't learn it unless you spend some time using the character.

However, I would still recommend this game because I think there's great potential for it to grow in the future. Support from their help line has been responsive, so I'm optimistic that improvements will be made to the system.

I played for a hour so far. Graphics are pretty awesome. The gameplay is interesting and there is a lot of options to build your deck. You're starting the game with enough currency to buy spells and build a decent deck. It's a refreshing take on the turn-based strategy genre. It's great that each character has its own minions and abilities and there is actually a story behind each character. It's a PvP game and it takes seconds to get matched with someone so I'm assuming there are a lot of players online. I totally recommend it!! :)

I've only played the game a little bit so far but first impression is that its fun. There are different ways to win using cards, minions and spells. The maps and characters have a very nice art style. I'd like to see even more characters. Also I'd like to be able to hover over an object and see what it is. Same with spells. I'd like to see info about the spell I am casting during combat. Overall a good game

This game is a refreshing take on PvP strategy games out there. I like the characters and lore. good game overall! :)

Little Lords of Twilight is an interesting yet simple game with clearly defined objectives: destroy the opponent with tactics. There isn't much of a learning curve and the tutorial points out everything you need to know. You quickly start to understand that the defensive line to protect your portal is important. The voices used for the protagonists can be a bit eerie, but then that's the sort of game this is ;). Lady Frost isn't much of a lady, that's for sure!

I particularly enjoyed the camera zooming in shortly for the attacks and the variety of weapons/ spells used. There's some humorous animations for the characters (like Monster Herk cracking his spine) to help lighten the idea you're going into battle with spells and wizardry. On the topic of visuals - the graphics look great and the artwork is spot on.

The different levels will see varying scenery and obstacles placed in your path making you think about strategy more. You get around 40 seconds for your turn enabling you to spawn an accomplice, heal, move, attack, etc. There is a points system for weighing up the different characters and increasing their abilities, and you get a choice of passive or active upgrades on level-ups.

One thing I'd like to point out - the game seems focused on PvP battles - which is fine - however at the time of writing this review, there wasn't many ways to connect to those friends. If I remember correctly, it uses Facebook friends for some of the matchmaking rather than having any sort of integration with Steam and that's certainly something which could be addressed in the future.

The gameplay seems quite smooth and the dialogue isn't over-the-top at all. I won't lie in that there are other games which are built around the same architecture which do things a little better, but then this isn't marketed or advertised as that sort of game.

It runs extremely well on both computers I've tried it on, without any sort of hiccups or crashes. The CPU/ GPU don't get utilised even by 50% when running alongside other mundane tasks (like browsing the internet or having Spotify playing in the background).

This is a PvP turn-based strategy game i first stumbled upon when it first released on mobile and has cought my attention right away. Visuals and art design of heroes and environments look amazing and obviously alot of care has been put into it. With its steam release it has only gotten better. Originally the game had only two playable heroes, but as time went on more and more were added and it seems they want to continue that trend going forward, and all of these heroes are free which is an added bonus.

The game has a useful tutorials (about 20 or so) that you can do at any time and completing it gives you extra ingame currency for you to spend ingame so it is a nice incentive to do it. That said, you only need to do the first one to open up PvP matchmaking which is great.

Gameplay itself revolves around strategically moving your hero and its minions around the board in order to outsmart your opponent and thus prevent him from taking over your portal or killing your hero. There are number of power-ups placed around the map that give boosts to your hero or provide healing. You only have a limited amount of time to make decisions and so every second counts which adds even more to strategy aspect of the game. One thing i found different from other simmilar games is that here you have a day/night cycle and depending on which it is your abilities change and your hero gets eather weaker or stronger making things alot more interesting and not as monotone as you would see in other games.

Reward sistem is quite interesting as well, you get a currency called Madblings which you get for eather winning or losing, and you can use those to buy cards that unlock new abilities for your hero or skins to change its apperance.

I do have to point out that there are some exlusive skins for your heroes that you need to buy with real money, but prices are quite small, around a dollar, but these are not necessary to play the game and you can play for free without the need to spend a dime as most things can be bought for ingame currency that you get ingame by just playing and so i don't consider this game pay to win at all.

There is a ranked PvP sistem in place as well which you can partake in after you have done seven matches so you can test yourself there against the best and earn some great rewards. Friends and public rankings are also available for you to check out and see how you stand against others.

For the time i played, PvP seemed to give you a balanced opponent to fight which maybe has one level over you or is on a same level so that is quite good for new players just getting into the game.

The game can also be linked with your Facebook account so you can play with same account on your mobile or steam and you can share your moments with your friends, which is a nice touch.

I did not experienced any crashes or glitches in my time playing which means that if those were present at some point, are constantly worked on and fixed if needed which is great for the game and should keep people playing.

I do have to point out one thing that i didn't like much and that is the fact that you cant see any tooltips when you hover over your abilities mid-fight and so if you don't know your spells and traps well you could find yourself a bit lost and lose on that precious time so i do recommend going over your spellbook and learning what your spells do for maximum result.

Overall, the game is quite fun to play when you have that extra bit of free time on your hands and a great experience for both casual gamers and those that are more hardcore as the game is easy to get into.

Highly recommend to at least try, you will not regret it.