Recent reviews by Galp

If you like turn based war games, this is a competent outing. Unit variety is great, there’s a ton of progression and the factions play out differently enough to almost, but not quite, excuse the limited number (4).

But if you only like 4Xs for the building and complex simulation, Gladius comes up short. No diplomacy, economy, culture, religion or any civilian focused features. For better or for worse, this is about constant, total war on all fronts.

Full review available[oldgrizzledgamers.com].

If you like assembly line games like Factorio or Production Line, this is already pretty addictive. You build stations to shape raw resources into finished goods - in this case combat apparel, bullets and guns. Countries' militaries requisition orders and you choose which to accept and fulfill for cash. There's a lot more tech tree planned but what's there is good for quite a bit of playing. Full review[oldgrizzledgamers.com] available.

The early access rough edges are in the form of finicky placement, uneven pacing and almost no feedback on where your line is doing the wrong thing. So it can be frustrating but always your own fault. When everything is working it's quite satisfying and you can put out massive amounts of product. Great start, looking forward to the finished product.

On paper this looks like a great Rimworld clone - tons to research, build and manage. A full galaxy to explore and aliens to interact with. It even has cute redshirts and lets you level your colonists up into star trek roles like diplomat and councillor.

But it somehow gets very tedious once you're done learning how to play. The flavorless colonists and their ridiculous demands for personal comforts, the functional but clicky UI, the surface level difference between products, the huge money sinks that gate progress, the bare-bones diplomacy. It all leeches bits of engagement away until you feel like you're just playing with numbers.

It's well meaning and I'm sure some will like its cute, relaxed vibe. But despite all the "stuff" it has, for me it was too shallow. Full review available.[oldgrizzledgamers.com]

As a long, linear, single player, turn based game this is absolutely worth the price. It's streamlined from older Mechwarrior games. The changes smooth out the difficulty and probably make it friendlier for rookies but strip out a bit of the charm. But it's still a fantastic game of mechs slugging it out, with a lot of tactical consideration given to each action.

I wish they smoothed out the UI, there are so many needless pauses and delays as to really annoy, I wish there was no pointeless dialogue choices. But it's quibbles, the fights are great all the way through and the story missions are interesting. Full review available.[oldgrizzledgamers.com]

The multiplayer works and is a lot of fun but there's no progression or tracking so it loses its appeal after a dozen matches. There's also no matchmaking, you have to make a lobby, so it's a bit awkward and takes longer to get a match.

It's slow to develop and initially seems simple, but it keeps growing in complexity and competition keeps forcing you to adapt so that what is essentially just laying down assembly stations and conveyor belts keeps you engaged for a very long time.

The UI never fights you, tutorial is efficient and it's perfectly stable. Could be clearer in the mid-game, how you use some research is unclear and wastes time. There's no car designer or dealing with sales and marketing much. Not enough variety of cars or what goes in them. It's just about research and building an efficient factory that keeps changing with the times. I loved it. Full review available[oldgrizzledgamers.com].

Uses the same mechanic as the "game developer tycoon" type games where it's really just about your employees adding their stats to make a final product.

The problem with Epic Car Factory is there are too few parameters and options for this to be much fun and the core mechanic does a poor job of making you feel like you're designing a car.

With no other business considerations (logistics, factories, product lines) there's just not much to do after a few hours. Full review available[oldgrizzledgamers.com].

After the trailer I was so excited to play this. It's a massive, sprawling game with gorgeous animation and sound. The combat is turn based and very puzzly because of the Banner Saga like mechanics. That's not my preferred style but the fights were challenging and required considerable thought so I was engaged during combat.

But to get to any of that you have to plough through obscene mounds of terrible writing and nonsensical dialogue choices that don't impact the game. I like RPG's, I like reading, that's not the issue. It's the quality, volume, inability to skip and sheer tedium of it.

In the end the good bits aren't nearly good enough to warrant slogging through everything else. Full review available.[oldgrizzledgamers.com]

As a city builder it's too light and abstract, dealing only with roads and simple zoning (not even industry/residential/commercial).

As a political simulator it just doesn't react to decisions in a realistic way and there aren't enough underlying variables for your important decisions to affect more than population growth.

You have to play unnaturally to do well, and when you do that you stop feeling like you've built a real city that can exist so it's all a bit hollow. Full review[oldgrizzledgamers.com] available.

Borderline casual in simplicity and thoroughly indie, but very generous in doling out new bits to play with for the full, short, play length. It's kind of peaceful, clicky and not too demanding, except when it surprises you with a vicious nightly attack.

Has some glitches that make Hardcore mode too frustrating, better with a save to revert to. Not a lot of replay but I enjoyed my evening with it.

Full review available.[oldgrizzledgamers.com]

Considerably more casual than GearCity but still flexible enough to design the cars you want to. Sales, logistics and production are very simplified. The car designer is as well, but you're still designing a car so quite a bit more complicated than the average tycoon product.

It actually has a complex customer prefernce model underneath but it gives you very little data to target competition with. It's too easy to make money and gets repetitive after a few decades without significant external events or goals.

Full review available[oldgrizzledgamers.com], I'm recommending because the hardest part is making a flexible car designer that's not a mess to use and Automobile Tycoon did that well (but streamlined). The rest they can add by release, and I hope they do otherwise this will get boring relatively quickly.