Recent reviews by Shaemis

As I approach my 200 hour mark, I figure it's time to review this gem of a game. I've played most co-op horror games up to this point, and this one remains the best. Every single update makes it better and better, the developer is very open about upcoming changes with a little mix of surprises.

It's the perfect mix of detective work/deduction, and super aggressive hide-and-seek. Spookier solo, but way more fun with friends. One of my favorite games I've ever played.

Update: A lot of my prior issues with the game appear to have resolved, however a lot of points I make below still stand. While I still think it's a wonderful game with some serious flaws, the performance issues at least seem to have diminished and it feels a lot more playable across my several devices. I'm changing my "No" to a "Yes" as far as general recommendations, as I do love the game, but I'll leave my prior review below, a good portion of which is still unfortunately relevant.

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This is a tough review to leave. It's one of my absolute favorite games across Steam/Android/iOS, but in its current state I cannot recommend it. Against players it's great, with the ability also play asynchronously which is wonderful, but there's no way to increase the honor count to increase the game length. As such, games feel much shorter than they should, especially once you get your "engine" going. Another downside is the inability to add AI players to a multiplayer game to fill out the seats, which is a massive oversight.

Against AI is even worse - the game gets hung up relentlessly, with the latest expansion almost every other game for me, where the AI simply get held up/overwhelmed mid-turn and the game refuses to continue. Restarting the game does nothing, as they'll go back and do their same turn again, and get hung up at the same point. There's also a *lot* of bugs with cards getting caught and being unable to continue your own turn, even after restarts.

This is such an incredible game that needs a lot more developer love to really shine, and the only thing we're getting is more paid DLC, which would be great if the games could play out more than 50% of the time.

I'm hoping to see patches address some of this stuff, but given the track record of the developer, especially on the steam end of things, I'm not holding my breath.

Only played a few rounds so far, but it's a solid little new deck builder entry. While it's made by the folks who brought us Ascension, it acts and feels a bit more like Star Realms, with the focus being less about outscoring your opponent, and more about building up to ultimately defeat them by depleting their health. Champions are similar to Bases in Star Realms, and less like Constructs like in Ascension. So they have a set amount of health as well, and can be targeted with damage and ultimately destroyed. There are also 4 factions of cards, which play out a lot like the ones in Star Realms if you're familiar with it.

Otherwise it's a fairly standard deck builder. Build up a deck to be stronger and stronger, recruit cards that work together, deny your opponent cards that will help them, and banish cards from your deck to draw better cards more often. The most unique element to this game that I've not seen in Ascension or Star Realms (at least of the expansions I've played) is the ability to "fast play" a card you purchase, which gains it's effect but then trashes the card. It only works for some cards.

All in all, the price is right for the content, which is a little lacking as far as I'm concerned. Not a lot of cards to toy with yet, but it is early access. I suspect more content will be released as DLC, which like Ascension/Star Realms is generally worthwhile and reasonably inexpensive. At the very least, you have a slightly new/different version of Star Realms for a tried-and-true company to build upon. Looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds.

Edit: Forgot to include, but the application itself is pretty small and light-weight. It runs well, no crashes, and has click or drag options for playing. While this (and most games like it) will usually feel better on a phone or tablet, it works perfectly here. No issues on my end.