Recent reviews by Cerro

This is a great way to lose an entire day. The deck building and options really give you different strategies and approaches, some being easier than others and some struggling against certain enemies. It's a nice puzzle to solve and its very dynamic, giving you a high reply value. On top of that there is a progression system unlocking new decks and cards as you go. There isn't much to complain about and I reckon this will be excellent on a Steam Deck. This is a simple game, executed perfectly - tight action, tight gameplay, tight spaces.

The "next" factorio but with the new dark fog it has now added more Tower Defense to the game which has made the game more fun and added in an extra challenge. An excellent progression system that gives you something new to do as you expand, the sense of scale is well established. Unlike other base building / automation games, you can easily build a reasonably efficient base without having to watch hours of videos or do tutorials but at the same time there is a huge depth to the game if you really want to be as efficient as possible or speed run the game.

Still in early access, more dark fog features such as better space combat, are coming. Updates for features, bug fixes and rebalancing are frequent and there are no signs of the devs slowing down. A game for any fan of automation, base building and tower defense.

Major nostalgia here but also as a standalone game this is an excellent point and click adventure. Writing is on point, jokes are excellent and you care about the characters. A throwback to the old classics with a modern touch. Play it, enjoy it, be happy.

So first off, this is more of a puzzle game that a strategy game - it's a lot of fun if you enjoy figuring out the best possible approach and what skills to trigger and when. For example: Overrun is the single most powerful skill in the game, followed by first strike. If you destroy an enemy unit and have overrun you get to fire again (all tanks have overrun in SM:B). To work out the amount of damage you do, your current unit strength is added to a bunch of values and generally defenders fire first - so if you attack, your unit takes some damage and therefore does slightly less damage in its attack, therefore first strike means you always attack at full strength. Combine first strike and overrun with one of your most experienced units and/or a hero and you will be able to take out 5-10 enemies in one turn - you just have to manage movement points and ammo. Heroes should always have overrun and first strike, then give them extra ammo and more movement so they can chew through enemy armies - meet a stubborn enemy unit or hero that you can't kill in one go? Soften them up with another unit or use something they can't shoot at, like a plane, still can't kill them? Get the devastating fire skill or pick the strategic skill to allow you to fire twice in a turn and use the whole overrun chain a second time (as long as you have ammo - which you can get during your turn from forcing enemy units to surrender). You might think a unit with overrun, first strike, extra ammo, extra movement, devastating fire and the ability to capture weaker units might be an OP cheese tactic but honestly, the AI has so many units that you will need this combo to win.

The historical accuracy is mixed here, the german units are often in great detail - your Pz IVs in the early-mid war are awful at defeating heavy tanks but great vs infantry and light tanks while the Pz III is better at destroying tanks but rubbish at pretty much anything else and soon becomes obsolete and better as a StuG or SP Arty. Later the Pz IVs get a longer barrel and become much more well rounded tanks, but they start to become ahistoric as T-34s and KVs become too weak. The AI T-34 should get some upgrades to keep it slightly ahead. Then Tigers appear and you simply roflstomp everyone. The annoyance comes from the sheer weight of numbers the enemy fields, later missions just about every hex has a unit so it can be a slog, unless you use the aforementioned combo to thin them out a bit.

The weakest part of the gameplay are ships. They are fragile, way too fragile. Ship to ship battles are fine, but naval missions are annoying - yes the kriegsmarine was never up to the royal navy or the US navy but even if you keep your best ships afloat (Tripitz, Bismark, etc) you only get Bismark later and you have 6 battleships and 3 carriers to go sink... you can't restore ship HP during missions so it's a case of using planes because they can be repaired and high strength planes will sink ships quickly while your navy sits back and only engages when the enemy is weakened - it becomes a little tedious. The weakest part of the game by far is the voice acting, it's the same voice actors across the entire series and only one of them is any good. Skip the cinematics and the odd up close animation attacks where the camera follows the units - you will be better for it. The side quests in the game are important, they often give long term campaign benefits so do them, especially early on, they can't be difficult due to them being on the other side of the map but they are worth chasing.

All in all, a great game that's a lot of fun if you like working out puzzles, this isn't HoI but it does have a good WWII panzer general feel to it that works well in the context of abstracting blitzkrieg tactics.

This is a simple game but it is so satisfying. There are plenty of games out there of a similar vein but it doesn't matter how many times I play the same map, every time there is a genuine feeling of progress. Great game mechanics and design built around a simple premise. Easily worth the price.

There is a great here but currently also a really poor UI. So many menus and options stuck behind other screens - why am I paying multiple times to change a project? Why is it so hard to get back to a project if I switch to another screen? How come my engine factory can do multiple engines from the same factory but not from two different families? The number of "factory addons scale with size" but you only ever get 5. The game doesn't really tell you very much about the mechanics of it all but it seems to want to push you to build lots of small factories rather than a few large ones because a large one is going to be less than optimal.

Good game, the puzzles are a bit different to your typical escape room - sometimes you struggle to figure out what to do while the puzzle itself is fairly easy while a physical escape room is usually more tricky with the puzzle but you don't have to hunt for the next one. Occasionally this can get frustrating as rather than trying to problem solve you are just wondering around looking for stuff to do. The better designed levels avoid this problem and generally makes the whole experience more fun and less frustrating. The game itself is very simple, so get some friends together and start gathering items.

I generally don't recommend the player created rooms, while it adds a lot of content they tend to be buggy and generally less interactive which kills the experience for me.

I hope to see a follow up to this, as it is a great game that just needs a little more depth / variety. The core game is a lot of fun, developing the cars is a lot of fun and building is team is the best of it all. Ultimately the races get a little repetitive after several seasons and the championships can get a little whacky with the rules, especially if you are not there to influence them. This is a solid game that has plenty to offer, it doesn't offer some radical new gameplay but what it does, it does extremely well.

Must have game that pretty much defines all the games that came after it. It now has a graphical interface rather than being a text based game which makes it much more accessible and easier to play. The learning curve is fairly steep and the tutorials are fairly basic but it is enough to get started and I have no doubt the wikis and community guides will soon be written to explain some of the really deep mechanics going on, specifically for this version as there are a number of changes from the original DF.

This is a game for those who love to get into detail, who don't mind micro-managing things and love to build civs (or fortresses). If you haven't played DF before, think of Rimworld and then add a ton of additional complexity, more ways to die and a total lack of info on what on earth you are supposed to do... you will have lots of fun* - you will find so many ways to have fun! Seriously, get this game and then get copies for your friends, they will thank you later.

*see DF definition of "fun".

This is a game worth having. It is simple but fun and there are plenty of systems to learn how to properly take apart. With the full release you now have a complete story line, it's not essential and doesn't really mean very much to the game itself (the goal is to cut up ships and that is very much the focus) but it adds a couple of fun, unique scenarios to the game.

Most reviews complain about the lack of different ships - it would be great to add more variety but there are quite a few configurations for each different type, with different approaches to breaking up the ship. This isn't a £50-60 AAA game, but it is a very enjoyable and well made game about floating around space and lasering hulks of metal while trying to avoid getting yourself crushed, burnt, frozen, electrified or otherwise blown to bits. This isn't the hardest game, if you want Dark Souls, you aren't going to find that here, this is more chilled and the americana soundtrack very much sets the mood so sit back, crack a beer, relax and enjoy cutting up some big chunks of metal.