Recent reviews by Flashstriker

I wish steam let me pick an inbetween option for this review. I don't think this is a bad game, I simply think it's the worst Steamworld game. It plays like most standard city builders during the city layer, making citizen housing and providing their needs.

The main unique selling point is the Mine layer, and it starts out pretty good. While it's mostly a way to provide unique resources to your city, being able to carve through the landscape and having to form your structures within these confines starts out pretty fun.

The weak point of this is the enemy mechanics. All the enemies feel the same. Like I know they have unique mechanics, some are tanky, some are ranged, etc. But when you don't have *direct* control of your defenses, you don't really get to interact with these mechanics. Your defenders just shoot/pickaxe the enemy and then return to their quarters. There's little interactivity because you can't even mark a point like "Defend here". They just automatically go towards enemies, and thats it.

I will say that theres plenty to like. The story, while minimal, is driven by the strong characters. The story and characters are nothing groundbreaking, but they fit well into their archetypes and its nice to provide an alternate perspective to the general Steamworld universe. The general visual design is top notch, and really sells the Steampunkish aesthetic that Steamworld prides itself on. Its ties and nods to the rest of the franchise are cute (I love the little Rusty plush!) and very much appreciated. It does make me wish the Shiners made an appearance though, but you can't have it all.

At the end of the day, if you're a fan of the Steamworld series I'd pick this up on sale. It's worth a play for it's connections to the franchise, but falls rather flat as a standalone. I don't regret my purchase, but I won't be replaying it anytime soon. Which is a small shame, because the game has a lot of options for replaying, they're just not unique enough to make me want to replay.

So this is my first Review, but this game absolutely deserves good reviews, so here we go!

The best way I can describe this is as a Tower Defense but not. In a way it's like a much more simplfied Dungeon Defenders - You have your characters who can build defenses against the hordes of player deployed enemies. Its really as simple as that, but it's far more addictive than it sounds.

With the enemies being deployed by another Player, each match is a fresh experience. You'll never quite know what to expect, but you can still defend it well. Speaking of defenses, currently theres two "barricades" and two "turrets". Sandbags and Walls are self explanatory, they block enemies until destroyed. The turrets are a Flamethrower thats good at dealing with hordes, and a machine gun thats good against single targets. Theres also 4 different Defender classes, each with a different weapon. Theres nothing else making them distinct at the moment, but I have it on good faith that this will change.

Now I absolutely love this game, but I'm not blind to it's faults. It can be very buggy at times, for instance I was forced inside of my turrets when I was swarmed. Theres also the fact most maps are downright impossible without all 4 Defenders, unless you have an Attacker that is very bad. This isn't the fault of the Dev, but I've found a *lot* of people leave midmatch, so thats something to bare in mind.

Overall, I'd give it 4 stars out of 5. The games free so you might as well try it out! And if you find it as enjoyable and addictive as I do, buy the Supports Edition, keep the servers running for all of us!