Recent reviews by Bonesaw McGraw

I took a chance on Against the Storm. I typically steer towards various roguelikes and have been anticipating the Frostpunk sequel and looking for something to fill that niche. What I found was an incredibly unique and challenging experience.

Against the Storm combines both a base builder and a roguelike in such a unique way. Every time you play the game it is truly a different experience. There are so many different directions that you can build your bases in to try and win the game, and there are so many random modifiers that come about that shake up the game in unique ways. As much as I have played I have found a preferred strategy to follow, but there is so much variance between bases that this does not always lead to success.

As you continue to progress through the game you will unlock various perks through a well designed tech tree that ostensibly make the experience easier. What I've found in my time with the game is things are so well balanced and the difficulty scale so well tuned that oftentimes these bonuses don't have as much of an effect as you may have thought originally. This design of balance stops you from feeling overpowered as you progress and really helps maintain the challenging feel that the game has from run to run.

I have purchased many early access games and had a mixed experience with them. You can tell that the dev team for Against the Storm is truly committed to fleshing out and building this game and the universe they have created within it. Updates are frequent, communication is up front about upcoming patches and features, and the feedback form is easily accessible. The team has done a great job in the short time I have spent with the game on making sure that feedback is applied and features are plentiful. Again, the fact that this game is an early access game is somewhat surprising to me still because the game truly is fleshed out in such a complete way already.

If you are looking for a relaxing yet challenging experience, I couldn't recommend Against the Storm more. It is one of the best experiences I have had in gaming in some time. It's rare for me nowadays to commit as much time to one game as I have this one. Take a chance and support the team over at Eremite Games.

This game.....is bad. Compared to the previous Duels incarnation this one decided to remove features rather than add them. When I started out I was pretty glad I could skip the tutorial since I've played Magic for longer than I care to admit. I was pretty perturbed that you only get the deck that you randomly choose based on whatever colors you like.

From there the game is pretty impossible. You start with a limited deck with no synergy, and your opponents have quite a bit of synergy built into their decks. When you start to accumulate cards I must say that I enjoy the amount of customization you are given. Anything and everything that you want to do with the cards you've unlocked, you can. Having such an open deckbuilder is a pretty awesome feature. Unfortunatly, that's about the only positive thing I can say about this game.

My biggest gripe is how the mana is tapped for you. The game, for whatever reason, thinks that when you cast a green spell you want to tap all of your green mana. Okay. Sure. Well, if you have a creature with a green activation cost and another green spell you were planning on casting....sorry. I guess you shoud have been babysitting the left Ctrl button a little closer. The fact that the auto land tapping went from somewhat intuitive with a mis-tap here and there to "Oh, I'm sorry I did that. I guess you should have hovered over your spell and waited. Tee hee!" I have been so frustrated by punting a game away due to the ridiculous way the game decides to tap your mana that I have tried to ragequit on several occasions. Well. Brings me to my next point.

The UI is this game is bad. Really bad. Unspeakably bad. It was clearly designed for a mobile platform and moved over to PC. I can't say how it plays on xbox, but I'm guessing it plays pretty awesome on mobile. The menu icons only repond if you clock a tiny square at the bottom. The menu is a left to right swiping sort of thing, which is great if you are using your finger, and awful if you are using a mouse.

If I could get my money back for this game, I would. I don't under any circumstances reccomend this purchase. Perhaps in the future they fix this, but given WOTC's recent track record with terrible changes (MTGO, DailyMTG) I doubt they will.

Stay away.