Recent reviews by Harven

Our Adventurer Guild is a indie tactical RPG that has a wonderful mix of character customization, tactical gameplay, and a fun story wrapped around it.

One of the game's best features is the character customization. Every player has a chance to turn their rookie adventurers into a variety of classes from a stalwart Defender to a stealthy Assassin. Every character can be customized for look and voice - and with a scouting feature it is even possible to custom build your adventurers instead of take a risk on the rookies wandering into your tavern.

If you're looking for a RPG that is fun and lets you play with character builds then you can't go wrong with dipping into Our Adventurer Guild.

As an early access game Going Medivel has a lot to offer. From the beginning the game is a complete experience with a wide array of building tools for managing your colony, enough resources to manage to be challenging, and a base building experience that sets itself apart from other colony sim games.

As a base building game, the developers provides a sim manager with the tools to not only build their small colony but provides the tools to build literal castles up to sixteen layers tall and a depth of up to 5 layers deep. This means every map becomes a unique opportunity to build something new and different - and provides the player with enough tools to have creations that can be as unique from past builds.

Colony management mirrors Rimworld very closely. The player monitors happiness, a variety of needs, and may have to defend their base from raids - depending upon their settings. All of the tools are in place to create a happy healthy colony while a player harvests the world in order to bring their grand designs or modest builds to fruition.

As the game feels complete it is also clear that there is a lot more that could be added to the game. Hopefully the developers will add mod tools so the community can expand the available options when they finally hit the day of release - but I also hope that between now and then they add much more varieties to the game - such as more wall material and texture options, and more integration options for religion.

Lastly, the developers seem invested in their community and are currently putting out frequent updates to the game regarding their activities in squishing bugs and developing new content.

Anyone who enjoys colony sim management and colony building will get quite a bit of mileage out of the game. With a modest price point fitting most indie games and the occasional sale, I recommend not sleeping on this Early Access gem.

Clanfolk takes inspiration from other games in the genre like Rimworld and Going Medieval. In Clanfolk you are the patron of your clan set in the Scottish Highlands and your job is to build your holdings and eventually expand your clan.

The game at this stage is in Early Access and so it is going through a lot of the early access growing pains, such as balancing issues, some bugs, and there are aspects of the game that need more focused development. What makes this an early access gem though is that the developer is active in the community and posts updates quite frequently. They are also quite receptive to criticism and requests for targeted improvements in the game.

Currently, Clanfolk does not much in the way that is new to the genre it is a great entry if one wants a more sedate game without the constant raids of a game like Rimworld. The focus here is build, reproduce, and expand. I believe that once a lot of the early growing pains of the game is worked out this will be a worthy entry to have in your steam library.

Surviving the Aftermath is an apocalyptic colony builder done in similiar style to Endzone. Unlike other games of the genre it adds a new layer to the game that makes use of an overworld map and a series of specialists that you can hire to do things on the map to benefit your colony. While the game itself meets many of the usual expectations of its type - it is this use of specialists and the map that has allowed the developers to introduce quests and a limited form of combat action into the game.

Overall Surviving the Aftermath is pretty typical for its genre along with the same kind of limitations that these kinds of games have. Other than the new layer of gameplay it doesn't really do anything new in terms of colony sim management. Once you figure out the games quirks, especially the AI that loves to throw the malady mechanics at the player in waves - in a predictable order - one of the biggest obstacles of the game becomes trivial.

For fans of this genre of game though it's a fairly decent entry and the new gameplay layer adds a depth to it that many other games lack. That alone makes it worth some game time if it is in your library.

Hammerhelm is a first person building game that allows a player to develop a plot of land into a thriving village. That is the heart of the game and it does that in an interesting fashion. It is important to note that the game seems to be a labor of love by a one-man development team so there is a lot of areas where improvements could be made - but what we have is fun indie game that can occupy your time for a few days.

I hate to say that Atom RPG sat in my library far longer than it should have. I bought the game during a Christmas sale and it lingered untouched until I wanted to involve myself in a Fallout style game.

Here's my quick and dirty overlook of the game:

The story is great - the world you interact with feels immersive and alive. I loved how rumors you heard about in the game you could possibly find and interact with, and how those rumors would turn into rumors about you later. I also loved how the devs got cheeky with the dialogue and poked at the question options you could ask NPCs.

The gameplay is pretty good. Turn based combat that carries a high risk/high reward structure. You aren't limited by areas that are based on level so in the early game you learn what you should avoid and what you can take on until you get better gear, get more levels, and have companions.

The sound design is also pretty good. I didn't feel at all annoyed by the music or felt that it was out of place. I also loved the sound profiles they did for the firearms, they have the kind of tactile audio to them that one would expect of the various types of guns being used.

As for the drawbacks - I think the most noticeable drawback to me was the balancing of character stats and skills. I believe it was an attempt to make character build very important in a player's trek through the Wastes but optimizing for combat feels like a must. But that may be limited to my experience.

Overall I enjoyed my time with the game and I may eventually pick up the DLC and give that a run. This was clearly a labor of love for the developers and I had fun, even if at the end of the story I couldn't be a fun guy.

Nantucket is a beautiful game with a wonderful musical score. The story premise is very well considered and makes for a very interesting premise to kick off a game about whaling and captaining your own ship.

The anchor on this beautiful ship though is the combat system and its total reliance with RNG. The combat system is not an enjoyable experience and turns what should be a fun game with a fantastic premise into a bad time. I was instead found repeating my first 10 minutes of the game several times because I had no control over how the combats would turn out and my final straw was had when a random combat event cropped up that auto-killed my main character and ended the game.

Unfortunately, a game cannot thrive on just art, story, and music, no matter how great it is. The game mechanics have to be just as solid and so I could not recommend this game due to the poor execution of combat game mechanics which makes up the bulk of the game play.

Symphony of War is a tactical RPG that follows along the line of other greats like Tactics Ogre, Warsong, and even has inspired elements from games like Shining Force. The overall gameplay is enjoyable and pretty intuitive. I really loved how the game lets you alter parties between missions - moving characters between classes as needed to create your squads. The class diversity is quite wonderful and really gives a depth to the choices that are made when creating them. Additionally the musical score is pretty good and I think the artifact system was neat - though I think it could have used a little more diversity among the current artifacts.

For any fan of tactical RPGs who like a good story to go along with it I highly recommend Symphony of War. This game is clearly a labor of love by the developers and it shows.

For a short game at just around 10 hours Storm of Spears is a throwback RPG with a light story and old style combat. Don't expect anything unique or new to the genre and treat it as the throwback experience it is meant to be. It's fun but good that it ends when it does - otherwise it would feel more drawn out without having more depth.

It should also be noted that this game was also targeted by the groups who were marking games with anime art as hentai, sexual content, mature, and so on. This game is none of these things.

Tower of Time is a tactical RPG with a deeply layered story. The story writers did a fantastic job writing in characters that could invoke a range of emotions - especially through the progression of the story right up until the very end.

The game doesn't have AAA graphics but what is present serves the game very well with wonderful backdrops and unique level designs that make exploration and progression interesting. And the story unfolds complemented by some beautifully rendered cutscenes.

With 7 characters to use in the fight to climb the tower - a player will pick up a wide range of gear and items to help them on their way. The overhead tactical combat system is pretty fun, but can feel repetitive at times - especially during the late game. But it lets you get a benchmark on how well you've built your team and geared them out. Fighting the bosses gave me a wonderful raid prep vibe at times.

Besides the graphics the music is quite wonderful and fits the atmosphere very well. With a lot of melodies that slide between haunting and a little more aggressive for combat, you get a wide variety of accompaniment that doesn't get boring for the game's duration.

There was a lot of heart put into the game and its shows. I'd highly recommend it, even at its current price - it is not a waste of your time to play. Achievement and difficulty players will find some worthwhile replayability.