Recent reviews by The Knight Who Says Yis

While the elevator pitch for this game is "Pokemon plus volleyball", don't let that fool you into dismissing it as a straightforward experience. Beastieball sets itself apart in two major ways: the two by two grid on which each team plays and the ball itself, the possession of which creates Offense and Defense turns.
The grid is split into a front row that grants increased attack and a back row that grants increased defense, which allows you to adopt aggressive and defensive postures at will. Instead of directly targeting opponents, most moves target the first thing standing in a single lane, or more uncommonly, a single row.
Having the ball puts you on Offense, which gives you up to two additional actions leading up to your attack. On the other hand, being on Defense is required for both switching out and Defense-exclusive moves- a good Defense call can spoil an otherwise dangerous attack. To mitigate unstoppable sweeps, stat changes are zeroed at the end of each point and the first attack of each point must be from the back row, cannot target the front, and cannot have any additional actions attached to it.
To balance all the complexity these rules open up, both movesets and damage predictions are public knowledge, and each team member is limited to three moves (plus moving and passing as basic actions). If you leave your front open and your opponent dunks on you with a row-based attack, that's on you.
Beastieball picks up on the Doubles formula of Pokemon games and expands on it in a meaningful way, adding enough strategic depth to keep the game interesting through the endgame without being overwhelming or extremely number-crunchy.

The plot is decent and the music is great. Graphics are charming, though presently unfinished.

This product needs an FDA addiction warning.

It's alright. A bit short, and a lot of soda memes due to Summer Sale 2019. But it's alright.

The mix of general survival, inventory management, crafting, and resource harvesting creates a delicate touch within the game. It feels as a roguelike game, difficult, but that ONE thing that killed you could have been avoided. The game feels like a survival journey as much as an RPG, with limited amounts of health potions and gradual biome progression. However, the biomes don't seem to get any harder on their own, with the only increase in area difficulty being that the biomes gradually swap each other out in an attempt to get you to go to the harder zones. The game is about risk versus reward in an aspect, as running into a difficult biome will also grant you access to plenty of treasure chests or high amounts of valuable ores. However, said biomes often end up having enemies hard enough to take out your level 30 character in a mere 4 hits without any health potions to rely on.
Overall, the game has its ups and downs, but the mix of aspects in the game end up making it worth buying.

As long as you can manage your situation, it's fine.

But when you recieve a breach and break in the O2 room, lose your shields in an asteroid field, stick around for too long near a sun, lose your shields next to a beam weapon firing, forget that your enemy has missiles, cloak too late, lose your sensors in a boarding party, flee from a boarding ship into another boarding ship for 6 enemies at the same time, forget to upgrade your weapons in time for the final boss, run out of missiles/drones when it's your only chance, play the stealth cruiser and forget you have no shields at all, lose too many crewmembers, accidentally let your cloning bay get hit and lose half your crew, make the wrong choice in a random event, rush foolhardy into an impossible battle, forget to cloak when the final boss shoots a laser burst, have your door system break when a fire is in your ship, or get hit in that ONE vital spot that ends up killing your chances at victory, you're basically dead.

But it makes the game that much better when you do win.
(Also, I still have not beaten the game on higher than easy mode yet.)