All posts tagged in strategy
Jul 5, 2023
Horticular is a relaxing garden-builder with a little magical twist. You’ve been summoned by mysterious gnomes to restore an abandoned garden. Immerse yourself in a magical world with a day-night cycle, weather patterns, and adorable animals. Meanwhile, build your dream garden with hundreds of unlockable items. Create lush flower gardens and flourishing crop plots. Attract creatures by fulfilling their requirements and taking care of them. You’ll need to fight off decay and corruption by using the magic within your garden. You’ll also get to rename inhabitants to personalize your gardening experience. And if you want to prove your abilities, enter the in-world competition, plus much more!
Coming this year to Steam.
- May 18, 2023
Forge Your Own Future Or Unearth Mysteries From the Past
Welcome to Cosmopolis, the once-mighty and sprawling city that has now been left shattered, in ruins, and flooded. You wake up alone on the roof of an abandoned, overgrown skyscraper. There is no one around, and it appears that the city, as well as society, has collapsed due to the decades-long struggle between UNICORP and rival corporations pursuing transhumanism ideas. Now, it is up to you to solve the mystery of the last days of civilization and your sudden awakening, or simply live out your life as you choose in I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival.
You wake up on a roof with only the clothes on your back, but luckily there are plenty of resources to be found all over the roof. Collect food to cook with, find seeds to plant in your very own garden, and remove useful pieces of technology from gadgets to repurpose. Old microwaves, rusty broken-down cars, and obsolete computers will all prove useful as you harvest different components from each. Build helpful tools and gadgets from blueprints using the parts you collect, and even upgrade your cyborg hand! You will even be able to fish up a variety of tasty fish from the surrounding sea.
Befriend the lonely AI in I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival, and they will prove to be helpful to you. Ward off your own loneliness with their friendship as well as receive helpful tips. Don’t forget to defend your new home against nature, too. It is certainly not what you remember, and will prove to be dangerous. Eliminate mutated bugs, as well as defend against mutated plant-life bent on destroying your garden. Besides all of that, go out and explore the new world, too. Explore the ruins of Cosmopolis and see what goodies you can collect. Maybe you will even find answers to what happened while you are out there.
Coming Soon
I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival comes to Steam August 8th, 2023! You can Wishlist it now to be notified when it’s available. There’s also a demo available to try out.
Want more apocalypse fun? Check out .Age. Or do you want more survival fun? Give a personal favorite, Raft, a try!
- Apr 6, 2023
Collect Creatures, Battle Beasts, and Solve Puzzles
Join two young runaways as they unearth the mysteries of a lost realm in The Wild at Heart. Explore a world reminiscent of old storybooks, rich with history and full of beautiful scenery. Discover dark caves, beautiful woods, fascinating coastlines, and ancient shrines that hold untold secrets. The Deep Woods is full of mystery and secrets for you to uncover.
As you explore the stunning landscapes, collect a herd of Spritelings to help you in your adventures. Spritelings are quirky little magical creatures who can help you break things, collect loot, connect paths, and fight beasts. The Spritelings’ unique abilities will be especially helpful for fighting. You’ll also be able to fight the supernatural creatures of The Wild at Heart with your trusty vacuum, the Gustbuster!
The Wild at Heart has a useful crafting mechanic, too. Gather needed resources like magic crystals, scrap, electrical components, and more. Build new structures, create useful items, or upgrade what you have. Don’t forget to make yourself a light source! The shadows at night hide malevolent beings. You may want to stick around a campfire until the morning!
Available now!
The Wild at Heart is available now on pretty much every platform. You can find it on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox, and the Humble Games Store. There are physical copies available for Nintendo Switch and PS4!
For a similar experience, check out Lost in Play, a cute game that delves into the imaginative world of a child’s mind.
- Mar 9, 2023
Survive a Harsh Post-Apocalyptic World
I’ve written about a couple of incredible little building simulations (Tiny Glade and Gourdlets) that don’t have combat or objectives, and instead are just perfect for relaxing and getting creative with your building skills. So, I thought I’d change it up a bit and present The Wandering Village!
The Wandering Village is the third simulation game from indie developers Stray Fawn Studio. The world has mysterious plants spreading across it that emit toxic spores, merciless weather patterns, bloodsucking parasites, and many more challenges to face. The game goes a step beyond being a simple base builder where you create a village. Instead, a small group of survivors have taken refuge on the back of Onbu, a giant wandering creature. Become the leader of the survivors, build up a flourishing settlement for your people, and will you live in symbiosis with Onbu, or will you make choices for the well-being of your people only? It’s up to you
It’s your job, along with the other survivors, to build a functioning village. Onbu is large, but there is still limited space. You’ll need to plan the village well to include homes, farmland, and much more. Be sure to plan your production chains and optimize them to make use of every little bit of space as efficiently as possible. The Wandering Village even features different biomes that you’ll have to adapt your village to, also. Don’t worry though, you’ll be able to pull out some old-world knowledge to conduct research. Unearth technologies that can help your village flourish, but be careful. Progress can be a double-edged sword, and potentially harm Onbu.
Available Now!
The Wandering Village is available now in Early Access on Steam. It is verified Steam Deck compatible, too. There are also plans to release the game for Xbox, though there is no specific date for that yet. The game should make its way to Xbox Game Preview sometime this year.
Looking for more base-building? Check out Before We Leave, Foundation, Dwarrows, or The Crown.
- Oct 16, 2022
Create Your Village, Craft Its Story
Once upon a time, the beautiful continent of Cataria was home to an ancient civilization. However, the continent disappeared one day, becoming lost to the world for centuries. After hundreds of years, Cataria has been found, and dozens of adventurers have set off to explore the continent and its ruins. People wish to find a new home and resettle Cataria, and uncover its mysteries along the way
You play as one such person. Choose between two ancestries in Ages of Cataria, humans or elves, find the perfect location for your new village, and craft its origin story. Humans are just that, human, while elves are elegant plant-like creatures. Each has their own set of attributes. Each also has their own unique building style, resource requirements, and lifestyle events. Villagers of Cataria all have their own personalities, skill proficiencies, and wellness levels. It will be up to you to manage their wellness so they stay comfortable and productive.
In Ages of Cataria, you’ll perform jobs around town in the form of mini games to boost your character’s productivity and skill level. From cooking to hunting, each job has its own unique mini game to be played. You’ll also get to experience character-driven quests with your villagers. These will be in the form of interactive visual novels that will help define your villager’s personalities and stories. Some quests are minor, while some are life-changing events. And of course you have stylistic control over your village! You’ll be able to customize your town’s buildings to fit your style.
Coming June 2023
Unfortunately, we’re a long way out from the release of this beautiful and unique game. However, it will be on Steam and Switch. It is currently open for pre-orders on the Cataria website, too.
For another cute sim to play, check out Hokko Life!
- Sep 28, 2019
Spellcaster University is developed by indie studio based in France, Sneaky Yak Studio, and has just released on September 24th, 2019 on Steam Early Access here. It is even currently on sale at 10% off from now until October 1st, 2019. This strategy simulation game is about building your own ‘Hogwarts’ for mages and training them. See below for more details about what to expect in its current form.
About Spellcaster University
In Spellcaster University, you take on the role of the director of a magic university in a heroic fantasy world. Build your school, manage your budget, recruit teachers. Will you make it a high place of black magic, with the best necromancy and demonology teachers? Or a school in harmony with nature to train druids and shamans? Or why not train adventurous mages, offering them options to learn how to fight and be discreet? But this will require surviving the ruthless attacks of the orc tribes and the controls of the education authorities.
Key Features
- Build your university with a mechanism of magic decks. Each game will be different.
- Manage the well-being of your students by building refectories, dormitories, rest rooms… and ensure their discipline with a dungeon.
- Customize your rooms with powerful artifacts such as Xar’Saroth’s raclette machine or the Soul Devouring Bed.
- Tame legendary creatures: dragons, fauns, pegasus, janitors…
- Push your students towards a glorious future. At the end of their courses, you discover their future (necromancer, archimage, peasant…) according to the success of their training, and win new bonuses.
- Select your students: traits, personality, alignment, wealth… each decision will have its consequences.
- Escape the armies of darkness by building your university in isolated environments: lake, mountain, desert, volcano, giant turtle back, etc….
- Collect powerful grimoires to strengthen your university and to confront increasingly hostile environments during a procedural campaign.
Looking for more magic and spooky Halloween fun this October? Check out our article here: Mildly Spooky Games You Should Play This Halloween. And for more magic school games, make sure to check out the latest on Witchbrook Stardew Valley of magic by Chucklefish.
- Sep 5, 2019
During Nintendo’s Direct last night we finally got the official title for Town; Little Town Hero! This strategic RPG is created by none other than GAME FREAK, the geniuses behind the classic Pokemon games. With a new trailer we got to see a lot more of the battle system, the townsfolk that will be aiding you, as well as some of the single boss monsters you’ll be facing off against. Little Town Hero will be releasing digitally on the Nintendo Switch on October 17th, 2019 for $24.99 US. You can pre-order it now right here!
About Little Town Hero
The story is set in an isolated village on the edge of the world. The only gate leading outside is heavily guarded by a castle, and the villagers are not allowed to leave. Most of the villagers don’t give it a thought, and happily go on with their everyday lives. However, the protagonist is a little different from the others – he wants to see the world outside. One day, a “Monster” appears in the village, shocking everyone because until then, no one knew such creatures existed. The protagonist is able to fight it using a mysterious Red stone he found in the coalmines. In the course of his defense of the village, he gradually unravels secrets of how the stones and the monsters came to be…
Catch the Live Stream
GAME FREAK’s 30th Anniversary Celebration Stream will go live on Oct 16 (JST), 2019! In this special stream Junichi Masuda; one of the founding members and composers of GAME FREAK, will give us the history of the company, reveal information about their game development system, and give us the latest information on Little Town Hero along with another title. You can watch the live stream on GAME FREAK’s official channels on Twitter Periscope and YouTube Live. You can also check out their official website here.
- Aug 27, 2019
We love cute, affordable Nintendo Switch games, and are happy to bring another rapidly-approaching one to your attention. The first Gnomes Garden released onto Nintendo Switch at the end of 2018. We are now very close to the Switch release of another Gnomes Garden game, called Lost King!
Follow the story…
The Gnomes Garden games are listed as “strategy” games. You must plan out your moves carefully to be able to complete each level before the time runs out! But because time is such a big factor, we also feel that these games qualify for the time-management genre. Like its predecessor, Gnomes Garden: Lost King is an affordable, family-friendly game that operates on a basic story. You are the queen, and your husband went out to hunt, and he doesn’t come back! You must go find him. And the path is full of obstacles!
…past all the obstacles!
Gameplay in the Gnomes Garden game is quite simple, but becomes difficult more quickly than expected. In some levels you will need workers to clear some obstacles. So if the first thing you did was not to add another worker to the hut, you won’t have enough help to clear obstacles to other important points on the map. If that happens, you’ll fail to get through on time and have to restart the level. Or maybe on another level you’ll need a magician. Or perhaps you’ll need to build bridges, which makes resource gathering as important as bringing in more workers. Each level has different challenges, so you can’t use the same strategy every time.
Perform with skill
Gnomes Garden games are simple but quite diverting. And if you’re goal-oriented, Lost King has lots of trophies to earn. Aim for the best possible performance and you’ll be able to admire the results of your accomplishments any time you like.
Gnomes Garden: Lost King will release on the Nintendo eshop on September 5th, for $9.99. If you’re eager to try your wits against the many tasks on the road to your goal in Gnomes Garden, you can buy the first game on the eshop for $4.99 right now! In the first game the king falls ill because his beloved garden has withered, so his daughter must save the gardens to save her father. (We must say…this Gnome King sounds like a high-maintenance kind of guy!)
For other affordable, family-friendly Nintendo Switch games, why not take a peek at our little list of cooking games, all available now on the Switch eshop!
