Let's face it,
Game Development is Hard.
So it's no surprise that game developers
tend to follow trends
or stick with tried and true genres and mechanics.
But once in a while, a game comes along to shake things up.
Some turn out to be quite successful,
and the innovations they brought to the table
were easy enough to copy that other games follow suit,
eventually becoming a new genre.
Other innovative games are much harder to copy,
but their wide cultural impact or massive sales
mean that many studios will still try,
often to disastrous results.
Then there's Library of Ruina
a game who strayed way too far from the norm
that it took me two videos to properly explain just the basics.
And while it can be considered very successful for an indie game,
it's not that successful.
And so we don't see hordes of developers
falling over themselves trying to copy it.
However, after spending a long time playing the game and making videos on it,
I can't help but wonder if there are clones out there
just waiting to be discovered.
Hi, I'm Zero, and I've been searching for games
with devs crazy enough to copy Library of Ruina.
Unfortunately, as of this video,
only one other game has come close to copying most of its mechanics.
Limbus Company.
You know, its spin-off sequel.
Instead of scrapping this video, I decided to lower the bar
and expand my search to games that share the same general idea.
Ones with very unique takes on combat,
and those that expand upon existing but very niche game mechanics.
They're not what I'd call Ruina-likes.
They're more like alternatives to Library of Ruina.
Or Ruina-lternatives if we remove the extra A.
Before we start, I'm gonna have to briefly discuss
what I'm looking for in a game for them to be in this video.
If you watched the other video,
you already have a good idea what the criteria are,
so you can skip to the first game via the chapter markers.
Or perhaps watch the disclaimer part first
so you won't be confused about the review format.
The game section is split into two parts:
in the first half are the games that I played last year on stream.
You could check them out for extra gameplay footage
as well as my initial reactions.
The second half are games that I've played offstream
so they'll be new even to long time subscribers.
Anyway, let's begin with the criteria.
First off, I'm looking for Turn-Based games.
I like turn-based combat...
It's not perfect, nor do I want all games to be turn-based,
but I sometimes I want to be given
all the time in the world to think of the right moves to win.
Some games have tried to spice up turn-based combat
with quick-time events or other real-time elements,
but it can end up as a slippery slope,
with the devs eventually ditching the turn-based altogether
So how do we make turn-based games,
often perceived to be boring and slow,
to being more challenging and cinematic
without relying on real-time elements as a crutch?
That leads us to the full version of the criteria.
The game shouldn't be the usual turn-based scheme
where players and units take turns performing their actions.
That is: "I go first, and you go next."
Or IGOUGO for short.
This is simple and intuitive,
but it leads to weird situations if you stop and think about it.
Like units standing around like dumbasses getting hit
when they can dodge, parry, or block the attack.
The lesser known alternative to IGOUGO
is WEGO.
That is, We Go at the same time.
If IGOUGO is taking turns like tic-tac-toe,
WEGO is rock-paper-scissors.
We don't have time to cover all the nuances of IGOUGO vs. WEGO,
so I'll just summarize WEGO as:
Combat orders should be processed in a separate hands-off resolution phase.
The processing doesn't have to be simultaneous.
A good example would be Pokémon taking turns to perform their moves.
Though I'd still prefer that the game maintain the illusion
that the participants are all duking it out at the same time.
If that sounds like Auto-battlers,
yes, some Auto-Battlers can fit in this criteria.
And considering that Library of Ruina has Auto-Battler roots,
that gives us our next criteria:
I can also look into games with Unconventional Auto-Battling mechanics.
You might have noticed that we skipped a criteria.
That's because the second is more of a
sub-criteria under the WEGO turn-based.
Namely, there has to be a Clashing mechanic.
In a nutshell, Clashing allows two actions
to face off against each other at the same time.
This one comes naturally with WEGO,
and a step up from the Pokémon style where they still
stand around like idiots taking damage.
While adding Clashing adds a bit of believability to the combat
realism isn't the goal here.
The main thing we get are more tactical options
compared to non-Clashing combat.
And it's just more fun to watch.
And our last major criteria:
It's a Card Game with a unique gimmick.
I'm being intentionally vague here, but we'll explain this further
once we get to a certain game later.
Here's our final checklist.
Every game featured in this video will tick at least one box on this list.
Library of Ruina has even more "unconventional" mechanics,
but for this video, we'll limit it to these 4.
Now for the disclaimers.
I'm mostly going to review the games' mechanics
and will try to keep the review of the games themselves to a minimum.
Because of this, I have to remind you that
while gameplay forms a crucial part of what makes a game good or enjoyable,
it's not the only thing that will determine a game's overall quality.
To spoil a major point I made in the other video,
Library of Ruina wasn't successful because of its unique gameplay.
On the contrary, its weird and unfamiliar mechanics
can be the biggest hurdle new players have to face before they can enjoy it.
Another point why you shouldn't treat my comments as full reviews:
most of the games I'll feature are either in their Demo stage
are still in Early Access.
At this point in development, anything can happen.
Some of them may stall and fail to release.
In fact, at least one of the games I'll feature
already has suspended development.
On a more optimistic note,
even the most crude and incomplete prototype
may eventually become a breakout hit
and turn into a multimedia franchise in a decade.
Early in development also means
I won't have enough playtime with many of these games,
and unfortunately I've been recently burned
by games where the critical problems only show up after 5 hours of playing.
Or worse, after 50 hours of slogging through them.
In short, I won't be giving a "Buy" or "Don't Buy" recommendation.
The most that I can do for mechanics that I like
is to tell you to check the games out.
If after playing the demos or watching other reviews,
you also find them interesting,
it's up to you to decide whether to buy them or not.
To save some time and to not insult your gaming experience,
I'll be focusing on the new things that the games bring to the table.
So if it's a Slay the Spire clone,
I'll straight out say that it's one
before moving on to explain its gimmick.
As always, Captions and Chapter Markers are available for this video.
If you want a more comprehensive,
spoiler-filled outline with sub-chapter timestamps,
check the pinned comment.
Speaking of spoilers, I will try my best not to spoil any of these games,
including Library of Ruina and Limbus Company.
But I can't guarantee that none will slip through.
With the intro out of the way, let's proceed to our first game.
Corrupted: Dawn of Havoc.
When I thought about doing this series,
this was the first game that came into mind as
it's practically an alternate universe version of Library of Ruina.
Putting the game side by side, you can see the similarities.
Both are Deckbuilding Auto-Battlers,
and both employ a less realistic, cartoon-y art style
to tone down the gore and body horror aspects of the setting.
But Ruina decided to go a different route,
choosing early on to be more melee and clash-focused,
even having to retcon the guns from the previous game.
Corrupted's combat, on the other hand,
is what you might expect from a typical Auto-Battler.
Onto the basics.
You start a run by assembling a party of three members.
Then the game proceeds in typical Roguelike fashion,
your party progressing through stages until you reach the end.
Or, more likely, until your whole team is wiped.
Each stage can be a shop, a supply chest, an event,
or even a "Slay the Spire"-like rest stop where you can upgrade or heal up.
But most of the time you'll be in a battle.
At its core, Corrupted is a wave-based Auto-Battler.
Your party will face waves of enemies,
and at the start of every wave,
you can position your team anywhere on your side of the battlefield,
with some hex grid tiles providing buffs or debuffs.
Like with most Auto-Battlers,
your units automatically move towards and attack the closest enemy.
A wave ends once all the units on one side is eliminated.
Now that we've discussed the familiar Roguelike and Auto-Battler parts,
let's talk about the most obvious change:
the Card Battler element.
Unlike in Library of Ruina, where every unit has their own deck,
here all the party's cards are pooled together to form a single deck.
At the start of the run, this will consist of two Bandages
and three starter cards from each member.
You earn new cards by winning battles
and also through shops and supply chests.
At the start of combat,
you draw an initial hand and begin with three Energy,
the latter of which will be used to play cards.
As with other real-time card games,
you draw and gain Energy at regular intervals.
Since deck sizes are small,
the discard pile is shuffled back to the deck
once the latter runs out.
Though note that single-use cards are very common in the game.
This card game aspect adds an extra layer to the Auto-Battler:
You can't order your units to move or attack,
but if you have the cards and energy,
you can make them perform special actions.
Cards aren't the only special actions though,
and this leads us to the next main feature of the game,
the SP and Skill system.
Units gain SP every time they attack,
similar to how some fighting games do it with Super meters.
Then once their SP bars are full, they immediately activate their Skills.
Note that this applies to all units, and not just your party.
Just like how your team's Skills can turn the tide of battle,
enemy Skills can also be fatal to your team.
Fortunately, Skills can be interrupted by special effects
like Stun or Electrocute,
canceling the Skill and reducing the SP
so it will take some time before they can attempt again.
You have to time it correctly though,
right as they are channeling the skill.
Too early and it won't lower the SP,
and too late, well, is too late.
Timing can be a problem,
but thankfully the game isn't purely real-time,
but real-time with pause.
Things are also practically paused
when you're hovering over or using cards.
But what if you don't have a card on hand with an effect that can counter a skill?
Obviously, you can kill them before they activate their ability.
Alternatively, you can just let them happen.
And lastly, you can also try to Break or stagger the enemy.
Like Ruina,
actually more like Limbus Company,
if you deal enough damage to an enemy,
a threshold denoted by the white part of their HP bar,
you can put them into a Break status,
and this also cancels any skills they are channeling.
I can't stress enough how much of the game revolves around
the countering and Break mechanics.
When deck building,
you want to have enough cards in your deck that can counter skills.
And in combat, you want to hold onto those cards as long as possible,
saving them to only be used on dangerous enemies,
potentially stun-locking them.
There's other mechanics like equipment and fusing,
but they're fairly typical for the genre.
So let's skip all that and go straight to my critiques.
Corrupted can have what I call the
"Overwhelming Force Problem"
This is a long tangent but it will be relevant for other games
so I'd rather take time to fully explain it here
than do it as we go along.
If you just want to know my final thoughts on Corrupted,
you can skip to the timestamp on screen.
Back to the topic...
In order to complete or win in a video game,
you generally have to overcome a certain threshold of difficulty.
The simplest way to overcome this is through personal skill.
Maybe you're good at games so you often win at the first try.
Or the game is just too easy so winning isn't a problem.
Or the game is initially too hard,
but you eventually learn enough to overcome it.
Of course, most games aren't all skill.
Some have progression mechanics
that help a player to get over that threshold.
There's leveling and meta progression
which unfortunately includes pay-to-win microtransactions.
Then there's the Randomness factor.
By dynamically changing the overall difficulty,
we can prevent games from being too predictable and boring.
Sometimes this means that the game is harder than usual,
but sometimes it might give you an easier cycle for a boss.
For this graph, however, we'll keep the threshold static
and put Randomness alongside the other factors.
This leads us to a formula:
Your Skill plus Progression plus Randomness
must be greater than the Difficulty threshold
in order to win the game.
An "Overwhelming Force" scenario is what happens when your character
becomes so powerful that Skill doesn't really matter anymore.
Note that this isn't a problem yet,
as in some games getting to this point is intentional,
like in JRPGs or other grinding-heavy genres.
In those, the Progression factor can make both
Skill and Randomness seem insignificant.
What can turn this into a problem is if this wasn't the intent of the game,
and players just ended up grinding levels because it's easier
or more fun than actually learning to be better at it.
The Overwhelming Force scenario can also happen with the Randomness factor,
with a good example being Roguelikes.
Again, this isn't a problem on its own.
You can win in well-designed Roguelikes with a good mix of all 3 factors.
Sure, sometimes RNG screws you over,
but experience can help make up for it.
And sometimes you get too lucky that
Randomness alone gives you the Overwhelming Force.
The problem arises in poorly designed Roguelikes,
or in higher difficulty challenges.
There, you absolutely need the RNG to give you broken builds.
Otherwise, you'll outright lose the run.
The skill here is relatively minimal,
mostly just the knowledge of broken builds and not blundering.
Then there's Auto-Battlers.
I'm not going to argue whether this is a problem or not,
but point is, you generally need
Overwhelming Force to win in Auto-Battlers.
In the other video, I theorized that this was the reason
why Project Moon switched from a pure Auto-Battler
to a more tactical setup:
It's simply not fun to lose because your units are being silly.
Conversely, it's much more fun to be able to win a potentially losing situation
by figuring out how to turn things around.
To wrap up this long tangent, I'm just gonna point out that
Corrupted is a Roguelike Auto-Battler.
In its defense, Corrupted does have a way to address this problem
through its card mechanics.
But at this point in development, it's not quite there yet.
Even if you do get to build a good deck,
if you don't have the right team composition
and weren't able to find the right equipment and upgrades in the early game,
you won't have the tankiness and DPS needed to beat the later levels.
Basically, the devs just need to add a bit more depth to the card battler part
to make up for the inherent flaws of Roguelike Auto-Battlers.
As for other the problems, well, it's an Early Access Game
that was last updated last year.
So you've got your usual localization problems,
all the way to repeatable crashes.
Which is unfortunate,
as the game can be fun to play when things work as intended.
But the biggest problem, at least for this video,
is that, on top of the lack of updates,
there is no demo.
Like I said in the intro, it's up to you to decide whether
shelling out money just to try out the game at this point
is a good idea or not.
And that's all I have to say about Corrupted,
an alternate universe version of Library of Ruina's combat mechanics,
where the normal part is a weird one,
and vice versa.
The next game I played on stream was Private Military Manager.
Coincidentally, its tagline,
"Tactical Auto Battler"
is what I'd use if I have to describe Project Moon's combat system
in as few words as possible.
Let's see how the game compares...
In Private Military Manager, you're the boss of a PMC
working in a fictional South American nation
after the fall of the Soviet Union.
You're then contacted by someone in The Company
who hires you to sow some chaos among the cartels
by blowing up a warehouse and abducting a facility manager.
You have 3 weeks to train your team
and plan how they will execute the operation.
You can test out the plan in a kill house built by your crew
based on the information provided by the client.
The demo tutorial begins with one such test,
with your default team kitted with default equipment
and performing default orders.
It doesn't turn out well
with a good portion of your team "dying" in the simulation.
So for the next 3 weeks,
you'll be working towards a perfect operation.
You set the training schedule of each of your members,
building up stats that they lack.
At the same time, you also have to keep an eye on other stats like
health, mood, and discipline.
And there will be events that randomly happen
that will raise or lower them.
Eventually, you'll be able to hire new recruits,
preferably some with roles that you don't have yet
like a Breacher or a Sharpshooter.
The market will also open, letting you buy better gear for your team.
Enough of the side content, and let's go back to the Auto-Battler part.
In the Squad screen, you can assign who will participate in the operation,
what they will bring, and more importantly,
what they will do.
The demo scenario is split into six sections,
and there will be special actions available
for each of the phases of the operation.
For example, the 2nd part can be breached by explosives if you've got a Breacher.
You can run through a simulation every day,
and you don't suffer any penalties in losing.
At the end of every week, however,
your client will visit and watch how your team performs.
Failing that will result in an immediate game over.
If you succeed,
the simulation's difficulty is raised the following week.
You'll get more guards,
and some of them may have better gear like shields.
As the loop continues, train your team,
improve their gear, test run some simulations,
and get evaluated at the end of the week.
If you pass all 3 inspections,
you have 7 days to complete the real operation.
And after doing your final preparations, you conduct it,
and the demo ends.
And that's Private Military Manager,
at least what the demo is about.
I may have skipped a couple of stuff, like Dispatch mechanics,
or how grenades and formation orders
prevent the game from being a pure Auto-Battler,
but I've covered what needs to be covered.
Onto the critiques, starting with the tagline:
"Tactical Auto-Battler".
For one, it's definitely nothing compared to Project Moon's combat.
And compared to other tactical simulators like Door Kickers or the OG Rainbow Six,
PMM is also doing its own thing despite the similarities.
In the end, I couldn't really say that they got the tagline right,
mainly because the demo is pretty limited.
Which in turn is my biggest problem with reviewing it:
Despite its three-week in-game length,
there's really not much to see here.
The scenario's also too easy;
as long as you're not screwed by events
like your PMC's getting sick or fighting each other,
it's hard to lose.
If this wasn't supposed to be a tutorial level,
I'd say this is another prime example
of the Overwhelming Force problem that I mentioned in the last game.
But the real problem with Private Military Manager is
it has stopped development.
That game I mentioned in the intro?
Yep, it's this game.
They've offered refunds to those who bought into Early Access,
though if the demo left you wanting for more
and you're somehow curious how far they've gone into building the game,
it's still available at a heavily discounted price.
Anyway, moving on to games from the next stream.
First is Tarnished Blood,
a game set in a dark fantasy nightmare horror world.
In the intro, we see our apparent protagonist
wake up face to face with a monster.
He eventually kills it with some help from a newly arrived archer.
Then they return to a settlement
where you can assemble a party, gear up, and go hunt the next monster.
You might be thinking, doesn't this sound familiar?
And you would be right.
This game is heavily inspired by another game:
Kingdom Death: Monster.
The brutal cooperative tabletop game
that's often sold out despite its price tag.
Okay, I'm sure you were thinking more of
Monster Hunter or perhaps the Souls series,
but when you look at the game loop as well as the overall vibe,
it's definitely much closer to KDM than those other games.
Anyway, the main reason why I'm featuring Tarnished Blood is its combat,
a Timeline-based system where you can assign orders at specific points in time.
This is similar to the tactical planning we've seen with PMM and its predecessors,
with the main difference being that you can run simulations before committing,
scrubbing through the timeline forward and backward as needed.
While we've seen this attempted in other games before,
most notably Frozen Synapse in 2011,
and Phantom Brigade in 2020,
I haven't seen a game fully iron out its problems as much as Tarnished Blood has.
Take for example Frozen Synapse.
My main gripe with the game is how in the single player campaign,
the stages are randomized and you're not told how the enemy will act.
You can try to predict how they will move,
but if you're new to the game and not familiar with the AI,
more often than not your predictions will be way off track.
There are obvious reasons why the devs went with this,
like PvP,
but I think the most likely reason is
they thought the game would be too easy
if the player knows the enemy's actions.
Basically, what we saw in PMM.
Tarnished Blood takes the most obvious solution:
crank up the threat posed by the enemy.
This way, despite the timeline appearing overpowered
and feel almost like cheating,
you have to take full advantage of it just to survive.
But even the timeline may not be enough;
it only deals with 60 frames of combat,
and the monsters can have attack patterns that play beyond that time span.
So until you're familiar with the monster,
you'll have to play safe and avoid giving your team orders
that may put them in a bad position in the upcoming rounds.
As for problems with Phantom Brigade's timeline system,
I can't really say much as I haven't bought the game myself.
But from what I've seen from gameplay,
timeline predictions aren't that accurate,
especially when it comes to attacks.
It kinda makes sense since damage is random,
and this system has to ignore the potential branching paths
when attacks may or may not destroy a unit.
On the other hand,
Tarnished Blood's timeline is mostly deterministic.
It avoids the branching paths problem
by giving everything that isn't the monster a single HP.
So attacking any adds, projectiles, or environmental hazards
will guarantee their destruction.
And the timeline assumes that attacking the monster wouldn't kill it.
Though if you do kill it,
the hunt immediately ends.
Conversely, hits on your units stun them for such a long time that
even if they faint, the timeline isn't affected that much.
The timeline even takes into account homing attacks,
like this vine originally snaking its way down to this guy.
It changes direction if I tell that guy to jump.
Alright, that's enough for the comparisons and overview of the system.
Time to talk about how the game actually plays.
In Tarnished Blood, monster hunts can have a party of up to 4 members.
Before the actual Showdown, your team will have to Hunt their target first.
Basically, there will be your usual stops,
and in each you'll be given a choice of an event to tackle.
The results of the events can give
temporary buffs or debuffs for the upcoming battle,
or more permanent effects.
Once that phase is done, you finally get to fight the monster.
They've got a set amount of hit points,
and your team has to destroy enough of their parts to kill them.
Like this one which has 6 parts, but one is worth 2 hit points,
so you'll need to destroy 3 to 4 parts to win.
As we've talked about earlier, combat is timeline based.
You're given a timeline that shows what will happen in each of the 60 frames
of the current round.
However, the markers on the timeline don't tell the whole story,
so you'll generally have to scrub forwards and backwards
to actually see how the round will play out.
To order your units,
you select them on their track on the left side of the timeline.
Then you scroll towards the frame you want them to perform an action,
then choose the said action.
Each unit can move and attack a number of times
depending on their gear and traits.
The green diamonds are the movement points,
running a certain distance requires one, and so does a small jump.
Alternatively, you can spend two to perform a stronger jump.
The purple ovals are attack points,
and usually your units can only attack once a round.
Whatever action you take,
the game will not commit that action to the timeline yet
until you confirm it.
This will allow you to play around with the timeline
to see how it will play out,
and adjust the action as necessary.
Canceling the action will, as you might expect,
cancel the order, removing it from the timeline.
Confirming will plant the order into the timeline,
allowing you to move on to other actions.
While you can still cancel confirmed orders with a right-click,
note that whenever you confirm an order,
roots will slowly creep into the timeline,
preventing you from modifying actions covered by it.
If this root mechanic is a bit too harsh for your taste,
don't worry, you can disable it in the options.
Now let's talk about the weapons
a big deal in the monster hunting genre
as some monster parts can be strong or weak against certain weapons.
Tarnished Blood doesn't go wild with the resistances,
only going for Slash, Blunt, and Pierce.
However, there's an interesting spread of abilities
among the different weapon types.
From Swords that charge up a special attack every time it's used,
to Hammers with a spin attack that smashes through projectiles and hazards,
to Bows that can deal increased damage
if the unit jumps to certain spots on the field before shooting.
Then there's Harpoons,
the one that best takes advantage of the timeline system.
It's thrown like a typical spear-like weapon,
but it sticks to the monster
and a rope showing the tension will be added to the timeline.
You'll then try to position the thrower at the right distance for optimal tension.
(You'll see it as the red rope on the timeline)
Then you can spend a movement point
to rip and tear the harpoon off for extra damage.
Getting it right can be tricky,
but it's fun once you figure out how to consistently pull it off.
Once you're done with your commands,
you can click the Play button to resolve the round.
You get to watch the results, then the next round begins after that.
The fight continues until the monster, or your team, is dead.
I could go on with other stuff about the game, but I think I've covered enough
and we've got a lot more games to go through.
I'll wrap this up by pointing out a very important feature in this game
that unfortunately, a lot of other games don't have.
A replay function.
Okay, it's not that important,
but it can be a great quality of life feature
to help you learn from your mistakes.
And it's simply fun to watch.
Seeing units fly around dodging and attacking like this
makes me think that the devs accidentally created the blueprint
for a turn-based Attack on Titan game.
While I love to see replays on more games,
I understand that it's not for every game.
It's great for WEGO turn-based games,
and almost necessary for timeline-based ones.
Frozen Synapse has it, though it's a bit clunky in my opinion.
Oddly enough, Project Moon's combat is an exception,
as every turn, Library of Ruina teleports units to their initial positions,
screwing up the smoothness of the replay.
I think it's possible with Limbus Company, though it would look very janky.
As for IGOUGO, it can definitely work,
with the best example in watching replays of chess games,
but it's a bit iffy for JRPGs or tactics games
as it highlights the silliness of standing around like idiots.
And that's Tarnished Blood,
hands down the best timeline-based combat I've seen so far.
I do wish the updates were more frequent,
though I couldn't really blame the devs considering the small player base.
Anyway, go check it out if you're new to timeline combat
and find all of this interesting.
Or if you've already tried Frozen Synapse or Phantom Brigade before
and ended up wanting more,
maybe this new take on the combat
will finally scratch that time-bending itch.
The demo's available on Steam along with its Early Access.
By the way, I didn't talk too much
about the Dark Fantasy setting to avoid spoilers...
Let's just say if you're gonna jump in,
expect to see darker and weirder stuff
compared to your usual monster hunting game.
The next game is the reason why there's
"Unconventional Card Games" in our criteria.
But first, let's talk about "Conventional" Card Games.
In the beginning, there were Traditional Card Games:
Poker, Blackjack, the works...
We can even include adjacent tabletop games here,
like Uno and card-based board games.
Then Magic: the Gathering came along and introduced a new type of card game:
one where you build a deck from tradeable cards
and fight with other players.
This dueling Collectible Card Game style is our 2nd type.
Then things exponentially became more digital,
and both got their own video game counterparts.
Unfortunately for CCGs,
there was one big problem holding them back in this digital age:
a problem even bigger than making a stable card economy
or how to get infinite loops working.
Single player doesn't work.
The systems are just too complicated
to code an AI that is both competent and doesn't feel like cheating.
Sure, there have been attempts like Shandalar and Yu-Gi-Oh! games,
but they just don't compare to the real thing.
To make a single player CCG work as a video game,
you have to make one from scratch with simpler mechanics.
Eventually, Slay the Spire figured things out
by going even further and ditching the PvP core altogether,
instead going for a far simpler, reactive combat around the Intent system.
It also replaced the deck building with Roguelike mechanics
to draft new decks every run.
This ends up creating the 3rd type: Single Player Roguelike Card Games.
Right now, if you search for card games in
in Steam or any other video game store or list,
pretty much all of the games you'll see fall into these 3 categories.
Yes, even the mostly unconventional Library of Ruina
is a mix of the deck building style of the 2nd
and the predictive combat of the 3rd.
But there are outliers,
one of which is the Mega Man Battle Network series.
A grid-based deckbuilder that sets itself apart from the others
by not being turn-based.
This particular mix of action-oriented gameplay
and tactical card game elements is so unique that,
outside of fan games,
only one other game has taken the risk to follow it.
One Step from Eden.
So when a demo popped up in my Steam feed for Card-en-Ciel,
I was certain that we finally got another one.
Sorry for stringing you along with that long intro, but no,
Card-en-Ciel is not a Battle Network-like.
At least, not like how One Step from Eden does it.
It's very much "Slay the Spire"-like,
while heavily inspired by Battle Network's combat.
We'll skip the Roguelike Deckbuilding part,
as we've already covered it before,
and go straight to the combat.
The battlefield is composed of two 3x3 grids,
with your side being the blue on the left.
You can see where the enemy is going to attack by the glowing tiles,
and to make this a turn-based version of Battle Network combat,
you will see a time value on each enemy.
And if you're familiar with a particularly annoying enemy in Slay the Spire,
you should know where this is going...
Every action you make lowers the timer of every enemy.
Once an enemy's timer hits zero, they will attack,
dealing their Attack Power as damage to their target,
and after which they'll then move to a different location.
The enemy will also do it when you end the turn,
so make sure you're not standing on a glowing tile when you do so.
Unlike Battle Network, however, you can't directly move your character
with the keyboard or controller in Card-en-Ciel.
Instead, each card has a direction under its cost,
and right-clicking will move your character towards that direction.
this is free, but will count as an action and lowers enemy timers.
The obvious downside to this is sometimes
you won't be able to move in the direction you want,
even after building a deck with a good spread of directions.
The game has a couple of other ways to address this problem...
...that we won't cover in this video.
Anyway, you have two attack types.
First is Normal Damage.
This lowers the enemy health, which is displayed as a bar on their right.
Like with Battle Network and One Step from Eden,
different cards have different attack patterns.
So some attacks may hit multiple enemies,
but if you're out of position, may not even hit any enemies at all.
The next damage type is Break.
This lowers enemy attack and damages their Balance.
Once you fully deplete an enemy's Balance, they will enter Breakdown:
They're stunned and won't act for the rest of the turn.
Any damage they take while in this state is doubled,
making it easier to finish them off.
And to top it off,
you also get a Cost resource as a bonus for stunning an enemy.
So basically, Break is Stagger Damage from Library of Ruina,
with the extra benefit of lowering enemy Attack power,
though the stagger lasts one less turn.
Card-en-Ciel has a large amount of keywords even in the demo.
First are the Amps: when you use these cards for movement,
you'll get a boost to the next Damage, Break or Draw.
This lasts until you use them so you can charge them up for the next turn.
Then there's Forge, which creates new cards,
Summon, which adds a unit on your grid, providing passives,
and the list goes on....
Card-en-Ciel's strongest passives, at least in the demo,
come in the form of Muses,
special additions to your deck that are
activated once you fulfill their requirements.
You can recruit Muses by winning certain fights in dungeons,
and it seems that there's no limits to how many you can get or activate,
so it's not unusual to end up spamming them late in a run.
And that's Card-en-Ciel,
a decent attempt at turning Mega Man Battle Network into a turn-based game.
I kinda prefer some parts of it over the original,
but at the end of the day, it's still too much of a departure from the source
that One Step from Eden would still be my go-to recommendation
for someone looking for a Battle Network fix.
Or just go play the originals.
Normally this would be the time where I'd wrap it up
and tell you to try out the demo for yourself...
But first, I have to address the elephant in the room.
The game's overall presentation.
In case you're not familiar with Mega Man Battle Network,
that series is a Rockman / Mega Man spin-off
that takes place in a separate universe.
It's pretty meta, with many references to the main franchise,
from the characters to combat moves.
Card-en-Ciel takes that metaness and dials it up to 11.
In the game, you play as Neon, a hacker that answers a request to save the world.
Well, VR worlds at least.
Some shenanigans have been happening and somehow Mad Obstructive Data
or MODs are showing up in games where they shouldn't be.
It's Neon's job to fix this corruption in various game worlds
through the power of violence
Or friendship.
Actually violence.
This whole multiverse crossover thing
is a huge step up from Battle Network's Mega Man-only references,
and a weird decision from the developers.
Inti Creates may have their own Mega Man in Gunvolt,
as well as other original games,
some more infamous than others,
but this is not enough to fill
a multiverse of different games needed by the setting.
They had to make up a number of fake titles for different genres.
And since they can't really spend too much time on world building,
they made the most stereotypical,
trope-filled versions of the titles they're referencing.
So you've got legally distinct monster collection game,
and generic JRPG,
both even more tropey than usual.
They even threw in genres that I didn't expect,
like horror-mystery visual novels,
4X strategy games,
and even weirder stuff that I won't spoil.
As if that trope overdose isn't enough,
don't forget that this is a card game,
and every time you play a card or activate a Muse,
you will be bombarded by voice lines and scenes...
Long story short, even as a big Card Game and Tactics fan,
Card-en-Ciel might not be your cup of tea.
To be fair to the game, it isn't as bad as some other games we've seen recently.
It's tonally consistent enough that if I somehow convinced myself
to fully buy into the setting,
I could see myself playing through the game with no problems,
albeit with tongue fully in cheek.
If you're okay with all of that, the demo's available for you to try out.
One last thing to point out before we move on,
note that I played this game on stream right after Tarnished Blood...
So yeah, in a single stream, I went from a brutal dark fantasy setting,
to a literal RGB Gaming Chair.
Crazy, I know.
For the third stream,
I started off with a game that's somewhat related to Tarnished Blood.
When I pointed out that game wasn't mainly based on Monster Hunter
but instead Kingdom Death: Monster,
it's not because I'm some tabletop gaming connoisseur.
I actually just found out about KDM through the game's Steam description.
That description mentions another inspiration:
Your Only Move Is HUSTLE.
I didn't talk about this because
Tarnished Blood ended up resembling timeline-based games
like Phantom Brigade rather than YOMI HUSTLE.
But what's YOMI HUSTLE, you might ask?
It's a turn-based fighting game.
If that brings up images of people taking turns slapping each other,
that's only because you're so used to IGOUGO.
It makes much more sense with WEGO turn-based.
In fact, practically every fighting game nowadays
are, at their core, compatible with WEGO,
as there's mechanics like frame data and priority rules
to determine outcomes of simultaneous actions,
like one attack hitting first because it's faster,
or an attack overpowering another because it's stronger.
And YOMI HUSTLE is just that,
with players submitting moves for their fighters every turn,
and the game calculating the outcome.
Now, I can't talk about YOMI HUSTLE
without also talking about an older turn-based fighting game:
Toribash.
Basically, if YOMI HUSTLE uses the
so-called Modern control scheme in fighting games,
Toribash uses a
QWOP control scheme.
No, seriously.
Apart from being one of the few notable turn-based fighting games out there,
Toribash is also notable for being heavily physics and rigging based.
Rather than choose from a list of actions,
you decide what your fighter's muscles will do this turn.
So if you tell your fighter to contract their left pec(toral muscles),
they will do that for the entirety of the next set of frames
dictated by the game mode.
In this case, the next 10 frames.
If this all sounds painfully difficult,
it actually is.
Though with practice, you can learn to perform some impressive moves
under this weird control scheme.
Just to be clear, someone else made this replay,
and I'm not showing off for this video.
But this allows me to segue back to YOMI HUSTLE,
which also has replay functionality.
And in turn likely inspired Tarnished Blood to have one too.
Anyway, back to introducing the next game.
One of the biggest challenges of this genre
is the wide gap in complexity.
Any newbie game developer learning networking
can build their own rock-paper-scissors game.
But for a long time, no one's really built a turn-based fighting game
that goes between those simple games
and Toribash.
Thankfully, YOMI HUSTLE showed up and narrowed the gap.
But even it can look too complicated for outsiders.
So right now, there's still room for more accessible games in this genre.
And the next game might just fill that gap.
Mecha Simultactics.
As the name implies, it's a turn-based fighting game with mecha.
Battles take place in 3D isometric environments.
And similar to YOMI HUSTLE,
each turn players choose between moving, attacking, or performing a special.
Then the game takes all of the units' actions together and resolves the outcome.
If both moves, they just move.
When one side attacks and the other doesn't get out of the way,
the latter gets hit.
Pretty basic stuff.
Now when one side attacks and the other either attacks or tries to get away,
the action Speeds determine which side wins.
That is, higher is better.
It gets more interesting when both sides attack with the same Speed:
this ends up as a Clash.
Finally, we see that criteria.
In a Clash, both sides can choose one of 3 possible actions,
with a rock-paper-scissors-like outcome.
Or they can choose to spend a Burst to end the clash immediately,
sending the enemy flying.
Though if the Clash is two tiles away,
it will miss and will leave the Bursting mech vulnerable.
Burst can also cancel knockdowns and enemy combos,
and puts a mech into Overdrive,
increasing its speed for a few turns.
Mechs can only have one Burst however,
and must be replenished by filling up the Guts meter through melee attacks.
Then finally, there are Special attacks which are either limited use,
or can be replenished by Guts.
Fight ends when one side is eliminated,
then we're shown a replay of the battle.
Like the other turn-based fighting games,
the game saves the replay and you can view it again later.
And that's pretty much what's in Mecha Simultactics right now.
Overall, it's okay as an initial public demo,
and has still a lot of room for updates.
Unfortunately, that also means I don't have much else
to say about its current state.
As of this recording, the Alpha is still available for free on Steam
and you can even play multiplayer
if you've got friends you can drag along for the ride.
If the game leaves you wanting for more,
remember there's always YOMI HUSTLE and Toribash,
with the latter being free although with modern monetization practices tacked on.
Last game I streamed, but definitely not the least,
Rune Coliseum.
Not gonna bury the lede here: If you're a Slay the Spire enjoyer
but is kinda sick of seeing every clone doing the same thing
over and over again
and wish for a game that uses Project Moon combat elements
like clashing and combo strings,
check out Rune Coliseum.
Instead of Slaying a Spire,
in this game you're a gladiator competing in a Coliseum.
Apart from that, it's the same Roguelike game loop
that we've seen in 3 other games before in this video alone.
So let's go straight to the combat...
Every turn has a Preparation phase followed by a Battle phase.
Pretty typical WEGO setup.
In the Preparation Phase, we are shown the enemy's intent
and we have to choose how to respond.
Here we also see that Rune Coliseum decided that all gladiatorial battles
must be one-on-one duels.
Unlike other games in the genre that pits one against many,
or teams against each other.
This one-on-one scheme sidesteps the complicated timing and priority problems
that WEGO games have to deal with,
with the only downside being that
Project Moon veterans will be briefly confused about how the action slots work.
Basically, these are not your typical Action Slots.
These are Action Queues.
In other words, we skip the targeting part
and go straight to this thing.
So yeah, action queue.
Your actions are on the left, while the enemy's are on the right.
Actions are resolved from the center outward in the Battle Phase.
We're getting a bit ahead of ourselves, so let's go back to the Preparation Phase.
Like we said before, the queue shows the enemy's intent.
You can hover over each of the slots to see what they are,
and this also conveniently highlights the corresponding slot on the other side.
Another thing to hover over are the small rectangles over the slots
to see a ghost preview of the action.
The queue also shows important info so you don't need to hover as much,
like the combat outcome in the ghost rectangle.
The check and number refers to unopposed attack damage,
and it's also mirrored by the heart and number
referring to the taken damage.
There's also numbers in diamonds under the attacks,
which we'll get back to in a bit.
And finally, the top of the queue can show special effects
like ranged attacks or stage-specific hazards or buffs.
To play your cards, you drag them up from your hand.
No need to choose slots;
it's a queue so most actions can only go to the end of the line.
Canceling can be done by right-click.
Hovering over your cards shows their info, like their costs and effects.
In addition, attacks also show how many actions
their startup and recovery will eat up as you play them.
Anyway, when an attack clashes against another attack,
also called a Duel in game terms,
the higher value wins.
Unlike Ruina with its all-or-nothing damage,
Duel damage is the difference between the winner and the loser.
You might think this reduced damage would lead to slower combat,
but many effects in the game can be triggered when an attack wins a Duel,
like some attack cards dealing extra damage after winning.
This is what the diamond numbers at the bottom mean.
The blue diamond refers to attack power,
while the green is the extra damage if it wins the Duel.
So to avoid taking any damage,
you just need to find an attack that matches or exceeds the blue diamond.
Alternatively, you can also use Block cards,
which work like in Slay the Spire,
that is, you get some shields that absorb damage.
What's new here is that the game has a built-in counter mechanic.
Whenever you completely block an attack,
you automatically use any Block Pursuit cards in your hand to riposte for free.
This only works if you have a shield,
and the number of free counters are limited by your shield's counter count.
I guess it's a good time to mention that Rune Coliseum has an equipment system,
and also a class system which restricts to which items they can use.
We won't go too much into detail about either,
but for now, we'll just point out that equipment are heavy,
and will add Overburdened cards to your deck.
While that may sound like it's gonna be a problem,
cluttering up your deck and hand with useless cards,
they do have an important use in combat.
You see, by going with the action queue,
clashing to attacks isn't as easy as with Ruina.
Your attack has to exactly match the order in the queue
for a Duel to occur.
So if your attack is in the 2nd slot, and the enemy is in the 3rd,
they won't clash with each other.
And somehow the devs chose not to give a free Wait action.
So here's where Overburdened comes into play.
It's a free card that eats up a slot.
Now the attack matches up.
Another way is to just walk forward.
However, this costs 1 resource compared to the free Overburdened.
Alternatively, if you don't want to clash or block,
you can also jump backwards for 2.
This is also pretty much equivalent to Ruina's Evade mechanic,
as it dodges most non-lunging attacks.
Now, as much as I'd love to go on talking about
all of Rune Coliseum's unique mechanics,
there's just too many to cover in a video like this.
I haven't talked about the Ultimate abilities,
or how they added a fighting game-themed character to the roster.
Heck, the tutorial even teaches you how to do an infinite combo.
So I'll wrap this up with some critiques about the game,
leaving all of those features unexplained for you to find out for yourselves.
Before that, however, I do have to point out that
this game has two of my most requested features in games.
We've already covered my most requested feature before,
a Replay function.
At the end of every battle,
Rune Coliseum lets you re-watch full matches in real time.
It also has my 2nd most requested feature,
A battle log.
Great for those "what the hell just happened" moments.
Rune Coliseum has this, though sad to say it still needs a lot of work.
On to my critiques.
First off, while the sheer amount of content makes it stand out
from the sea of bare-bones Slay the Spire clones,
it can be daunting to new players.
It's even worse for the developers,
who have to figure out how to translate all those concepts to other languages.
A good example would be Parry,
an action that's somewhere between a normal attack and a block.
And there's also another Parry keyword,
which means that if that action is successful,
you get to play a card as a quick, uninterruptible action.
The kicker?
Only Parry Cards can have the latter Parry Keyword,
though by default they don't.
Yes, it's that confusing.
Fortunately, they've fixed that in a more recent patch,
replacing the latter with "Deflect",
and overall the devs are prioritizing localization issues like this one.
But the point still stands,
this is a complicated game and expect to see similar quirks
if you plan to dive into the Early Access.
Speaking of Early Access, that's our next problem:
there's no demo.
Like Corrupted, Rune Coliseum delisted their demo
when their Early Access period started.
To be clear,
I'd rather have the devs spend more resources on the main game
than maintain a separate demo build, backports and all.
But the thing is, they're kinda expensive outside of sales,
and without demos, its hard to recommend checking them out
over just getting some other full game.
That said, there are 2 more games in this video that don't have a demo,
though I won't be complaining again to avoid sounding like a broken record.
Now before anyone points out that
Library of Ruina also didn't have a demo on its Early Access,
and was even more expensive,
in hindsight, it was such a unique experience
that it was well worth it.
Most Early Access games nowadays,
would only dream of delivering what Project Moon did back then.
Anyway, back to Rune Coliseum...
My biggest concern with the game right now
is how they will change up the combat in Early Access Version 5.
As of this writing, they haven't released the full details yet,
so I don't know if I just wasted your time explaining a very different game
from what you might have right now.
And that's Rune Coliseum,
Slay the Spire with actual Project Moon-like combat,
and not just a mod adding Project Moon stuff to Slay the Spire.
Next up are games that I've tried out off-stream,
so as I said, all of them will be new even for long-time subscribers.
First is Sentinel Point Heroes,
Yet another Slay the Spire clone.
Before you close the video,
this one has a combat system that we haven't talked about yet:
A Time Cost system.
Not a timeline based system...
well, there is a timeline in this game, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Anyway, the main idea behind a Time Cost system is that
each unit is given a set amount of Time Units
and every action requires spending those Time Units,
with more significant actions requiring more to execute.
A good example would be X-COM: moving requires few time units per block,
while firing depends on the weapon and shooting style.
Say an "Aimed Shot" will require much more time units than a "Snap Shot".
What's different with Sentinel Point Heroes' style of Time Cost
is it's a predictive system.
One that goes beyond the expected Slay the Spire style Intent system,
and goes straight to Timeline territory.
So yeah, you do have a Timeline so you know what your enemies will be doing.
Then you get to decide whether you're going to use
a fast, low time cost action to interrupt the enemy,
or use an even slower action if you think that's worth it.
And that's pretty much the game in a nutshell.
Now let's go into the specifics...
Instead of Slaying a Spire,
here you're a Superhero out to defend the city from Supervillains.
Same old Type 3 Roguelike Deckbuilding game loop:
You fight, then use the rewards to get new cards and upgrade your hero,
and the whole thing repeats until the run ends.
Like we showed earlier, combat also revolves around
a timeline where you can see your enemies' next actions.
At the start of the game, you'll only have one enemy,
but later on you may see multiple enemies,
each with their own actions in the timeline.
You'll then have to play your cards accordingly,
say, queuing up a block when there's incoming attacks,
or attacking when their guards are down.
The game gives you a couple of tools to help you know if your timing is right.
First, all actions in the timeline
tell you how many seconds are left before they resolve.
And conveniently, all enemy actions have a tiny delay,
so you won't need to worry about things happening at the same time.
Then there's the Planning Mode.
Normally clicking or dragging a card only lets you preview
how it would look like in the timeline,
but when you activate Planning Mode, you will be able to add multiple cards.
It's just a preview though, you don't actually add them to the timeline,
but it can be useful for long-term planning
if you're not good at mental math.
Now let's talk about the tricky parts,
especially if you're coming from other card games.
First is the Time Cost itself.
As a deck builder, you kinda expect there
to be some sort of mana or resource system.
I mean, for all the innovations Rune Coliseum brings to the table,
the cards still require energy to play.
But in Sentinel Point Heroes, it's all Time Cost,
which means you'll have to rethink long-standing concepts like mana curves.
The next one is trickier:
the concept of a Turn.
In other card games, a turn involves a certain set of phases
Say you draw cards, refresh your mana, do your stuff, then pass the turn.
In this system,
a turn only refers to the period between the last action and the next action.
This throws a lot of familiar mechanics into different directions.
Take the Blocking mechanic (for example),
it's the same old Slay the Spire shields,
and also lasts 1 turn...
On one hand, you won't be able to stack shields
and you also have to time them correctly to not waste them.
On the other hand, if you do time them correctly,
you could block multiple attacks with a single card.
Note that this relative concept of turns also applies to enemies,
like here where you can see 2 different Block time windows.
You could hit the 2nd dude with a Cheap Shot,
but not the 1st as they will block it.
However, you can hit the 1st with a Sword Slash
at the cost of getting hit by their Whip Arms.
Another thing about the Turn change,
since Turns are per action, there's no Draw at the start,
nor a Discard at the end of turn.
Instead, drawing has a special action on its own called Recovery:
You spend time to draw some cards.
You can use Recovery anytime you want,
Though the game automatically discards the leftmost cards
when you reach a maximum hand size of 5,
pretty small for a game like this.
It's also balanced out by the fact that some mechanics treat Recovery
as if it marks the start or end of a "super turn" consisting of multiple turns.
For instance, Combo resets to 0 on Recovery,
and Rupture's damage triggers when it's still up when a unit Recovers.
And that's the gist of the Predictive Time-Cost combat system.
There are other stuff like Sidekicks and Resolve,
but they're not as groundbreaking, and similar mechanics
are present in other Slay the Spire-likes.
Overall, it's a decent enough attempt at a hybrid combat system,
and I have no major complaints.
I think the best part about it is while it is technically a WEGO system,
it feels like a more conventional IGOUGO turn-based game,
so it's a lot easier to pick up for players
who aren't really familiar with the former.
It is, however, a very short demo,
and you may end up wanting to see more of the unique combat.
Unfortunately, like Library of Ruina,
Sentinel Point Heroes' blend of mechanics is so unique that
there really isn't anything out there like it.
But like Ruina, you can find a few out there if you adjust your expectations.
The closest I've found so far is the Polish Persona-like,
The Thaumaturge.
It doesn't have the deckbuilding and card game elements,
but the Time Cost combined with
seeing your opponent's moves in the timeline is there.
And more importantly, it's a full game.
I can't personally recommend it since I haven't tried it myself,
but it does seem to be worth checking out.
If you lower your expectations further,
you can find stuff like StarCrawlers,
which doesn't show the enemy's future attack.
And even further, you'll get to plain old Time Unit and Action Point based games.
For the next game, I have to confess that I don't have any personal footage of it,
only some notes that I took the last time I played the demo.
I originally tried it out back in the February Steam Next Fest,
same as Sentinel Point Heroes,
but I somehow didn't record it.
Anyway, the game is NITRO GEN OMEGA.
I couldn't record any new footage of it
because they delisted the demo for the Early Access launch,
and unlike other games in this video,
this one didn't impress me enough to shell out for it.
So this section will be brief and
only contain footage from the developer's promo material.
NITRO GEN OMEGA is a retro-inspired mecha game
with a relationship system and,
more importantly for this video,
a Timeline-based combat system with a hint of...
Battleship?
Let's talk about the mecha part first.
Similar to how real-world tanks have 3-4 roles,
in NGO, your mech has a crew of 4, each with a specific role.
The Driver and Gunner roles are similar to their real-world counterparts,
responsible for maneuvering and the weapons respectively.
Instead of a Commander, there's an Operator,
akin to real-world Combat Systems Officers in aircraft,
and is responsible for electronic surveillance
and countermeasures.
And finally, the Engineer is part Loader, part... well...
Engineer from other military vehicles like ships or aircraft,
responsible for reloading and making sure the systems are working correctly.
Combat gives you a timeline where you add your mech's crew's actions,
but it's not quite the same as
Tarnished Blood or Phantom Brigade's timeline system,
as you don't scrub the timeline back and forth
to find the optimal frame to move or attack.
Instead, there's a fog of war and a Battleship-like element...
Your enemy's actions are hidden
unless you order your Operator to Scan a part of the timeline.
In addition, the enemies can have orders in reserve,
which they'll use once you give out orders.
In other words, you'll be taking turns plopping down orders on the timeline.
And once you're done giving orders,
you can proceed to the Resolution Phase to see the outcome of the turn.
That's a quick summary of the combat.
So what does my notes say about the February demo?
Main gripe: the animations might quickly get old.
I understand that they're going for an 80s to 90s anime feel,
but coming from that era, it just reminded me of how much
some titles reused footage over and over.
Perhaps provide a more zoomed out Tactical View as alternative?
It's just weird that the positioning info
only takes up a very small part of the screen,
with most given to the cinematic stuff.
As for the combat mechanics as a whole,
I haven't tested it long enough to give a strong opinion.
However, I have a feeling that the fog of war element
would lead to the same determinism and branching problems
that other Timeline-based combat games face.
The relationship system seems fine, I guess,
so maybe check this one out if you want to build your own crew
of plucky young pilots and recreate your favorite mecha anime.
Next game is another take on Timeline-based combat:
Time-Lake: Time Travel Tactics.
As the name implies, this game has an actual time travel element
to go along with the timeline scrubbing mechanic,
and not just a sci-fi prediction algorithm
or whatever magical thing that Tarnished Blood isn't going to explain.
Say you've got an enemy that heals too fast
or blinks to a different location every time you hit it,
you can Time Jump to the past and bring extra firepower to the battlefield.
And that's pretty much it.
The rest of the game has stuff like Roguelike elements,
but overall the main gimmick is the time travel aspect.
And on paper this should add a puzzle aspect to set it apart,
turning it to some sort of Portal for Timeline-based games.
Unfortunately, if you've been paying attention,
you should already know my opinion on it.
That is, its timeline mechanics aren't as good as Tarnished Blood.
My full opinion is a bit harsher,
so if you do find this concept interesting,
just go play the demo to form your own opinions.
And skip to the next game instead of listening to my mini rant
on a game that is very early on in development.
Okay, where do I start?
The stylized Art Deco-ish design of the Dream is pretty
with all its lights and glimmers,
but it's horribly unoptimized.
This game, at its default settings,
stresses my system more than demanding FPS games.
Thankfully, they've addressed this by adding Low graphics settings
but this is still a reminder for devs regarding demos:
You want to wow prospective players with fancy graphics,
but if it's too much for the average gaming rig,
you'll just turn them off.
So finding a balance is key.
Another problem is with the UI.
It takes some time to get used to, but even after a few hours of playing,
I still can't get over how huge the timeline's default size is.
Yes, you can zoom out and even move it around to make it actually usable,
but these changes don't stick.
Next time you'll be in a combat encounter,
the enormous timeline's gonna be shoved in your face again.
Then there's the time travel mechanic.
This is where that Portal mention comes into play again.
I was expecting the game to encourage you to use the time travel cloning
as much and as creatively as possible
to do wacky mind-bending stuff in the battlefield.
But no, Time Jumping requires Rubies, a limited resource.
So you end up using it only as a last resort,
until you grind enough lower levels to get enough Rubies to last a run.
Which unfortunately leads to other problems.
Not only do you learn to NOT rely on Time Jumping that much,
you can also get enough upgrades to Speed and Attack
that you end up not needing the time travel mechanic anyway.
Why bother spending Rubies when you can just
walk and blast your enemies with one shot?
Remember what I said about the Roguelike and Auto-Battler problem
of upgrades turning your team into an Overwhelming Force,
which in turn removes all the player skill from combat,
and how in Tarnished Blood it's the opposite
and you have to make full use of the tactical options
the timeline mechanic gives you just to survive?
Yeah, in Timelake, you can easily become an Overwhelming Force,
almost removing the need to use the time travel mechanic.
I hope they remove the Ruby requirement for Time Jumps,
or at least be more generous with them.
And instead of powerful upgrades,
I'd rather see battles that are more puzzle-like.
Again, like Portal.
All this talk about Overwhelming Force might make you think
I really don't like Roguelikes,
or the even worse offender, Auto-Battlers.
But despite this inherent problem with the genres, I still do enjoy playing them.
For Auto-Battlers, I enjoyed the 9 Kings and The King is Watching demo,
though not enough to buy them,
and I've apparently spent a lot more time than I expected
on the Heroes for Hire demo.
However, I can't deny that the lack of tactical decision making
makes the battles less satisfying.
It's not uncommon to have Overwhelming Force and steamroll the enemy,
or the other extreme where your troops are just too weak,
or worse, do something stupid
and you lose in the most unsatisfying way possible.
Some Auto-Battlers try to spice things up
by letting you try to optimize the positioning of the units,
as well as add some rock-paper-scissors system
where some units are much better than others.
But here's what rarely gets mentioned:
those have been around since the beginning of Auto-Battlers.
The Ancient Art of War, the ancestor to Strategy games, RTSs,
and yes, Auto-Battlers,
had them way back in 1984.
Positioning your units for optimal performance?
Check.
Rock-Paper-Scissors or a weapon triangle?
Check.
Simple, non-micro level commands like Attack and Retreat?
Lots of Auto-Battlers nowadays don't even have this feature.
We're at the point where it's normal for games in the genre
to have less core gameplay elements compared to its 40-year-old ancestor.
Then again, you could say Auto-Battlers didn't really stagnate or regress,
they just decided to go different directions,
like Auto-Chess and whatever we call Backpack Battles' genre is right now.
However, I'm gonna be blunt here:
I don't want all that flash and spectacle.
I still want a genre where I have an army or a party,
and I can send them off to attack the enemy without needing to micro them.
But as I said, if you remove the micro-level tactical decision-making,
automatically attacking units tend to be very stupid.
What we need is a way for our armies to stop doing stupid things in battle
while still retaining their autonomy.
Basically, programming your army.
Of course, bot programming is way out of many gamers' league.
But the next game might give devs an idea how to address Auto-Battlers' flaws,
and maybe even programming games' flaws too.
Auto Rogue is yet another game in this list with a familiar Roguelike game loop.
Though this time you're a round bunny thing(?)
You're also running away from Mama,
which sort of makes it more like FTL than Slay the Spire.
Anyway, let's start with the familiar parts.
You got your HP,
then your Energy, which is used by Skills.
As for the Skills, you start with your basic Strike and Defend.
The intent system here is slightly different,
with the game showing the full
turn-by-turn action pattern of the enemy.
For example, this slime will alternate between
Defending for 3 and Attacking for 5.
By Turn 3, they'll go back to Defending for 3.
Given this info, you have to program your Auto-Battle behavior to win the encounter.
And here's where the conditions come into play.
We want to block when the enemy is attacking,
so we add the "Enemy Attacking" Condition to our block.
This works.
We don't block on the 1st turn, only on the 2nd.
However, notice that we are still adding shields
even after fully blocking the attack.
So a more efficient condition would be "Defense Lower Than Attack".
This way, you still don't block the first turn.
And once we have enough shields on the second turn,
we can attack so we finish one turn earlier.
Depending on your level of programming experience,
all of what I just talked about may either confuse you, or feel familiar,
or both.
That's because this isn't your usual programming scheme.
It's not the Procedural Programming that many associate with coding,
nor is it even the "Event-Driven" that we see in
very high-level beginner programming environments.
It's a Rule-based system.
A lesser-known, but well-established paradigm that's used in lots of places,
from text processing,
to firewalls,
to proprietary business software.
Going back to our program,
it's important to not think of these as a series of steps
happening one after the other.
Instead, think of it as a "Rule List"
that the game repeatedly checks over and over,
running only the FIRST entry that you have the resources for
and whose conditions are satisfied, if present.
That entry might be at the top of the list or it could be at the bottom.
Regardless, only one entry will be executed per loop.
The easiest way to see this in action is if we move the Head-Butt to the 1st slot.
If this was normal programming,
you might think that at turn 2, after the first attack,
we'll go to the block.
But we don't.
Again, only the 1st entry that satisfies the conditions will be executed.
In this case, the Head-Butt.
Being a later entry, Puff is never used.
Luckily, we still end up with the same result.
But in higher difficulties,
that simple change of order can make a huge difference.
Despite what I just explained,
there are ways to get the familiar step-by-step processing
for those that somehow miss it.
The most obvious is to treat the whole program as an infinite loop,
and each entry having a "continue" tacked on.
Then finally, a "break" to terminate if no match is found.
Not a fan of this one,
even though it's probably what's happening behind the scenes.
Thankfully, there are ways to get that step-by-step thing
without totally breaking the paradigm.
First is nesting.
Dragging Skills to another will push it one level down.
As long as a parent is triggered,
all entries under it will be executed in series,
ignoring the priority system at the top level.
Alternatively, there are keywords that limit
how many times a Skill is triggered per turn.
There's "Limit", which can only be triggered once a battle,
and Rest, which can only be used once a turn.
When you add Skills of these types at the top of the list,
it can feel like they're being processed one after the other,
even though it's only happening because they're disabled in future iterations.
Normally this is the part where I give another example,
but I understand that many of you would be better off
just skipping to the next game.
Maybe you're just not into programming,
or maybe
you're too into programming,
and me explaining further would just take the fun out of
exploring the free demo for yourself.
Either way, here's my overall thoughts on Auto Rogue
so you can skip to the next game.
Yes, I think this is going the right direction
to address the problems with both Auto-Battler's stupid units
and Programming Games' rigid adherence to conventional paradigms.
But I'm not confident that this is the answer we're looking for.
It's still a bit too "program"-y, if that's a term,
and I'm not sure how you'd scale it to over dozens of units.
On the plus side, it does a good job of cutting down on the
unwinable situations in the Overwhelming Force problem.
Out of all the Roguelikes I've played, I don't recall any other game where
I had more success in saving a seemingly lost run
just by messing around with the programming conditions.
All in all, I enjoyed the programming-based combat,
and I hope other Auto-Battler and Programming Games
follow the dev's lead.
Go check out the demo if you're interested.
By the way, I'm also going to spoil the first boss in the demo,
so this is your last chance to back out.
Alright, back to explaining the combat to those that might need it.
Like I said, here I am facing the first boss.
My build revolves around Ice Lance, which deals damage equal to my shields.
The only downside is that it's "Rest", so I can only use it once a turn.
Before I pop it, I've got to pump up my shields.
And for this, I use Puff with a condition to use it when I have at least 4 Energy.
This condition will make sure I still have 2 Energy for Ice Lance,
and it will work even if I have 5 Energy left,
leaving the Ice Lance 3 Energy.
As for the rest of the build,
I've got strong Relics that give me Shield and Sturdy,
and at the start of the battle,
I activate 2 Limit skills that give me even more
one-time permanent buffs related to Shields.
Let's see how this goes.
As mentioned, at the first turn, I activate my Limit Skills.
This leaves me with no energy for Puff,
but I still have enough for Ice Lance.
For the rest of the turns, I get to use Puff twice,
then attack with Ice Lance to end them.
I also pretty much ignore the enemy's attacks
as I have way too much shields.
And this works,
winning in 6 Turns.
But if we rewind to Turn 4,
we get to see this Egg's gimmick.
Once they go below 50% HP, they get a huge Strength buff in later turns.
Thankfully, they also get a huge debuff when the Egg cracks.
Not only are they stunned, but they also take double damage for that turn.
So to take advantage of that, we could add, say,
a Head-Butt before we use the Ice Lance.
Well, let's do it with style.
We're gonna use a Poison Potion
and set it to activate on Turn 4.
Potions are, well, potions:
single-use items that are removed from your inventory once consumed.
And with that, we win on turn 4.
The battle plays like before until the said turn,
wherein we chuck the Poison,
then blast them with the Ice Lance for massive damage.
And that's Auto Rogue's programming combat.
It can't get a while to get used to, but you can always replay your fights,
walking through them step by step to help you understand
why a Skill was activated at a certain turn or iteration.
There's still other stuff, like the nesting I mentioned earlier,
and if you get the full version, other resources to manage,
like MP and Research.
But they're out of the scope of this review, so let's move on...
Our next game is LONESTAR.
Again, I'm not gonna bury the lede here,
If you're a Slay the Spire enjoyer that prefers Ruina combat,
but don't wanna go too crazy with new mechanics like in Rune Coliseum,
LONESTAR might be for you.
Alright, you know the drill.
It's Slay the Spire, but with space bounty hunters hunting bounty.
In this universe, beam weapons follow Dragon Ball rules
and can clash with each other.
Stronger beam wins and deals damage.
LONESTAR also has a unique take on card mechanics,
but before that, let's talk about ship components
or Units as they're referred to in the game.
They're what you get to pick from after winning battles
and come in two classes: Attack and Support.
You can fit these Units into your ship
as long as you don't go over the weight limit.
Rearranging them between battles is also free.
Most Units have slots for Energy,
and here we get to our card system.
The cards you draw are Energy Resources, each having a Point value and a Color.
What's different about LONESTAR is that, in your deck,
Points and Colors are separate.
For example, your default deck for the Shielder ship
has a Point deck with point values from 1 to 5,
and a Color deck with 3 White, 2 Blue, and 1 Orange.
Every time you draw, a Point and Color are drawn at random
and combined into a single resource.
Note that the Energy in your hand and the resources used to generate them
are also separate entities.
This way, when either the Point or Color deck runs out,
the respective resources will be reshuffled back to the main pool.
Also, the ones in your hand don't go into any discard pile
once used or otherwise consumed.
Because of these differences, the game refers to drawing a card
with a more appropriate term:
"Generating Energy".
We generate three Energy a turn, four in the first turn.
We retain our hand between turns, but can only hold 10 Energy resources;
Any Energy generated when you have a full hand
will be destroyed,
like in this example where only one went to our hand.
All in all, it's a big departure from the usual Slay the Spire draw mechanics,
apart from the auto-reshuffling.
Instead, it's more like how Limbus Company does its Skill generation,
just with two decks.
Now that we've covered Units and Energy,
we can now explain how the combat works overall.
LONESTAR has its own set of turn phases.
But for this video, let's simplify it to a standard WEGO setup.
Turns begin with a Startup Phase where the enemy makes their moves,
and you generating Energy.
Then comes the Loading Phase.
The 3-column grid in the middle
gives you a quick summary of the state of the battle.
The right column shows the enemy's strength at that lane
and the center column shows you the outcome of the turn.
In this case, you take all of the damage.
You can then load Energy to your Units,
for example, this Basic Core has one slot,
and as an Attack Unit,
any Energy you assign to it will become its strength value this turn.
Also, we now see our lane's strength on the left column.
Some Units can have special abilities,
like this Pair Core where it will gain 2 strength
after you assign two of the same Point value to it.
As a side note, the game uses "Strength" to describe the attack value,
as "Power" is a different keyword
that boosts the attack after loading Energy.
Coming from Slay the Spire, this can be confusing
as the latter is similar to how "Strength" works in that game.
Anyway, the results of the clash are calculated
by simply subtracting one side from the other,
with the stronger ones dealing the difference as damage.
So yeah, not all-or-nothing like Ruina, and more like how Rune Coliseum does it.
Once you're done with your turn, the game proceeds to the Showdown phase,
and the clash resolves.
Unlike other ship-based games,
damage is dealt to the ship as a whole,
so you don't need to worry about
individual Units being disabled by damage.
Enemy ships are slightly different, though,
as they can be staggered.
The Durability denoted by the value inside the shield
tells you how many times lanes have to be damaged in order to Paralyze the enemy.
They won't get to act for a turn,
but you don't deal extra damage to them,
so you may have to consider just saving your Energy for the next turn
if you can't finish them off.
By the way, beams fired at lanes without Units
will deal no damage.
Just like Rune Coliseum when gladiators aren't within range of each other.
And like Rune Coliseum, LONESTAR provides a way to dodge strong attacks
or chase down sneaky enemies.
You can move your ship one row up or down at the cost of one Fuel.
It's a limited resource, so unless your build focuses on mobility,
you'll only be using this mostly for emergencies.
Now let's talk about the Colors.
Some Units have pretty strong powers.
For example, the default Support Unit,
Gentle Tap Device,
creates a stronger copy of the Energy you load on it,
essentially letting you upgrade 2 Energy in your hand for free.
However, it has Orange and Blue slots, limiting your options.
Think White, Blue, and Orange as Levels 1, 2, and 3.
Orange slots, being Level 3, can only be loaded with Orange Energy.
Blue slots, on the other hand, can be loaded not only with Blue Energy,
but also Orange Energy as the latter is of higher tier.
And lastly, White slots can accept any color,
however, White Energy can only be used on White slots.
Because of this core mechanic,
a good portion of your runs will revolve around Color management.
Will you pick Units and upgrades such that
you don't need Orange resources as much?
Or will you go all-in with the Orange
and find stuff that can generate more of that rare resource
so you can take advantage of the stronger components?
And that's LONESTAR in a nutshell.
Again, I've skipped a LOT of stuff that you kinda expect in a game like this.
Overall, I'd still check out Rune Coliseum first
if you're hungry for experimental, Ruina-ish combat.
But if you're in the market for a more "pick-up-and-play" experience,
basically just want Clashing mechanics in your Slay the Spire clone,
LONESTAR may be a better choice.
It's also a full release while being a bit cheaper than the former.
Last game for this video: Sister of a Dragon.
So far we've seen 5 different games with clashing mechanics,
and somehow none of them use a type or elemental system
that can affect the clash.
Sure, you might consider Defense as hard counters to Evade in Ruina,
or evade being a hard counter to everything in Rune Coliseum and LONESTAR,
but an actual type table with different multipliers affecting the clash,
we haven't seen it yet.
That's where Sister of a Dragon steps in.
In this game, combat takes place in a multi-lane grid like in LONESTAR,
though here it plays a lot more like a proper lane-defense game.
Before everything else,
note that the UI looks a lot more complicated than it really is,
and I kinda expect the devs to update it later to be more functional
rather than force the hex grid aesthetic.
So to make things a bit less confusing,
here's an oversimplified summary of Sister of a Dragon's combat mechanics:
You and your opponent place tokens on different lanes on the board.
Tokens placed this round are on defense.
Tokens on defense that survive this round
will advance and attack next round.
Your goal is to punch through the enemy's defenses, eventually eliminating them,
all the while making sure that your team survives.
Simple right? So let's dive into the details.
Rounds are split into different phases,
with Enemy and Player Turn being two of those,
hence why I'm using "Rounds" as a term instead of Turns.
Anyway, Rounds start with the enemy taking their turn first,
placing a number of tokens on the Enemy Zone at their edge of the board.
Their turn ends, and in the Activation Phase,
the tokens advance one tile to the center.
Like I said earlier, in this round, these tokens are on defense.
Normally this is the part where we go to the Player Turn,
but you don't get to act at the 1st round as the enemy has initiative.
Perhaps this is just for the demo,
or probably a player handicap to prevent things from being too easy.
Either way, the enemy having the initiative
means all of their initial tokens survive,
and will attack next round.
Next round, same thing, the enemy places tokens into their zone,
their turn ends, and all their tokens advance to the center.
Again, tokens placed this round are on defense.
But now, the tokens played last round
arrive at the Activation Zones and now shimmer,
indicating that they will attack this turn.
Now it's your turn.
Since the enemy is already attacking,
generally you'd want to be on defense this round.
So you figure out which tokens to play to defend against the incoming attack.
Here's where the Schools, the game's term for types or elements, come into play.
You can see the School interactions by right-clicking any token,
and in this case, we want to know our options against this Red token,
which represents normal Damage.
We check its interactions with our options,
which is another normal Damage,
and Yellow which is Protection.
Damage on Damage is at -50%,
that is, clashing will deduct 50% of the opponent's power to each token,
while Damage on Protection is much worse for the Damage side,
with it losing 120% of the Yellow's power.
the latter only losing 50% of the Red's.
Alternatively, you can also right-click your tokens
to see the possible interactions.
In the end, it seems like Protection is the best move here.
So we play our Protection spells, each costing 1 AP,
ahead of the attacking Red tokens.
While we're here, let's also play our own Red token so it will attack next round.
Turn ends and our tokens advance 1 column.
We then go to the Resolution phase where all activated tokens attack.
The Red Damage tokens clash against our defending Yellow Protection tokens.
120% of 5 is 6 and 50% of 4 is 2.
So the Red tokens are destroyed while the Yellow tokens survive with 3 power left.
Next round arrives and the enemy takes their turn.
Let's slow things down here
and take a closer look at the tokens advancing and activating.
The enemy token went from 1 power to 4 power.
That's the effect of the Activation Zone.
You can hover over a non-activated token
to see what it will activate into once it readies for attack.
And in this case, it goes from 1 power to 4 power.
This also applies to our tokens.
In this example, all of our tokens will go up to 5.
Or go back to 5 in the case of our damaged Protection tokens.
Anyway, the battle continues and our Yellow token punches through the defenses.
But deals no damage.
That's another thing to keep in mind:
some Schools don't deal damage to certain units.
The Yellow Protection represents protection in general.
This can be shield magic, or parries, or even actual shields.
As a defensive School, almost all units are immune to Protection.
Similarly, the Purple Astral School is sort of the dispel magic of this system.
So while it can be pretty strong against a lot of types,
it doesn't deal damage to most units too.
Both might not deal damage,
but the trick is to play them ahead of actual damaging tokens,
just like I'm doing here.
Moving on to the next lane, we see a full clashing setup in action.
Two Red tokens clashing against each other and surviving.
When tokens survive a clash, they just push through to the next column,
which, as we said earlier, are on defense.
The enemy token crashes against our defense
and loses enough power to dissipate.
On the other hand, our token is powerful enough to burst through,
dealing 2 damage to the enemy.
And finally, in the bottom lane, as expected, Yellow breaks through,
dealing no damage but paving the way for the next token.
And that's the basics of combat.
As for other parts of the game, there really isn't any.
This version of the demo only focuses on the combat, with other parts on the way.
On the bright side, this can be a good thing if you're starting to get sick
of the Roguelike game loop we've seen all over this video.
The current demo might only focus on combat,
but with 38 different scenarios exploring different mechanics,
it's a step up from the other proof of concept demos we've covered.
Sometimes you're equipped with limited use weapons that you can use
instead of relying on the luck of the draw.
And sometimes you have companions who have their own kit
and can also tank some damage.
Other scenarios make use of the center of the board.
You might have noticed that, once activated,
tokens just zoom towards the other side instead of stepping tile by tile.
And from that, you might think that the center is just for show.
In most scenarios, it really is just for show.
But for others, it's where environmental hazards pop up.
Say you're in a swamp,
Toxic Fog tokens will appear and do interesting things to tokens.
It's up to you whether you try to take advantage of them,
but also open up opportunities for the enemy to do the same.
Or just destroy them and not worry about the risks.
The trickiest scenarios are the ones
involving tokens that change Schools upon activation,
as what might normally be a good response
may turn out to be a terrible one if you're not paying attention.
Add in a couple of hazards, and I bet many
will just give up calculating the best move
and just go for trial and error.
Overall, it's a decent enough proof of concept.
We'll just have to see how it integrates with the main game,
with the crafting, deck building, and other possible RPG elements like leveling.
As for the type-based clashing,
it seems to work well enough that I hope others copy or build upon it.
Only for ranged combat though, like this game's magic-centric system,
I'm still a bit iffy about it working in melee combat,
but I'd like to see some devs try to make it work.
And here's a rundown of the games featured in this video.
In case you're on mobile and find the one-line summaries hard to read,
I also put them in the pinned comment.
By now it should be clear why I went with "10+" in the title rather than 12,
couple are very early in development,
some barely make the criteria,
and I don't even have my own footage for one.
On the other hand, I did touch upon a bunch of other games
so I think the "10+" is still valid.
Anyway, my top picks are Rune Coliseum
for the sheer amount of stuff they're cramming into the game,
though we'll have to see if the upcoming update
will retain that level of complexity,
And Tarnished Blood for figuring out a better way to do timeline combat.
Other notable titles are Sister of a Dragon and Auto Rogue
for making me spend a bit more effort trying to explain their mechanics,
And Card-en-Ciel, LONESTAR, and Auto Rogue again
for being full releases.
As for games that didn't make the list,
some fell short of the criteria.
For example, The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily
is technically WEGO,
but that's pretty much it.
It's got other stuff like Countering and the Airship,
but I don't find them to be that groundbreaking.
Then there's games that are just too early in development to give a fair review,
like Mana Smack.
Which says a lot considering I featured Timelake and Sentinel Point Heroes.
There's also games without demos, or if they had,
I missed their demo period.
For example, FuRyu has a history of odd takes on turn-based combat
with The Caligula Effect,
but I can't justify buying Varlet just to see what they did this time around.
And finally, there's games that arrived too late to include in this video,
like Million Depth with its practically turn-based
[SUPERHOT] mechanic where everything only moves when you move.
Those late games will have to wait until the next video.
That is, if I find enough Ruina-lternatives out there to fill one.
If you know of any that I missed,
post them down in the comments so I can check them out.
Again, here's what I'm looking for in a combat system.
And I'll also add the stuff I didn't talk about in this video.
But really, I'll check out any turn-based game if it's weird or unusual enough.
Clair Obscur?
Not weird enough.
I need games that are at least 1 or 2 levels weirder than that.
Anyway, thanks for watching,
especially to those who watched all the way through.
And see you in the next video where I hopefully don't take
another half a year to edit it...