Castle Vox

Gaming Genres:  Turned-Based Strategy
Story Genres: War, Historical
Graphical Styles: 2D, Cartoon,  Low Resolution
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Pricing Model: Pay $
Developer(s): Sillysoft
Publisher(s): Sillysoft
Initial Release Date: October 18, 2010
Website(s): Homepage
Description:
Castle Vox is a next generation computer strategy board game. Play on historical, geometric, geographic, and fantasy settings. New maps get added all the time, and can be one-click installed using the built-in Map Manager. No waiting while other players make their moves. Everyone plans their moves at the same time. When planning is finished, all battles are resolved simultaneously. Finish an epic game in half an hour. Collaborate with teammates to conquer your enemies. Jointly occupy continents to earn their bonuses. Secret team chat in multi-player modes. Single-player computer AIs will give your brain a good workout. Fast real-time multi-player games. Or play slower once-a-day turns games.

Opinion:
Castle Vox is Risk with more strategy and more realistic gameplay. You get two unit types, offensive and defensive; Castles, which allow you to produce units on their province; And simultaneous movement, which both speeds up gameplay and adds a whole new layer to the strategy (predicting where the enemy will be and where he will attack, while planing your next moves). With both coop and competitive multiplayer, good AI for every difficulty level, and many maps, there is a lot of content here.

It is a great simple strategy game. Anyone can pick it up and start playing, but it sure takes a long time to master.

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Indieness: Indie
Play?: Should Play

Fallen City

Gaming Genres: Puzzle, RTS
Story Genres: Non-Fiction
Graphical Styles: 3D, Cartoon, Low Resolution
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X
Pricing Model: Free
Developer(s): Big Robot
Publisher(s): Channel 4
Initial Release Date: April 23, 2012
Website(s): Homepage pub., Homepage dev.
Description:
Cities are machines for making life liveable.

But when machines break down, they don't do what they are supposed to, and they can even be dangerous. So what happens when a city breaks down? Well, instead of making life better, it makes it worse. Don't just take our word for it - there's science behind it. Cities that aren't working properly make their inhabitants unhappy, and that's what Fallen City is all about.

The residents of these streets are definitely not happy, and the only way they'll ever get back to their normal cheery selves is by getting that machine running again.

So take to the streets with brooms and cups of tea to calm down the angry, find fancy hats in the rubble. We'll the get Fallen City back on its feet!

Key Features:

• Puzzle your way through six ruined districts of the city, fixing up vital buildings to progress.
• Work with the denizens of Fallen City to entertain the bored, repair ruined buildings, calm down raging angries.
• Discover the vital uses of strange buildings across Fallen City.
• Uncover collectible skills and items!
• Cities and Citizenship?

This is a game about what cities are for, and what can happen when they go wrong. It's got some fun ideas and important theories backing it up, but mostly it's about what happens when people work together to see what cities could be, and why they make life better when they're working as intended.

Opinion:
An interesting game with a great concept, but a rough implementation. Quite an anti capitalistic, and somewhat pro socialist, story; That has you working together with your other fellow citizens to clean up and repair your city, and inspire and reform other citizens.

The strategy and puzzles come in mostly in what order you do this in. You have to create skills in a specific order so that you can unlock the different areas of the map and get the right new citizens to join your cause and the right new special buildings at the correct time to get 100% completion  (which means that you have repaired every house, swept every street, and put every blade of grass in its right place). These challenges are not really very interesting, and far to shallow.

The main problem with the game is really the controls. You use a RTS style interface, but can only control one character at a time (which does not work at all). You have tons of little tasks you need done and tons of little guys, but no way to get more then one working constantly, and maybe another half of the time.

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Indieness: Quintessentially Indie
Play:

DoomRL

Gaming Genres: Roguelike, Turned-Based Strategy
Story Genres: Horror, Science Fiction
Graphical Styles: 2D, ASCII Art, Realism, Pixel Art
Series/World: Doom
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Pricing Model: Free
Developer(s): Kornel Kisielewicz, Mossmouth
Publisher(s): Kornel Kisielewicz, Mossmouth
Initial Release Date: Unreleased (But Completely Playable)
Website(s): Homepage, Official Wiki, Official Forum, Wikipedia
Description:
DoomRL (Doom: the Roguelike) is a fast and furious coffee-break Roguelike game, that is heavily inspired by the popular FPS game Doom by ID Software.

Opinion:
Even unfinished, DoomRL is a lot of fun. It has tremendous depth but is also a game you can learn by playing and just jump in and go (though you will likely want to look up some specifics eventually).

Uniquely, it is both completely roguelike; In that it has randomly generated levels, a complete and in-depth character development system, turn-based combat, and permanent death, as well as originally using ASCII art graphics and having a huge level of detail; while retaining a feeling of an action heavy action-adventure.

It is Doom with an expanded and balanced arsenal, a character development system to complement this arsenal, and with the use of strategy instead of run and gun reflexes. Basically it has everything that the original game had: pistol, shotgun, chaingun, BFG, chainsaw, imp, zombie, explorable barrels, etc; In their original form and with many variations. Unlike the original game you cannot carry everything, so they have made everything balanced so pistols are just as likely to be carried to endgame as are plasma rifles.

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• Graphical Release Trailer

Indieness: Quintessentially Indie
Play?: Must Play