Brutal Orchestra

"Overwhelmingly positive" with many reviews with 100+ hours... yet if you check the achievements only 50% who play the game finish the "tutorial" (I did, but it took me two runs). What that tells you is the game is actually pretty love it or hate it. It's incredibly puzzely and repetitive in ways I find unpleasant. Other people will find it to be the cat's meow. If you love games like Cobalt Core, but want more thinking and planning, this is probably right up your alley. For me it's a 4/10, but I'm glad I gave it a try.

Very charming game, would recommend. There are many reviews talking about how unfair/difficult/RNG the game is, and I very much disagree. Those reviews almost put me off from playing this game myself and if you are in the same boat as I was, I would definitely reconsider, as I'm now glad I did! If you are at all experienced with turn based rpgs you should not have too much trouble picking up the mechanics of the game quite quickly, in my opinion the game has the potential to be tricky if you're impatient and dislike reading enemies abilities and passives in each combat, but is very manageable, and complaints about RNG are not very well-founded in my experience so far. I beat my first run, got the "bad end" due to a choice you get to make at the end, beat my second run and unlocked the harder difficulty, which I then beat on my second hardmode run after seeing the final boss and being able to be more prepared for it the second time around. The common complaint I see about the pigment mechanic is that if there are no enemies in a given combat that drop a pigment colour that you need, you're kinda screwed, or that you are pidgeonholed into a specific ability that you do have the pigment for every turn and your choice is taken away from you. I can only assume this is the RNG that people refer to in so many reviews (there is RNG in the items and companions you find, but its a roguelike, your upgrades being random is kinda the point of the genre). What the reviews compaining about the pigment system fail to mention is that you are not in fact screwed, and you can in fact still choose exactly which ability you want to use, because using an ability you don't have the pigment for simply costs a percentage of your health, which increases for each colour you miss. This damage is far from negligible, but with proper planning and good use of healing its never something that doesn't feel like it can be worked around, and it feels disingenuous to me to see so many reviews complaining about how RNG-ridden the game is and how unfair it is that you lose access to your options if no enemies with pigment you need spawn, when this is patently untrue, and I can only assume these reviews come from players that are unfamiliar with the genre, and for one reason or another feel uncomfortable paying health to activate abilities they need? It would feel worse if there wasn't an abundance of dedicated healing characters in the game to sustain through the costs... but there is plenty of healing? TL;DR If you're put off by all the reviews complaining about the "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RNG combat system", don't let them put you off. I almost did, and i'm very glad I didn't. If you're familiar with the genre you should have no issue navigating the combat system, which in my opinion feels very fun and well thought out.

Roguelike tactical strategy game where you position your units and use abilities that require different colors of pigment. Damaging the enemy gives pigment the color of their health bar, so you have to decide what to attack using which unit in what order. Get items and unit upgrades along the way. You can get pretty screwed if the enemies don't supply the pigment color you need based on your units' abilities, but overall it's a fun time. Works well on the Deck using the trackpad as a mouse, but I wish it had Steam Cloud saves so I could continue the same progress on my Deck and desktop.

[h1]An Artist's Dilemma [/h1] Let me just start off by saying, [b]if you at all enjoy weird and at times gruesome art, this game is 100% worth it for the experience of seeing everything it has to offer alone. [/b] [b]The story[/b] is also a highlight of the game! It's just a shame that after the first successful run on each difficulty, the story just kind of... fades away? I understand why, it wouldn't make sense to make the emotional endings repeat every time, but still. [b]The gameplay[/b] is very unique, especially when considering it's a roguelike, which can become repetitive after you've played enough of them. And while unique, it's also the biggest point of critique I have for this game. The color system is incredible when you have just the right set up, but it takes 1 unfortunate or unlucky encounter, where you don't have a way to deal with a particular color, don't have a way to get rid of color fast enough, or don't have enough space to move around and your whole squad can go down in a heartbeat. The squad you build up is also an essential part of the gameplay, which would be fine, if there weren't mates designed from the ground up to be nearly useless. It can feel like dragging around dead weight... [h3]Despite my critiques, I still consider the game a shining pearl in the was ocean called indie games.[/h3]

I'm sick of people labeling games roguelikes that are not roguelikes. This isn't a roguelike, it also isn't a roguelite. It's something else. Words have meaning but try telling that to people in 2026 where no one gives a ♥♥♥♥ what meaning things have anymore. I'm also sick of games that mandate failure until you unlock enough of the drip-fed content to randomly be rewarded with a victory. There is no strategy to that, it's just lazy game design done by developers that lack the game sense to design real challenge that rewards skill or planning, but there is very little room for skill when you have to coast on the back of RNG. I don't play games to have the outcomes decided for me thanks, when I lose it's because I actually made a mistake, not because a program generated an unfavourable output string I had nothing to do with. If I didn't get this in a bundle I'd have refunded it.

game has fish, but no fishing mechanics. difficult to recommend

I do not wish to sound too mean with my negative review. This is clearly a very creative game but is also is... not very fun. Every character just has 2-3 moves and customisability does essentially not exist. You cannot choose which 2 out of their 3 moves they will get and everyone can equip 1 item at most (with many also feeling lackluster). The only thing making the combat system itself even remotely interesting is the pigment mechanic which is honestly not very fun. Especially with some bosses you just go ''Well, guess I got unlucky and just got someone with whose pigments I basically can't do anything.''. The idea of limiting what you can do in some way is not a bad one but it would have required every character having FAR more moves so they can do at least something with every kind of Pigment.

I don't think I've had a game consistently bring me back since I first played Rain World for the first time. This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ beautiful, and a lot of fun too. This game deserves all its flowers and more.