Combolands: Roguelike Citybuilder

7/10

Good!

numbers get bigger and make good noise

This is such an AMAZING game. The design is brillant, from start to finish you discover new things. Tons of unlockables, great difficulty, but not too difficult. You know those games that tire you out and are only exciting in the beginning? This game is the opposite: You feel like the more you play the better it becomes. And the best part is, that it''s perfectly balanced and adjusted unlike a lot of recent games, where oyu feel like they omitted the playtesting phase. If you are still reading this, go buy and play it, it is now one of my gems that i always love to get back to <3 Thanks to the devs for the fun time!

TO PREFACE: Including the demo, I have only around 20 hours in this game, at this point. There's still content to do, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got another 30 hours of this game at this point easily. In fact, if I tried to 100% the game at this stage, it would probably be more than 100 hours of playtime, depending at least bit on RNG, and whether I would choose to not be stubborn in playing some guild/faction combos over others, even on maps where they might struggle. It was in fact my latest run, at the 2nd highest difficulty currently, which started from the aforementioned stubborness, where I tried running Commercial and Maritime guilds together after few failed attempts, and ended in my first endless run win, and relatively late stage 2nd cycle attempt. I did this by accident, and am not sure whether or not it was supposed to happen, but it did prompt me to write this review, despite my low-ish playtime. REVIEW (MAYBE) SHORTER THAN THE PREFACE: Combolands is addictive as hell, in my opinion as someone who plays tons of roguelikes, easily one of the best ones I've ever played. If you're not into games that are simply chill, and lack violence and high speed action (exluding end game high volume and speed of points flying in towards your super stacked buildings), then this game might not be for you. Otherwise, I wholeheartedly DO RECOMMEND IT. And yes, I could've (and did attempt to) written a longer, and perhaps more proper review, but honestly, playing a round or two of this game will tell you much more than what I could even remotely and sensibly pass on to you through text. tldr; You choose two factions/guilds as the foundation of your budding city every game, and go on from there. You unlock rest of the guilds and features as you go, godspeed.

This feels like a simple game at first, but it becomes surprisingly deep over time, with synergies to build. I can see a lot more playtime in the future.