MechCorp

Yes, it's basically a clone of Battletech. Don't expect a lot of originality here. But it's quite well-executed, and honestly if anything the story is more compelling than Battletech's. Well worth the price.

I just rage quit after 2 hours of game play. I was starting to get the hang of the game, kind of enjoying it, and all of a sudden I investigate an event (distress signal) and lose a crew member in an explosion. I didn't even know I could lose a crew member during an event. You only have 4 crew to start with and each plays an important role (navigation, combat, logistics, engineering) and I had invested much of my cash training them. I hadn't manually saved in the last 30 minutes and I didn't feel like replaying just to get back to that point, so I deleted my two saves and almost uninstalled. I am pissed off that I have to restart so I have a full crew compliment again. I realize this is a one-man dev team labor-of-love and I support that. I ran into no bugs/crashes in 2 hours, it has fun RPG elements (training your crew, adding mechs, upgrading their attachments, etc. A lot of people will enjoy this game "as is", so I am giving it a positive review. However, my gaming time is limited so I am not personally a fan of rogue-like games with easy perma-death (especially when I was just starting, playing on Easy mode to learn the mechanics of the game), so take this review with a grain of salt. IMO, the game should have auto-saves before all events/battles on Easy mode (there are only two modes, Easy and Normal). Now I know I have to scum save constantly before every event and battle. IMO, the game would be more interesting if each mech had its own one-man crew with combat related stats and not just "the ship" having 4 crew that give you general stats across the board. IMO it needs more, and more frequent, contracts, not just one every once in a while. And the event where it asks you to choose sides between the Federation and Alliance should come much later in the game, not right when you are starting (probably reducing the number of contracts by a third?). Also, I think the tactical maps/fights would be more fun if they had a few more defensive features blocking line of sight/fire, providing cover, etc.

fast tactics, clean minimal aesthetic & great music, but you run out of supplies and the game ends, constantly. there's no easy way to get supplies, it's ridiculous- you'll be running out, hoping the next contract or side job will offer some, but no, you die. it ruins what could've been a great little game.

This is a neat small game that is ruined by numerous bugs. [h1] The good[/h1] [list] [*] Mech assembly. You have your hull, weapons and additional modules. Sure, it is not deep, but for a small game - more than enough. [*] Tactical combat. With all the modules you have a pretty fun combat loop: you have a good number of skills from weapons and hulls so the combat doesn’t get stale till you finish the game. [*] Clean minimalistic artstyle is a good fit for a mech game. [/list] [h1] The bad[/h1] [list] [*] Bugs. Way too many of them. Some bonuses subtract a stat instead of adding it. HP bars for mechs are shown 3 hexes away from the mech. A few crashes. It is just way too much to not pay attention. [*] While you have your abilities tied to mech hulls or weapons - your enemies don’t. To me it feels cheap. [*] Balancing in combat isn’t always there - sometimes you are fighting against 3 one-hit drones, and sometimes you are fighting a legion of heavy mechs. [/list] If you are tolerant of bugs - grab it on sale. While I enjoyed my experience with the game - it has significant problems with said bugs to make a positive review.

the mech tactical game isn't bad but the rest... is a deep void.

Despite the typos, it's a tidy little turn-based mech game. Battles are short and sweet, you must balance three types of resources as well as research, production and crew training, and there are enough colour schemes to allow you to deploy the most garish mech squad you can think of. Short and predictable story, but still worth a spin.

Fun roguelike mech strategy game. Like battletech-lite meets FTL.