Someone in the Against the Storm thread said that game would work better if it were turn-based. That’s patent nonsense, but regardless, their imagined game basically exists and it’s called dotAGE.
(Is it called that because it’s presented in pixel art? Or because your character is an old man? Presumably both!)
To me, this really feels like a worker placement board game that gradually colonizes more and more and more of your massive virtual table, asking you to spread your village across the map, constructing buildings where your villagers can forage, farm, breed, and who knows what else.
Your goal, best I could tell, is to manage your way through periodic apocalyptic curses, which put the squeeze on your infrastructure in a variety of ways. It’s a roguelike, so presumably you ultimately circle the drain of deadly decline… or plunge down a sudden cataract of catastrophe!
I made a point to play this before the Quarterlies, because it seemed like a potential contender for my 2023 list. I think I played the starting ten or so turns about six times, each time disengaging and deciding to come back later, when I would start over, feeling I would have a better grasp on what to do and what matters. In my last attempt, I reached the onset of a wave of curses, and the mechanics for navigating them left me so nonplussed I put the game down for good.
But I gather once you find a groove with this game it can be really rewarding! I bet some other folks here can give a better account of its positive qualities than I can. But it seems like a game worth talking about. It’s the work (over nine years) of a single Italian developer, so the Indie is spread thickly on this one!
Someone get in here like the (titular?) village elder, chew me out for my lack of character, and regale us with stories of your glorious past with this game.
