Tales and Tactics just released in EA.
Singleplayer Auto Chess in roguelike runs.
From the mod team that made the Downfall fan expansion for Slay the Spire.
Despite some let’s call it “low budget charm” this is pretty good and does what it says on the tin well.
Even if you are accustomed to the auto battler mechanics it is quite challenging, especially in boss fights.
Lots of units, tribes and synergies to combine and try out.
I never played an Autobattler. What is considered to the best one?
Cats. 'Nuff said. Maybe. Will know in a year…
Most auto battlers are multiplayer only and free to play. Overview of currently popular ones I know:
Team Fight Tactics From Riot and played in the LoL client. The prettiest and most popular but in many regards (especially readability) also one of the weakest ones IMO.
Hearthstone Battlegrounds In the Hearthstone client. This is more of the second type of auto battler that developed. Instead of all units fighting in real time this and similar games have a set of units/cards act one after each other. Among other things this makes it -exceedingly much- easier to see and follow what is happening and what effect abilities have.
Auto Chess The original that spawned the entire genre. Initially a Dota mod this now has its own client and phone game version. This and TFT above are closest to the original mod.
Mechabellum currently in EA for $15, will be free to play once it’s released. Notably different from the base mod formula. Real time but slow paced fights with good readability. You recruit combat units with notable strengths and weaknesses instead of the tribes systems of many other auto battlers.
Super Auto Pets More casual in gameplay and theme. Asynchronous multiplayer. Instead of joining a lobby and playing against a set group of people you play alone against copies of random other players roughly at your powerlevel/round timing. It’s challenging and “personally competitive” but without multiplayer pressure.
Has a weekly rotation mode that brings lots of diversity .
Dota Underlords Abandoned by Valve this in many ways was the most advanced in readability and feedback.
Noteworthy singleplayer indie games I like that are auto battler inspired in certain aspects:
I enjoyed Dota Underlords, well worth a spin. Super Auto Pets is also popular. Mechabellum looks interesting but is early access.
As noted above, Super Auto Pets is a great place to start if you haven’t played an autobattler before.
I should note that it can be happily played for free for many hours, and you’re not at a competitive disadvantage while doing so.
Thanks for the feedback! I will give them see. Maybe try one in between BG3 sessions.
Tales and Tactics looks really good. It looks like there are quite a few features to unlock as well as new characters to play. For instance, your initial run won’t have class-specific perks or race-specific perks in play. You can also unlock the ability to create your own character for a run, plus a bunch of other stuff that adds to the complexity.
This is the sort of game where it superficially looks just like a lot of other titles (which makes the price seem high, since most autobattlers are cheap/free), but I haven’t seen anything quite like it.
Prime of Flames is pretty cool. I’m playing through the free demo, and so far it’s surpassed expectation. Definitely worth a look.
I finally started Shardpunk: Verminfall and the first level did this to me:
Low cover? ‘Defense’? Flanking was even part of the tutorial!
This is a great way of losing me very early on (in what appears to be a really cool game!), and reminds me of why I got so fed up with XCOM and its wild percentage daftness. Ugh.
I’m a sucker for programming games, realistic spaceflight games, production games and idle games. Those are my guilty pleasures. So Desynced is another production game that I’ve added to my collection:
It’s obviously Factorio-ish, but has a different feel. Imagine if you started Factorio with logistics bots and had slightly better programming tools for them. I’ve only got about an hour with it, but I already like it. Early access, but the roadmap looks both promising and achievable.
As I just learned, Black Skylands has finally left early access.
The best description would probably be a top-down steampunk Zelda-like with airships, cuddly moths and plenty of combat. I played it during early access and found it pretty fun, I just regret that with the crapton of current releases I’ll like have that one sitting in the pile of shame for quite some time.
En Garde! is out today! Did we talk about it in this thread? Some gave dev students have turned a super-impressive student project into a full game.
I picked it up on Xbox yesterday, but as I mentioned in one of the threads around here, I had to jump through some hours to do so- their store is being weird.
I played the demo they had last month and really enjoyed it, picked up the full release on the strength of that. I haven’t actually started playing But looking at the Steam forums/reviews this morning, it seems like they overhauled the whole ship-building portion for 1.0, simplifying it greatly? I haven’t actually seen for myself, but that seems like a big last-minute change.
That reminded me of this delightful video:
Been wanting more ever since the demo!
Holocure came out on Steam today as a free game.
Really good and diverse Vampire Survivors clone, and looks like they added some additional content as well.
Also, not free, but interesting: Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood also came out yesterday.
Shadow Gambit is out, and there’s a demo. From the studio that made Shadow Tactics and Desperados III. QT3 thread is here.
Cultist Simulator semi-sequel Book of Hours is out. QT3 thread is here.
Just saw a Splattercat video on Microcivilization, which the developer describes as a mix of Cookie Clicker, Civilization, Rome Total War, and Diablo. He said it, not me!
Regardless, it’s not a simple mindless clicker and looks like it’s a lightweight and entertaining game. Plus, there’s a demo available if you wanna give it a go.
Here’s Splatty’s video on it:
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is out. Jet Set Radio clone by the developers of Lethal League.
So there’s a demo out on itch.io for a game that’s based on Twin Peaks. By which I mean, it actually is a Twin Peaks game, where you play as Special Agent Dale Cooper investigating the murder of Laura Palmer, using the likenesses and names of actors from the TV series. I’m not entirely sure how that works, for one thing they are planning to give the game away for free when it’s done so maybe that makes it legal? Anyway, you can try the demo while it’s available at least:
