For fans of turn based strategy...

I've recently been playing two cracking new examples of turn based games that I wanted to share with everyone:



1) Invisible, Inc. Klei's signature style shines through in a game that blends the best of XCom and Deus Ex. It's so good it instantly begs the question why has turn based stealth never really been a thing before?

It's a roguelike with a lot of "make the best of it" dynamic strategy that requires you to carefully build your team and equipment up to give you a chance at the final missions. Mixture of hacking, stealing and stealthing with occasional violence and last second escapes. Every mission is a heist of some kind and can go badly wrong...but it always leaves a life line of recovery, even in the worst situations...



2) Darkest Dungeon. Wow, I hadn't heard much about this but decided to give it a go. The main premise is simple - you take a party of 4 heroes into randomised dungeons of increasing difficulty, fight bosses and gradually build up your base of operations, level your heroes and acquire new items.

So far, so generic, right?

Well, no. First of all, it has a gorgeous art style and voice over work that gives the game a really dark feeling - very Lovecraftian. The tone is perfect for a mixture of darkness and horror without ever taking itself too seriously.

Secondly...things can and do go badly wrong. Your favourite heroes will die horribly. Promising new recruits will go crazy with the horrors they see, every expedition is a risk and there's no cheesing back to save games to rescue them. Preparing for a Boss battle may involving sending a team of relatively expendable heroes to their deaths just so you can scout out their attacks and decide what kind of team composition you'll need to fight them.

Abandoning quests, chickening out and locking your heroes in the sanitarium to deal with their weaknesses are sometimes necessary. More than one disease ridden former stalwart of the team has to be quietly sent off to live out the rest of their life in misery, as I don't have the funds to cure them.

While exploring has it's own dangers and you have to learn how to best deal with the traps and weird artifacts you encounter, the meat of the game is the combat. It's a typical mix of healing, special attacks and mixing your party composition to get what you need (this bit especially is very DOTA) for the job in hand. There's tons of different enemy types and skills you can learn to balance and perfect your approach.

Invisible is a really good game. Klei is doing a really good job with these rogue likes, and well... Don't Starve in general.



But am I the only excited that HOMM VII is shaping up good? And is not a cash grab just like VI?

I got invis on my wish list. for now I'm waiting (and hyping) for the new XCOM 2 and some other games.

I also hope the new HOMM will be good. and of course some other games

I havent really got into any of the HOMMS since 3, it was so good, everything since has been a let down. I did play King's Bounty for a while but they kinda killed it with endless remakes of the same thing.

I'm really impressed with Klei, enjoyed all of their games thoroughly. I can't recommend Darkest Dungeon enough btw, it's ridiculously addictive.