A Token War

The premise itself is fun. It's legitimately challenging and tough and requires a lot of thought to win matches. My problems is the lack of a persistent save. Sure, there are checkpoints, but they are few and far between(every 7 or 8 matches, each of which take 10+ minutes to win). If you lose three matches, then you go back to the checkpoint and lose all progress/units that you acquired. Shops to purchase units/extra lives are also pretty rare(every 5 matches or so). Add onto the fact that shops items are RNG means you could lose out on a unit that makes the upcoming matches almost impossible. To me, some battles are genuinely challenging and take a couple of matches to figure out. But you don't get a couple of matches because if you lose 3 times, you go back to the checkpoint and have to spend another 30-40 mins just getting back to that level to try again(but with totally different setups because of RNG). Also, your "base" that has to survive every round doesn't heal between matches. So one bad match means you pretty much automatically lose every upcoming battle and have to restart at a checkpoint and lose all your progress again. If they removed the lives/checkpoint feature so you could replay levels and try different strategies, this would be a huge win, but it rubs me the wrong way when a game doesn't really respect your time by forcing you to lose a ton of progress just because of one or two bad matches.

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6142328/][b]Like this Review? Follow The Cpt Froggy Club Curator Page for plenty more![/b][/url][/quote] You start A Token War by first deciding a name for your Kingdom. Next, you choose Normal game difficulty, this is the only difficulty available to you currently. However, upon completing the game on Normal Mode, you will unlock the mode True Strategist. Following on you can then select to play Campaign, there is a Versus mode but that requires you to unlock it by progressing in the campaign. A Token War is divided into five regions, the first region in the campaign also has the Training Grounds. The training grounds consists of four tutorials which will take you over the basics of the game. You don’t have to complete the tutorial if you don’t want to as the game will try and show you the ropes as you play but you might as well do the tutorial. Upon completing you can then start your campaign which is indicted on the map “Warpath Starts Here”. This is the first of six stages in the first region you must complete. There are some stages which are marked with a star on the map, these are to indicate that this is to be an Iconic Battle. Victory here will allow your commander to grow in status, this will allow you to retain any units and structures you control should you taste defeat in later battles. If you do taste the bitterness of defeat in later battles then you will return back to this point. In order to defeat the enemy, you must destroy their Stronghold before they destroy yours. At the beginning of each battle, your tokens (units) are stored on the left. From here you will drag them on to the battlefield, the battlefield will vary in shape, size and is divided into grid squares. However, you can only place your tokens in certain grids, these are indicated in blue. Where you place your tokens is up to you and putting them in various places may or may not give an advantage. Once you have decided you’re happy with your placements then hitting the Setup Complete button will commence battle. Each players turn consists of two actions, these actions allow you to move or attack with your tokens. Although, you’ll have to carefully think about which tokens you move or attack with, as you will have multiple tokens on the field at any one time. Each token has details on its Attack Power, damage it will do in combat, Health, once this reaches zero then the token is destroyed and Movement, the number of squares that it can move. There may be some text on the token as well, this will specify any rules or abilities that the token may have. Highlighting a token on the field will allow you to see where that token can move, this is indicated as blue on the battlefield. If a square is red in colour then that indicates where that token can attack. Defeating an enemy token will then have you move onto the square your enemy occupied. Flanking your enemy with two or more tokens will allow for a Flank Attack. This will highlight the tokens allowing it to the add the attack power of all the flanking tokens increasing a flanking token combat damage. This is great if you surround an enemy’s stronghold with your tokens as it may allow you to destroy the enemy's stronghold in one attack. The battlefield is not always a flat board, it can have high ground and as with all high ground in battle it can be highly beneficial or a hinderance to you. Your health and attack will gain a bonus from occupying a square on high ground but so will your enemy’s and attacking them might not be as easy as first glance. Archers can be a pain in the botty if they command any high ground. There are different types of tokens for combat, Archers, Trainees, Grunts Medics etcetera but there are also other tokens such as towers or training camps. Towers can provide a plus one health to adjacent tokens, while at the end of the turn they will deal one damage to any adjacent enemies. Training camps allow you to summon a trainee every three turns to the field. You are also able to perform Spells as you progress, these spells will still require an action point to use them but could come in handy at certain times within a battle. However, once a spell has been used then it cannot be used again in the current battle so make sure you use it wisely. As you gain spells you might not be able to take all of them with you in battle, so you’ll have to decide which spells to take in and which to leave behind. After defeating a stage you’ll be offer the choice of token to add to your ranks, gain an upgrade and fill your pockets with gold. You can use the gold at the Marketplace, here you can repair your stronghold, buy new recruits. You can also get rid of any unwanted tokens and sell them for some extra gold. The marketplace lies between two stages, it will become available to you after defeating the first stage. However, if once you have defeated the stage after the marketplace, then the marketplace will not be available to you gain. So, if you require some repairs or new recruits then I suggest that you use the marketplace while you have the chance. In the settings there’s only a few options, Display Mode (Full Screen and Windowed), Resolution, Quality (Low, Medium and High), Music and Sound Effect Volume Sliders. I’d like to say that A Token War is a relaxing and fun game to play but while it is fun and isn’t always relaxing. It can be very frustrating and the game is a lot harder than it looks. I’m not the best strategist gamer (I can’t be great at everything … or can I???) and I do like a challenge in a game but bloody Nora Batty I struggled. I managed to overcome one of the stages by just overwhelming the field with trainees from my training camp. The units I had just got spanked when trying to destroy towers, luckily, I had managed to defeat all enemy units so they only had structures left. This allowed me to keep ending my turn creating trainees which then attacked the towers before the towers defeated them. The Archers were a pain hitting me from across the field just nailing anything I had on the field. After you’ve been utterly defeated, you will get some help in the form of cash being thrown at you. This is great as it may just allow you to get a new recruit which could help turn the tide in battle. And this did happen with me at one point, although, if you’re unable to visit a marketplace, then no amount of money thrown at you is going to help. This can become very frustrating when you’re stuck with inferior tokens compared to your enemy’s. Positives + Nice graphics + Challenging + Campaign and Versus modes + Remote Play Together + Shared/Split screen PVP Negatives - Very frustrating at times - No achievements currently - No cards currently Build an army of unique tokens, cast powerful spells as you protect your stronghold, using tactics to defeat your enemy across five regions in the turn-based game A Token War. 7/10 [quote]Key provided by developer/publisher for review purposes via THE CPT FROGGY CLUB! Any opinions expressed are entirely my own! [/quote] [quote]For more reviews, great game giveaways and much more. Come join us @ www.Zeepond.Com and [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/thecptfroggyclub]The Cpt Froggy Club[/url] Steam Group[/quote]

A Token War is fun and challenging at the same time. I love being able to build my collection out and pick upgrades that work with my play style specifically. I'd definitely be able to play through again with a very different experience too. I found myself saying I'd do just one more map and realize five maps later that I should have gone to bed. Bonus points for great art and music too, they add a lot to the atmosphere.

Fantastic turn based tactical game. I love the variety of units. Since you only have two actions per turn you really have to think through which unit is the most beneficial to move around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR7ltNSvx1c

Imagine having a deck in a TCG, but being able to choose the cards on your playing field before you start fighting on a turn-based board. This is A Token War, which does this seamlessly to force you make decisions about your deck before you start your game, and then again each turn you play. This game has great replay value. Every time I have played through and beaten the game from a new game file, I have had to employ a different strategy based on the tokens I received and it is refreshing to try something different in each play through. Additionally, as you build your collection, you find new combos that have great synergy and some tokens you think are not viable are actually really great. Overall, the tokens are well balanced and most, if not all are usable in at least some situations. Some of the levels really test your abilities and a strategy that was working for the past 10 levels may have to be totally changed based on the situation. Overall a fantastic game, I have found myself playing multiple times for hours and losing track of time just trying to beat the next level. Each world has its own theme and the units in those levels have common abilities which gives the game great flavor. Definitely would recommend for not only the game play, but also for the stellar soundtrack and beautiful art style.

Lots of fun! I really enjoy having to figure out which tokens would work the best on each level. Great soundtrack too!

I love the strategy aspect of this game, it's like chess if chess were DnD, it's like chess if chess were fun and interesting. Really enjoyable!

Really fun and challenging game! The roguelike aspect + genuinely difficult strategic levels mean that first time you get knocked back to a checkpoint it can be a blow to your ego, but that's nothing compared to how good it feels to get past the battle you got stuck on. The details of the game are great too, the cheeky descriptions make me actually chuckle and I love the cute token drawings. The audio is another highlight - the sound effects perfectly match the tokens and the music is engaging and fun to listen to even when you're on your third or fourth attempt at a section.

Game is good. Very interesting take on deck building.

Not the game for me. This is more a puzzle game, than a roguelike or a tactics game. And I don't really like puzzle games. There are a lot of battles where it is hard to know what is important to target. Is it important to target some tree-stump before it spawns it's unit? Who knows. Oh, it turns out to spawn a super powerful enemy unit.... well that sucks, good to know for "next time" i guess. Don't like the way turns are done. You can only do 2 actions per turn with any unit. That means you barely use the units that you placed, and just focus on using your actions to move around your most powerful units. (same system that the game Floppy Knights uses)