Ash Warden

Ash Warden is another game with awful, nonsensical user tags, so part of this review is going to be me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about them again. Having played this game to completion, I can tell you Ash Warden is: - NOT a clicker - NOT an idler - NOT survival - NOT story rich. what game was the person who tagged that playing? it wasn't this one. - NOT Roguelite oh my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ god, stop. Not everything is 'rogue'. Its gotten worse than the 'omg this is the dark souls of (insert blank)!' retarded casuals and game journalists kept saying 10 years ago about every new game that was slightly difficult. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, stop, please. What Ash Warden is, is something I'd describe as an odd mash-up of Tower Defense and an RPG. You control a warrior that jumps between towers fighting creeps that spawn trying to destroy them. The creeps drop currency when defeated which is used to purchase powerups. You also gain XP which gives another resource to spend on power ups. As a game, Ash Warden is a decent time waster. Its very short. 8 levels. Kinda fun. My only thing I don't like is it's one of those kinds of games where the player is intended to get overwhelmed and lose and progress is made from buying powerups in between losses. But at the same time, I realize this design choice is intended to extend playtime and makes it a bit of a progressive numbers go up game. Ash Warden has another big issue. When choosing your weapon, go with the bow. The sword currently makes the game buggy. Other than that, this game is budget priced so I really can't complain too much. The developers seem open to feedback and are actively working on the game still, so I feel confident giving it a recommend. If the game is on sale, and you've got some change in your pocket, Ash Warden isn't a terrible buy and it ought to keep you entertained for a few hours if you like tower defense games.

I have a lot of reasons to dislike this game. Which is a shame, because it's genuinely a cool idea for a game, it's just poorly executed. Firstly, I got it in a bundle with a bunch of incremental games, which this is not. Actually, the user tags for this game are way off. Tower Defense? Well... not really, you have to defend the towers actually. Incremental? Again, not really, I don't know how I would explain what this game is, kinda like a top down ARPG(Think Diablo, but without the gearing), but you're rooted to various positions and you can teleport between them with a long cooldown. Another tag this has is "Idler" this is NOT an idle game. Do not buy this thinking it is. You have to actively play, if you go idle you will die. This game is both incredibly difficult and incredibly grindy. You will die the first few runs, there's no choice here, it's going to happen. Then you get to the next level, with a teleporting boss and you have a very long cooldown on your own movement, the talent choice reduces that cooldown by 0.4 seconds, so that's doing piss all. You're going to have to grind, a lot. Every time you reach a new level, you're going to play through the excruciatingly slow start of the level to get XP and "vestige" which is the currency for skill points and it takes a long time to get anything worth while. You also have a choice between an archer and a warrior... the warrior must be like hard mode or something, because they're not very strong and they have a much lower attack range. The game has really poor writing, the English is... I suspect they've used google translate. Even the achievements are poorly worded. I was going to give this a positive review, because while I don't like it, I might still recommend it to others. But this game wastes your time too much. This is where I'll point out that while the game is cheap, even if it were free I'd still recommend against it. It doesn't feel like you progress at all while you play it. It takes a long time to achieve anything and it just feels boring to play. I'm sure there are people out there who are better at this kind of thing than I am and could potentially have this finished within a few hours. But I doubt it'd be a very enjoyable time. Personally, I don't like this game, and I won't recommend it to people... That said, I do have to compliment the developer on thinking outside the box. It's a very unique game and maybe some day they'll improve upon it. Short review for a short game, which I didn't finish, sadly. I hope it's of at least some help to you. Thanks for reading, or skipping to the end, have a lovely day.

There are upgrades that will softlock you if you don't take them fast enough, there is no respeccing from what I can see, the 80 minutes I have played ended up in a softlock (the last 10 minutes of which was trying to luck my way out of it to no avail.) I saw the negative reviews and specifically picked a range upgrade but I should've picked one with more range apparently

The artwork, atmosphere and feel of the game is really cool, even the gameplay is fun, but the depth of the game is really lacking. There are 8 levels and 2 characters (not swappable). Aproximatelly 1 hour per character and it's not really a big difference on them or the levels, it feels really grindy and repetitive (you get something different 7 times), I do not recommend it if this is everything in the game. It even would be more enjoyable as an idle game, because there is no strategy on when to go to another tower (all of them are the same and there are no upgrades mid match)

+ 20 minutes before I ran into a 'must grind to proceed past this boss' situation. To advance, I need to grind 5 more minutes and buy the node that deals +50% dmg to boss, duh. + Aesthetically pleasant, but no way to disable all those tiny animations and otherwise speed things up. It's not really readable. + Rounds start at 90s, I think, much longer than the usual 20-30s for similar genres. And so much of that initial time is just waiting for the SLOW enemies to approach. Overall after 20 minutes I felt like I am neither having any fun (just reactive switching between 3 points, in pre-designed order, in exact same times). Nor making any meaningful choices (other than 5 seconds for buying an upgrade every 1.5 minutes). I'll pass and refund, thank you.

bit boring, all you do is jump from tower to tower to have your character auto battle the spawning enemies. that's it. that's all. Rinse and repeat with a second character as replay value

[h1]Ash Warden - Un tower defense incrémental sans surprise[/h1] Un petit tower defense incrémental avec un arbre de talents et d'upgrades plutôt bien fourni, et un gameplay simple mais satisfaisant. Rien de révolutionnaire, on est sur de l'incrémental ce qu'il y a de basique. [h3]Une montée en puissance qui déraille[/h3] Le vrai problème c'est la courbe de progression. Vers les 70% du jeu, on tombe sur un gros mur qui force à farmer et upgrader longuement. Puis une fois ce cap passé, les deux derniers niveaux s'enchaînent presque sans avoir besoin d'upgrader quoi que ce soit. Ce déséquilibre est vraiment dommage - on passe de trop difficile à trop facile sans jamais trouver le bon rythme. [h3]Court et imparfait[/h3] 4 heures pour en faire le tour, et le contenu commence déjà à se faire sentir comme limité. Pas de quoi regretter l'achat pour un fan du genre, mais pas de quoi s'enthousiasmer non plus. [hr][/hr] [b]Correct pour les addicts du genre incrémental. Pour les autres, il y a mieux ailleurs.[/b]

Fun game, however is lacking in content

It is nice for an incremental activity. My issue is I had a power outage mid-run with the archer after having completed it with the swordsman. When the power came back on I launched the activity but it would not start on the menu screen. I verified the files, those were fine, but still would not start. I uninstalled, reinstalled, still would not start. I requested a refund, knowing I would not get it, but hoping it would send up a red flag for the developer there is an issue. Not heard anything from them on what to do. Will change when I get some a solution.

The game is fun and challenging though I think it needs some polishing. My only complaint that sticks with me would be the animation of your mouse where when you are collecting crystals it changes to a hand instead of a crosshair. This interrupts the ability to charge attack. not if you are already charging an attack, but the ability to start a charge attack. on the later stages this lead to many of my failures. yes there are skill issues on my side but, if the developers change this i would be very happy.