Aurora Dusk: Steam Age

It's a pretty interesting game, a semi autonomous village sim where all your characters are persistent, and you can make as many as you want. They level up all their stats individually and it's even fun to just leave running sometimes to see what your characters levelled afterwards. My only complaints are: 1. It feels like there should be another game mode or two to justify levelling your characters. 2. Perks level up WAY too slow. Like, the stats level up fast, but the skill points that unlock new perks for your characters don't level fast at all. I think after 60 hours my highest level character was still around the middle level perks 3. Lastly, developer, please save files to steam cloud. I lost all my data from the last time i played... Not meaning to make this sound like a bad game, this game is fantastic once you get past the cheesiness and sloppy UI lol.

Really interesting game with a lot of skills and progression. It suffers a bit from not having a clear idea of what it wants to be. You build stuff, collect resources, progress your skills, that's the core gameplalay loop and it's very satisfying. But the campaign is more of a tutorial, and the survival and skirmish modes are very basic, fast-paced and ultimately feel like a placeholder. This game is great but would have been a masterpiece if it took the time to develop a game mode that better utilizes its excellent progression system.

The game is well designed. The 2D sprite graphics might detract a bit, but if you can deal with it, you'll have fun with this one.

Fun and loaded with a vast number of useful skills. The Campaign is shorter than I would have liked but multiple game modes more than makes up for that with replay value.

Its a really fun and comfy game, the best part is that your character keeps its xp in all modes you play, so it helps maintaining the feeling of progression. The game got enough updates and felt like a love project from the creator, and honestly if it was in the workshop, the game would be perfect.

okay, its been a while since i played this really interesting game. and i plan to play it again. what i recall is this: i didnt finish it, because i had a problem with one mission, but that is no big deal. the problem was me, not the mission, if i recall that correctly. the fascinating thin about this game is that the other people in your town build and develope the town with or without you. you can nudge them into this or that direction, but you are not necessarilly needed. and that actually works!! you can influence stuff, you can do stuff, you can make a difference, but the AI run other citizens and soldiers and golems and what have you get stuff done as well. and it is not in a scripted way. you can watch them develope the town according to all the limitations due to time and resources. you can for example begin certain projects and they try to get them to fruition. by the normal game mechanics. or you can have them begin their own projects. played this over a year ago, but i can say with certainty that i was impressed by the games AI. two thumbs up for sure! edit: and you can develope your own character in many different ways as well, if i recall correctly. why has this gem been under the radar?!

This is a hard game to review. I had to come back to it several times to "get it" but once I did, I enjoyed it...for a while. The main story is fairly short and the challenge/survival modes are good but repetitive. The main thing is that you are a cog in a village, you can manage a lot of things, like where troops go and how many resources are planted, but the villagers will also go on their own and do things. For the mechanic and replay-ability, I'd recommend it at the $10 price. Oh, and when it talks about companions, those are characters that you've already leveled up. They can join you in later games but are a bit OP. Thought I'd mention that since I couldn't find it before.