CrossOver: Roll For Initiative

[h1][b] TLDR: A surprisingly fun blend of D&D, tower defense, and match-3. Definite recommendation if you enjoy at least one of those three. [/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Thorough D&D mechanics ➕Encounter choices ➕Music ➕Loads of content - campaigns, endless runs, dice defence, local coop [h1]NEUTRALS: [/h1] 🔹Constant pausing to take in board breaks the flow a bit 🔹Could use options to interact with dice board, i.e shuffle, spawn specific dice, etc [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Can’t buy weapons/spells at shop, RNG can screw you if you don’t get a good selection after end of stage ➖MUST use weapons or spells - why can’t Monks attack with fists? ➖Lack of unlockables limits repeat playing [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [6/10] [/b] [/h1] Game world is pretty much just D&D character sheets, though props to the sheets being accurately represented. Narrative is very light - just a couple of sentences between each round. Nothing spectacular [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [8/10] [/b] [/h1] There are 2 main mechanics here - match board and tower defense. The match board is simple match-3 on the same dice. Matching 4 or more sends out a shockwave that damages enemies. The tower defense part takes place on a D&D character sheet. Enemies swarm and attack various elements of your sheet. If enough attacks hit your weapon section, you may lose a weapon. Same with spell, armor, and gold. You get them all back after the battle, so essentially the only thing that is important is health points. Each weapon/spell is unique and has an aim component and/or an AOE effect. Things like bows hit enemies in a straight line. To use each weapon/spell you must gather the corresponding dice in the match board. That dice then powers your weapons/spells to defend your D&D board. [h1] [b] Graphics (Quality/Technical) – [6/10] [/b] [/h1] i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | Windows 11 installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [8/10] [/b] [/h1] Great music. I loved the “Irish jig”-style music. Felt that it not only fit in with the D&D setting, but was upbeat enough for the chaos happening constantly on screen. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] There doesn’t seem to be much to do long-term after you beat each campaign once. The other modes, Endless and Dice Tower, provide some good replay value and seem to be the main draw after you finish campaigns, but the longevity of those modes are questionable at best and repetitive at worst. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [7/10] [/b] [/h1] Crossover: Roll for Initiative (CROI) does a great job at blending your typical match-3 games with a D&D coat of paint and a Slay the Spire roguelike-type campaign. At its core, CROI is a tower defense game that uses the match-3 resources to power up your attacks. I don’t have any big negatives for CROI, it’s mostly just a bunch of smaller issues as I listed above in my cons area. I’d say to me the most impactful negative is a lack of unlockables/replay value in the long term. For comparison's sake, I wish CROI had some of Slay the Spire’s longevity - it could use things like a daily run, leaderboards, and unlockable weapons/spells. I’ve played about 7 campaigns so far (died a few times in campaign 3) and each time I tried it with a different race/class combo. I didn’t notice anything cool happening after I finished the levels. You get a diamond currency, but all this does is unlock a couple races or classes and pay for stat boosts that are only for a single run. I want to be able to unlock some cool weapon/spell combinations. Something that really enhances or creates builds in a cohesive manner. As for the positives, there is a lot that CROI does right. CROI almost feels like a Slay the Spire gameplay loop, but with no cards and a tower defense game. If that wasn’t clear enough, I’m a big fan of Slay the Spire mechanically, so as long as you differentiate your game enough, and CROI definitely does, then it's always a positive. Still, I’d say my biggest positive that CROI does is the D&D-inspired game world. CROI oozes D&D from every angle. You can truly see that the devs are passionate about D&D and aside from some mechanics that had to be changed to work in a tower defense environment, the vast majority of the game is very faithful to D&D. Overall, CROI was a surprise to me. I wasn’t expecting an odd combo of a D&D match-3 tower defense game to work well, much less be interesting. I got to give credit where it’s due, CROI pulls it off and I definitely recommend checking this out if you are into D&D at all. [h1] [b] Recommend? [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]Yes[/h1] You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

Oof. Unfortunately I can't recommend this, even at 90% off. Warning: I don't find match 3 mechanics to be very interesting. However that's not my problem with this game, but it probably pre-biases me against it. Some mash ups work. Some work in-spite of themselves. Some just don't work. This game is in the last category. It feels like your trying to play two games at once. Both requiring focus, so neither gets enough. It's like two games glued side by side rather than a blend. If you love match 3 and tower defence and want to play them at the same time...? Maybe try it. Short playtime... yep, because it didn't click and the fundamental mechanics are immediately clear.

Original mix of tower defense and match-three, with D&D flavour. There are multiple campaigns with some CYOA events sprinkled. Sometimes it gets very hectic, if you focus both in weapons and spells. Runs very well.

It's hard to believe more people don't play this game. Awesome innovation of the match 3 genre and in my opinion has great balance and is still quite challenging. Definitely in my top 5 all-time favorite games.

I suddenly understand my mothers crippling addiction to candy crush

What a unique and fun game! Should be more well known! Also worth mentioning the lovely pen-and-ink art style of scenes and items.

[h2]A mashup of three game genres that's less than the sum of its parts. I would rather play the match-3 individually and either have the shooter automated or not present at all. I wish I could give a neutral review - this isn't bad, but it isn't good enough for me to recommend, either.[/h2] [h3]The Good:[/h3] [list] [*]The art for the races/species and for the events is beautiful, done in a fun sketchy pencil style. [*]The idea of combining a top-down shooter (it's not really a tower defense, despite the label), an rpg, and a match-3 is really fun, and there are some genuinely good ideas here (like having the match-3 work as ammunition, where if it works out well you only have to match-3 in the lulls between enemy waves, or the random items/spells/money you get after each completed arena) [*]You can pause the game at any time to check the glossary and strategize, or even just stare at the dice box for another match. [*]If you go too long without making a successful move in the match-three, it will point out a match to you. [*]The match-3 dicebox actually has some interesting strategy - instead of the dice always moving in the same direction, they move in the direction of your last swap. This is weird to get used to, but provides some interesting situational stragegy for getting 4+ combos. [/list] [h3]The Bad:[/h3] [list] [*]You can't rebind the hotkeys, or swap the sets of physical and magical hotkeys. It's terrible practice to use the function keys for hotkeys, and not allowing rebinding is just embarrassing in this day and age. Hotkeys also don't select a spell unless it's cast-able, so you can't hotkey to a spell to wait for its cooldown to finish or to see a visual indicator that it's out of "ammo" the way you can with mouse selection. [*]The different dice just aren't distinct enough in shape and color to make pattern recognition easy, even on high contrast. The only ones that I could reliably pick out are the d6s (a plain square). This makes playing the match-3 both stressful and frustrating. [*]The interface is too busy and too unclear. There should be cast counts beside the spells, not off in the corner where my eyes will never be drawn to in battle. The monsters and your own spells often obscure your character sheet, including your spell lists. [*]Which one of these spells is AOE? which one has an effect? What do the little symbols near the monsters mean? Where is my next match? Better pause the game! This is nice as an option, but terrible as a requirement - no matter how skilled I am, the design of the game will force me to stop in my tracks so get my bearings or risk loss. [*]The core conceit of the monsters directly attacking your stats sucks. It leads to a slow spiral where the more monsters there are, the more you unavoidably get hit, the less likely you can recover even with buying mercenaries or using items. I'm sure it's meant to feel stressful and strategic, but since you have no way to choose which stats are targeted, you can only take strategic losses if they happen to crowd around your dump stat. [/list]