CrossOver: Roll For Initiative

old school from 8-bit games - amazing sound and music. special greetings to [b]Chris Huelsbeck[/b] :) good job!

After 20 hours of game play and multiple "Let's $%^& go!!" moments, I feel it is safe to say that Crossover is here to stay. This cocktail of the likeness of Bejeweled and something like a dynamic tower/board defense game with some rogue-like progression, is really awesome in my opinion. The game just came out and I feel it is already very well balanced. Replayability is 5/5 and the game music is also engaging. Please do try the demo first. It took me about 1 hour of play before I decided to make the purchase. Read the instructions, or just give it a go and see where you get stuck :P. Good luck and have fun!

Too hectic and stressful. Half of the time I'm feeling like I should do something else without actually having that much agency in the game.

[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.

Tabletop dungeons and dragons meets match 3 (also has futuristic story setting). Game has real time pause so you can plan moves/combos and has co op. Has endless mode. Only thing it seems to be lacking is steam achievements in regards to things like "Beat (insert campaign here) on difficulty X" or "Beat (insert campaign here) with out using pause". Also does not seem to be any option to rebind keys from what i can tell in game options (if it is their, i am definitely not seeing it). You use keys 1-5 and the f keys f1-f5. F keys for spells and 1-5 for weapons. Game is labeled as having controller support, but from what ive played of it so far, you 100% want to use the mouse. This is not the type of game for a controller. The story is a bit lacking in terms of the amount of text (wish they added another paragraph or 2 to it) but what is their, i found to be decent and enjoyable to read. Now is it worth the default price in my opinion? Whelp, for us canadian's its 12.99 before taxes, with taxes your looking at 14.50 roughly. As with any game, comes down to if your able to get 1 hour of gameplay/fun for each 1 dollar spent. So far, from how much i am enjoying it and the fact it has an endless mode, i believe i will get my moneys worth. So far, my 1.8 hours ive clocked in is after having done the tutorial and the first campaign story and thats with fiddling with the controls and a bit of idle time as well looking for certain pieces of info. So its a safe bet you will find out if the game is for you well before you reach the 2 hour refund time limit. Thus making it a safe investment in that regard. Not much more to say really, vid's on store page and pics shows you the core of the game play. Overall, i give the game a thumbs up. Both casuals and hardcore gamers can enjoy this in my opinion since you can choose to use real time pause or not and their is a difficulty meter setting as well for a more intense or laid back experience (the meter ranges from 1-11 with 8 being the default difficulty setting) and the steam achievements can be earned by all with out much trouble it seems. The only real gripe i have, is that i cant pick dwarf for every single medieval fantasy based story >.<. Thats pretty much it, all i got left to say is, Rock and Stone brother/Long live bruenor battlehammer and the gutbuster brigade! Bwahahahaha! Edit: Fair warning for those that choose to play through the game on the hardest setting. You can get through pretty much all but the last campaign without converting diamonds for gold (i was able to do it, its very very doable). But come the last campaign, the word "extreme" that is put in brackets, is put in their by the dev for a reason (unless your playing it on id say, 8 or less, in which case ignore this warning). Its no joke on 11 difficulty setting. And lastly, endless mode and dice mode dont "save" when you quit, so once you start, be sure you got the time to do it till you die.

85p on sale just now for a game that is worth the full price.

one of my favourite games, highly recommended