CrossOver: Roll For Initiative

New crack addiction unlocked.

Nice little not-quite tower-defense, heavily RPG and certainly match 3. Reviews claim "tower defense" and the game lists that feature, but all there is that resembles a tower are mercenaries, and they only stay on the board for 20+ seconds and then you have to hire more of them to defend you. I have yet to see a tower. Okay I was confused by this game when I tried to play the demo. Then I forgot about it, but saw it on sale for 88% off at just a little over a dollar, and decided to go ahead and try again. But this time everything clicked. So if you're familiar with the DnD dice, there is a 4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, etc. And the number of sides is always the same number when playing the match-3. And when you score in the match-3, that makes those dice available for casting or whatever attack you want from your collection of weapons and spells. If what I just wrote made sense to you - you've played enough of these sorts of games so this will all make sense relatively quickly. BUT if it didn't make sense, this game doesn't bother to explain this all to you! That was a big failure I think - they really should not have assumed that everyone knows how attack rolls work. The game felt impossibly frantic until I did the tutorial (a second time) and read all the messages and realized "oh I can just hit TAB to freeze and figure out the match-3!" and suddenly the game is pretty fun and approachable. Too bad the keys can't be remapped - as space would have worked better for me... but I can't complain. I think the game is weird enough that it just hasn't seen much of a following, hence it only has 47 reviews at the time I'm writing this. But if you like match-3, this is a pretty good match-3 implementation. As I'm playing I find I tend to get greedy and hope I can just kill all the monsters without hiring mercenaries, but the mercenaries are very helpful and where the game gets its "tower defense" designation (or maybe there are other ways to get tower defense - I've only played a short while). There are 2 "games" - i.e. there's a fantasy game which consists of about 8 or more "books" which are individual maps that go through a linear progression on the map, and there's a space game which I imagine is similar, but I haven't tried it yet. There are also the co-op mode, and an endless game mode which shows your ranking among the other people on Steam (and I think another mode I haven't tried yet, sorry). In the endless game mode new weapons keep getting discovered which is really cool, as the game turns into a rogue-like at that point. I have to say I don't like some frantic match-3 games I've played and I really like that I can pause the game in this one. And when I hire mercenaries I can focus all my attention on the match 3 and the mercenaries pretty much cleanup the board just fine by themselves. At least on the relatively easy difficulty I'm playing at right now. I will want to try a harder difficulty pretty soon now that I can pause the game. There is no modding. If you like table-top DnD board gaming - I think you'll enjoy this.

La scheda cartacea del personaggio, quanti bei momenti, quanti personaggi e quante storie... Così sono inciampata in questo gioco. Carino da matti, difficile stare al passo con la spedizione campagna, diviene sempre più impegnativa, ma se ci si stressa troppo ci sono le altre modalità di gioco. Progetto interessante che esce dai soliti schemi, quasi prende il fascino dei vecchi libro game. Carino e da tenere per un occasionale partita quando siamo in vena di avventure vecchio stile e un'pò di malinconia. Io l'ho preso in saldo e consiglio di attendere un offerta se lo si vuole sperimentare. Lo consiglio come passa tempo occasionale ;) The paper character sheet, so many beautiful moments, so many characters and so many stories... That's how I stumbled upon this game. It's incredibly cute, but it's hard to keep up with the campaign, which gets increasingly challenging, but if you get too stressed, there are other game modes. An interesting project that breaks the mold, almost taking on the charm of old gamebooks. It's cute and worth keeping for an occasional game when you're in the mood for old-fashioned adventures and a bit of melancholy. I got it on sale and I recommend waiting for a sale if you want to try it. I recommend it as an occasional pass the time ;)

An wonderfully intense blend of action RPG and match 3 gameplay, this title is crazy, hectic, and chaotic in all the right ways. An excellent throwback to the formative years of pencil and paper RPGs. Full review: https://youtu.be/UvxtlkdUA4I

This feels like a cheap mashup that was not as fun as I was hoping. It isn't really a tower defense game. The bulk of the game is the match 3, but it is weaker than most match 3 games out there. There are not the same big combos or board clears you expect out of most match 3s. The sprites attacking your "character sheet" are charming at first, but you barely look at them as you are focused on the match 3. I think the idea behind this game is better than the execution. It feels cheap, which I wasn't expecting from Microprose. That said, the game boxes and the room from the 80s have a unique charm.

Got it for almost free and played a bit and didn't hate it - so I guess positive review? But the game feels like it was an id3ea and got built with not much additional thought. A lot of systems work poorly with each other and the UX is pretty bad. Don't get this unless it's on deep sale.

The idea is fantastic, but the gameplay sucks. Play the demo first, and if you like it, wait for the sale. I got mine with 88% discount.

A nice curious take on the match-3, making it into more of a resource style thing. The little rpg elements help to keep it feeling somewhat fresh and interesting, leaving me curious about what's next. Though the 'combat' and how the resources were based almost entirely on chance of getting the right resource to fuel the attacks you wanted or needed to do left it feeling a bit awkward at times as I found things i liked using but kept needing to struggle through collecting this dice or that to get the ones I needed to fuel them. It got kinda stale fairly quick for me. Not a bad game, and for its price it has some decent replay value through the various 'campaigns' you can go through.

似乎挺有意思，但运行十几分钟后死机，只能强制电脑重启

Not for me not going to return as it cost me a dollar. It is hard for me to imagine an audience for this game. Main issues: Dice and pacing: The dice system could be improved by rethinking the order of actions. The game gives you time before enemies appear, but since you can pause at any moment, this just turns into: pause → plan → pause → plan. It completely breaks the flow. This would work much better as a limited number of moves before a wave starts rather than a timer. Dice movement during combat: You can also move dice while fighting, which forces you to juggle combat and setup at the same time. The result is more pausing: pause → move dice → pause → attack → pause → rethink. Separating dice movement and combat phases would make gameplay far smoother. Combat clarity and feedback: During fights, enemies and their attacks are often hard to see, and incoming damage isn’t clearly communicated. Sometimes I get hit without understanding what actually happened. The tutorial explains this a bit, but there’s no strong visual feedback showing how damaged or weakened your character is (armor loss, stat reductions, etc.). With so many possible enemy effects, the game needs clearer visuals, at least a summary at the end of each encounter. It’s also unclear whether damage or debuffs persist between encounters. Wasted dice combos: The core mechanic creating dice combinations, mostly happens before enemies appear, when you have time to focus. But large combos are wasted during this phase because they automatically damage or debuff enemies that don’t exist yet. Dice combos should be usable abilities instead of triggering automatically, similar to normal attacks. As it stands, it’s difficult to plan big moves since you need most dice just to stay functional once enemies arrive. Overall, the ideas are interesting, but the execution constantly fights against smooth gameplay.