[h1][i]This review is a part of Steamified's Community Reviews project and the credit goes to both Steamified and Brainwashing Games for providing the key for reviewing purposes.[/i][/h1]
[b]Link[/b] is a strategy roguelike game developed by Brainwashing Games that has just come out of a relatively short period of Early Access. It combines a great roguelike combat system and interesting base management gameplay where resource management is vital to ensure the survival of your crew.
The story starts off with your ship having malfunctioned and crashlanded to a snow-clad and hostile planet. Help is on it's way but with no nearby ship to evacuate the crew, the survivors will have to survive the hostile environment and the aggressive Xenos until help finally arrives.
The gameplay consists of basically two main parts, one is the base building and resource management phase and the other revolves around exploration and doing missions outside. First I will talk about the base building component. I just have to say that it's a good surprise to have this in a roguelike game as it changes how you would normally thrive in the other games in the same genre. The mechanic is a la the XCOM series where you build different components on each room at the cost of valuable resources. These rooms can be further upgraded to increase it's functionality, provided that you've amassed enough of the required resources. There is also a "Doomsday" meter (not sure what it's called exactly) that fills up slowly as each day passes by. Once it reaches 100, the local Xenos will initiate base invasion (I got a Game Over because of this since there's no chance for me to survive when I'm down to two crew member).
The resources I've mentioned consists of Food (for obvious reasons), Knowledge (required to build and craft advance components), Fuel (To heat up) and Tools (for building and crafting), Resources are scarce and vital for both maintenance of the crew and to build rooms.
The other part of the game consists of doing exploratory missions out of your crashed space ship either to salvage, to rescue other survivors (added to your crew if you're successful) or bounty hunting to lower the threat meter. The combat revolves around careful management of Stamina. In battle you can either choose to spend all of it to rush and kill the enemy in one swoop at the cost of slow regeneration afterwards, or take it slow and steady and ensure your crew have ample amount of stamina in case things go south. Of course, this is an arctic planet so the longer you're outside, the faster you'll lose your heat. Once it gets down to zero and your men will go down one by one. The best course of action is to get out, get what you need, get back ASAP.
Now that's all covered, I'm gonna mentioned the pros and cons of this game and hopefully it'll explain why I gave Link a thumbs down.
[h1]PROS[/h1]
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[*] Blends brilliant resource management and roguelike elements in a game. It adds a new level of tension when it comes to your crew survival.
[*] The combat system is deep and highly rewarding once you've get the hang of it. The stamina system works wonderfully and it definitely stands out from the others.
[*] High amount of replayability. Before the start of each new game, you will be presented with a choice of goals that you would like to achieve during your run. For example, Survive 5 Turns, Kill 10 Enemies, Discover an Artifact, etc. Fulfill the initial goal and you will be rewarded Requisition points where you can use it to unlock different crews and their accompanying bonuses.
[*] Base building is fun! A welcome change of pace compared to the other roguelikes.
[*] Devs are active in the forum, answering questions and getting bug reports.
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[h1]NEUTRAL[/h1]
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[*] This game has a pretty steep difficulty curve, even at the early stages. Waste too much resources and you'll be dead in no time. I just wish they would implement varying difficulty settings to encourage newbies to get accustomed to the game's mechanic.
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[h1]CONS[/h1]
They say first impressions are a powerful thing and unfortunately, this game doesn't leave a good one for me.
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[*] The biggest thing that got me is that the game doesn't support native widescreen support, or any other resolutions to boot! The default window is a small, I guess, around 800x600? Playing on a 32" inch TV, it's a chore to bring my head forward just to read what the description is saying. There's a fullscreen toggle available in the game but, first, it doesn't state that anywhere in the game. I have to check out the Discussion section to see what it is (it's Alt + Enter, btw). Secondly, the Fullscreen mode is basically just a stretch of the small window and the result is unbearably ugly and not to mention the side borders getting cropped. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy pixels aesthetic but this is just bad.
[*] The Settings page is bare with only sliders to sounds available. No Fullscreen, no key configurations, no nothing.
[*] Lack of any basic Steam functionality. There's no Overlay, no screenshots, no achievements, etc. The only thing available right now are the trading cards [strike]but I don't think they're released yet. Probably in the next couple of weeks or so.[/strike] It's available now. My Badge page must be bugged before.
[*] Keys are not remappable, nor are they shown to the player. As I've stated before, I wouldn't have known about the Fullscreen mode unless I checked out the Discussion and pressing F12 (to take a screenshot) immediately brings me back to the title screen!
[*] The game crashed on me once during the tutorial and according to the other complaints, I'm guessing there will be a lot more to come.. Fortunately some of these are already acknowledged by the devs and I hope it will be fixed in future updates.
[*] Minor typos here and there.
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[h1]To conclude, I give [b]Link[/b] an average [b]3/5[/b]. A wonderful game at it's core but greatly severed by the lack of the essentials in a PC game.[/h1]
I have high hopes for the game, and the devs seem committed too. I'm gonna wait until a few more updates and patches to roll in and I'll gladly jump into the game again and adjust my review accordingly. I'm confident that once the rough edges are smoothed out, Link will definitely be a contender for a hidden gem title. For now, I simply cannot recommend this unless roguelike and strategy games are your cup of tea, then by all means, go for it. For $5 you can't go wrong.
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