Once Upon A Tile

[h3]A intriguing tile laying puzzle game featuring adventurous anthropomorphic animals and mysterious curses.[/h3] First of all, even though this game has been released, the achievements are yet to be implemented properly. So if that is a dealbreaker for you, be aware. Once Upon a Tile is a lightweight and simplistic dungeon building game where you, as one of the 4 varied heroes of critterdom, place tiles, advance, collect resources and defeat various opposition hindering you from exploring the realm. You begin each map with a deck of tiles, and each tile you place has a diverse set of forms and values connected to them such as armaments, mystical powers, monsters, traps and other familiar dungeon tropes. Your task is to survive the ordeals while avoiding to trap yourself in the ever labyrinthine forms and shapes of the corridors you leave behind. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3481818515 This game is a roguelike, of sorts. Your character is upgraded temporarily each run by adding increased chances of better loot, higher baseline stats as well as gathering gold that can be used in between runs to improve upon your characters by investing in gear and talents. The game's characters are unlocked by playing and have unique flairs with the variations in their talents. For example, Yara, the starting character, is a lovely little rodent that really encapsulates the gorgeous artwork surrounding the characters, however, in game it is more of a simplistic board game style representation of a pawn wandering across the map. Overall the graphic representation is fine and works perfectly for this kind of game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3481818269 Now, as I stated earlier this game is released, but it feels like it could use some more seasoning to truly shine. The gameplay has quite a few layers to it, but after a few runs I began to feel it was a bit too samey for my taste. The challenges are separated into three different scenarios, where two of them are basically the same, with the exit somewhere in your deck of tiles. The last scenario is the one I liked the least. In this one the exit is somewhere on the map and you need to first draw a path that connects to it, and then, on top of that, have a tile left that you can place behind it to make the character actually enter the portal. It feels weird, convoluted and is heavily dependent on RNG. You can mitigate this by various powerups that let you see tiles in advance, but it can still be hard to deduce what are needed. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3481818645 [b]Conclusion:[/b] This is a cautious, but hearty, recommendation from me. I really like parts of this game, the artwork is stellar, the core mechanics are great fun and I really like the tactile tile laying. However, there are quite a bit of bits and bobs that feel like they need a bit more polish. Pathing is wonky at times and has made my character stroll into traps despite it being a free path next to it, no achievements as of the writing of this review and a general sense of repetitiveness after a few hours. That said, this has the core of a great puzzly game that I really want to see more of, and I do hope that the developers continue to support it and stick to adding new contents and ironing out bugs. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/] Follow [b]IndieGems[/b] [/url] for more reviews like this one. [/quote]

It's very nice! Even if a little rough around the edges. The core mechanic here is that you connect dungeon pieces together and the character will move in to the closest tile on the piece. The character picks up items they walk over and fights (or takes damage from) on encounter tiles, so fitting pieces to pick what you might walk over first / later / preferably never adds some depth. Also the music is very good!

A fascinating tile puzzler who's cheery visuals bely a sense of eerie unease, Once Upon a Tile is a simple yet captivating experience. Carefully laying down tiles to escort your little forest creature seems simple enough, but if you aren't thoughtful in your placement it's very easy to find yourself doomed by your own hubris. There isn't as much going on within the runs to differentiate them in the way a rogue-lite like Slay the Spire, but it's better to think of this more like a puzzle game like Dorfromantik. With that comparison, the four characters and their subtly different upgrade trees and play-styles do a wonderful job of making your many runs exciting and varied. Under is best girl, more love for ratties! The only two cons I can think of are: most of the achievements currently seem to be broken, and sometimes when there are multiple paths to an objective, the game will just straight up lie to you about the path your character will take. It can be very frustrating to make what the game told you is the perfect play, only for your mouse to decide hey, I know I told you I was gonna pick up that sword... but these three traps, tho...

This game plays with building your own dungeon instead of traversing an already existing one, which is quite fun and refreshing! Overall, a cozy roguelite puzzler with cute little mice!

Once Upon a Tile's gameplay is a great mix between relaxing puzzle games such as Dorfromantik and more adventurous dungeon crawlers. It has adorable graphics (the mouse is very cute!) and plays great - also on the Steam Deck. An awesome game I had the pleasure of playing at a conference before and definitely recommend now that it's here on Steam!

One Upon a Tile ist ein super Spiel. Es macht sehr viel Spaß. Für das Release ist es wirklich toll gemacht und hat unter anderem auch super süße Details eingebaut, wie z.B. die Mauspfote als Cursor <3 Ich würde mir allerdings wünschen, dass wenn man auf Fallen, Monster oder aber auch auf "Schätzen" etc. landet, es kleine Animationen gibt. Das würde das ganze vielleicht noch etwas aufregender gestalten :). Ein etwas großer Minuspunkt ist für mich tatsächlich das Ding, dass wenn man seine Leben verloren hat, wieder von vorne beim TUTORIAL anfangen muss, bzw bei den ersten Schritten und das nimmt einem irgendwann ungemein den Spaß daran. ABER nichts desto trotz ist es ein wirklich schönes Spiel und hat Potenzial. Und da es ja noch in der "Anfangsphase" ist, bin ich mir sehr sicher, dass wir noch einiges erwarten dürfen <3

Fun little roguelike puzzler that keeps you thinking but isn't too darstardly difficult!

Love the puzzley challenge! And the graphics are lovely.

Great game I already played the demo at local events and it just gotten better. If you like strategic / puzzle games or come from a boardgame background I highly recommend it.