Steam Marines

I originally recommended this game, but Ive had to change my mind, At first the game is enjoyable, the challenge is certainly there but the game is lacking in depth. 1) Massive jumps in difficulty between Easy/Normal etc. Enemes on Easy can die in 1 hit, whereas on Normal they can take 4 (thats quite a jump) 2) Limited skill tree. You marines can only level up 4 times and this seriously puts them at a major disadvantage late game (especially on Normal and above) 3) NG+ is not fleshed out. This connects to point 2, due to the limited levelling up and progression, the only reason to play NG+ is for a scaled challenge. Completed the game on Easy? NG+ is Easy 1.5 etc etc 4) The game is meant to be played multiple times, but there is a slight lack in variey (especially in enemies) After completing a few runs, Ive seen enough. There are better games out there

When I think rogue-like, I think of a good, challenging (sometimes brutal), game that I can play in a couple of hours. I think of ascending difficulty where I try to find better gear and become more powerful so that I can attempt to defeat ever more challenging enemies until they kill me, or I manage to beat the end objective. Completing the game should be a proud moment that makes me want to brag to my friends that I finally accomplished it. Sadly, Steam Marines fails to achieve most of this. The basic game mechanics aren't bad, and the first couple of levels were fun, but it gets sorely repetitive very quickly. Each area introduces new enemies, but they all do pretty much the same thing (except the bosses, but even they only have a minor twist to make them unique). On the rare occasions when you find new weapons and armor, odds are your marines can't use it, or it will be worse than what you already have. Once you figure out how to beat the enemies, the game becomes very formulaic and more of a chore to trudge through each level. At normal difficulty, each level took about 30 minutes (that number can vary a lot). With 25 levels, it just takes way too long for a rogue-like. When I beat the game, I wasn't jumping for joy. Rather, I felt myself saying "finally, it's done." I decided to raise the difficulty to see if it got better. The enemies were tougher and more numerous, but still did the same thing. The levels just took longer and longer to beat and felt more like a crawl. After a couple of levels, I decided I had better things to do than wait a minute or two between every turn while the computer made its move. UPDATE: Changing the AI speed did help speed up the computer's turn significantly, but wasn't enough to reduce the tedium enough for me to want to play this game again. I got through a couple more levels and decided I'd rather spend my time playing something else. I do appreciate that the developers are still working on the game, so hopefully they'll be able to add enough variety to make me want to play it again.

“In space no one can hear you scream” goes the famous film quote. They might just hear you scream after playing this intentionally hard roguelike game. Steam Marines is a roguelike set onboard a ship that has been attacked. You control a squad of four soldiers who must reach the elevator on each procedurally generated floor to proceed through the ship and eventually find freedom. It would be fair to say the game takes a good amount of influence from the Space Hulk/Crusade and X-Com game series, with its dark corridors and rooms with ‘fog of war’ and action points to spend on movement and actions. While not an original concept, Steam Marines manages to blend its influences into a neat game. Your squad can be created from randomised suggestions or built from scratch. There are four classes to choose from, a leader, support, scout and grenadier. As the names suggest, their weaponry fits their names, the leader takes the front with a close range shotgun, scout with a long-range sniper gun and support with a high capacity machine gun. Having one of each is probably a good idea to get a good balance of strategy and combat. Steam Marines throws you in the deep end with a few words of encouragement to keep you afloat for a minute while you play the tutorial. The tutorial gives you a chance to see how the basics work such as movement and combat. Once completed, you are on your own to work the rest out. The tutorial could go into a little more detail for people who are not familiar with this genre of game. After reading the developers forums I found out a few features I knew nothing about. This is a Steam Early Access game meaning the game is still in development, so this can be excused but it is worth keeping an eye on the forums for this reason alone. After a floor or two, the enemy number becomes many, and you will likely hit a brick wall as you learn the game the hard way. Death is permanent and once your squad is gone, it is game over. Tactics is important as it is in any strategy combat game, never knowing what is around the next corner or behind a door. You will soon learn that moving a soldier with few remaining Action Points into a new room is a silly mistake as they will likely face a couple of enemy units with no points to take action with. The game is turn based, so killing as many enemy units or getting into cover before you run out of AP is essential, the enemy can be brutal even on the easiest difficulty. Tactics such as flanking enemies that have shields works particularly well and grants bonus damage. Steam Marines features a simple leveling up system that improves the soldiers stats such as their strength and class attributes. Your soldiers also have talents which are awarded as you progress and include attacks and defense buffs and special attacks which are important to take advantage of. Much like the X-COM series, you form a bond with your soldiers and you will go to lengths to protect them. One mistake will make you scream as a group of enemy units slaughters half of your squad (if you are lucky). You can explore the ship to find items such as new weapons, health and AP replenishment and boosts. Survivors can join your team to replace any dead soldiers, but they will be weak and need to leveled up. The graphics are an 8-bit pixel art style that is dark and at times scary. Scary, but not in a make you jump out of your seat way, more in a way that you never know what is in the next room. Your heart will miss a beat or two as you enter a new room to see what is inside. The audio adds to the atmosphere with again dark, slow and eerie effects that remind you of X-COM. It creates an opposing atmosphere and builds the tension very well. There was little I did not like about Steam Marines. One minor annoyance is the auto-switch to new soldier once the selected soldiers AP has run out. If you manually choose a new soldier it can sometimes auto-switch to another without you realising and you end up moving the wrong soldier. You can switch this off in the options and I definitely recommend doing it! Steam Machines is a hard game, but it is fairly balanced and death will most likely be player error rather than the game. It is a dark, atmosphere filled strategy roguelike that works very well taking in a lot of inspiration from classic games. If you enjoy roguelike or tactics games this is a perfect game for you. If you are a newcomer, you may find the learning curve a little steep at the start, but it is something that can be reached and enjoyed. You can buy Steam Marines via the homepage at http://www.steammarines.com/ or via Steam here. Gameplay - 8/10 Tough but fair combat system. The approach to the levels gets you thinking the best strategy to reach the elevators. Graphics - 7.5/10 Nice pixel art 8bit style graphics that give a dark, opposing atmosphere. Sound - 7.5/10 Eerie, slow background effects that builds up the suspense. Final Score 8/10 Review originally posted on http://www.gamergeddon.com

[b]Post Early Access Update:[/b] After the release the game still features numerous bugs, glitches and even chrashes. The game still does not feel like a full release. The random generator still spawns you in closed off rooms, the controls are still clunky, the UI still needs work and the overall experience still hasn't improved enough for me to recommend it. [b]Original Early Access Review:[/b] I'm at a loss with Steam Marines. The game has promise and I might recommend it when it's finished, but so far the game is just lacking that special umph to make it a great experience rather than a mediocre one. In Steam Marines you start the game looking over the tutorial, end up confused, start up a game and die... horribly. After 2 or so games and tinkering with the classes I started to get a grip on things. You choose a squad of 4 marines at the beginning of the game and each class has a different weapon and a different skill tree. The skill tree is interesting but basic, each level you get to choose a passive or an activated ability. I never did use the powers much as they take multiple points of Action Points (AP being the resource you use to move, shoot etc.) and it always seemed better to just fire regularly. The gameplay is a slow tile-based tactical slog through a ghost ships with robots and other baddies crawling out of the walls before attacking. This can be very frustrating as a wrong move and lack of items to restore AP can lead to dead marines very quickly. Furthermore, the random dungeon generation really needs some touch-ups as rooms with no doors or walls placed on top of each other make it impossible to move without breaking down walls and you need to do this to create proper tactical spacing. At the end of every level you're rated on your performance and if you're a careful player like me you'll most likely end with a negative score even if all your marines survived the level. The score seems to indicate that this is supposed to be a fast-paced tactical RPG but the gameplay itself rewards slow and methodical movement. It's frustrating to say the least. I'm not saying there isn't fun to be had with this game but in-between bouts of frustration, lackluster UI, boring music and a retro look that works but still needs a little work done (dropped items currently don't show up on the map) it just isn't worth the full price. With some polish I'm sure this gem will shine but right now I just can't recommend it.

I really wanted to like Steam Marines. There's some pretty cool ideas at work here; turning Space Hulk into a roguelike. Unfortunately, it just falls short of almost every mark it wants to hit. The random levels are entirely too random. Sometimes you'll spawn in a room with no doors. Sometimes you'll spawn in a room of nothing [i]but[/i] doors. Sometimes you'll spawn on top of the exit! And on and on. Enemy placement suffers similarly, with you going from no robots to being completely surrounded in the space of a turn. The UI is a mess. The tutorial doesn't tell you everything. And ultimately, what options you do have on a given turn are extremely limited. This game has a great premise, and what's here is a promising effort, but ultimately I can't really say it's worth your time and money. It's not an egregiously awful game, it's just not really much fun.

Steam Marines is a brutal tactical turn based squad based sci-fi roguelike. It is reminiscant of games such as Dungeons of Dredmore and Sword of the Stars: The Pit mixed up with the AP and Squad systems of X-Com. The game currently offers 4 classes; Leader, Scout, Grenadier and Support which offer a variety of different play styles. This game does have a steep learning curve and like all roguelikes it is a very frustrating but rewarding experience. If you enjoy roguelikes and tactical squad based games then this title is definitely for you, otherwise you may end up putting your fist through the monitor in sheer frustration.

They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. In Steam Marines, even the things that kill you make you stronger. And there are a lot of things that are very good at killing you. As someone who hasn't played a bunch of roguelikes, this games is brutally difficult. I have often immediately regretted certain tactical decisions, and hung my head in shame as I ended my turn, resigning my squad to a swift and gruesome death. The procedurally-generated levels, combined with the ability to completely demolish walls (I have a strange compulsion to destroy every wall I see) and carve out your own path gives this game a great deal of replayability. You don't memorize levels to make progress, you learn to plan and make better decisions. You will learn when to lure or flank the enemy, and when to shove the enemy off your ship a la Harrison Ford in Air Force One. And when you get too frustrated, there's always hope. Maybe you'll get a giant metal exoskeleton you can use to exact fiery flame-thrower vengeance on your unwitting foes...

All good fun until you find all the bugs. The bugs your marines are not able to handle, the bugs in the code that is. This is a rogue like and it takes time to get to the point where you find a better weapon. Most weapons you find are worse than the one you already have, and you only find a weapon every 4th game or so. When you have two marines with the same class they can use the same weapon, but only the first one can switch their weapon to the one they found. Same goes for armor. Weapons and armor pretty much sums up the real powerups you can get, so there you go. The actual game mechanics are centered around counting tiles your enemy's will move next turn, staying out of their way and guarding to shoot them when they advance. Grenades are worthless until you get level ups and the only weapon that does not just do damage is the shotgun, which is one of the best things about this game. It does knockback and you can push robots off the ship through the walls. The map generation is totally broken. The maps do not look like anything any human would design as a spaceship. Some rooms do not even have a door, you have to break through the walls. In the end, I payed 5 bucks for the game and it's worth 5 bucks. Just don't expect a fully functional game.

I'm not entirely sure whether I should recommend this game or not, as I have rather mixed feelings about it. [b]GOOD[/b] -It has lots of variety, such as... -classes with different skills, -nice punch of different items, both interesting and useful, -good range of enemies (considering the length), and so on. -It has funny odd things, like a collectable painting that can be used for random effect. -It's not too short. -You can set "facing" (turning a character in place) to cost no Action Points from game settings. I was able to overcome some of the bugginess with this. -Difficulty: As you learn how things work and how you kill different enemies, things get easier so that you actually survive. Meaning, that you propably wont be playing the game through with first attempt, thus providing some challenge. [b]BAD[/b] -It has terrible graphics: sometimes I'm not sure what I'm looking at, while occasionally I have difficulties with reading the text. Sometimes its very hard to say whether a piece of wall is bashed or if it's semi-destroyed. In some maps, the wall tiles are so dark that I have to look the screen from different angle (benefits of flat screen) to be able to actually differ them from background or unexplored tiles. Some enemies can't be recognized from each others, until they blow on your face. -Moving around often bugs like hell: unit graphic may stay behind from actual position during moving, sometimes the whole movement is ignored. I have had two marines standing in a same tile more than once. Luckily this mainly plagues PCs, it could easily make the game unplayable if this would affect NPCs as well. -Shop pricing skyrockets like stockmarket-bubble. -Item prices increases every time you enter a shop. -Shop offers four items, chosen randomly. Combined with above, trying to buy a med-kit can become very, very expensive. -You can't sell items. -Using mouse over the battlefield is buggy, and supposed benefits are often broken. Not to forget that sometimes moving the mouse on the map area causes heavy lagging and shooting CPU-load to roof. -Occasionally "targeting indicator" does not appear as supposed to, you have to rotate the character or switch between characters for it to show. -Game is balanced in a wrong way: You must make sure that you wont be shot at all, because enemies will tear apart your marines too easily, even on easy-difficulty. This means that you must use lure-tactics constantly, and even a single mistake may result to complete failure.

TLDR; Skip this game, buy Bionic Dues instead. Bionic costs half as much as this, and is actually a finished product. Steam Marines is a great concept that never got finished. Many of the poor gameplay elements, admitted to by the Dev, were supposed to be changed before launch. They were not. Dev swore all over the place that he was going to maintain the game post-release, and not abandon it the day it came out. That's exactly what he did, leaving TONS of game-breaking bugs and glitches. There is no music, there is no variety, the tutorial in no way prepares you for the amount of missing information you'll find in the game. It's sad, because this really could have been a great game. It is not. It's a twenty dollar turd that you should avoid at all costs. Dev skipped supporting this game to start working on a sequel instead, but that's a dangerous road. How many people are going to buy another game from someone who just got bored with his first one and left it to rot? You can still see the 'road map' on the discussions page. After playing the game for a while, then reading the road map, you realize that a vast amount of the features the dev decided to leave out are exactly the ones that needed to be implemented to make this a great title. I have no idea what he was thinking, because he was well on his way to making one of the best games to come out of Greenlight/Early Access.