The Rebellion

While I did receive this for free and have been helping them test, I have found myself booting it up to play the survival mode without being prompted and doing it for fun. (TL;DR at bottom for lazy) I have to say, the survival mode is quite fun. Difficult, but the challenge is what makes it fun. Furthest I've gotten is Battalion 5 on survival mode, which took over 2 hours to get to and I had a blast the entire time because my hero got OP halfway through. It scales with the population cap you set, the players in the game, and the difficulty you select. Normal is a decent challenge, Hard is, predictably hard, and nightmare difficulty is near impossible. I think what makes this different from standard RTS games is the fact you can equip your units with whatever equipment you want that you make. Go to the blacksmith, create pike, warhammers, swords (long/short/bastard), shields, bows etc. Equip full armor, light armor etc. To top it off, you can equip light iron, full iron, bromium or agacite of all of this, which really adds variety. The latter two are more rare, and therefore better but more costly to get as you HAVE to expand your base to go get it. Imagine the standard footmen in Warcraft 3 only having a ton of customization to basically make him a heavily armored archer, lightly armored and quick man at arms, or a heavily armored tank. Tons of options to make a unit into 100's of variations. Hammers knock down your opponents, pikes allow you to hit at range with shield, swords deal massive damage. Add on Bromium armor adding additional health, agacite adding additional agility (4A's, and this makes you/the units equipped attack faster), and bows for ranged, the types of weapons all feel unique and interesting and are quite a nice touch. It is slightly buggy and a bit unintuitive, I won't lie to you or the people I helped test for. However, I've had fun. I'd happily have paid $20 for this game for the time I've put into it (excluding the testing). A lot of that time was also just enjoying the game. The promise of it going forward I think is also big because, realistically, there are no other new RTS games that I'm aware of, and the fact you can fight alongside your soldiers is good fun because you can actually change the tide of battle with your hero alone. Seriously, if you liked Warcraft 3 then you'll know what hero play in that is like when you get your heroes to 1000 agility in the custom game modes. Imagine that, only you get to play as them in third person. Your hero starts out weak, but in the end he eventually does become OP and able to take on entire waves by himself, and if you have two go at each other in PVP it also is hilariously fun. Overall, if you're willing to deal with a few bugs in an RTS/ARPG, I'd say get it because I do think the fun outweighs the bugs quite heavily at this point, especially for a two man team. If not, check back on it later after it's been further updated because the promise is definitely there. TL;DR: Its quite fun. Variety of units is unmatched to any other RTS with the customization, Hero play is quite fun and PVP is fun albeit buggy. Survival is a blast. There are some bugs, but I think the fun outweighs the bugs.

I didn't play it for very long, but long enough to see this game isn't very good. The first point is enough to make me give this game a thumbs down. There is no skirmish AI. There is a 'survival' mode, where waves of AI attack you, but you cannot fight a 1 on 1 against AI, it is multiplayer only. The idea behind the game, having direct control over a unit, while also creating units and playing an RTS is pretty unique. There are games who have done it before, but not a lot. The problem is that that's where the uniqueness of the game ends. There are very few buildings and they look quite boring. The soldiers look very plain. And the resource collection system has also been done many times before. It works, but it just isn't done in an exciting way. The graphics of the game also look very plain and actually a bit out-dated. Soldier models look nice, but everything else just looks boring. This game could, with a lot more work turn into something good, but the way it is right now, I can't recommend it. I'll certainly get a refunds myself.

This game has a lot of promise. I played 2 games and was hooked. Really excited to see where the dev take this.

It is a good game, still very early access but the RTS works almost flawlessly and the Third Person combat system works well also. The armour and load-out system is unique and provides a lot of choice for customising your army and play-style. When the game is further fleshed out and the bugs squashed, it will be legendary.

To start off this game is great. I really like that you can switch to your champion and play him first person. Even though this game is in early access its optimized well so i have no loading or graphical issues, i have not had any crashes, and the game loads fairly quick. Also the game is super difficult which makes it even more fun!

I wanted to wait until after I played some PVP, but I love the concept and the backstory behind the developers so here we are. For an early access game, this indie game is on par with big budget titles out there. If you're into RTS titles, it scratches that itch with a hybrid twist - it also lets you control the hero in 3rd person. Though the wave defense mode is great alone, I really want to play more PVP matches and start getting competitive. Would like to see this title grow and offer more modes, maps, heroes etc. Great so far for launch day - I recommend!

Review from: https://betatestedgamereviewed.com/game-reviews/post/1785929/the-rebellion-early-access-review (Update since original review) The devs reached out to say that some updates were coming for issues that I've brought up. Given the response and that the game is still in early access, taking community feedback, I will change my review to recommended as I do believe the game will come to the place it needs to be! The Rebellion comes to us from Caz Game Design, a team that have actually left their jobs to dedicate their time into this game. They've taken the deep dive into game development. It isn't like this game is newly in development either, they've already been working on it for 3 years, prior to it being released on Steam in Early Access. If you don't know what the Rebellion is, I'll tell you! It is a real-time strategy game where you can also switch to a third-person view and play as your hero! It's a super cool concept, one that piqued my interest almost immediately. Let's see how it goes once we start playing! Loading the game for the first time can actually be quite daunting I've found. You have the option to join or host a game, or you can watch a tutorial. I would, of course, suggest to begin your new journey with the tutorial. It does give you a basic foundation to build off of, but I don't think that it was all that effective in fully explaining how to play. Once I started playing I realized I didn't know as much about the game as I should have. I think the tutorial would be better if it were an interactive, step by step walkthrough where you can control and build. That way it isn't a long winded intro with little interest for a new player, and it in itself isn't a roadblock for new player interaction and engagement. With the game being newly released into early access, there aren't many people online playing at the same time to be able to join another person, but you could choose to play along with your friends which I think could be a fun, cooperative experience. You also have the option to play solo, creating your own lobby and locking down the open slots, pitting you against waves of AI enemies trying to defeat the guard captain. Once you get this far, now you need to pick up on the game mechanics! The game mechanics themselves are well done! The rhythm and flow of the game makes sense entirely and is quite self explanatory. You will place down your first building, essentially a town hall, to begin your camp and production. From here you can create peasants to do harvesting, mining, and building work, or you can create new buildings which have specialized uses. Everything always comes with a resource cost, and you can keep up with your resources on the left hand side to see what you have on hand at all times. You will need to make sure that you are utilizing your peasants to always be increasing your flow of resources so that you can grow. Next, as your objective is to protect the guard captain that means you will need soldiers, so you need to place a barracks! The barracks allows you to build soldier type units of different types, depending on what you want to use them for. You will want some of these before the waves of enemies start rolling in, so that you can help with protecting the main town where the captain is stationed. Those soldiers need gear and gear costs even more resources so you will want to make use of other buildings, such as the blacksmith, the refinery, and the sawmill. It's all a delicate balancing act that you are undertaking, like walking on a high wire. If you focus too much on resource building then you aren't completing the objective. But if you aren't building resources then you have no way at all to protect the captain. I think Caz Game Design have done an excellent job building out a foundation that the game can grow from, and everything from a fundamental stand points works incredibly well! There are also 2 other maps currently available, with other game modes like PvP. In its current state, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the purchase of the game for $15, unless you are wanting to beat the curve and possible price increase as more work goes into the game. This isn't to say the game is bad, but it does definitely need some more work into before I would comfortably pay that price. The tutorial itself I think would be a huge bonus, and maybe even indicators that identify items if you hover over them. The icons are hard to differentiate so I was having troubles at first figuring out which resource I needed to focus on. I also wasn't too thrilled with the AI pathing of the enemies. It was a regular occurrence that I would be in third-person, stabbing an enemy as they are trying to walk by to fight an archer a good 30-50 feet away, ignoring my entire existence. Along with that, fighting isn't as entertaining as I wanted it to be. The idea of being able to switch from RTS to being your hero is immersive and such a solid idea, but when the battle animations aren't there, it throws all of that immersion out of the window. If I stab a person with my weapon, they should react in some sort of way but the animations are stiff, not much sound effect to it either. If they can work on the battle area to make it more fun, that would be enough to switch me to recommended for the price honestly. The game isn't bad, just not where I want it right now. But that's why early access exists. The early access version of The Rebellion does a good job of showing off the strong foundation it's being built on, and highlights the extreme amount of potential they have moving forward! Early access is planned for 2 years, so I would look forward to revisiting after a few updates to see what has changed!

A HOT MESS of a game. Videos do not match the game. Cant recommend.

This game is very refreshing in a world full of wave survivals/ RTS games. This game is a challenge. i love that it combines structure building as well as defense, without being overly complicated. I can equip my soldiers with different weapons to help survive the increasing difficult waves, while utilizing different tactics to win. Resource management is key to production. The game makes you work for the win. while the game has a way to go, the developers are extremely responsive on discord/ steam. The are constantly taking feed back while improving and releasing updates to the game. i would definitely recommend this game and watch how it grows.

It's a fun game but every single game that i've played thus far has crashed...