Valley of Tribes

Glitches and leaves battle.

Fantastic free to play game. Has ranked, balance is perfect, 1v1 me

6/10 Minimalistics tower-defense/Dota TLDR: despite absence of a tutorial or any kind of onboarding, the system here is so simple that you can learn it in a couple of battles. Gameplay involves a bit of strategizing but there is just too little meat and too much waiting to keep up interest Good: + free + nice fantasy-themed music + 3 factions which play slightly differently due to unit types. Also, by winning or losing battles, you accumulate exp and unlock some faction-specific bonuses So-so: +/- graphics are pixelated which would be fine for an indie game. Yet the purpose of some of the buildings is unclear from their looks (mushroom faction's turrets). Also, the overly saturated palette is a bit straining for the eyes +/- no onboarding. E.g. it took me a while to understand that you only can build (new buildings or unit) during the night phase, and the units appear only when the day starts. Or that the 11-cost spell will only shoot during the day. The icon actually looks like a building so I was certain it's some tower you need to place, and it will destroy an enemy building every day +/- it's just one fixed map. With the same optimal setup of turrets and money-producing buildings over and over. Had this game been less gfx-depended (e.g. if it used just some kind of minimalistic gfx or something in space setting) there could be more varied maps, maybe even randomly generated ones. Maybe even with 4+ participants. +/- no variety of turrets, no turret upgrades... Just 1 economic building. Just 2 unit types +/- units can't attack turrets. I guess they should be able to at least attack the turrets that the enemy deploys. The 2 mini-turrets could just be part of the castle itself (since they can't be destroyed) Bad: - waiting for the end of the night is pointless. There should be a "Ready!" button, and if all players have pressed it, the night should end. Similarly, something like a "fast forward" button for the daytime, at least when you're playing against bots. Since the player can't give any orders during those battles, there is no point in watching them over and over - the UI of deploying units is probably mobile-optimized? Placing 10+ snails takes way too much effort. Since there are 2 roads the units can go along (and, with more varied or randomly-generated maps, there could be even more), maybe there should be a button to just fix a direction, and then pressing the unit's button would add units to the build queue. Also, such scheduled units would better just appear outside of the castle (since you can't undo their production anyway) Somehow, this game doesn't feel finished. It's probably because of the somewhat careless visual impression and the small amount of content typical for prototypes, not published games. [table][tr][th][i]I'm a Steam curator, you can [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43946907-Friendly-Nerd/]follow me[/url][/i][/th][/tr][/table]