thesheeep
Arcane
Since a lot of people talk about They Are Billions right now, I was wondering how there is no topic about Rise To Ruins here.
There are pretty big similarities between those titles IMO.
While TAB offers direct control, RtR is more of a Settlers-like game with you as a god figure (including godly powers).
It is in EA since 2014 ( ), but really absolutely playable. Full of features and if there are bugs, I didn't find any.
Here's my Steam review:
There are pretty big similarities between those titles IMO.
While TAB offers direct control, RtR is more of a Settlers-like game with you as a god figure (including godly powers).
It is in EA since 2014 ( ), but really absolutely playable. Full of features and if there are bugs, I didn't find any.
Here's my Steam review:
tl;dr: A great and hard survival strategy/simulation lacking some rudimentary save feature.
Raise your settlement by building housings, lumberjacks, mines, fletchers, carpenters and loads of other utility buildings for any issue from feeding to healing to building roads.
Make sure you don't build too much or spread your villagers too thin or collapse is sure to follow.
There is a very strong Settler-like atmosphere here - but with a great UI that really helps to find your bearings.
Dangers? What dangers!
Of course, that alone would be far too easy. At the same time you will be attacked by monsters of varying danger levels - from the lowly headless zombies to ghostly spectres and fire-slinging elementals.
So you better raise walls and defenses (there are various towers, golem creators and guard recruitment stations) soon. While the first 2-3 days will see very little attacks, later on you will see large masses of mobs marching towards you, especially at night.
Any player of tower defense games will feel right at home in this aspect - the better your wall maze, the better off your town.
Of course, that would STILL be too easy. Have a meteor shower, or a lightning storm, or a blood moon (creating bloody slimes right in your base), or an eclipse (causing mobs to attack at daytime, too) or an earthquake...
All of these increase in intensity as you play longer and longer.
Of course, all of that would still be a bit easy. So you need to take the four seasons into account and prepare for them. Spring is just dandy. Summer is HOT, so your villagers will "overheat" and work slower (and your crops will grow slower). Autumn seems to have an increased catastrophe rate (earthquakes, etc.) but I may be wrong. Winter freezes over lakes and nothing will grow - if you didn't stock up water and food, you're done with.
Thankfully, to deal with all of that you are given some godly powers like throwing meteors, grabbing/dropping anything, summoning emergency golems, etc.
The graphics are charming, as is the music and the sound effects. More music tracks would be welcome, though. Good as they are, after a while they start becoming repetitive.
I can see only one real downside here:
The current rhythm of "play for a long time, then lose everything in the later stages" leads to you having to play the first year over and over again. Which is extremely annoying as it is very easy once you get the hang of it and have a working build order/strategy for the early game. After a while, it just feels like a waste of time, really.
This could be improved via save games.
Or create an automatic restore point of some kind, maybe at the beginning of the second year.
The longer you play, the less attractive is the prospect of doing the baby steps all over again each time.