The developer has a very interesting resume. He developed the Button Hunt games and Smoking Kills on Kongregate. Achilles015.
Reed Erlandson has his name pop up first on search results. I watched a bit of some of his videos on his youtube dev channel, https://www.youtube.com/@coastbop.
Review of the game : The game is not smooth. It uses a lot of computer resources for being an unity game. On his dev video blog, there were a lot of unity 'basic' assets. The current version looks better.
Many of you may know about Hexarchy. Hexarchy is an indie civ-like game. It uses several unity assets but it is less glaring. Compared to Rogue Hex, Hexarchy is a more polished experience, runs well, has good UI... Hexarchy is a more competently made product by about the same team size as Rogue Hex.
Hexarchy on full release was a fully made product. Rogue Hex has an issue with the UI where some underlined keywords ( the same as in card games ) do not have a corresponding entry. If you chain more than 3 nested tooltips, the next tooltip had inverted text for me for some reason.
The vision of the game looks good. It may be better to check the game later when the performance problems are ironed out. The game uses Midjourney for almost all the art that is not an Unity asset. The icons for the research tab uses public domain classical paintings.
Reed Erlandson is an interesting character. It is worthwhile to check the developers behind the games.
For the value proposition, I will compare this game to two others. Hexarchy is a far more complete and feature-rich than Rogue Hex. The same goes for Orbii Universo. Rogue Hex is priced at 26 CAD the same as these too. It would be more reasonable to price it to 50-75% for the value provided. I think 15 bucks or a bit higher might be fair. However, the unit sales for these types of games is low, a higher price would not be 'greedy' from the developer.
One might spend money if he is interested in the game, value proposition or wants to support the developer.
Critical steam comment : +++ The game is interesting as a light-weight take on a Civilization style game, but also an interesting experiment in use of AI.
There's appeal in AI enabling a single (or small) dev-team to produce a small game at a cheap price. Maybe cheaply made is fine, if it's a cheap, and decent game.
Well, that's the issue.
It's not a cheap game.
This is before getting into the separate debate about AI-ethics and artistic labor: AI is used to produce a game more cheaply here, but ultimately it's release price is 14-16 ish Euro/GBP/Dollars. That's just ridiculous.
On top of that, the “surprise 1.0” release is undercooked: Game lacks any graphics settings except resolution No keybind settings and generally few hotkeys The game is also a CPU-hog, even when idle on a turn (given how simple it is, it has no business using so much CPU in relatively idle game situations: it'll jog your CPU as much as civ6 on a large map midgame save). +++
I had same experience with game using all my computer resources.
+++
If the game gets ironed out, one might be willing to spend money on the product. The developer is likeable but at the current state, the product is 'trash'. The developer worked on a free reading/math app for kids financed by UK which is very commendable. He worked on other projects of public interest.
There is English support via the English interface and English audio.
Reed Erlandson has his name pop up first on search results. I watched a bit of some of his videos on his youtube dev channel, https://www.youtube.com/@coastbop.
Review of the game :
The game is not smooth. It uses a lot of computer resources for being an unity game. On his dev video blog, there were a lot of unity 'basic' assets. The current version looks better.
Many of you may know about Hexarchy. Hexarchy is an indie civ-like game. It uses several unity assets but it is less glaring. Compared to Rogue Hex, Hexarchy is a more polished experience, runs well, has good UI... Hexarchy is a more competently made product by about the same team size as Rogue Hex.
Hexarchy on full release was a fully made product. Rogue Hex has an issue with the UI where some underlined keywords ( the same as in card games ) do not have a corresponding entry. If you chain more than 3 nested tooltips, the next tooltip had inverted text for me for some reason.
The vision of the game looks good. It may be better to check the game later when the performance problems are ironed out. The game uses Midjourney for almost all the art that is not an Unity asset. The icons for the research tab uses public domain classical paintings.
Reed Erlandson is an interesting character. It is worthwhile to check the developers behind the games.
For the value proposition, I will compare this game to two others. Hexarchy is a far more complete and feature-rich than Rogue Hex. The same goes for Orbii Universo. Rogue Hex is priced at 26 CAD the same as these too. It would be more reasonable to price it to 50-75% for the value provided.
I think 15 bucks or a bit higher might be fair. However, the unit sales for these types of games is low, a higher price would not be 'greedy' from the developer.
One might spend money if he is interested in the game, value proposition or wants to support the developer.
Critical steam comment :
+++
The game is interesting as a light-weight take on a Civilization style game, but also an interesting experiment in use of AI.
There's appeal in AI enabling a single (or small) dev-team to produce a small game at a cheap price. Maybe cheaply made is fine, if it's a cheap, and decent game.
Well, that's the issue.
It's not a cheap game.
This is before getting into the separate debate about AI-ethics and artistic labor: AI is used to produce a game more cheaply here, but ultimately it's release price is 14-16 ish Euro/GBP/Dollars. That's just ridiculous.
On top of that, the “surprise 1.0” release is undercooked:
Game lacks any graphics settings except resolution
No keybind settings and generally few hotkeys
The game is also a CPU-hog, even when idle on a turn (given how simple it is, it has no business using so much CPU in relatively idle game situations: it'll jog your CPU as much as civ6 on a large map midgame save).
+++
I had same experience with game using all my computer resources.
+++
If the game gets ironed out, one might be willing to spend money on the product. The developer is likeable but at the current state, the product is 'trash'.
The developer worked on a free reading/math app for kids financed by UK which is very commendable. He worked on other projects of public interest.