Recent reviews by SeedyBee

The achievement hunter in me wanted to pick up another idle game for an easy win. Don't make my mistakes, I'm at 2500 hours and still have two left before I'm finally free.

There's very little content here even by idle game standards, but it still demands a lot of habitual "play" to progress. There's more that gets unlocked, but not a great deal.

The same "seasonal" event (the beer festival) has also been in effect for the entire time I've played, so I guess it is very much abandoned.

[Actually played for much, much longer, most my gameplay has been on Switch. Cross-saves are a wonderful feature though some achievements don't auto-unlock.]

Where to start with Hades? It's proven astonishingly popular even with people who don't normally like hack-and-slash gameplay; Dying is tied so closely to the progression of the game and story that each death is almost something to look forward to because it's where every inch of progress you make finally gets cashed in.
Also, while I'm far too much of a bonehead masochist to use it myself, there's a God Mode tucked into the options menu that isn't quite as game-breaking as the cheat codes of old but provides just enough of an extra incremental boost that ensures players who aren't ordinarily very good at action games can still experience the storyline without smothering the sense of adversity that makes an essential component of the narrative.

The writing itself is something to behold- if not just for its quality then for the sheer quantity. I'm over 200 runs deep and between the main story and the many side-stories, the game still seems to almost always have something new to show me with each death- to the point where I worry that more skilled players who complete the game in a reasonable amount of time might actually be missing out.

In short, Hades is a Roguelite that really does seem to be for everyone, regardless of ability or genre experience.

Humanity is long extinct under the weight of its own hubris, and Earth now belongs to the next species to try and tame the remains- the humble beaver. In Timberborn, you'll be establishing a colony of amphibious rodents in the remains of the droughted planet.
The core gameplay consists of citybuilding and workforce management, playing as kind of a hybrid of Tropico and Rimworld- if you like those, you'll feel right at home here.

Beyond the immediate "lumberpunk beavers" gimmick, there's plenty to sink your teeth into. The water physics are as deep and fluid as you'd hope for a game with dam-building at the core- beyond periodic droughts causing the river to dry up (and taking with it the water that you and your crops and the local trees rely on). You'll manage this by establishing dams and utilising natural reservoirs. I've deliberately used this to adjust the current to help power generation, and if you know what you're doing (or if you really don't), you can completely alter the depth and direction of a river. There is also dynamite- which I haven't yet unlocked but am sure I can definitely be trusted with.

The other interesting thing Timberborn brings to the table that I've not seen much of before is the ability to build certain buildings on top of each other. Obviously you'll need this for building bigger dams, but this essentially means that you can use regular buildings, platforms, and stairs to build a veritable jungle gym of scurrying pathways- expanding your colony while saving that horizontal ground space for precious farmland.


The game's only just hit early access with no roadmap and still needs plenty of polish (including adding some important things to the tutorial for genre newbies), but honestly I'm already very satisfied that my time and money have been well-spent this weekend.

The best dam city builder I've played this year.