Empires in Ruins Reviews

I must admit the game is fantastic: intriguing plot, interesting characters and lovely game mechanics, and of course fantastic music that so well emphasizes the atmosphere

the only good thing about this bugged crap is that with its 0 graphics, it does not take a lot of time to reload after it crashes

I think anybody who enjoys tower defence games will get a kick out of this. It's nicely presented with clear graphics and a clean, easy to understand user interface. There's a strategic game to tie the TD battles together that is rather more complex than I'd expect for this genre: a bit early for me to tell how good this side is yet but there's plenty to do and the tutorial is fairly detailed. I honestly don't play enough tower defense to really critique how it stands up to the better examples of the genre but the general production quality here is quite high for such a small studio. The dialogue doesn't take itself at all serious but is nicely written: I particularly like the grimy, foul mouthed, obnoxious main character you play (makes a change from sappy, girl-men heroes) and the supporting cast prop him up suitably. More to come as I've dug a bit deeper.

I wish I could give a separate thumbs up and thumbs down for the two parts of this game. The strategic province management side of things is well-written, has great art, and reasonably engaging gameplay. The tower defence side had much worse art and much less impressive gameplay that didn't really innovate on a genre that has way too many samey entries. Auto-resolving the tactical battles to avoid the boring tower defence generally resulted in my guys getting massacred, so I had to slop my way through them instead. Until I realized I wasn't having fun and just ended things. I wish I could recommend. The strategic level is really very innovative. It's just too bad it was yoked to underwhelming tower defence combat. Swap out the existing TD combat for something else, and you'd have a Total War style contender.

DISCLAIMER: I started play this little gem since the closed alpha, so I have more than 100 hrs of play time. This game has 3 layers of gameplay in it: Tower Defense (the battles), 4X (Like Civilization), RPG (moral choices). Don’t think that it’s the usual TD game: it’s not a “place towers and spam units”. A single sapper can blow up the 80% of one of your towers. Workers can repair them but you need to manage when order them to do it. (If they will be killed they respawn in a couple of seconds, but a perfectionist player don’t want to lose even a single second). Towers can be upgraded on damage, rate of fire and range. Also specialized towers can be unlocked and built. This game feature a tower with Hot Air Ballon for strike the trolls from the sky. The enemies can attack by land, air and water. Can dig tunnels and put in place basic strategies to cripple your defenses. Do not ignore scout reports. And do not rush the wave. Expecially at the hard difficult, a single wave can be your defeat. The 4X and the RPG layer will put you in the shoes of Sergeant Hans Heimer who has the order to recapture an entire reign made of provinces. In a turn based map you will manage provinces, level up your character, unlock abilities, research more than 100 tecnologies to power up your towers and your armies. Hang a traitor or bribe him? More troopers to the guards (less rebellion) or more to the army (easier battles)? Be sadic or be kind? Suffocate revolts while securing your back supply lines. 3 levels of difficult from easy to hard, an awesome and detailed tutorial, a campaign and a sandbox, unique battlefields with resources to gather and natural obstacles to use in advantage to fight the enemies. Technical side, the game is very stable. It runs fine on a old pc with an Nvidia GTX460. Still no graphic options but they will arrive soon. It has the vsync so no risk to burn the gpu with more than 200 fps. The only fire will be the fire of your ballistas against the enemies. The Developer is very active and present on Twitter, Discord and Steam Community. It’s an early access title just because it still lack some parts of the gameplay. But it’s already perfectly playable and already can assure you dozens and dozens of hours of fun.

Empires in Ruins is an incredible game. There is way more to take in and analyze than one might realize at first glance and I definitely advise that you really try to dive deep when you get into this excellently crafted game. Addressing the voice acting and audio- I love the no-holds-barred attitude the developers used when building this thing. I won't quite any of the lines specifically but you can certainly tell they loved writing the dialog and recording the lines. There is a particular 'adult' flavor to this game's storytelling and narrative that taps into the cynical and down-to-earth nature of your innermost thoughts. On top of that- the fact that this type of game has a narrative and story is actually incredible. Throughout play I am constantly reminded of "Stronghold" (the first one- from way back) and I think that's an absolute plus. Regarding difficulty- this game delivers. I find that I am able to jump in and have fun with the lower difficulty items quite easily, and also am challenged with the ever increasing and ramping difficulty-based objectives in a way that is constantly pushing me to get just a tiny bit better. I have found that my favorite way to play this game is with the repeatable skirmishes because I can rapidly try out different build and deployment styles- trying different techniques to accomplish the goals and determine what works. I really, truly, feel like I am afforded an opportunity to explore my own creative solution to the conflicts, within the confines of the gameplay design, and love the feeling I get as I overcome the challenges. The story and overworld design that exists is a shocking shift in the design of the game from what I expected at first seeing the game and have to say it leaves a rather positive impression. This feels like a really fascinating mix of Tower Defense, RTS, RPG, and Kingdom Manager that had to have been built by people that appreciated the early '00s gameplay experiences to bring this together. There's some very cool feeling throwback to things like Heroes of Might and Magic. I think overall that I love this game. It kicks my butt, and there are some rough edges in the overall design-- but if you remember that this is an indie endeavor and is bringing in an absolutely astonishingly large amount of design elements into one (cohesive) package... it is just jaw-dropping in its execution. I have watched this game grow and change as the developer(s) have continued to work on it and have to say the community engagement is incredible. I have nothing but respect for how hard they're working on this project. One example of the positive response they provide to the community is an anecdotal experience: I (unprovoked) sent a list of probably 15-25 different 'complaints' (things that I thought needed to be fixed / tweaked / tightened up) and the developer immediately responded to discuss what I brought up, ask some opinions, and subsequently get to work on addressing these (minor- basically non) issues. This is a great game and you will definitely get lost in it. I only have about 13 hours in it right now (I don't game a whole lot right now because of life things) but I know this will be a staple in my regular gaming regimen for years to come as it just has an awesome soul and super engaging (and challenging) gameplay design.

Edit: The developer is super chill, and is looking to patch out the bugs soon. This is still a hard game with hit-or-miss writing and an imperfect UI, but serious props to anyone who can indie dev something this complex. Check it out if there isn't something in the review that's a dealbreaker for you. This is a very "yes, but..." recommendation. Empires In Ruins is a thing I should like. It's a tower defense with a 4x strategy layer, and where you can econ yourself into an easier TD situation, or TD yourself out of a bad economy. Unfortunately, Empires' mechanics are a bit of a jangly, stumbling mess. I can't tell how much of this is intended---as the game puts an emphasis on imperfect information and incompetent, disloyal underlings---but gameplay flits back and forth between neat and engaging and janky and frustrating. Here's an example: The game board is a map of provinces which you slowly spread across. Each province has its own upgrade tree of structures as well as a province level. The structures provide things like food for the province's population, or resources for you. You can only directly build structures in the province you've parked your headquarters in; for everywhere else you need to appoint a governor and give them general directions for what kinds of upgrades to build. Except...they don't follow them. I ordered a province to build food, there were food buildings available to construct, the construction queue was open, and the province started building a mine. Maybe this is intended. If so, it would be fine, except for the way food works. Province populations rely on food. If the available food decreases, the province starts starving and losing pop. If it loses enough pop, it loses a level and unbuilds a bunch of expensive and time-consuming structures. It also seems to be bad for morale. However, provinces gain population as long as they're not starving. And food buildings are limited and province level locked. So you'll often have provinces that are at max food, gain a population, start starving, lose a population and morale, gain a population, start starving, etc. And heaven help you if you're foolish enough to increase a province's level without having a full on economic crash-cart on standby. The level goes up, the province's food demand goes up, it immediately starts starving like crazy, and you have to race the next several food upgrades before it de-upgrades itself. And all this is assuming that you don't get a string of random-rolled events that lower food or lower pop or de-upgrade key buildings for you. The tower defense game layer is less janky, but it revolves around the idea that enemy units can destroy your towers very easily. In normal mode, doing so removes all of your towers' upgrades. In easy mode, it simply costs a butt ton of resources to rebuild. Tower destruction isn't preventable in many cases. Fliers, on death, putter forward a seemingly random number of pixels before exploding. This means you need to set out some low cost towers way ahead of your formations to act as spoilers. Speaking of towers, better hope you research the right ones by chance---since the information on what they do is hidden behind the clunky UI. And honestly, a *lot* of Empires' information is hidden behind the clunky UI---or just straight up not included. When I started my first campaign, I played on normal. No word from the game on what that entailed. Turns out: higher enemy unit health, worse luck with random events, fewer skill points per level, lower starting skill points, fewer resources at the start of maps, and probably a lot of other elements I haven't been able to pinpoint yet. This led to my scuttling my first campaign five hours into the run, when it became clear I'd backed myself into an unwinnable state. Empires is an autosaver, and it plays slow, and it's *very* easy to accidentally go into a terminal spiral, so be ready to delete at least one campaign save partway through. Playing on easy helps, but it doesn't cure any of the stuff I talked about above. On top of that, the game's writing is...okay at best. Its main character in an antihero living in a crapsack world, and he just wants to drink himself to death, but he's been put in charge of a reconquest for political reasons. That's not a bad setup, but it requires a bit of a deft touch, and Empires' touch is, uh... cackhanded. I'm using that word choice deliberately, because Empires *really* likes talking about defecation. It does it almost constantly---both as an attempt at humor and to remind the player that this is a grim world. Neither approach really works. Now, I haven't cleared the game yet, so there may be issues or bright spots I haven't encountered yet. I'll update this review as I go. At the moment, I think there's the sparkle of a gem in here, but someone dropped it in the outhouse and you have to go fishing for it with your hands. Edit: I think there are some actual bugs. For example, when I go to set my battle board, sometimes everyone turns into clones of the same guy. Also I have a province that has structures it can build and that can be set to active construction, but when I set it to active it simply stops producing resources and doesn't build anything. 2nd Edit: More bugs! "Get Volmja to 50% authority or happiness" glitched out. I'd gotten it over 50% authority, it remained over 50% authority, but then the objective de-cleared itself. Moving my headquarters there unstuck it. This seems to be an unintended primary function for moving the headquarters: unglitching provinces. 3rd Edit: Wrapped up the last battle at the end of chapter three. The loading screen going back from the battle to the main map was a bit long, so I tabbed out and back in and the game had set itself into some sort of default state. All provinces were unlocked, my resources were all set to 1250, my objectives had updated but couldn't be accessed. I killed the program without letting it save, but this might have borked my run. (It did not, but I did end up with Schrodinger's Headquarters for a bit, as it was traveling between provinces when the chapter ended and the game got Very Confused.) 4th Edit: "Build two levels of infrastructure in Rumplitz." I have. I've also cleared all enemy provinces, and this is the only objective remaining on my board. Is the very last thing in the game glitched? Or do I have to wait for a random event to increase its food supply so I can get it to tier 3? (Edit: solved the problem by upgrading my neighboring province of Kreet.)

Empires in Ruins is a mix between a 4X strategy and tower defense game, which surprisingly blends pretty well. There are in total 3 game modes right now. The arcade mode offers currently 26 maps, just select one and you have instant tower defense action. (more maps to come) In the campaign / story mode you follow the story of sergeant Hans Heimer and his army during the Western Marches campaign. You have the ability to research new towers, upgrades for your towers, upgrades for your workers and soldiers as well as researching new buildings. You can also spy out other provinces and conquer them while trying to manage your provinces and overpower rebellions.(Research and development are tied to campaign chapters) In sandbox mode you are not following any storyline, and you are free to conquer the world map as you please with all mentioned features above. The game offers a beautiful artstyle and an awesome soundtrack. Totally recommending this game.

EDIT: In addition to giving a very chill response to my review, I noticed that they'd turned around a patch in under twelve hours tweaking some numbers, seemingly explicitly prompted by my feedback. That's worth big points in my mind, and while not enough to switch my vote, keep in mind while reading that the bits related to autoresolution and research times have been remedied. :) I'm always reluctant to give a thumbs down to the work of small studios, as reviews can really make or break one or two man projects that have consumed years worth of effort. None the less, after I finished Empires in Ruins, I realized the level of negativity I was feeling merited such a review. This game is unusual blend of genres, featuring essentially three components: a 4X/city builder, a tower defense battle mode, and essentially a visual novel that provides the narrative and branching paths. Unfortunately, all of them are lacking. The 4X bit, while it technically features exploration via the espionage system, but it's pretty muted by the fact that only 3-4 new provinces will be unlocked and open for exploration at any given time. Expand and exploit are better, with building out city growth and infrastructure, but this is stunted somewhat in that you can only directly control development in the province your headquarters are situated in. Everywhere else, you appoint "officers" to govern, though you may not have enough of these to cover everywhere. Officers can be given broad priorities, which is mostly sufficient as the construction options are pretty limited, but there are some kinds of buildings that they will not build, ever. The tower defense portion is pretty standard, though it's kind of amusing that you have the enemy coming to you even during offensives; the game pokes some fun at this, in fact. There are three primary kinds of towers, which can be taken down branching paths to upgrade/specialize them, but for the most part they're pretty standard fair. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect is that there are four different resources you utilize, only one of which, Gold, is acquired via kills. The others, Wood, Stone, and Iron, have a small base income, but mostly require the construction of special buildings to generate them. There's not too much distinction between the three; by and large, they're all called for in similar amounts, with the only real distinction being that each one requires specific terrain to build the generators. Not every map provides these in symmetrical distributions, though, and on some, the best I could do for some of those resources would be one building; in one memorable case, none at all. for one of the resources. This mostly just proves frustrating, as you're essentially rate limited by whichever resource happens to have the fewest sites. Every province has unique maps to battle across, and there is some initial tension as you're not certain what new enemies might pop out of where. This suspense quickly wears off, though, as you'll likely find yourself replaying certain maps over and over again, as trades can often happen at the front lines. This mastery is made extra important by the inclusion of flying enemies, which can do immense damage to your HQ and defenses, and there's no way to know what paths they will end up taking. I often found myself losing the first round on a new map because I had not spent precious resources guarding a certain angle sufficiently to stop the soon-to-be bombings. Fortunately, the game does have an autoresolve feature, though the odds it gives you feel a bit wonky. In the early game, without much research, I tended to have better luck autoresolving most fights, but later on it swings the other way, with fights that the autoresolver said I had a 5% chance being pretty easy to win manually. For me at least, this made me feel pressured to handle most fights that weren't overwhelmingly in my favor, which tended to lead to a great deal of map repetition and tedium. A brief note on research, because I'm generally a tech heavy player. Nothing too unusual here either, unlocking small +% upgrades and new branches or special abilities for your towers. The research is gated by chapter in the story, and while I completed all of the options for the earlier chapters often well before concluding them, the time required ballooned massively for the later ones. I had wanted to max out research before heading into the final fight, but this took a *lot* longer than it took to get into position for that fight, The enemy was relentless in attempting to push me back from their single remaining province, and somehow muster immense forces to do so, which lead to a great deal of repetative manual fights for the bordering provinces, as the autoresolver was only rarely giving solid chances. The VN part.... well, I'm not sure quite what I was expecting going in, but suffice to say, the protagonist has exactly three personality traits: having zero respect for anyone around him, including and especially subordinates; being an alcoholic; and, having severe intestinal issues. While there's some conspiracy-oriented plot going on, the vast, vast majority of dialog in the game is just said protagonist expressing or referencing those three traits, sometimes in combination. It's not really dark humor so much as merely scatological and rather juvenile. There are the roots of some neat ideas here, and the blend of genres has potential, but early access or not, Empires in Ruins seems pretty far removed from being worth your money or your time. FURTHER EDIT: My evaluation was based on the story mode, but the game does feature a sandbox mode that might dodge some of the above complaints. If you're on the fence about the game, do consider that as well.

Absolutely love this project! Dr Hogan and H&R have done a super job creating the perfect blend of 4x tower defense, & city management. Politics, spies, Nothing was left out. Even in early access the game is pretty damn stable! If you're a tower defense fan you'll love it! I've played several of the demo's over the last year and worked with the team. Discord is your friend if you need help or advice for strategy. "Nominated for Game of the Year"