dotAGE Reviews

I Have been playing for twenty hours, burned money on the dlc, and still haven't been able to go past one year. And yet it is a masterpiece.

comfy pixel strategy with good depth, charm, and balancing. Worth it.

I found this game during the free demo time whatever it was called. I was hooked right away. Gives me the “one more turn” of Civ and I love the little humor in the game.

Incredibly fun but incredibly challenging if you play on normal and above. Great humor, music, and surprisingly strategically deep. The randomness and changing research trees per run adds variety but also makes it a headache if you're like me and want to cultivate a winning strategy first before choosing other ones (the dev says he might provide an option to control this). Def a game to try out, and don't be fooled by the cuteness...it's a fight for survival.

great game, you will ilkely like this if you like colony sims and worker placement boardgames. the final seasons can be a slog with the sheer number to manage

Overall great game. I love city builders and I wasn't sure at first about this format but actually it's amazing. The pacing of this game is surprisingly good. I love the memories mechanic, it lets you play the first time without being overwhelmed with too many random new concepts. The pedia is extremely useful.

Incredible game with a surprising level of depth and charm. For me, it feels like a perfect balance of some of my favorite games like dwarf fortress and civilization with some fun unique additions. I highly recommend getting this game!

One of the best out here for roguelite+colonybuilder+resource-management lovers. Very unique, hard to compare to other games, same vibes as Against the Storm. Easy to play once you wrap your head around main mechanic, many variances for runs, fun metaprogression. Cute style, great performance, some UI weirdness, active dev. Easily one of my best game EvEr.

The game is very much an "abuse your mistakes" type of rogue-like. Successes don't negate anything wrong (I got 'rewarded' with more resource nodes for passing a health event, instead of anything clearing up the sick pips) while failures compound with your next event to make them fail. Not to mention a suspiciously negative RNG on your 'chance' to influence events. Either you get 100% good, or you fail most of the time.

This is a perfect combination of sim builder, city management and puzzle, as the game gets you to not just manage your resources, but do it strategically in response to impending "doom" events. The game always keeps you moving and adapting, planning several turns ahead to make sure you aren't blasted by the capricious fates. In order to avoid "fear" events, you'll have to stockpile "hope." In order to overcome "sickness" events, you'll have to shift your focus to "health." Most of these events can be predicted by your elder's use of prophecy, but if you neglect one of these domains for too long, you'll get a sudden, unforeseen "reckoning" event. Add to this, of course, the normal food management, tech trees, and seasonal dangers common in city management sims. One of the most creative aspects of the game, however, and the one that really adds a "puzzle" dimension, is the importance of building-placement. In order to optimize your village and its production, you'll want to make sure certain buildings are clustered together or adjacent, while others are not adjacent. It starts off relatively simple, but becomes fiendishly difficult as the game progresses towards the Apocalypse. Actually, if you know what you're doing and can stay on top of the demands, it's not too difficult (on normal), but the problems can really snowball if you make a critical error. It might have you pulling your hair out as you realize you don't have enough hemp to make leather to make cloaks to survive the winter, and you should have planned ahead fifty turns ago. Now you're starving because you had to re-task a dozen pips to burning a dozen little bonfires--and you failed the event anyway, meaning now in addition to have no food, half your village is iced over and your pips have become pipsicles, and you won't have enough resources to both unfreeze your village and prepare for the coming sickness event. It's that kinda game. You've been warned! But man if it isn't incredibly fun and addictive.