tetris but also feudalism. it is a very russian game in this way. would be cool if there was an incentive for t-spins to appeal to very lonely people such as myself.

the tetris effect i got from this game was suicidal ideation

I want to be really clear, I do love what this game is presenting as its loop. However, I find the loop after several hours to be extremely shallow. You are met with sheer cliffs of difficulty spikes between Acts, for which there is zero means for you to effectively "outsmart" your way into a win. It's planned failure to force you to return to the main menu so you can start again with a/several boosted cards at your fingertips that you unlocked naturally without even thinking about it simply for the fact that you were following what the facility says you should already be doing to maximize its effectiveness. I would hazard to say that if you weren't trying to do that every time regardless, you'd just be jeopardizing your entire run due to the RNG potential of just being served a dearth of pieces that simply won't mesh with what you need to build to win the fight on that map, and all for a silly bonus when you inevitably have to restart. I enjoy Tetris a lot. I tend to feel clever when I manage to make the lines, and the strategy behind laying things in the order you need to max them out in this game is fun. But I *hate* that I'm told to go back and do it all again just because you want to force me to pad my time out content-wise by creating artificially scaled walls. I will continue to play this game, but honestly it's largely because it allows me to do so between calls from work easily. Without changes, it's just not respectful of time though, so I don't think it's worth it if you're coming into this expecting to be able to outsmart the rogueliteification. You won't. It's just a more fancy Tetris with a mini-game at the end. So yes, I do recommend this game... but at the same time, I don't.

It is a card deck builder in disguise, I do not like deck builder games

Warning, this is long winded, I have a lot of thoughts. But tl;dr: Can't recommend. Feels like they came up with a cool, eye-catching idea of "City Builder Tetris Roguelike" and then struggled to come up with ways to expand upon it in interesting directions. If you care to know why, allow me to explain: - Most keywords don't explain what they do. - Tons of achievements are just padding, "Get thing X times", ect, so you can earn unlocks. - Said unlocks are uninteresting. Some are cool, but many are just a single card, or feel like they were hacked out of the base game to become unlockables and pad playtime. - Navigation is pointless. At forks, your options all offer the same 'type' of encounter. Some options also just suck way more than others, so you aren't even making a choice there. - Enemy encounters use the same cards as the players. It means every normal fight plays out the same. - You always fight the same boss each act. This means some cards and strategies that get countered by a boss will always be bad. - YOUR TETRIS PIECES ARE INCONSISTENT. This means you can set up a 4-line "clear" only to have all your line pieces buried at the bottom of the "deck" of pieces. If they're even there at all. The level of randomness was also a real sticking point for my experience. I know the game is trying to make me not play "normal tetris" and encourage me to make tough decisions that interact with its mechanics... but... 1) that feels awful, because you're only punished. 2) they put in a "Reload Save" button in the menu that lets you RESTART ANY ENCOUNTER. Let me ask you this: If you can easily replay any fight that doesn't go well due to bad RNG... then what's the point of even having the randomness at all? To waste my time until I get a good run-out? To top it all off, the higher difficulties are just horrifically challenging. and the RNG of getting randomly hard-countered or bad piece order only makes it more annoying. And perhaps that would be fine, people like hard challenges after all. But right near the end of the unlock tree you get the third playable faction, "The Order", which revolve around not one, but TWO "Super-Resources" in Faith and Crusaders, which SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM. (Other factions can unlock Faith, but they can't access it nearly as freely as The Order. Crusaders are Order faction unique though.) The Order feels so overtuned that it feels like a lot of the high-tier difficulty is balanced around it. But a Faith & Crusaders build is so powerful that it's the only build to go for. Anything that isn't that can't really compete, which overall results in a late-game where you're going for the exact same choices and build every time while fighting an uphill battle of annoying RNG. In summary: An interesting concept held back by a ton of unfortunate design decisions. Maybe there's a fun game in there somewhere, because the first two hours are actually pretty nice, but beyond that my experience grew more and more aggravating every time I played.

Northernlion sucks at this game

A great idea that is reasonably executed, ruined by its meta progression system in the following ways: 1) Rather than a generalized "experience" meter that increases after every run based on the success of the run, the game opts for a quest-based system. This encourages you to hunt for specific cards and exploit them to complete quests (at the expense of your runs), and provides absolutely no direct benefit for actually winning (outside of the first time, which completes a quest). Whether you die in Act 1 or on the final boss in Act 3, you do not gain any direct meta progression benefit unless you are completing quests. 2) The unlockable tree is huge but basically linear. No meaningful choices to be made, except for whether or not you want to interact with the system at all. Because: 3) Unlocking gameplay elements makes the game worse, not better. This is the central problem with the system. Given the sheer volume of things you unlock, the size of the item pool bloats extremely fast. Unlike Slay the Spire, where you will have multiple dozen opportunities to add cards to your deck during a run you're only going to get 4 or 5 chances per act in Drop Duchy. So unlocking things dramatically decreases your ability to get impactful or synergistic cards, meaning that the game is punishing you for interacting with the meta progression system. And the more that you interact with it, the more cards you unlock, so the more the game punishes you. Even before you're 10 hours in, the item pool becomes so large, and the opportunities to select cards so limited, that it all just feels like a slot machine. Meanwhile, what does a successful run even get me? Either nothing (because I didn't play the way the quests wanted me to play), or an even more bloated item pool. I had a great time for the first few hours, but I'm already at the, "Why am I playing this, again?" stage, and probably won't return to the game.

I found myself forcing myself to like this, but I can't. The game play is not addictive although it was fun for about 20 minutes. The concept is highly creative but in the year 2025, I can't justify the price for a game of Tetris. It is also not rewarding to complete runs as most roguelites with the strategy aspect being mostly what force has the larger number of troops. I often find my troop number to be significantly lower than the enemy, and it is not due to my playstyle, but in what tiles the game offers, without buffs or run modifiers. When you lose a game, the number of enemy troops subtract from your reserves (50 Reserves - 25 Enemy= 25 Reserves) and you are granted a win. I apparently won by scraping by with 3 reserves, and the game gave me achievements. I hated it because I didn't get any dopamine besides the Steam achievement sound. But when you win, your friendly number of troops does not add to your reserve capacity (50 Reserves + 20 Friendly = 50 Reserves). It doesn't even replenish a depleted reserve (3 Reserve + 20 Friendly = 3 Reserve). The only way you can replenish is by paying coin which is stupid because the game is very obviously favoring the computer, not the user. The tutorial also has way too much reading like this stupid review. Summary; The game should be $5-$7 of a working man's money.

It is a decent game with extremely poor game design and systems. No mouse controls means that you have to learn key bindings and cannot play with mouse. Those same key bindings cannot be displayed on the play screen meaning that you have to pause, look at a sub menu, pause again. It is very bad game design. Locking cards behind achievements feels really terrible to play. It like the worst F2P model. Most of the time you end starting a game and playing just for some silly quest that means you cannot even fight against the first area boss. Locked progression feels really bad to play. Getting new terrain while unlocking cards just doesn't feel good as a player. Having the same three bosses for the areas every single game gets boring and repetitive very quickly. Most of the cards are very confusing and hard to understand as a player especially as you unlock more cards because the enemy gets more cards as you the player does. I find it really bad that you can only play around 15% of a game when you buy it and have to finish arbitriary quests to even experience the majority of the game. Basicly this is bad game design by making the game feel more expansive by locking content behind achievements (aka quests). Again, this has all the scumbag moves of a F2P game but requires you to do a bunch of busy works tasks to enjoy the game instead of spending extra money. Overall a very poor player experience.

I feel a little pained giving this game a negative review because conceptually it's a neat idea. It's a deckbuilder mashed up with Tetris: you collect a deck of buildings and can deploy up to 8 per level, which line up and fall Tetris-like alongside a number of terrain tiles, and some enemy buildings. Your buildings either generate resources or provide troops. How the buildings align with the terrain and other buildings determines how effective they are. At the end of each level, your troops fight the enemy troops. Your resources are used to upgrade your buildings and generally develop between battles. There is also a research component - you can research new buildings, technology cards that upgrade your abilities and more. So, where does it go wrong? A deckbuilder works because you can control your deck to create synergies, and deal with and adapt to what the game throws at you. The problem is that in this game the randomness is so high - what cards you get, plus the Tetris game. It fails on the side of making you too vulnerable to RNG. Ironically, it works better at the start than later on: as you research more cards there are too many options and the deckbuilding becomes more chaotic. At this point, you end up struggling just because it's too much luck rather than judgement whether you can make your deck work. It's a critical flaw for this sort of game.

mobile game with pc game pricetag

cool concept but not really funny

Leaving a positive review here, as is clearly a labor of love and I also dig the novel idea and twist on Tetris gameplay. But beware, that it's *that* kind of rogue-lite, where you grind to defeat the boss of stage #1. Then after you manage to defeat the boss of stage #1, you have to grind through stage #1 and stage #2 multiple times until you manage to defeat the boss of stage #2. Then rinse and repeat. It's just not fun for me, to add injury to the insult RNJesus is a bitch here. If the order of tiles is fucked in the tetris part, then you are fubar in that encounter. Is it a boss encounter? Tough luck, keep grinding, mate. I also sorely miss an undo button (at least once per battle). Is it a good game? Yes, but definitely not for everyone.

Its inventive in its spin on tetris, idle music is nice, but i do not understand where the fun is supposed to be in this game, its like its missing an entire major feature that adds the excitement factor.

Good tetris rip off mechanics. Unfortunately you can have the best run in the world which can be totally ruined by being unlucky in how the random blocks are given to you in a single combat. Very limited strategy available to handle those situations. Boils the game down to feeling like I might as well flip a coin.

The Tetris effect occurs when someone dedicates vast amounts of time, effort and concentration on an activity which thereby alters their thoughts, dreams, and other experiences not directly linked to said activity. The term originates from the popular video game Tetris. People who have played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time can find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf or the buildings on a street. They may see colored images of pieces falling into place on an invisible layout at the edges of their visual fields or when they close their eyes. They may see such colored, moving images when they are falling asleep, a form of hypnagogic imagery. For some, this creative urge to visually fit shapes together by organising and building shapes can be extremely addictive. - Wikipedia

I am addicted to roguelikes, I am addicted to deckbuilders...Do I like Tetris? Well now I do ^^ finally a game with very new, inventive mechanics of which you still get new ones even after hours of play. It is amazing, actually.

This is a fun little roguelike that is nice for when you want something chill to play. There's some cool mechanics, but not a whole lot of depth compared to most other popular roguelikes. A few of the major negatives are: The meta progression is quite weird. You pretty much have to lose runs or do multiple runs on the easier difficulties to unlock new stuff before tackling the harder difficulties. It's extremely hard to win on these without upgrading your faction and unlocking new cards first as they make a huge difference in how you play the game. Build diversity is a little meh. A few archetypes for each faction are extremely strong and push you into playing them almost every run. Others can be almost unplayable, so runs can feel very samey. Hopefully they continue to do some game balance and make some of the weaker builds more viable. I wish tile transformation was developed a little more. This is one of the coolest mechanics in the game in my opinion and I wish there were more interesting combos you could do. Right now you can drop an archer tower on fields to recruit troops, then drop a farm on top to recruit even more on top of that, but that is about as far as it goes. I wish there were crazier ways to use these mechanics as I think it would add more skill expression. Similarly, I wish there were more ways to abuse enemy units. Right now the goal with most enemies is to make sure that under no circumstances can they get their recruitment bonus off. This is especially true on higher difficulties as the bonuses are insanely good if they go off and any reward for you is never worth it. I wish there was some more risk-reward here where you could set up enemies in a way that you actually got something off of it if done right instead of it always being a pure negative. As long as you're not expecting something like StS I think you can have a lot of fun though. Hopefully the devs come out with some DLC that expands the content a little more.

its like Catan board game combined with Tetris mechanics and deck building.

One of the most innovative strategy games in recent times, if you want me to sum up this game then it is a roguelike Tetris land and deck builder game. The gameplay is about you following a roguelike path where you get randomized events be it choosing between branching paths that can contain area that may or may not have enemies, then there are options to choose between opportunities to get certain resources or trade them or getting your own cards for your current deck, and then finally there are 3 boss levels you have to pass to progress or beat the game. Then when you get into an area or level that's where the Tetris land and "base building" gameplay elements kicks in, you have to build your land which comes in various traditional and non traditional "Tetris blocks" rows by rows, aside from land blocks then there's also your productions and military "buildings" which also comes in the shape of "Tetris blocks" to gather your resources and your troops, if there are enemies on that level then after you finished building the land in that level you'll have to play some sort of a combat between you and the enemies troops. Both you and your enemies troops are gathered by exploiting various elements of the map and various alignments between buildings, and the biggest twist is that you also the one who has to build your enemies troops by placing their buildings in the same map that you play in concurrently with your own buildings, this add another layer in the strategy. And don't forget the roguelike element as well where you can only unlock more maps, more powerful abilities by collecting and spending points after each run. All those elements combines surprisingly well and the game is pretty addicting for those who enjoys roguelike strategy games. Audio and visually the game exudes somewhat cozy vibe albeit nothing really stand outs but they serves the game nicely... The game supports 21:9 resolution out of the box so that's a plus for me (because to this day with indie and lower budget games you never have any guarantee for it)... And that's it, a really solid game for it's price and perhaps deserves more exposure than it currently enjoys by the virtue of it being this unique.

Too complex with way too many annoying instructions. Didn't realize I hate tetris so much.

First boss feels horribly random sometimes you can't win no matter what you do because you get the tiles in a terrible order and they don't fit

Funny

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☑ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☑ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☑ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☑ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☑ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☑ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☐ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☑ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ 4 / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☑ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10

not actually fun, bad mechanics and poor core design. Refunded.