Dawnmaker

This is a great game, and I really wish I could recommend it, but it lacks any sort of nuance and depth. It's a ton of fun for the first few hours, but the gameplay gets stale pretty quickly. There isn't enough variance -- between levels, between characters, between runs. In this game, I can pick the strategy I'm going to use for the rest of the run before I play my first card, and from there it's just execution with barely any significant decisions. The really good deckbuilders (e.g. Slay the Spire) force you to make lots of choices which have meaningful impact on the rest of the run. Dawnmaker doesn't do that. Here are some things I'd like to see. If some of these are added, or really any other fun mechanics that break up the monotony, I'd be a lot more interested in playing this game some more and a lot more likely to recommend it. 1. Variance between levels. This is far and away the biggest problem. Every stage is a big flat plain with mostly buildable tiles and a scattering of buildings (ruins, lighthouses, etc). Give me some variety. Give me a map where half the terrain is lakes or mountains and I have to prioritize when and where my buildings interact. Give me a big lake with some isolated islands. Give me a tiny map where I don't have enough room for everything and I need to destroy my low-tier buildings to make space in the lategame. If you're feeling really crazy, give me a map where some of the tiles change position every time I shuffle my deck. The way things currently stand, synergy bonuses between adjacent buildings are by far the strongest mechanic and badly in need of balance. Also, change the way the cards work in certain levels. Maybe make one resource more valuable sometimes. For example, give me a lush farming environment where agricultural production from farms and harvests is increased but there's a penalty to industry and activated buildings. How about a map where all building costs are doubled? How about a map where all [rock] costs are changed to [book] and vice versa? Some of these ideas might be terrible, and all of them would require some testing and balancing, but right now every level is too similar. And on a related note... 2. Variance between characters. For starters, give us more unique cards and some unique buildings for each character. There's some slight variation right now in the starting deck and building set, but it's not enough to matter significantly. You don't even need to design a lot of new buildings -- just take some of them out of the general pool and restrict their availability to one specific character. 3. Limit some broken combos. It's super satisfying the first time you get a big pile of distilleries and barns and restaurants and libraries and [that one building that gives you +1 action and +1 lightning for 4 books], but once you have it the rest of the game is just a bunch of mindless clicking. And when that's how every game goes, it's just not very interesting anymore. If each character only had access to a subset of the most powerful buildings, we'd have to figure out some different ways to win. Oh, and give us one character whose superpower is that she has access to all the buildings to keep all the ridiculous combos in the game, but balance her with a downside (or make her the easy / intro character). 4. Make lighthouses more impactful and/or necessary. More often than not, the best strategy is to completely ignore most of the lighthouses until the very last turn because the benefits they offer are not worth the cost. Maybe change the main hub upgrade so that e.g. from level 3+ the upgrade also requires at least 1 more repaired lighthouse. 5. Fix Exporter. In its current state, it's straight up broken. Either get rid of it entirely or nerf it so that it can't give so much money. Give it a cap where it stops working after generating 10 coins, or steadily increase the cost of using it. Right now, you can get a gamebreaking amount of coins from it, and the process of doing so is not even especially fun. Ok, that's it for now. I would absolutely love to come back and update this review to a positive one someday, so I hope this criticism is taken in the spirit in which it was intended. Cheers.

Solid little deckbuilder/citybuilder/roguelike with mechanics that genuinely push you to do better. Nice soundscape and beautiful art really help keep it engaging as well.

A very fun deck-builder. Works really nicely and definitely scratched the strategy itch.

Unfortunately, there are severe performance issues on macOS.

Fine game. Quite pretty. Would be awesome with more variety and different decks, maps, regions, etc. More stuff, essentially. Not that there isn't enough here for what it is. It's just, for me, the replayability isn't quite there. Even during the first run, things were beginning to feel a little same-y. Everything gets harder, but the strategy remains the same.

This game really gets the "just one more turn" vibe right. It's not really a city builder, it's much more of a puzzle-solving style of gameplay. I beat the first 2 campaigns, and I can see what tactics the third one needs but it takes a level of game-knowledge and risk-taking that I don't really want to develop. It's hardest at the start, when you lack cards/resources, but as you get to harder maps then you should have built up a deck tailored to your strategy and the final level should be pretty easy.

A very nice deckbuilding game where the path to victory is many and the game is relentless. For any boardgame fans and those who like resource managment and action economy system, this is a must try.

Very engaging puzzler. I wouldn't call this a city builder- you do not manage population, jobs, housing, etc. You place buildings via an rng progressive card system into tiles with strategic positioning to increase value. The challenge is good, and the variety of cards, buildings, maps imply large amount of replayability. This is one that has caught in the 'one more turn' mentality. Turns are very quick.

Turn based strategy game and deck building. Takes a minute to get the hang of, but it's exactly what I need when it comes to a chill strategy game. The demo was sick!