Recent reviews by DarkChaplain

HuniePop is a game that I did not expect to actually enjoy. I considered it a gag game, something that people would buy to poke fun at friends, like they did with Bad Rats and Secret of the Magic Crystals over the years.
While I still believe that HuniePop will be very successful at that, boy was I wrong about its entertainment value and competence as a game. The writing is spot-on and the humor stellar, poking fun in all the right places, and toying with dating sim and nerd stereotypes.

The match-three gameplay is as you might come to expect from the genre, though rather than putting pressure on the player via timers, HuniePop limits the available turns. This turns a traditionally hectic, chaotic gameplay mechanic into something more calculated.

Since the match-three game is played during virtual dates with the female characters, this actually makes sense. At an actual date, you wouldn't be rushing about, but instead take care not to step onto your date's toes, or act like a fool.
The time-based pressure comes into the picture later on, when you are ready to take the girls home to your bedroom. And again, this decision works well once you consider what is actually happening behind the scenes. Playing this bedroom variation is exhausting, especially later down the line, as the difficulty increases with each successful date.

However, where the game shines the brightest is when it presents its very diverse cast of heroines. There is a date for every taste. The characters' lifestyles can be like night and day, and you are bound to grow fond of a few of them. I know I did.

Where it falls short, in my opinion, is in its directness. There really isn't much to do with the girls after you bed them. Yes, you can/should complete their gift lists (which takes a while) and unlock their complete stat sheets (which you will likely have finished by the time you get to the 4th date anyway), but there are no new events or CGs to earn past the first time with them in your bed. There is also no interaction between the girls, past the introduction scenes which overlap.

This is my biggest criticism. The introductions were amazingly fun to watch, and I really want more of that. Seeing the amount of promo-art for the game, with the girls in various locations, playing volleyball or sitting in the sauna, I cannot help but regret the lack of story-events. Just playing through the game and talking to the girls gave me plenty of ideas of what events I would like to see them in.

I hope this will be expanded on in the future, maybe via DLC. I know I would pay for more of HuniePop's brilliant writing.
As it stands, though, I have spent a magnificent amount of time on the game, and certainly got my money's worth.

Audrey is the best girl.

The PC Port is atrocious as of now. Not only did they not bother making localization files optional downloads (Steam supports selective downloading of localization files), and have you thus install 60 gigabytes (49gb download) onto your machine, but they also failed to provide any sort of graphical options beyond Windowed/Fullscreen modes. No VSync, no Anti-Aliasing. Additionally, the game's internal renderer is locked to 720p, and the game won't output anything but 720p. Fullscreen on an 1080p screen will thus either stretch/scale accordingly, or add black bars.
They have also failed to add audio options. There are no volume sliders at all.

On the Gameplay front, there's enough been said already. The game is excruciatingly linear, and chock-full of cutscenes. For comparison: If you played Final Fantasy X and considered it too linear due to the lack of global world map and directly connected areas, you'll hate XIII. It takes a good 15-20 hours of corridor walking to reach the point where it opens up a little bit. There is little to nothing to distract you from narrow corridors.

The combat system is shoving the Auto-Battle command down your throat right from the start. The command selects attacks and abilities based on dynamically calculated algorithms. Especially early on, where the characters are limited to one job, with one or two commands(!), the game turns into a simple "Press A to do stuff" simulator. The tactical element from previous Final Fantasy titles is almost completely lost as a result, as the game almost turns the player into a passive observer.

On top of this, the game attempts to "rate" the player's combat performance from 1 to 5 stars, based on how long it took them to win a battle. The rating affects the item drops, but even then a 5 star rating will not guarantee even common drops. I'd also like to point out that the target time, especially early on, is very generous, almost giving double the time you actually need to finish a battle with a 5 star rating.

Lastly, battles are completely isolated from one another. Where in previous FF titles you had to watch your HP carefully, and would take damage and negative status effects into the following battles, XIII instead heals the party to full health after a win. Wave-based engagements like seen in Final Fantasy X (most notably the tutorial section teaching you to pick targets wisely, or the Bevelle Marriage scene) do not stress you beyond the current, very short battle.

As for the story I will just say it is very, very convoluted and throws technobabble at the player for lack of better writing. The characters contradict each other and themselves at every turn, and make you shake your head in disbelief. At least the Japanese Audio will make their voices bearable, though.
Be prepared to read up on a lot of the game's terminology and background via the in-game Datalog to fully grasp the game's reasoning. Still, do not expect things to make complete sense.

Graphically, it still looks quite nice, with pretty effects being thrown around. The vast amount of pre-rendered cutscenes (18, if I count the game's video files) look gorgeous, even if the contents aren't making for a good story. If you enjoy eyecandy, you will get it, even though the resolution lock and lack of options are a big failure on Square Enix's part.

Overall, the pricetag reflects the game's quality. The mechanics and exploration are half-baked and too automated and controlled to satisfy an old franchise fan like me. The port is dreadful, and I would not recommend buying it until they at least offer a patch to add some basic settings for graphics and audio.

If you can't wait, though, please don't expect it to be up there with the franchise's gems and fan-favorites. It "innovated" on all the wrong areas, and neglected its core vision as well as the franchise's strongest point: Storytelling and Character Development. As such, XIII is a lukewarm JRPG at best, and a below-average corridor crawler at worst.

Having just finished the tutorial sections and story exposition parts of the first hour, I cannot speak for the whole game, but I felt it necessary to present my views after browsing the mostly negative Steam reviews on this game.

Yes, Deus Ex: The Fall is a mobile port. As such, it suffers from simplified gameplay, controls and mechanics, as well as voice acting and animations that cannot live up to the standards of the high-budget release that Human Revolution was.

However, it is definitely not as bad as people make it out to be. I can understand their disappointment, but this was never going to be a fully overhauled experience, but a port of the mobile version - and as such, it works.

Firstly, the game runs smoothly, and while the graphics options are limited to resolution, fullscreen/windowed mode and various degrees of Anti-Aliasing, lacking a Field of View setting, it does not look awful. Yes, you will recognize it for being a port, but it looks well enough.

What it struggles with are animations - especially during the many early cutscenes and dialogues. Characters look rather static, almost more so than in the original Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Gestures are rare, and overall the lack of life in the character models underlines the, in my opinion, biggest issue with the game: The mediocre voice acting.

Deus Ex: HR, outside of the main cast, ranged from acceptable to poor voice acting, but in The Fall, even the main characters have taken an obvious hit. Their lines are often delivered mechanically, or overdone, and don't match up with poses or expressions. What might not seem like a big issue on a smaller mobile screen quickly becomes disappointing on the bigger PC monitor and a proper sound system.
During the first few areas, you will find a bunch of audiologs, which are actually reasonably well done, however. This makes it especially odd that the story-dialogue between Ben Saxon, Jaron Namir, Anna Kelso and co feels flat.

Most sound effects I came across are directly copied from Human Revolution, so they are of reasonable quality. I have read about certain issues with sound effects or voices cutting out for some users, but have not experienced anything of the sort on my machine so far.
As for the music, I liked what I listened to up until now, with common themes from HR mixed with new tracks I might even prefer over the bigger title's soundtrack.

Now for the Gameplay; It suffers from its touchscreen origins, and there is nothing to be said otherwise. There is no jumping in the game, only contextual vaulting. No merry hopping around in The Fall. However, you get used to it easily, and the rest of the mechanics are fairly similar, if not the same, as in Human Revolution. There have been a few changes to the interface, though, which may need some getting used to.
The augmentations are pretty much the same as in the other game, as you might expect. I think Praxis Point requirements have been adjusted slightly, and the trees trimmed.
The dialogue system is still in, including the analyzer-augment - which I didn't get to use just yet, since all conversations so far were linear. Again, this is about an hour in, past the prologue sections.

The biggest change to the game would be the inventory / market. You can buy weapons, ammo, items, etc from wherever you are, provided you have the funds. This means you can stock up on cash, and then just pick and choose gear for the situation you are currently facing - got no EMP grenades to disable a robot? Spend 200 credits and you're ready to throw!
Personally, I think the idea is alright, but I would have liked to see limits to this system, or at least have it be more expensive than merchants found in the game.

For all its simplifications in the gameplay department, however, the world still feels like Deus Ex. The environment design seems quite alright, despite middle of the road textures for props. The atmosphere of HR is captured nicely, and ebooks, datalogs and emails are still all there, adding more lore to locations, characters and technology.

The game does follow up on the Deus Ex: Icarus Effect novel, but does a good enough job introducing non-readers to the characters and their motivations - though for obvious reasons, reading the novel first is recommended.

Please also be aware that The Fall was released as part one of the story, but so far, there hasn't been any word on a continuation. As far as I heard, the ending might disappoint due to a cliffhanger. Considering Square Enix/Eidos's plans for the franchise, though, this should get addressed fairly soon, with a new PC game in the works already, and James Swallow writing more stories based in the universe.
It should also encourage that a screen accessible from the main menu also made it from Mobile to PC, proclaiming that a continuation is supposedly happening, and the Pacifist achievement refers to the game as "Part 1". I am hopeful for a continuation.

Should you expect a big blockbuster like Human Revolution? No, not at all. This neither had the budget nor the time to become as impressive. For what it is, however, it is a fine Spin-off to the franchise, which fans should appreciate, once they lower their expectations and demands to a reasonable level, in accordance to the game's price and scope. It is a slice of Human Revolution, for a fifth of the launch price of said tripe A release. Considering that, I can't be too mad at the game.

I just played my first 40 or so minutes and reached the Ash Desert, which is the 3rd world after the intro section. My god is it a wonderful game!

To put it in perspective: I usually, for almost every single game, play in windowed mode. So I actually went to the options menu, set the game to windowed, and started playing. Even before leaving the Void, I had already switched back to 1080p fullscreen and got rid of all external distractions to best take in the beautiful art direction, soundtrack and voice.

The setting, while rather depressing in many ways, actually also feels quite uplifting - and I can appreciate that. That the gameplay is very intuitive and enjoyable only supports my belief that I've got a real gem on my hard drive right now.

Thanks to the developers for Nihilumbra. How in all the hells could a game like this have been stuck in Greenlight-limbo for over a year?! Valve really need to get their act together....

I will update this "review" later on, when I have played (a lot) more of it. However, I doubt this game can anything but better from there on out. It is a lovely game, and I would very much recommend picking it up!

I first finished this game around May or June 2013 after I got it from a Greenlight bundle. I loved it for the art direction, the simple mechanics that induced nostalgia in me, and the comfortable gamepad controls (I would not play a game like this with mouse and keyboard, out of personal preference).

Having grown up during the old age of "jump & run" games, or platformers, I felt right at home with Oozi. It pulled all the right strings for me, and made me remember my old Sega days with all those simple yet enjoyable games.

Oozi has 24 levels in its story mode (whereas the story is just a basic framing on loading screens and between the four zones), of which 4 are boss fights. That may not seem much compared to games like Super Meat Boy or A Walk in the Dark, but it certainly is enough in this case.
Levels can last a good amount of time, depending on difficulty and skill level. You'll definitely get many more hours out of the game than out of pretty much any modern shooter.

On top of the main levels, however, the game also comes with an Arcade Mode, which puts you back into those levels with a more specific goal than reaching the end: Collect as many stars as you can before the timer runs out. If you die, start from the beginning. Checkpoints replenish a bit of time, which is very tight all the way through the level. If you finish the level, you will get a rating from one to three stars, depending on the amount of stars you caught.
This is quite tricky in a lot of levels, and will require almost perfect runs to get 3 stars.

There are also Challenge and Bonus missions, with varying goals. From reaching the end of the level while avoiding rising water to "kill all enemies" missions, you'll get a lot of action. Additionally, those, too, have two additional goals each. All three goals need to be met for a three star rating. And they run on a timer!
These missions are tough as nails, and will probably infuriate you a lot. However, they are satisfying to beat, and well-designed - if you are good at platformers, test yourself on them!

The overall level design of Oozi is simple on first glance, without any elaborately hidden secrets (not unless you run through levels blindly), but the trap and enemy placement really builds a nice difficulty curve.
While you start out with only your basic double-jump and can only knock out basic enemies, every zone delivers a new set of skills and mechanics. This ranges from stomping over wall-jumping to picking up bombs, punching stunned enemies and hiding in shadows. The traps get more mean as the game progresses, and while a lot of them and the enemies are similar or just visually different from previous encounters, the sheer variety of things that may kill you is a plus.

Truth be told, the game still has some glitches and bugs here and there (restarting one challenge mission would get the objective stuck, for example), but nothing that would really deter from the game's enjoyment. Those things are easily fixed and worked around.

As it stands I would recommend Oozi: Earth Adventure to fans of platformers, and oldschool platformers specifically. It is a refreshingly enjoyable game without any of the more "pretentious" elements or big stories, and simply focuses on challenging the player. Which it does excellently! Purchase recommendation given.

A pure adaption of the boardgame classic, Space Hulk comes with all you may be used to playing with on the tabletop, with none of the setup troubles, boxing the tiles and pieces after a long and tense session. It comes with an online multiplayer mode, which allows you to take the missions to the internet and test your wit against friends too far away to come over to sit around the table with you!

Full Control Studios are, without a doubt, fans of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and Space Hulk in particular. Despite the bumpy launch the game had, their dedication to the project shows.

Space Hulk is a turn-based strategy game involving two factions - the Space Marine Terminators and the alien Genestealers.
Both sides play vastly differently - from the amount of actions a unit can take per turn, to how it achieves its goals.
The Terminators are slow, hulking figures who rely on ranged weaponry, area denial and re-rolls to fight the Xenos, while the Genestealers are numerous, fast and require to close the distance to attack a Marine with their diamond-claws. They can easily outmaneuver the opponent, and receive reinforcements every turn.

To make things worse, the number of dice a normal Marine rolls against the 'stealers, is limited to one, against the aliens' three, and the highest result wins the combat - and kills the enemy. There are no life points in this game - if a character gets wounded, he is considered dead for the rest of the game.

To balance this out, the Space Marine player receives 1 to 6 Command Points per turn, determined by (virtual) dice. Those can be used to enact additional actions beyond the 4 allowed action points of a Terminator. Even though limited and unreliable, these points, if used well, will offer a lot of tactical flexibility to the player.

The inherent strength of the Terminators lies in their weaponry - their Storm Bolters are deadly and their close combat specialists allow them to deny the Genestealers the highest of their rolls or to re-roll one of their own. The flamer can bathe a whole room or section in fire, easily burning the aliens to ashes if stepped in, denying whole parts of the map. However, its use is limited to 6 shots per mission! The assault cannon is equally limited to 20 shots, and acts like a much stronger Storm Bolter.
Overwatch, costing 2 action points, will ensure that your Marines will also shoot on any enemy that crosses into line of sight, or moves within it, giving you an advantage over the enemy's fast tactics.

The objectives are determined by the mission. They may range from simple kill count goals to evacuating a certain amount of squad members. All the main missions are adapted from the boardgame.


Yes, Space Hulk had its share of problems at launch, and probably still has some of them, but more than a few can be attributed to just how close this video game adaption is to the boardgame it was meant to represent.
Bugs and performance issues have been significantly reduced by now, the game runs smooth, and a new, albeit short, campaign has been added to the game for free.

A criticism that was brought up a lot at launch was the "sluggish" movement of the player's Terminators.
While personally I very much enjoyed the hulking Space Marines move through the corridors like that, I can understand that not everybody has the same attention span and some may like to move on more quickly (although, once an order is issued, you can move ahead and issue another to the next Terminator of your choosing - they will enact them simultaneously).
Since then the developers have introduced a new setting to the options menu, allowing the player to toggle the animation speed, resulting in a good boost in unit movements.

Another criticism leveled was the lack of satisfying squad customization - one I can understand, but not feel quite as strongly about.
The characters in the game are directly inspired by the 3rd edition boardgame set, released in 2009, which I own. Having invested a lot of time in painting the miniatures of Sergeants Gideon and Lorenzo, Brothers Claudio, Zael, Omnio and all the rest, I can attest that the ingame models are very much like those little plastic figures. They are so faithfully modeled, I felt a bit sad that the boardgame miniatures are stuck with static (though dynamic) poses.

Customizing a squad's loadout also would not work with the way the missions are written. The game presents you with a short mission context and your objectives, all presented via Terminator-like voice acting (though not of the high standard of Relic's Dawn of War II games, it is still suitably grim), a neatly animated map and iconography.

What new players may not realize, however, is that the missions, have been written with certain restrictions and loadouts in mind. There are no differences between individual Terminators apart from their equipment - changing any one of the Power Fist + Storm Bolter Terminators to another Flamer, an Assault Cannon or close combat gear would undoubtedly unbalance the missions and remove a big part of the challenge.

Space Hulk is a challenging game. Some people, myself included, would even go as far as to call it a strategic puzzle game. Knowing your pieces is vital to success, being aware of all entry points of the enemy's Genestealers is crucial. A wrong move can easily unravel your whole deployment, and turn your structured progress into a desperate run for the exit.

The randomness of the dice adds a layer of unpredictability, but similar to Blood Bowl, minimizing the risks of the dice and thinking your moves through is the key to success. A dice roll may turn sour, but there are certain contingencies to make up for the randomness, if the player is smart enough to use them. In addition, the game itself takes care of all the manual tasks and notetaking of the tabletop version, keeping you informed of your resources at all times.

The learning curve may be a bit steep for some players, I admit, but unlike the boardgame, the video game adaption offers three short tutorial missions, which should do a lot of good in making you aware of the key strokes of the game.
Thankfully for new players, the 2 minute timer the Terminator player is subject to in the boardgame (unless the players decide not to use it to add even more pressure to the Space Marine's shoulders) is turned off by default and not enforced in singleplayer games. Purists can still play the game on hard difficulty and use the timer, but I am glad they made this optional.


The level editor is still in the making, I'm afraid.
If the current 18 missions (three tutorial missions, 12 for the classic Sin of Damnation Campaign and the 3 new missions on board of the Messenger of Purgatory) aren't enough to sate your appetite (which is unlikely, as missions are very replayable and usually not beaten on your first try), there are two new DLC Campaigns available right now (Sword of Halcyon and Defilement of Honour), both of which feature a set 5 missions each and are directly inspired from old first and second edition rules of the boardgame.

Squad customization may or may not be added in the future, but first I assume there will be the teased and promised Chapter Packs, introducing more than just the Blood Angels to the game - all neatly modeled according to lore and current miniature kits. Full Control have also said that they would include those Chapter Packs with new, Chapter-unique (historical) campaigns and flavor. This is DLC I can get behind and will support.


Considering that the first priority for Full Control was using the license to recreate the 3rd edition box set of Space Hulk, which was only produced in very limited quantities back then to begin with, I can acknowledge that they did an incredible job at capturing the game's aesthetic, tone, sound and, obviously, the rules.

This is, without a doubt, Space Hulk.
For the Emperor!

To be frank, my expectations for TR were low before launch.

I was not thrilled by the redesign, and the drama about implied rape scenes (which turned out to be completely fabricated for the sake of causing even more drama) or the vulnerability of female characters in gaming certainly did not make me feel hopeful about the game. The bigger focus on third person shooting without acrobatics seemed like a turn-off as well.

It took a friend to invite me to a 3 hour session of watching a walkthrough on Youtube to get me to buy the game, a few days past launch. What I saw in the videos was gritty, characterful and, while still heavy on the shooting, actually fun to play.

Initial skepticisms aside, what I got out of Tomb Raider was more than I had hoped for.

The graphics were gorgeous, and the game ran incredibly smooth even on my old (but trusty) HD5750 - which surprised me greatly. Of course, I still wouldn't recommend enabling the TressFX feature for more realisticly calculated hair physics - the performance hit won't be worth it to most people.

The aesthetics were stunning, to say the least. From shores right onto mountain tops, abandoned bunkers or extensive cave networks and old asian villages, the art direction of this game impressed me. While you may think that lost islands aren't exactly the most original setting for a game, the way the wartime relics, bunkers, nature and old asian environments flowed together was satisfying to take in.

The sound design was solid, although there may be a bit too much focus on having Lara express her pain or the effort she's making jumping and climbing. Of course those grunts and moans make sense in relation to the story, but at times they got too much for my taste.
Guns sounded good, explosions had a nice WHOOM! effect and the Soundtrack is simply fantastic and sets the right mood for the game.

Gameplay-wise, the game played really smoothly, and Lara's set of animations let every player action flow neatly into the next.
Like I said before, there is a bigger shooting element in the game, but thankfully you can avoid a lot of the encounters by employing stealth (which is not an active mode, but works rather naturally anyway) to take out enemies without alerting the cavalry. Kills grant experience, but if I remember it correctly, the stealth kills grant a comparable amount.
The guns felt good to use, and some of them had more uses than gunning down crazy people and were used in puzzles or exploration, like the bow's rope-darts.
The upgrades were visually represented, and while they may make it appear like Lara's the daughter of MacGyver, having a fully upgraded weapon, like the bow, felt satisfying and well-worth the scavenging for parts.

Speaking of scavenging: The game has A LOT of that. Breaking boxes, looting animals, finding trinkets, artifacts and doing little mini-challenges in certain areas - the game keeps you busy. Some of it will of course feel rather game-y and may be perceived as padding, but it still feels good to find that last hidden skull charm hanging from a tree...

I completed all of those challenges on my first playthrough, which I ended at the 20 hour mark. The game would have allowed me to go back and finish all those leftovers - but I had none.
However, the artifacts come with a nice little feature: You can view them in detail, rotate them around, zoom in, and maybe find some further detail. All of this while Lara comments on the object, determines its origin or shares a little story. While picking those objects up might not seem practical in her situation, this feature really lent depth to Lara the archeologist. The woman knows what she's doing!

Sadly there is no singleplayer DLC that would add more tombs or areas, outside of the preorder DLC "Tomb of the Lost Adventurer", which was neat, but short - like all tombs in the game. This may be my biggest criticism of the game.
The tombs are fairly lackluster. They all basically consist of ONE room, and one central puzzle. Gone are the lengthy puzzles with a lot of backtracking, that would feel very satisfying once you'd figure everything out. Instead you get a short, simple puzzle, often with timed jumping involved, and a treasure chest sequence as a reward. I was hoping for more in that department, as the Tomb aspect is a vital part of the TOMB Raider franchise, in my eyes.

The leveldesign switched from fairly linear corridors to more open areas quite a lot, depending on the situation Lara was in at the time, and where her path lead her. I liked the mix, and enjoyed being able to return to an earlier camp and put my new tools to use and pick up the missing treasures.

Sadly, I cannot say much about the keyboard controls, as for this I felt a gamepad to be the most sensible choice. For what its worth, I would definitely recommend using a controller, as the smoothness of movements will get much clearer with those pretty analog sticks. The gamepad layout worked very well for me, and running around on Yamatai quickly felt natural to my fingers.

I will not go into the story, for obvious reasons. However, I enjoyed it for what it was, even if it was quite predictable at times, and threw Lara into more and more awkward situations by the hour. Just so much: Be aware that TR has always had a supernatural element, and is not restricted by science or history. Back in the days you could get killed by dinosaurs, which isn't the case here, but you won't get around some ritual magic and otherwise ;)

And yes, this is an origin story - Lara starts out as a rookie who has to go through a lot throughout the game. She does grow as a character, however, and while the mass-shootings are rather drastic and exist more because you are playing a game with guns, rather than because the game needed them, I don't see them as contradictory to the main character's development.

The other characters are a bit bland at first glance, but receive more development via flashbacks in the form of camera recordings or diary entries and letters, which are another of the multiple collectible types in the game. Those letters add a whole new layer to the narrative, and connect the whole crew. Some of them legitimately saddened me.
Apart from this, there's this one guy you'll want to punch very hard in the manhood, and the father figure Lara has to eventually outgrow in a sense. Their inclusion achieves what it is supposed to, and serve to add conflict and reassurance to the whole ordeal.

Now, there's one more thing: The multiplayer. I did not spend more than one session with that component, as I am not interested in 99% of multiplayer games - simply not my cup of tea. I did, however, find the map I played on to have more depth than anticipated, and could imagine the mode to be a good amount of fun, if you can get a full session going. However, no promises there, I did not play much of it.

Despite all the drama surrounding Lara Croft's redesign and the series reboot, Tomb Raider has managed to win me over quite assuredly. The game does not get as much credit as it deserves, and I would definitely recommend picking it up if you enjoy a good action adventure game.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, buy this game. It is STILL unfinished, nowhere near completion, and will most likely never be done. The developers haven't been active for months and sent the alpha out to die.

Early Access was introduced partially due to the bloody mess of this game's "launch", and yet it never actually received the Early Access tag, and instead is being sold disguised as a finished product.

Not much has happened since then, and it is unlikely that this is going to change in the near future. Yes, it has its charme, yes it had potential, but this potential has not yet been touched by the developers - and this game launched on Steam A YEAR AGO!

If you are a fan of this type of game, I wholeheartedly recommend Gnomoria, which is not only cheaper, but also well underway to being a finished game. It wears its Early Access tag with pride, and releases patches very frequently. Just this week they released version 0.9.2, which tweaks, rebalances and fixes a LOT of combat mechanics, and the game itself works and looks charming. While not done yet, it is very much playable without the level of frustration Towns will give you.

Stay away from Towns.