Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Dec 9, 2022

  TL;DR -- Too slow with willful timer that willfully makes you wait for the cards to resolve their actions. (Note "willful" and "willfully".) This greatly extends the length of the game---and even without it, the game is slow. I just minimize the screen while the game plays out...not-much-fun. ---- This game has a countdown timer between card plays...you do nothing while waiting for the "pause" timer to count down and the card to activate. It is like sitting at a red light...light turns green...and the one car in front of you has a countdown timer -- making you wait a few seconds before pressing the gas pedal (correction: make that every car in front of you that pauses a few seconds). Turning off animations does not stop timer. Turning off "observe combat" does not stop timer. ---- Cannot quit game without seeing ads. In fact, there is no quit choice in options list...but there are several links to advertisements. Marketing and ads are cornerstone for this game at start up and end -- the designers are very bold in them. You have to figure out to hit ESC to bring up the quit option (seriously)...but ads are right there waiting for you to click on them. The is a non-discrete exit icon located far from the list in the bottom corner...so easy to miss -- read about it elsewhere. ---- Sound effects are OK to good. One, a hum, is a solid win. ---- Graphics work fine. ---- Game really lacks interaction once combat starts (and the accursed timer that makes you wait). Sometimes the game stops after you minimize-the-game-to-go-do-something-else and you have to maximize, click a target, and then re-minimize and get-back-to-other-stuff...
• gamedeal user

  Jun 30, 2023

  There's no in game resolution option. It's nearly impossible to see anything. The controls are also pretty ass.
• pastry_assassin

  Aug 9, 2023

  I am playing this game for the first time in 2023, and I love it. I have seen a lot of previous reviewers mention the amount of bugs and/or issues they have run into, but that has not been my experience. The game is fun, challenging, and stable. I encourage more people to give this game a shot. This is mostly a solo game though, so if you're looking for a multiplayer experience, there does not seem to be a very large community of active players.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 1, 2016

  Edit: Played a couple of 3 player games on the recent April 12th patch. It's still a fun core game, but the glitches and game issues make it too frustrating. This game is hard, and requires every resource to be used effectively. If you can't use something because of a game glitch, it pretty much kills the enjoyment. So the game itself is great. I'm a veteran of tabletop and electronic card games of a similar nature, although I never played the tabletop version of Xenoshyft. The mechanics were easy to understand and pick up, and the card selection and balance seemed fine. The reason I'm currently not recommending this game is due to the myriad game breaking bugs that we found in only about 4 hours of gameplay. After a patch or update, I will gladly re-review this game. We had the following happen: * Milita couldn't be played to an empty space on the board. When I discarded him at the end of the round, it also discarded a surviving stormtrooper. This can be a pretty huge swing in a game like this. Our assumption is that some sort of internal "card ID" got mixed up, and the game though the stormtrooper and the militia were the same card. * To go along with the game getting confused, playing with one of the expansion powers (Grafting Lab), the tier 2 ability lets you bring back a card from the discard pile into your hand. It was a crapshoot what would happen when I would use the ability. Sometimes I would get 1 card, sometimes I would get all of the cards, and at least 2 or 3 times my TEAMMATE got the cards. This did not adversely effect the game since he could play on my cards, but bizarre nonetheless * We had tons of bizarre issues playing cards on other people's lanes. On death effects like the vindicator armor weren't usable if they were played on another lane. We also had troops discarded at the end of combat we had placed in another player's lane for no discenible reason. * The biggest, and gamebreaking-est of them all happened to us twice. We were in the 7th or 8th wave, and while we had both clicked done on a reveal phase (2 green check marks), the game wouldn't advance us to to the draw phase. We tried several things to 'jump start it', like both unchecking, one person leaving the game. It just wouldn't go forward. Very very frustrating after spending 30 minutes working towards the finale. The UI is serviceable, but could use some help * Why is your resource (Xenostathem) not indicated with the icon instead of the text. Pretty minor, but they have pretty icons for everything, I had to literally ask my buddy in the first game where on the screen my total resources were. * Should give you a checkbox for 'auto pass' if you don't have anything else you can do in a turn, or if you and your teammates know you won't have much impact on their lane. * I was constantly double clicking when I should be single clicking to use abilities, and it could be confusing what state you were in. The text seemed to blend into the background a lot. I wouldn't mind some more highlighting around the 'Done' button, or other text that tells you you need to do something before you continue.
• gamedeal user

  May 2, 2016

  I love that so many board/card games are being given digital versions these days, but this is the kind of release that mars the trend. To address my low playtime, my issues with this game are not related to the actual game mechanics of XenoShyft, but rather the technical and design choices made for this digital version. [strike]First off, there isn't even an exit button on the main menu (that I could see), so you have to ALT+F4 to exit if you're playing in fullscreen.[/strike] (This is incorrect, as pointed out by a comment in my review. I somehow missed the button in the lower-left corner of the main menu). The options menu contains no video settings whatsoever, leaving you with no resolution settings. The only thing you can change is whether you want to play in windowed mode or fullscreen, selectable only before you start the game in what appears to be the default Unity popup, Playing in fullscreen results in a square shaped view area with nothing using the left and right sides of your monitor. UI that could be placed in this area is instead crammed in the top and bottom of the screen, which means you have to pan around constantly, even when zoomed out. Speaking of zooming, it's incredibly slow and requires several full mousewheel turns to get close to the cards. I thought adjusting the zoom sensitivity setting in the options would alleviate this, but it barely made a difference. I have a Logitech mouse with a free-spinning toggle on the wheel that's useful when you're reading documents with many pages. Scrolling up 40 pages or so this way takes a few seconds. It takes about the same amount of time just to zoom in this way in XenoShyft. When you want to pan, you have to click an area outside of the playing field and drag the view (the way you would do it on a touchscreen with your finger). If you click on some cards this way, it will instead show you a zoomed in view of the card. But it won't do this on some other cards (like generic Militia cards). I could have dealt with all of that, annoying as it is, but the real dealbreaker is that sometimes pieces of the UI do not respond, breaking the game by not allowing you to advance to the next phase of the game. The game was clearly ported from a mobile version and it shows all over the product from the nonexistent resolution options, to the unresponsive and cluttered UI, to the awkward panning and zooming controls. The tutorial does a good job at teaching you the rules of the game, but is done through a slow and annoying "AI" voice that reads to you and cannot be disabled. At least I know how to play if I decide to purchase the physical card game. It's a shame because the underlying game seems fun. As it currently stands, I can't recommend it until the developers fix a lot of these issues, which really seems like they'd have to redo a large part of the game.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 28, 2016

  The most frustrating game ever but for some strange reason I cant stop playing
• gamedeal user

  Sep 24, 2016

  I really enjoyed this title. It was originally a board game, and is about defending your base from attacks by alien creatures. Each game consists of nine waves, in which you can drop up to four soldiers to reveal and fight four aliens, one by one. Hopefully, you've chosen the right soldiers to defend your base, and equipped them in a way that plays to their strengths. Additionally, there are "instant" cards that can be played in the middle of the wave to bolster your soldiers in the heat of the moment. The game can be played cooperatively with one of many factions, each of which specialize in a particular field. The weapons division can gets it's hands on weapons cheaper and eventually deal more damage, where the armor division can grab armor cheaper and eventually get more defense out of it. I enjoyed trying to win with each faction, and feel that both the NorTec Elite and Hive expansions added a great amount of replayability to the game. The tense feeling as each card is flipped is very memorable, and good planning is usually rewarded.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 23, 2017

  I have played about 10 rounds solo and have only made it to Wave 3 Round7 once. At the end of round 7 there were 2 enemies left but the game kept on spawning enemy cards and dealing damage to the base till it was destroyed. The only way I have been able to make progress is by using the science lab and loads of grenades. Every card and ability counts. I am playing on easy with 20 hitpoints for the base. I would not consider this easy. I do enjoy the intensity and the close combat of this game even though the odds are heavily stacked against the player.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 25, 2017

  I wanted to like this game, but I did not. The interface is very clunky. And the balance is tight enough that mis-clicks or mis-applied abilities can ruin a game. The multiplayer is empty. The 9 rounds it takes to play through to a victory ends up feeling like a real slog. And you will have to hit a "Done" button like 20-30 times a turn. It is ridiculous. As near as I can tell the game is easier the more divisions (players) you have... and when playing single player you can control up to 4 players. So, set yourself up with multiple divisions, then really overpower around two lanes in the early game by using all the cards from all the players on just those two lanes.... and leave the other lanes utterly empty. Your base will take damage in that first round, but you can take it. Once you have built up your super lanes, then on round 2 you can overload your remaining lanes, and then you just sort of coast through the rest of the game. It is annoying to play as 4 players solo, however, because each player has it's own hand of cards with interrupts and abilities.... and you will need to either remember what everyone has or cycle through them all every time something important happens. So, then the game has a simple strategy that makes it not very hard. You are repeating the same strategy solo. The interface makes playing this strategy clunky. You can't play with other people cause there aren't other people playing this. And then you have to wonder, is this even fun? Simple but grindy.... was not fun for me. Sadly I can't recommend.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 9, 2017

  I love this game play the tabletop thought i would try this out, pretty cheap all in all I know I haven't played long and this is still enjoyable for me however Dev's have since abandoned it it seems, no post since 2016 cons: buggy, Tends to not let you advance sometimes to the next turn, gotta close the whole game down and reopen it and hope it works if you reload your save little clunky when your first clicking around but once you get used to it not terrible Pro: seems like a good adaptation to the board game, when it works Its can be great fun all in all if they ever fix the freezing buggy problem, I would change this review to if you like board games play it, if you just want a game you can play with a couple friends and try a challenging yet fun game hell even play by yourself and it changes often, its a great game but alas for now I'd just recommend getting the Board game off Amazon or something ps. I have tagged this game as buggy hopefully a few more will follow suit so its up there Edit: a good long time later and I can say, I have actually played through a game, 3 even without it freezing or being a buggy mess, so perhaps they fixed!