Waiting for Duviri: The Second Set

This second batch is much better than the first, and all could hold my interest if I give them a chance.

Riverbond

A Diablo style game, but in cute voxel format with silly and equally cute opponents to boot. Half of your treasures will just be different "skins" for your character with the other half being ridiculous weaponry like ice cream cones and laser machine guns. Despite most of the game play being mouse button bashing I ended up playing this for far longer than I should have. Bonus points for awarding XP upon dialogue completion too which encourages NPC interaction (even if they are just telling jokes). Better than I thought it would be and one I could easily lose a day playing if I start it up again. Apparently there's even a co-op mode?

Warpips

This is an idle game with a war theme, as there are very few opportunities for you to interact with the battle field itself (which sadly is a small set of repeating maps). Most of the time you will just be buying a variety of units to immediately go out into the field and deciding how to spend XP they gain - either selling for money, increasing the XP to money trade, increasing your max number of units or ranking up your troops. You win a map if your forces destroy the enemy base and lose if they destroy your base, then do some minor tactical overland decisions and choose what troops to bring for the next map and so forth. It's simple but it's also addictive.

Duskers

In the dark reaches of space are many abandoned derelicts and this game invites you to visit them with your drones to gather resources, supplies, and get terrified at silly red lines. This keyboard only game is mainly represented in a top down view where you can control your drones and get them to use their abilities. Maybe drone 2 has a power pack so it can power up a generator if it sits on top of it. Drone 3 might be able to tow stuff, like other destroyed drones back to your docking shuttle, and drone 1 might have the motion tracker that shows just how few doors there are between your team and the freaking monsters.

Oh, your drones can't really fight back and almost all commands must be TYPED in. Yep, while movement is the usual WASD you'll need to type "generator" to power up an area, or "d1" to open door 1 or "close d1" to close the same door before something horrible comes for you. It's mostly a puzzle game where you want to lock or herd the bad things away while you loot. Pretty unique and gives off that GTFO feel, the only downsides are the graphics are intentionally minimal and it feels more like work instead of being fun.

Epistory

Another keyboard typing centric game, this time focusing on a girl riding a giant fox across a beautifully rendered, bright fantasy paperscape landscape that slowly unfolds as you explore. Excellent narration and an interesting story got me hooked here, and while you use WASD to explore it is typing that unlocks chests, plants flowers and fights enemies. Very cool but while typing gets old kinda fast, its not as fast as the big exploration segments of the game - lots of beautiful but empty space traversal which is a HUGE no-no in my book.