Barony

A minecraft roguelike.

Tasked with delving deep into the nearby dungeon to free a cursed town from the evil within sounds super familiar, but you probably haven't seen it in blocky Minecraft vision before. That's exactly what this game is: and you can take up to three friends with you!

Surprisingly, there is a fantastic tutorial which shows just how deep this game goes. Melee weps have weaknesses, there are different types of ammo for long ranged weapons, you can throw things, cast a variety of spells, build turrets, mix potions, parry with a shield, sneak past enemies, command NPC allies, appraise gems to sell them for more money and so on.

That is a very bad looking situation...

And then you step into the main dungeon and get insta-killed by a boulder. Yep. The death traps aren't as dangerous as the many enemies lurking inside though and given its a rogue like, and death is final (less final if you are in co-op unless you all die), which means you then get to start again from the top! Strangely, even GTFO is more forgiving than that. :P

It's a game I'd probably get into if I found people willing to play it, but the graphics and style are just not going to cut it with my regular group. I give it 2.5 minotaurs out of 5.

Insight: Long corridors that loop onto themselves are great for lure-killing with throwing weapons. It's hard to miss if the enemy has no room to evade and each loop you can pick up your thrown weapons again (which are the only type to never break).

Astroneer (Alpha)

Mining the galaxy for... fun?

Astroneer is a cute but strange little game where you take the role of a titular Astroneer to land on lonely, randomly generated, decent sized planets and build bases on them. To do so, you (and your buddies if in co-op) will need to use your magical vacuum cleaner to collect various materials to research and construct things.

Exploration is essential in finding some of the rarer components, often requiring cave spelunking where hostile flora often resides. That said, the worst threats are of an environmental nature - either from powerful wind storms or from simply going too far from your tethers and running out of air.

Better take shelter from that...

Once you progress far enough, you can build a shuttle to take you to the next planet and start all over again. That's pretty much all there is to this game at the moment and while it certainly is pretty it's not really my cup of tea. Probably one currently better suited to the Minecraft crowd, we'll see if it gets more interesting when it goes live for real.