Archeo: Shinar

Love the idea of this game, but the gameplay loop is very minimalist and dull.

Full review

My curator page

Archeo: Shinar is a turn-based strategy and management game. You manage a team of explorers, ostensibly on a quest to find the Tower of Babel, but more likely on a quest to find fortune and glory. Your team can be trained to improve their particular exploration skills, as well as boosted through items and the liberal application of attitude adjusments. They then go out on expeditions, hopefully returning successfully, but at least having a merry jape along the way.

Beyond the expeditions and team management, Archeo: Shinar also includes an array of options for what to do with the various artefacts the explorers return with, and how to improve your own reputation. The player can interact with the press to improve their standing and get favours, buy and invest in land, and sell artefacts. The game also includes random events that can help or hurt, but at least add a nice bit of flavour to the game.

However much promise there is in the game’s concept, though, it’s the actual execution of these concepts that matters. The game can be effectively split into two aspects - the preparation and time between expeditions, and the expeditions themselves. The expeditions, for all the romp they are, are minimally interactive, with the main interaction being the party preparation beforehand, and choosing an explorer for a particular challenge when it arises. However, with each challenge being timed and no real information given about what the challenge is, beyond the needed skills, there is less the sense that you are submitting an explorer to a challenge, and more the sense that you are subjecting them to the mercy of a random number generator whose logic you are incapable of understanding. There is no transparency for the odds of success, neither during the expedition, nor during the preparation, leading to expeditions the player is woefully unprepared for, but which they had no real way of knowing they were unprepared for until it was too late.

The management element of the game is similarly baffling. While there is a broad array of things to do, the reasons why I would do these things are not evident, nor are the actual victory conditions. Some, like the market, are straightforward, while others - like property and press - are confusing either in how to engage with them, or in why I would want to. It wasn’t until about a third of the way through the playthrough that I realised there was more I could do in the press room than just plying reporters with gin, but I am still unclear as to what the benefits actually are. Equally, while the property management seems like an interesting mechanic, beyond the basic elements of giving more money or resources, it’s unclear why I should engage with this element as heavily as the game seems to think I ought to be.

Perhaps most bafflingly of all, I don’t really understand how to win this game. In my first mission, I was given a rival and thirty rounds, but no real indication of what victory against this rival looked like. Was it having more reputation at the end? Investing in property? I know I did lose at the end, but I’m not sure what I could have done differently.

Archeo: Shinar is a game that tries to be a lot, and in doing so, loses track of what it actually ought to be. There is the core of a fun game here, in expeditions and in preparing adventurers for an expedition. That game would have fit nicely in the zeitgeist of reevaluating British exploration and exploitation, and would likely have been a fun addition to that canon. Instead, Archeo: Shinar chooses to take on a much broader array of elements instead of focusing on the mechanic that its players came for. In adding property management or reputation instead of making the expeditions more compelling, it succeeds only in watering down the one thing that made the game interesting to begin with.

This game disappointed me. I love explorer games. The art looked fun, and what I saw of the writing looked like it echoed a style of humour I enjoy. Its needlessly complex mechanics, arcane win conditions, and reliance on random chance, though, left me feeling powerless and lost in a way I didn’t like and definitely didn’t sign up for.

I guess it is the quintessential explorer experience then, isn’t it?

A far too abstract push-your-luck game with an awfully bad tutorial and introduction. For this to have been released years after Renowned Explorers is just mad. I can't think of anyone to recommend this game to, who wouldn't be having a better time with a narratively richer game like Renowned Explorers or a snappier push-your-luck styled game like Skull or Dead of Winter.

It's amazing how these people are still functioning with the amount of phobias they have contracted.
Sadly, that's very relatable.

it looks like a fun game. it sounds like a fun game. it plays like a fun game. but they just throw mechanic after mechanic after mechanic at you. learning the game feels like im being given a college lecture. if you love reading through an entire pages worth of instructions on how to play the game, go for it. but i like less reading than playing in my videogames.

It has the Achilles' heel of strategy games: A tutorial that tells you to do many things, but no explanation of why you'd want do it. It doesn't realise that it could be much more with less.

The mechanics do not mesh and aren't in service to each other and seemingly exist only to add unneeded complexity. I have a massive board game collection and this felt like coming into a complex 4x game with two expansions already integrated and half the rulebook missing.

I had to quit out of the basic tutorial and restart it twice thinking I'd missed something before getting frustrated and just quitting altogether. If your solution to negative reviews is to post an explainer video, then that should indicate to you that your tutorial is simply not good enough. Speaking of... After I came back and tried again, I got stuck in the fourth tutorial and had to force quit the game and try again before it finally let me through.

After beating all the tutorials I think I actually understood less than when I went in and have zero inclination to actually play the game. It was as if it were trying to teach me 5 disparate games that were tied together by nothing more than a loose theme.

I just finished the tutorial and the game seems interesting, with lots of different strategic elements to have to balance. However, I understood less and less of what the tutorial was trying to teach me as the game went on because the English got worse and worse. They need to hire a copy-editor/translator to fix it. Not a great first impression. However, the game does seem to have great potential. I'll come back and edit this review if my impression changes as my gameplay continues.

Edit: It crashed the second time I opened it. Welp.

This game is an economic turn-based strategy. In Archeo: Shinar you can become an organiser of expeditions. Your job is to manage them and find your best team. The game has low entry threshold and you can leanr it in a few hours, but still it's pretty hard and just a few bad decisions may end with you losing couple of hours of progress.

Archeo: Shinar is a turn-based and real-time strategy set in the world of archeology. It's a simulation of managing the expeditions and finding the best team for that. The game is pretty hard because with just a few bad decisions you can lose couple of hours of progress.

Interesting little game. The concept is good, although the execution is a bit unpolished. The management aspects of the game are good. Dealing with employee phobias and such is fun. Dabbling the in black market and properties help keep you on your toes financially. The story expedition are pretty fun with multiple choice courses of action. Unfortunately those are rare, and most expedition are very dry. This game is best played with the sound off and skimming over the game text. The background music isn't bad, but the voice actors are 100% loyal to the horribly written scripts. The text in the game is chock-full of grammatical errors and weird phrasings. The company that developed this game is out of Dubia, and it shows. Still if you can look past the translation errors, its a fun game.

One last note, unlike most games out there, hard is actually hard in this game. I advise starting off on easy or normal. Even normal is a nice challenge in the campaign mode.

This game has beautiful art and music, it just needs more revision in the information design.

The flaws that I found in the design: paragraph rules, widows on paragraphs, and subtitles. Four examples I found in the game:

1. In the career section, there is no space between first and second paragraph. I also see some "widows" on the paragraph structure and in many other parts of the game.

2. The subtitles for the career intro cutscene, some of them are too long. The length of a subtitle should be two lines at most. There is a good documentation from BBC about how to present subtitles properly. If that would help.

3. On the "Press" section. There are just so many texts in one weight. Sometimes hard to read. I will elaborate it on the next point.

4. The typography hierarchy. Most of the text descriptions are seemed to be in one weight only. There is less contrast, making it harder for me to read. It is recommended to have different weight for the title, subtitle, and body copy.

In conclusion, This is the core issue that I found in the game. I think you guys should spend some more time refining the information design since it is a very important component of the game. What my suggestion to you guys is to review the basic typography design rules and improve the paragraphs based on those rules. This game has more potential and I have faith in you guys since I notice you guys keep updating it.

I am really torn on this game. I love the art, the theme and I do enjoy playing it, but the difficulty level is just impossibly high. I play it on easy and still I struggle to get very far before losing.

This game has some RNG elements around what missions are available and sometimes you just get screwed over by that. Also once you start to do badly it is nearly impossible to make a come back, as you fail after failing to pay your workers 3 times, but if you fail to pay them one month the next time you must pay them what they are owed on top of their wages, so unless you get really lucky having 2 month's wages at that point is very unlikely.

I am optimistic that the devs are listening to feedback though, they've unlocked the tutorials so you no longer need to earn access to them. I'm hoping that by continuing to bang my head against the wall of this game's difficulty I am eventually going to be able to get further (or that someone will make a whole wiki for this game that can hold my hand through it!

In summary, I would recommend this game to people who are very good gamers or like a hard challenge, but for the majority of people I think they'll be put off by the cliff face of a difficulty curve.

At the beginning the game was hard to understand but after few step in tutorial i got everything prefectly explained. Actually this game gave me so much fun and its great game for late night sessions. I think everyone would enjoy it

Great game not only for people well acquainted with archeology! A unique gameplay system and great graphics which emphasize the atmosphere of the game. I highly recommend.

Full Review at https://goodindie.home.blog/2019/01/23/archeo-shinar/

The theme is fun, the art style is neat, the music is great, but the mechaincs feel very disjointed. Most of the time, important information, such as chances of success, aren't available. The expeditions aren't very interesting, without anything more than a title to give context. There's plenty to do outside expeditions, but little of it actually benefits the expeditions, and none of it is very compelling.

This leaves the game feeling like two seperate games, each of which can't really stand on its own.

I like the theme and i like games like "The curios Expedition" and "Renowned Exploreres" or the game about oil ("turmoil") which are also simple managment games but just simply with a more fun minigame. The "managment" part of this game is promising but i dont know how the other curators find it so fun. The detious letter opening every time, with one or more letters just full of bad formated text to read for you and then 2 boring choices instead. Then there is this mechanic that the choice often matters only the next or more round later when you allready forgot what it was about, so you read it again...
The buildings are a nice idea, but the hidden auction is just...boring. Bet an amount and hope you guessed got enough...The buildings are also a lackluster. There could be more synergies or special upgrades or something.
Then the main part what i thing should is the expeditions. I thought the preparing for expeditions is the core of the game, but its just evaluation people for their stats and off the go. Maybe even with an item which gives flat bonus on one of the needed stats. Wow that was it? Also no synergys between the staff or special items. The minigame sooo boring. "you need that" "here take this guy he is good at it, maybe i even give a better guy for the hope you go over the hidden trashhold and get an artifact" "thanks" do this 3-5 times and the expedition is done and you get the reward which was listet at the beginning. No real surprises and artifacts are just for money or gifts. Also no sets or bonus.
The only thing which is good is the artist side of things. It looks pretty. But for me its a golden painted piece of coal. I refunded it after an hour and maybe i buy it after more content comes, then i will change my review hopefully.
Maybe i buy it again

This little game is great, so even though I still have hours of play to come, I had to post a review. It is a really well polished and well thought game. You can actually feel that the persons who made it had fun making it, and really love the game.

The design, text, music, everything that contributes to immersion and roleplay is beautifully done. The gameplay is complex enough to be interesting yet smooth and easy to understand. It can be challenging at times.

I don't have much negative thing to say at this point.

Small feedback for possible improvement:
- maybe, the tutorial was too wordy? Reduce the amount of text so we can just start playing more quickly.
- I don't mind Cuppy but we are a bit too close to the thin line between cute and annoying, and since the archeolgy setup and the descriptions are great, we don't really need an external 'fun' element
- On the opposite, more text and roleplays in the expeditions could add to the fun! A little description of the mission for example (just 1-2 lines), which may even be done with a random text generator). Similar to te archeologists' descriptions, which are very well done.

If every other game in early access was done so well then we wouldn't need early access. I have been sitting in quarters for about 5 minutes just looking at the screen. It's a 2D game and the quarters are just for you to manage your explorers, but I was sitting there, watching what's going on in the background. The little details, like damsel going to visit the other house, and running away before another damsel returns, or some kind of a lord trying to solve the case of the enigmatic bag which felt from the balloon. And I'm not talking about the game, it's just the details in the background. And every explorer has some personal info like "thinks that communism is the only way for humankind to survive" or something like that. It's so well made, I'm in love with it.

You are the archeologist and you need to gain a reputation. To do so you need a team of explorers, which will need money. You pay money to the explorers to bring them with you to an expedition to earn reputation. But you also need money now, so you have to pick an expedition which will also deliver you money. But this expedition is hard so you need to train your explorers. To do so you need more money, and after the training, they will need more money in the salary. Then you decide to build a casino, to get more money, but to do so you need land, and you need to win an auction. To do so you need even more money. OK, now you are pissed and you decide to sell artifacts on the black market to get even more money. However, one of your artifacts was confiscated and you lost some reputation. In shortcut, to get the reputation you hired people, trained them and lose your money. Trying to find new income you lost reputation and now you don't have money and reputation. You need to fire a few explorers to stay in the business. Business? Yes, because now it's business, you have your own casino, you sell artifacts on the black market, and you deal in favors with gazettes to publicly slander your opponents. It's quite a good game, even in early access and current state. And you can play together with your family and friends on one computer, but it probably will end like monopoly evening.

Archeo: Shinar is an economic turn-based strategy game. It focuses on the preparation and shady operations between expeditions like in a grotesque (or not!) Picture of so-called academia. You will explore those dusty tombs like in any other game about archeology but this time, not with your own hands. In this game, you are the guy who "manage" expeditions, write publications (or rather sell them to newspapers) and keep on track with the new events like hating this guy for finding "wrong" artifacts because our paradigms say it shouldn't be there.
For now, it's early access, and you can see minor bugs and lack of career mode, but the custom mode allows you to play up to 4 people and has enough content for more than 10 hrs of fun.
If you are looking for a game focused on archeology, expeditions and finding lost legacy then... you should watch some gameplays because this game is focused on the economic aspect and without the story mode (career) you may find it a little bit odd to sit in a comfy chair in your office only to respond to letters and hire new explorers. However, it's refreshing to take a look from a new angle on the archeology topic.