Age of Steel: Recharge

Age of Steel: Recharge is an interesting and short Tower Defence Game

The game is very simple, the campaign is passed in 1 hour, 100% of achievements can be obtained in another 3 hours, the last hour you just look at the screen, making a couple of clicks every 5 minutes. In essence, it's an autobattler with upgrades. It's probably more interesting on higher difficulty, but on the easiest difficulty in survival mode it just seems endless. The game for one evening, played and forgotten, but nevertheless - it's a good game, the developer has done a good job.

I'm pretty sure I got this game for free from Indie Bundle and I'm thankful for that. I rushed through the campaign in a couple of hours, not because I was in a rush, but that's the extent of the game. I technically didn't finish the last campaign level, but I had control of the two lanes as far as I could tell and I got bored of waiting for the level to finish. It wasn't the first time.

My main complaint is the music and that you can't really turn it off. Even if you set it to zero it can come back. It's also very loud in general. My second is that the only difference in the levels is the special unit... which you can easily ignore (though some can be fun!). Also why are there two air lanes? It seems to be there only to make the game more "complex" rather than actually add anything to the game.

Really like this game. Straight forward and with a tantalising background lore.

Yes it can get a bit repetitive- but still holds a lot of charm.

Wish there was a follow up or additional DLC.

Fun, simple game for a $5 purchase. I enjoyed it. The game is all about finding the right combination of units to defeat the levels. The survivor mode is fairly good until you figure it out and live forever. For instance, I maxed out the first level at 117 minutes and 255k in score (I only started with 500). I only died because I left it running and did something else for a time.

Good for an afternoon distraction

Basically a nice game, but you are done with it way to soon. Took me three hours of play to complete the campaign. Three hours! It´s a pretty easy to beat game. The first levels are somewhat of a challange, but the last levels ground units are take out of the game. Can´t imagine why at all... it´s sooooo easy; nearly plays itself. If you get this game on sale for 1 or 2 bucks, take it and enjoy up to 5 hours. But don´t expetc too much.

You could see this game as a lane based tower defense game, but with each lane having it's own distinct unit types, or as a rock-paper-scissors tug of war game, where each time you see the enemy sending more units at you, you have to see if your current forces will handily beat it, or if not start building a counter to the enemy unit(s) now coming at you. Do it badly/slowly and they start beating up your base, do it well and you start to dominate all three lanes and kill everything as soon as it appears on screen. The lanes mostly fight against others in the same lane, but some units are designed to use dominance of one lane to give you a boost in another - like the bomber which is useless if you don't have aerial supremacy, but can be powerful at clearing zeppelins and ground forces if you do.

The base gameplay then works fine, and make an interesting lite-RTS style experience where you build units, upgrade your base to build more unit types, or research upgrades to existing units, all while fending off the enemy attacks. Unfortunately similar to RTS games each new level you start again from scratch, which has never been something I am keen on as it can makes levels fairly repetitive, especially later on when you have the same 15 techs to get as last time before getting a new 16th tech and finally get to do something a bit new.

Another issue in the game is some unit types aiming ability - most units fire straight ahead, but then bullets curve downwards, and no one ever learns to adjust for this and fires up slightly, meaning some units that seeming have long range actually can only hit things immediately in front of them, and some units are much more vulnerable and weak purely because they have some part of their design that drops "below the waterline" of where units shot in each lane.

There is a main campaign where you unlock new units as you go along, and there is a story to give it all background which was passable but no more, and missions have some variety of objectives - make a certain amount of resources, build a certain tech/upgrade/unit, kill a number of enemies, survive a certain time, etc.

There is also a survival mode where you can sit there and slowly the amount of enemy units sent against you increases and eventually overwhelms you, I can't say I played this mode much as it didn't really feel much different to playing any of the later levels of the game for the initial stages, then you wait around a while once you have all the techs/units/excess resources you can get for the enemy forces to ramp up, then eventually there is another interesting bit where they start to break through but you can hold on by making the right choices, but that tends to only last a few minutes before the enemy adds even more forces and then nothing you can do holds them back.

Overall it is fairly decent, a bit innovative in it's approach, nice to look at, but has a few flaws/frustrations that stop it really being something special.

Underwhelming. Would rather play a flash game on some website instead. Not really worth spending more time playing nor describing it.

This game reminds me of playing army men as a kid (those green army soldiers from toy story (stupid new generation with there istuff)).

Your base is left side of screen and you build and they get up and walk to the right side of the screen - gameplay. strategy comes in the item build order and unit streaming out.

I recommend this game if your into rts games want something easy to mod as it presents itself so.

IMO-
This game would be awesome if the developer did a few things differently maybe automate it a little so theres continuous battle. make the battlefield a little larger. If the base had a little underground area ie base starts on a hill. then you build hangars that spawn out of the base. 3 areas of combat.. Air , ground and below ground.

It's Thumbs up BUT...get it on sale. Would make a great mobile app but lacks a bit of depthand length for full price. I will say developers did some interesting things to spice it up a little. Short time sink though beat the campaign in about 4 hours.

Dont buy it whi this price, max 2U$, overpriced for a repetitive game, just a stream lined shooting ugly things, no fun 2 dollars top,

I played though some missions.
The graphics/style is interesting, but the gameplay looks a little boring and scenario is minimal.
I seen far better tower defense.
I cannot really recommand it.

Im entirely enjoying this game

Reminiscence of grade school days of scribbling GiJoe war on binder paper durring recess (Im an 80s kid)
Its simplistic in its approach as you see (no Im not saying I finish campaign in 2 hours omg.. Im at 78% in 3 and still having fun) the soundtrack and explosions are enjoyable and gameplay keeps you on your toes
I personally can say I got my $6.29 of fun out of it already and cant wait for more content (after finish camp.)

What I can say is dont let reviews decide for you, if you think this looks fun check out google vids. ect and
make your own choice.
It makes a good fill-in for when your tired of playing more graphicly intense/expensive games others may more appreciate. I dont play many "tower defense" games as you seem to have less time to react then alot other overhead "mobs on rails"? themed ones...
Multiplayer would have been interesting (though not sure how they'd implement it) I just wish was more games like this

Played the game for two hours, finished the campaign 100%.

The game is very repetitive. You need one strategy and on every map you can use it. It is always the same on each and every map.

The only difference is when there is a boss fight, but that does not count.

I didnot try survival mode because i don´t expect anything from it.

There are some special weapons on each map, i only used them on the last map, where you need Titans as fire support to bring down the final boss.

Should you buy it?
If you want give some east european devs some money - do it.
If you want to kill some time - do it.
If you expect some sort of strategy master piece you can play for hours and hours and try different ways - forget it.

One strategy to rule them all!

Tldr; Fun to play and fairly priced.

Bugs:
-Text screens need slowing down
-Few typos
-Game freezes for a second when bosses die
-Cannot unselect unit type to deploy sometimes

I would like to see a way to delete turrets (lemmings style would be fun) as this could let you lose your game if you have max units deployed and an enemy gets though. Please seperate music and sounds in the options menu, and also the bullet sounds are pretty dull (wet farts). UI wise the right sidebar blocks a lot of the action and should really be integrated into the menu bar by reducing icon size... could there be an option to shake the screen but not the menu bar?

I keep it short. Game is medium fun for around 1 hour if you enjoy this kind of game. Then you saw everything and it makes not much sense to play any longer. Decide yourself how much this is worth.

Fun-to-play side view strategy game with a story, ideal for short games of about 10 minutes.
You throw up to 12 units (which you have to research first) at you opponent, who throws whatever he can craft back at you. Plus some bosses.

Benefits

• Pixel graphics with nice effects
  
• Short games possible
  
• Story and interesting settings with different missions (survive the waves, kill the boss)
  

• Two modes (campaign and surviving) only
  
[*]UI could be improved

I only have one word to describe what is this games most Major fault: Downtime
You find yourself too often staring at the screen, and just occassionally clicking a few upgrades, because you are maxed out with 12 units on the field.

That, combined with the many other UI Issues this game has, makes me advice against a purchase.
Check out my short Video Review, which explains my reasons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuRLKGhYMBE

Not bad, not great but not bad. It's your usual Tower Defense-esque game, think Age of War with a good selection of units and plenty of fast paced enemies ready to bring your whole base crumbling down. It's simple, you build units and towers to hold back enemies while attempting to complete objectives. You can build buildings, upgrade units and unlock more units the more resources you obtain over time. There are some nice things like the graphics which is your usual low rez 16 bit that has become rather popular in indie games nowadays but there are also some rather annoying things like the ludicrously small unit cap or the fact that there even is a unit cap in a game like this. You're already limited in the amount of space in which things can be built, which is fine, but also considering turrets and actual units both occupy unit cap, it gets annoying rather fast. Also, survival mode isn't as good as the campaign so it seems that once everything is complete, there isn't much else to do. Hopefully, as the game is developed, there will be more replayability added to it.
My final thoughts, I don't regret buying it, it's not bad if a bit overpriced. I think an even 5 bucks or 4.99 would be a more worthy pricetag of the current product because this isn't really anything you haven't seen before in a game like Age of War.
Gameplay Impressions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-5B0nth5GU

This game is similar to tower defence games. The resource mining is automatic and you can use resources to buy defence units (turrets, tanks, planes) or to upgrade the units. Or you can upgrade the base to get different units and more upgrades.

This game plays on three floors, the ground (turrets and tanks and shield), the middle air (airships) and the top air (planes) and every floor has its own units. Generally each unit only fights against enemies on the same floor but there are bombers (defender and attacker) which drop bombs from the top to both other floors and there are air-defence turrets which can hit planes and airships.

The game play is fluent and interesting. You can only build one unit at a time and you are limited to 12 so you have to build wisely. But you can destroy misplaced or unused units. You cannot build while upgrading and the other way around, therefore you have to plan in advance.

Every level in the campaign plays about the same because the attackers are always the same and they always attack on the 3 floors. At the end of each level there will be a different enemy boss which is not very hard to beat.
On later level you will start with an upgraded base and get a special defence units which might be helpful against the enemy boss.

I like this game but the content does not justify the price.
The campaign is very short (about 3 hours) and the survival mode is boring because you start with a fully upgraded base and the enemies don't get harder.
Also it is not possible to replay the levels in the campaign. You could reset your progress in the game but be warned: This does not only reset the campaign, it also resets the records of the survival mode and everything you might have unlocked. So there is no real replay value.

Pros:
Great visuals
Good sound
Polished menu
interesting game mechanics

Cons:
Campaign too short
Survival mode boring
No support for touch screen