Axes and Acres

Mainly got this to learn how a game like this could work. Disappointed though that it doesn't really work well.

Simple, but nicely done. Levels build nicely, and you can reset to a lower level when you feel the difficulty has gone too high. I come back to it periodically.

Another perfect little game from BrainGoodGames. Simple and clear rules, with plenty of room to try to master this little gem of a game. Very limited RNG impact on a round (just enough to challenge your "go to" stratgies) and quick to play (one round takes me about 15min - others are probably much faster or much slower depending on playstile).

A really nice 4X style computer-boardgame. Is does the "difficult decisions" bit of a boardgame well, as well as being a very well defined space. It's not so good a computer game, however, as it's a bit janky and it isn't all that compelling to play, outside of the solitaire boardgame aspect.


The game design is sound, but the biggest problems are in the UI:

1. The learning videos don't match the current game
2. The tutorial is pretty buggy, though the main tutorial and the in-game prompts do a good job of explaining everything. You don't need to watch the official video or Tom Chick's one any more, though they might add some context.
3. Undo is really weird / often doesn't undo what you expect. It's also bound to RMB which is odd. I'd like the entire game to just be one giant undo stack so we can undo right to start if we want (with perhaps a penalty to league table).
4. The controls are not intuitive. I was continually getting muddled up, e.g. I want to activate a dice but I'd end up placing one. They should invert the system, so rather than the current system of selecting a dice from the rolled pool and then "contextually" using it somewhere I'd prefer to just point at the place I want to use it, and then select the dice to consume. Some parts of the game already work in that fashion, e.g. reproduction.

The smartest part of the game design is the guidance goals along the top. They really shake the game up each time and give you different things to prioritise.

I wanted to like this game. I really did.

But there are some major fundamental problems with how it's played that make it not fun for me.
1. There's supposedly an "undo" with right-click, but more than half the types of actions, primarily the ones where you realllllllly want an undo if you do one by accident, the undo simply doesn't work at all. The game is open-knowledge. Nothing is random except between phases. There is no reason any action shouldn't be able to be undone unless it reveals random information, and really the game should have a complete undo "stack" where you can undo back to the beginning of a turn.
2. When you abandon or fail, it (sometimes?!?) decreases the difficulty ("rank"). There is no way to turn this off. You can manually set the value, but only to 5 or 10, not to anything else. Since a "bad" starting position makes the game basically unwinnable at higher ranks, the fact that you can't retry on a new map and have to replay an earlier difficulty sucks.

There are some other, less fatal issues as well, such as the "help" being insufficient and you having to basically guess what some things do until you try them, but the two above issues made me stop playing and uninstall the game.

This is one of those "if you like X, then you'll like this" games.

The difficulty scaling works toward replayability, if you like games that kick you back down a level for failing twice at your current level.

The strategizing isn't overly challenging, if you like depending on dice rolls with little dice control.

The buildings have simple but effective abilities, if you don't mind getting timed scenarios that limit what you can build to fulfill them.

It's a good, cheap, chess-styled dice game.

As a big fan of BrainGoodGames in general, Axes and Acres has long been my favorite game they've ever put out. I can return to this years later and pick right back up, and the strategy is deep and cerebral. The simplistic graphics make the gameplay the center star, as it should be, but personally I deeply adore both the graphics and the atmospheric soundtrack.

I love this game and Militia 2 too. This two are pure tactics and strategy, without any distraction. And much less time consuming, than classic tactical or strategic turn based games.

This is a lightweight strategy game. It's not for building up a town; it's for completing objectives in a set number of turns. Despite this limitation, it is a fun entry to its specific niche.

The main drawback: There's no difficulty adjuster. If you win at a level, it increases the difficulty. If you loose twice in a row, it decreases. There's no sandbox mode, either. You will always have to play the same game mode, so there's not much room for exploration.

Right now, Axes and Acres is half off for the Winter Sale, and I think that $4.99 is a fair price for what this is: a digital version of a typical European board-game. It's not an American board-game, so it plays more like "Settlers of Catan" than "Candyland." That means it's complicated at first, though it's very easy to learn if you watch TomChick's video of him playing it. For what it is, it had the potential to be a great game: you build up your little hamlet from scratch each game, building houses, farms, guardhouses, town halls and so forth, and your peasants farm, chop trees, mine stone and reproduce, a game mechanic that requires two pawns instead of one for some inexplicable reason. (Because your pawns aren't people, they are tiny dice-shaped figurines, so maybe they have one gender, or six. I don't know.)

Anyway, the game is a lot of fun when you're playing it. You only have so many dice each turn and only so much food, so you have to decide whether to build or farm and so forth. Each game has random goals, such as "Build 5 roads" or "Kill 3 barbarians" and you have to work towards those goals in a set amount of turns.

And here is where the game goes from being great to being a near miss. For some inexplicable reason, the game designers decided that foisting a super-complicated European-style digital board-game that has no real-world board game equivalent to it on an unsuspecting American teenage Steam populace would make these people go "Oh, this is too complicated! Make it harder!" and so they decided that every time you win, the game would keep track, for every victory you would gain a Level, and the game would roughly subtract one turn for each victory. So, if you are given 25 turns to win at Level 1, you only get 24 turns at Level 2, and 23 turns at Level 3.

Now if you're great you may get to Level 50, if you're terrible you may get to Level 4, but at some point, every single person who plays will reach a maximum level where they can't go any higher, and so for them the game becomes an exercise in futility. If you lose two games in a row, you lose a Level and gain back a turn, so you might rise to Level 50, lose 10 games and end up at Level 45. I don't see this as a good thing, as you gain nothing.

In various rogue-like and tower-defense games, you have a meta-game, where even if you lose terribly each game, you are still gaining gold, cards, skills or whatever, and so there is compensation for the game getting tougher. "Solar Settlers" by the same company is a good example: you get cards permanently every time you play, and thus the entire game makes more sense and is always fun to play.

So, I do recommend this game on sale. It's worth playing for the 10 or 20 hours you'll get out of it before you find it frustrating and futile.

Thumbs up! Another good strategy game from BrainGoodGames. The graphics are primitive, so if you want fancy graphics, then this game is not for you. However, if you like board games, then this game might be for you.

This game is a simple town builder with a medieval theme. Your workers are represented by dice, so at the start of each turn, you roll the dice to see how many of each type you get. It helps to get a good mix of different types such as builders, workers and gatherers. If you don’t get any builders, then you can’t build anything. You start off with six dice, but you can gradually increase the number up to sixteen. You can promote your workers to advanced dice such as masons and hunters if you build the associated building for that type. Personally, I like building theatres to get actors. In addition to dice, there are also cards. When I first started, I concentrated mostly on the dice, but getting the right cards can be really helpful, especially at higher levels.

Gameplay has similarities to Solar Settlers, another game by the same company. You have a certain number of turns to meet the required victory conditions. If you keep winning, then your rank goes up and the game becomes more difficult, but if you lose, then your rank goes down and the game becomes easier. I liked Solar Settlers better, but if you like one, then you’ll probably like the other.

One of my favorite games. Has a somewhat steep learning curve, especially if you're unfamiliar with the genre. Once you figure it out, it's a lot of fun. There is some RNG, but there's a lot of things you can do to mitigate it - which is part of the skill of the game. The only similar game on steam I could compare it to is Tharsis.

Gameplay: You start with 6 dice. Each die can be spent to perform an action - build a building, gather a resource, make more dice, etc. You also get 3 cards every turn that can be used to perform or augment actions (tip: try to use all 3 each turn). Certain actions score victory points (randomized each game) and you need a certain amount of victory points to advance to the next stage. Win 3 stages to win the game and advance to the next rank.

If you like board and/or dice games, you will like this.

Absolutely fantastic game if you are a fan of building games (Civ etc.) and the elegance of chess. You build a little town, making your build choices differently based on variations in the layout of the terrain and the victory point conditions that vary in each play-through. It is consistent enough to appeal to (former) chess player in me, but random enough to be exciting and new each time. Random cards and "dice" (types of "people" you can use each turn to take various actions) keep it exciting, forcing tactical adjustments every turn, but largely without upsetting your larger strategy.

It has its limits. Once you have really mastered it (I am 5th on the leaderboards) it is pretty much done. You cannot play it 20 totally different ways for 10 years like the best Civ-type games of all time. But the subtleties of tactics and strategy are absolutely fantastic to figure out along the way despite what look like incredibly simple mechanics. So it is an wonderful puzzle game wrapped in a tactical game that is wrapped in a builder game. While I am pretty much done with it, it will stay in my memory as one of the best games I have ever played.

Well thought-out game. With simple mechanic like chess, yet tons of decisions to make.

It's single-player without opponent, so AI does not ruin the experience, you fight the environment to reach the goals.
Sure there's some RNG involved on dice but it just adds to the excitement (and makes the reroll 2 card more valueable ;)

You can watch the play on youtube or read the strategy guide if unsure before buy.

Some of the negative comments were made on early version. By now it's at 1.06a, tutorial works fine, no glitches (maybe some undo not perfect) and there were two major rebalancing acts. In the right direction too.

Deep strategy game, more than meets the eye.
Tons of replay value.
Feels like Forgotten Lands.
Very addictive game. Can take your time with it. New challenges with each level.
Eventually it will become too hard and frustrating though.

My favourite game of 2016.

Plays like a town building worker placement board game with some deck building on the side.

You are racing to meet your Victory Point target before you run out of turns. If you are successful you move on to the next phase where you keep all the infrastructure you have built, but the actions which give you Victory Points change. After you beat all three phases you win the map and increase one rank.

Each rank you go up increases the number of Victory Points required to beat the next map, however if you lose two maps in a row your rank decreases by one. This does a really good job of making sure things never get too hard or too easy for you.

I like the intense strategies that really make me think, weigh my options and optimize my turns. It's a game that rewards planning and creativity, with a sandbox feel of freedom to do what you want and many paths to victory. Although your start is pretty much the same each game, every game feels completely different. I really love this game and I expect it will only get better as development continues.

Excellent, suprisingly deep boardgame with great, minimalist art and pretty music.

Another game I picked up thanks to Tom Chick.

My only complaint? As you "rank up" in the game, you are expected to accomplish
more tasks in a reduced timeframe. I understand that this is an important gameplay
mechanic, I just dont like being put on a timer...but hey...it does make you more
careful and efficient.

Highly recommended.

V1.01a Review, based mostly off of 1.00 gameplay — 21.4 hours logged

tldr: Step-by-step thinking dice and resource management game with clean graphics and somewhat steep learning curve.

Recommended for those with the time and patience to learn the game.

Short Review
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Axes and Acres is a strategy dice/card game with survival elements. You manage food, wood, and stone resources to deploy dice, construct buildings and other actions to gain enough Victory Points to win and progress to a harder rank.

Careful management of your resources is needed, and using your dice as a resource is part of the fairly steep learning curve. You start with 6 dice and spend them not only for their face value (building, gathering, working, and reproducing more dice), but also one die to "confirm" each action, and one die to move 2 spaces. You also use cards to perform actions more efficiently to save on dice.

Graphics are clean and well done. Music is relaxing and sound effects sparse in a good way.

Recommended for strategy gamers with patience for the learning curve.

Long Review
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Axes and Acres' menu is very simple. You have some tutorial levels, a teaching video I didn't watch, "Play" mode, and an options menu with some basic sound and display options.

(The tutorial has been improved in V1.01, but I have not tested it yet.)
V1.00's tutorial may be very confusing and frustrating even for seasoned strategy gamers as myself. I had to restart some tutorial levels several times just to pass them, and I still didn't really get the game's basic mechanics when finished.

The main mode of the game, "Play" mode, starts you out as rank 1 and will progress you 1-2 levels on a win, and decrease your rank on I believe two losses in a row. This flow is actually very nice, and has kept me playing for hours trying to get better at the game and achieve a higher rank. Maps are procedurally generated.

Axes and Acres is a strategy game with some very concrete, step-by-step thinking involved. Careful management of your resources is needed to succeed, and using your dice as a resource is part of the fairly steep learning curve. You manage food, wood, and stone resources to deploy dice, construct buildings and other actions to gain enough Victory Points to win and progress to a harder rank.

Your objective is to achieve a certain amount of Victory Points (VP) in a certain amount of turns. VP are gained through completing the phase objective on the top of your screen (ex build a road, have 4 houses, hunt an animal, kill a barbarian). Harder ranks require more VP relative to the amount of turns given. Each game has three phases with a VP threshold required to meet phase two and three. When the phase changes, an event happens (positive event on lower difficulties, negative on higher ones) and your three phase objectives change as well.

You start with 6 dice and spend them not only for their face value (building, gathering, working, and reproducing more dice), but also one die to "confirm" each action, and one die to move 2 spaces. You can't save up extra moves gained this way, though dice left over at the end of your turn do add 1 move to a pool you can use anytime. You also use up to 3 cards a turn to perform actions more efficiently to save on dice. This detailed management may seem tedious to many players, but after playing this fun game a while you will get used to it, and is all part of the strategy and fun of Axes and Acres. :)

The player starts out a match with just two houses by a river. They must expand their infrastructure over the course of the game to gain enough VP in time. Axes and Acres features 15 buildings that will let your dice navigate the map, collect resources easier, "upgrade" your dice, generate powerful cards to your deck, and more! It takes hours to realize the potential of buildings and their effects.

Graphics are nice and simple, with a large and clean interface. Don't confuse simple with lazy — the graphics are very well done and all fit a cohesive art style. The music is doable, there's two or so acoustic-y tracks that play and serve as some good background music, though about half of the time I like to listen to my own. Sound effects are simple but nicely done, nothing over-the-top or annoying and fit in well with the relaxing atmosphere (minus the stressful thinking involved :P) and minimalist style of the game.

Overall, I would recommend Axes and Acres for those with the time and patience to learn the game. There is great fun to be had for those that enjoy step-by-step thinking and setting both short and long-term goals for a level.

These days it's extremely rare to see an original game design within the realm of video games. It's also hard to find elegant strategy games that are easy to learn and unfold their depth by the combination of relatively straight-forward rules. Axes and Acres delivers on both fronts!

The game resembles an economic solitaire board game, but uses the digital format to take full advantage of randomization (map, cards, goals, dice) to keep every playthrough fresh. All of the randomness happens before the player is making decisions though and can be mitigated in various ways, so it never feels unfair but more like a set of conditions you have to make the best out of every turn.

On top of that, the game uses a ranking system to dynamically adjust the difficulty to the player's skill every match. It's a feature far too few single-player games use.

All in all this is, so far, probably the most interesting game I've played this year.

Fun single player board game that gets slightly more difficult each time you win.

Elements of Worker Placement, Dice Rolling, Victory Point engine building, Light deckbuilding.

Would recommend for fans of Agricola, Empire, or even Civilisation.