Auro: A Monster-Bumping Adventure

The game still experiences a bug which freezes a match every 6 or so matches. When a match freezes, you have no choice but to restart or quit, which deducts points from your rank in the ranking system.

This. Is. Not. Fair.

And this game's been abandoned from updates too so it's not getting fixed. Save yourself the headache of losing matches you didn't deserve to lose.

Few things in video games are as fun as lining up monsters and have a troggle eradicate them all, netting you a lot of points, or forcing that troggle to yeet itself off the map. Or spinning two flying characters, pulling one in the other's vortex and killing them. Or getting that teeth clenching victory where your only move to net you the remaining points also causes you to die (which still counts as a win).

A masterpiece of tactics game. Insanely addictive and deceptively deep.

Very fun and original game.
However, this game is not for everyone, this game is highly skill based, so no grinding.
It reminds me a bit of chess, but more fun.

If you like tactical games like fire emblem, invincible inc, renowned explorers, and like games that are on the difficult side I highly recommend this game to you.

I used to play this on my phone way back in 2015/16, It has come a long way since. Imo, the design is up there with games like hyperrogue, into the breach, cinco paus. It's a shame this game doesn't get more attention.

It certainly is unique! I liked the game quite a bit, though it's better suited to a mobile platform to pick up and play for a few matches.

The sound and graphics are a real treat, and do benefit from the PC platform. The difficulty is a bit high in my opinion, and difficulty settings would be appreciated.

All in all, a solid tactical game.

This game was always a fantastic tactics game. But the recent updates have a whole host of improvements that make it even more fun to play. Time to climb the ranks!

With the recent upgrade to Unity and a small re-balance I can now recommend this tricksy quick puzzler without reservations.

Besides your direct abilities you have to use special terrain and monsters' own attacks/properties to build point combos -- not much of a description but it's all the game needs to be fun in short bursts (or even "one more tries").

Update: amazingly, the game was ported to Unity five years after release and many of the issues were fixed. I still encounter the occasional bug, but I have no reservations about recommending it now.

[original review below]

One of my favorite roguelikes ever.

At first the strange mechanics of the game make you feel impotent. Why can't I just attack monsters!? But pushing monsters into water is the name of the game here and it feels way more satisfying than simply hacking at them. Beyond that is the spell system. In each round you get 4 randomly selected spells + a slot for a one-use pickup. If you're clever enough, you can wipe out a whole screen of monsters at once. The way your spells recharge by picking up energy from floor tiles is tactically interesting and not something I've seen elsewhere.

Auro is a real brain burner. If you were to try to play optimally at the higher difficulties, you might think about each turn for a minute or more. Auro is very hard, but it eases you in with a "single player elo" system. You basically move up difficulty levels until you're matched with the right difficulty for you.

The pixel art is beautifully animated and quite large. The music is quirky, but stays with you.

I see a lot of complaints about this being a lazy mobile port, but I don't think that's accurate. The entire game was revamped for the Steam release. Go look up a gameplay video of "Auro iOS." It looks really different from the game today and in fact the iOS version isn't even available for purchase anymore.

Bugs

• Hitting escape twice creates a menu that is impossible to exit
  
• Getting stuck on a lone tile in the water gives you no further options and you're stuck
  
[*]Rarely, monsters will wind up on the same tile with bizarre consequences

This game has good gameplay, but it's buggy as heck. I often get pop up tutorials that I can't get rid of and I'm forced to close the game, so I lose my progess and combo. If they fix the bugs, I could recommend.

a bad port of mobile game

Auro is a really deep, yet easy to learn game. There is a lot of strategy embedded into a very small number of tools, and the amount of polish that's gone into the game's design is clear when playing.

A neat little mobile->PC game with a very similar design to Hoplite.

It's all about turn based tactical positioning on a hex grid using an assortment of abilities in order to kill monsters (usually by bumping them into the water).

Given the low price point and the good design, I would be happy to give this game a positive review, but...

The bugs finally got fixed.

̶T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶n̶o̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶b̶u̶g̶s̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶f̶i̶x̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶.̶ ̶H̶i̶t̶ ̶e̶s̶c̶a̶p̶e̶ ̶t̶w̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶?̶ ̶C̶o̶n̶g̶r̶a̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶c̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶.̶ ̶O̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶t̶c̶h̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶r̶e̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶,̶ ̶I̶'̶l̶l̶ ̶f̶l̶i̶p̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶v̶i̶e̶w̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶i̶t̶i̶v̶e̶.̶

The gameplay is great. The concept is simple and the game is easy to get into, but everything feels fresh. Your goal is to bump monsters into the water, and to that end you use a handful of abilities and the terrain itself, occasionally also turning the monster AI on itself. All while ideally avoiding to be eaten.
This comes together really well, because the abilities, tiles and monsters are all designed with simplicity in mind but taken together present you with interesting problems to solve.

The animations are also very nice.

The port could be a lot better, though. I haven't played the mobile version, but there are just a lot of things that could have been better. For example, when you want to see information about a specific tile or monster, you first have to click on the magnifier button you'll see in the upper left when you look at the screenshots. Then you click on the tile. This has no place in a PC game, in this case this whole process could be avoided by just using a left-click for info/right-click to move or bump scheme.
There are also no zoom or scrolling functions as far as I can tell, which can be annoying, especially when you walk straight into a pack of monsters you couldn't see and really don't want to deal with right now.

Overall I like this game a lot for its unique, challenging and addictive gameplay, but I hope some work is done on the PC version because the UI is a little clunky when it really doesn't need to be.

A "recommend" gladly given.

Once I started using spells freely, basically as fast as I could, I rarely lost a game. Also the manual is quite good, with hints at the back, but I found game is built so that you never have to read the manual.

Good turned based game -- you can take as long as you like.

Solid gameplay and a complexity that's purely the result of good design, not clutter and frustration. You won't get caught off guard by random effects or failures, (enemies act according to their rules, spells have the intended effect,) but every situation is very different, and that just means you can plan your strategy, which you will need to do, to survive. Try stacking spells and attacks, or even let monsters attack or use a spell in a new situation, they've thought all the possibilities out extremely well. It has the fun of a dungeon crawler, but the tactics of Chess... if the board were different, every time... and your queen could make pawns trail fire, as they move.

It's easy enough to sit and play a round or two, and be totally satisfied. More often, though, I find myself trying to ride a winning streak, or coming up with a tactic I'm dying to try, and I've played half a dozen rounds before I realize it. Then I play another half dozen, just to round it out. Dinofarm Games has a knack for making you feel like a badass, until you make a poor decision, and then you learn that they aren't holding your hand. Creative thinking and a little planning are the keys to success. With a decent, fair learning curve, beautiful pixel art, good music, and a sense of humor, Auro easy to pick up, but with enough depth, variation, and challenge to keep it from getting stale.

Excellent game. The gameplay is made of quick randomly generated matches and provides a lot of fine-tuned strategy and depth. The pixel graphics are cute and expertly drawn and animated. This is made by very dedicated people who truly care about their craft, folks.

I'm one of those guys that plays games looking depth... real depth. I know I'm in the minority here, but things that are truly novel just speak to my soul. Because of that, I tend to drift from game to game, playing everything in my library at least once or twice, but hardly ever come back to them once I "get it".

Auro is not one of those drift-able games! I originally bought it on Android about a year ago, and have sunk hours and hours into it. This game offers true strategy, not the feigned depth of most strategy games out there. Most strategy games add tons and tons of complexity to their rule-set to keep the player from ever mastering the them. Auro keeps it super simple and elegant. After a hardcore year of trying to "get it" I keep being delighted with the emergence of strategies discovered through gameplay!

Seriously, out of every game I've ever owned, Auro is the game that has kept my adult brain entertained the longest.

Dive in, bump some foes, give it a solid chance. You'll be glad you dropped a few bucks on a game that rivals the simplicity and elegance of the greats like Chess or Go. A modern take on a true evergreen game.

Replayability is insane; every game has a randomized map, randomized monsters, and a random combination of spells, but always feels winnable. Tactics game that does an awesome job of keeping you on your toes and maintaining a steady difficulty level using win-streaks in combination with rankings. Characters are lovable and hilarious.

This is one of the best games I have seen this year. I'm looking forward to seeing it on mobile and I strongly recommend to anyone that likes to feel clever.

I started playing the mobile version of Auro during beta almost four years ago and am really excited to finally have it on my PC as well. After all this time and thousands upon thousands of matches, I'm still playing it almost every day. At this point I can safely say that this is one of the BEST VIDEO GAMES EVER.

While it may seem simple and like a typical "mobile game" at first sight, there is a LOT more to it. The emergent depth this game unfolds over time is quite incredible and puts at least 90% of all PC and console game releases to shame. Every piece, every single rule, in the game has been balanced and honed for years to make for one of the best examples we have of a well-designed gameplay system. Rest assured that you have never played a "dungeon crawler" like this before.

The laser-sharp focus on the core mechanism of "bumping" makes every monster and spell in the game work together beautifully. On top of that though, the "competitive single-player" metagame is nothing less than revolutionary in how it does away with pretty much every typical problem of match-based "highscore" single-player games.

Do yourself a favor and buy this game! And in doing so, tell the world that good gameplay matters more than audiovisual pomp and exploitative business models.

I played this game loads on Android last year, and they've really overhauled it for the steam version. The game never looked terrible, but the new coat of paint looks great and is definitely appreciated. The campaign mode, too, has been re-themed and reworked. The menus don't have the same graphical polish as the rest of the game, but for the £6 asking price I'm not too fussed.

I should warn the people thinking of buying - this is a tactics game through and through. If you're looking for an immersive story or buckets of content you should go elsewhere. But if you enjoy strategy games like Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics, Outwitters, or even Chess then you'll get a lot of value out of Auro. The game starts simple, but put in a little effort and it rapidly ramps up the number of pieces on the board and becomes pretty deep.

I'll probably be putting as many hours into this as I did on the mobile version. I recommend it to anyone who likes tactics games.