Golem Gates

W game

this game is about Deckbuilding paired with strategyelements. Units don't have any sort of leveling or upgrading system and it appeared to me like spamming units/cards. Don't know if trading card game enjoyers would like it more than me. However it felt like there was no tactical decision making to be required in the 1st mission.

An underrated game. It's an amazing take in a synthetic metal future.

i was attracted to this game by the graphics, the demon punk look, and it didn't disappoint. For what is often a slug fest of an RTS the deck-building adds a surprising amount of depth. The campaign was a nice length for me, at times lulling me into complacency only to suddenly ramp up the difficulty. As a natural turtler, this game often took me nicely out of my comfort zone.

The part I enjoyed most were the trials, some of the higher ones I really struggled with, having to re-try, re-think, adjust the deck and at times rely on a little luck, before finally getting a victory.

Great art style, bad everything else. Wait for a 80% discount.

Great game, I've been glued to it for almost 9 hours straight now. If you're decent in the RTS genre then you'll have fun, if you're new (or aren't good at RTS games) then this is a good game to help you get better. You can make custom decks and equip them to AI to fight with or against you which is my favorite part right now.

Don't know what the limit is on how many custom decks you can have, I think I had like 8 earlier but I recently deleted a few. Also don't know what the limit is on how many cards you can have in a single deck, I know the minimum is 30.

You can do 2 to 4 players in versus with any team configuration (1v3, 2v2, 1v2, 1v1v1v1, etc) and it looks like there's a 2 player "survival" gamemode that I haven't touched yet.

You unlock new cards after each match, it appears as though you get more rewards based on how long the match went or how badly you won. I haven't lost in a while so I'm not certain but I don't think you get anything when you lose, I could be wrong though.

You can craft new cards through the forge, which just lets you choose between 5 cards which ones you want. When you get all 5 it resets with a new set of cards after you exit and re-enter the forge.

This is more of a sideways thumb. I didn't enjoy the game, but it's well constructed with solid mechanics, and I think some people may enjoy it if they don't share my dislike of the core gameplay. It's definitely not a bad game and doesn't deserve a thumbs down.

I liked the summoning mechanic, you draw new cards (abilities/units/buildings) slowly, you accumulate power to cast them slowly, and there is a maximum power capacity that grows over time. I liked the balance of the pace of card drawing + power generation, I didn't feel overwhelmed managing cards/casting vs combat but the card/power pace didn't bog the game down either.

How much power a card costs is a constant concern, both in play and in deck building. The deck building was fun, I found there to be lots of good options and important considerations. I earned new cards at a decent pace, and there's a forge where you can buy a variety of different cards every day, both of which kept things feeling fresh and interesting.

The game looks nice and the UI is solid. Even if you don't want to play PvP (like me) there's still a ton of content between the campaign, trials, and survival mode.

My biggest problem is that I did not enjoy the RTS play, aka the core of the game. I found unit pathing to be an annoying mess of collisions and rerouting. I found it difficult to differentiate most of my units during combat (icons + unit models were too similar and all clumped together, everything is shiny and one color).

The campaign was way too easy with no difficulty option, and while cut scenes were skippable the level intros were not (usually 15 seconds - 1 minute) which turned me off of trying to replay levels to get any achievements I missed.

The trials seemed to have a more decent difficulty balance but since I didn't enjoy the core combat I only played 5 of them. I didn't have enough interest to try survival.

There was a lot I liked about this game, but ultimately I didn't enjoy the actual gameplay. If you watch some videos and you think the gameplay looks fine or fun, then it may be worth a purchase.

Golem Gates is a game I would have loved to love. Sacrifice as a practical RTS with a customizable deck system? Sounds great! It just wasn't executed well.

+ The deck system is interesting. The reshuffling mechanic (making you unable to give orders for 15 seconds) is particularly neat. It would, however, be good to have more incentive to move your leader; it's just not worth the loss of card draw.
- The missions are basically all "kill this enemy" or "sit there waiting against waves for a while". They're almost all easy and tedious. Pauses that take away player control are excessive and slow, like when a door opens and enemies spawn; you have to sit there watching them walk out of the door, wondering when you get to do something again (although you're just going to spam a bunch of units where they're headed anyway...).
- The units are bland mechs. Some are just basically bigger versions of smaller units. There's little variety.
- Units have terrible line of sight and acquisition range, which, along with awful pathfinding, makes them feel clunky and awful. Most buildings suck and get out-ranged. The vacuum turret is blinding, though perhaps that's a positive because it has one of the few interesting effects (visually and mechanically) in the game.
- The (9) base multiplayer maps are all tiny and don't allow for a lot of interesting gameplay variance.
- The LOUD, UNSKIPPABLE cutscenes override my sound settings. Gladly alt-tabbing mutes them. They're also all shots of people(/robots) talking. Zzz.

Random bugs:
• I saved on the 2nd-to-last mission and when I loaded, it broke the minimap. Had to restart.
• After cutting the credits, I got a blank screen. Walked away for 5 minutes, still blank screen. Had to exit to main menu.

If you every played Battleforge and enjoyed it, try this out.
This game is a RTS where you don't build a base. When a game begins you only have one unit (this unit isn't allowed to die) and you summon units based on cards you draw off of a deck.
You have a mana pool which increases during play up to a cap which also increases albeit at a slower rate. You use this mana to summon soldiers, build buildings, lay down traps, and cast spells.

The game has maps that range up 2 to 4 players and there is a single player skirmish mode, campaign, challenges, survival, and multiplayer.

Golem Gates has a new take on the CCG genre that will secretly pull fans of such games in deeper. One of its strengths also has to be the well-polished feel it has for the most part. This game has potential and it seems the developers are trying to show that.

What I liked
The gameplay is fresh and interesting and you never truly know what your opponent will do at any point as even in the middle of a fight they may throw you a curve ball with a spell or buff you didn’t see coming.

What I did not like
There are just too few cards still in the game most battles feel like the opponent is running a copy of your deck giving little in terms of original strategy’s.

Graphics Rating 7|10

I have seen worse and I have seen better but this gets the job done never felt like I was looking at a rip off Minecraft game and that is always a +

Sound Rating 5|10
A little hit or miss in my opinion at times felt like someone was looking through YouTube for the heavy’s music they could find and threw it in the game without a second thought

Replay/Extras Rating 6|10
There is some replay ability but soon you will get bored mostly due to the lack of dynamic decks with the limited car selection

Gameplay Rating 7|10
I had some problems with unites not responding as fast I felt they should be now could just be me at times the gameplay can feel sluggish and tedious definitely a negative for me on a CCG/RTS hybrid

Overall an ok

{Rating|6|10}}

An overall good game, with a few flaws

Pros:
-pretty good balance. A few units do feel mandatory to have, but almost all cards at least have an interesting way to be used, and even the "mandatory" ones are such just because of them being the best thing to find in the early game, without being overpowered in any way.
-game is generous with glyphs (read: cards), and every mission you play feels rewarding
-Nice story, even if its sadly a rather short one, but it does keep you engaged in during the campaign as you try to find answers to what the hell is going on, answers that you DO get
-the mechanic that prevents you from doing anything for 15 seconds upon running out of cards in your deck and putting in new ones mean unlike other card games, having more than the minimum amount of cards in your deck isn't an instant strategic disadvantage
-fast action during the game, without being so fast it's out of control.

Cons:
-Unit pathfinding can be bad at times, especially with how "large" hitboxes are, meaning units will often make weird movement decisions or plain out get stuck as idle units will not make way to, say, a healer
-A few bugs
-A general lack of players that make the PvP dead as of now unless you have a friend to play with.
-Very few maps in PvP
-AI is rather easy to defeat (but Survival stays difficult from the sheer number of enemies assaulting you)

The 2 first cons are however things that I could see easily solved by patches, and the last one isn't a fault of the game itself. All in all, a very good game that deserves to have way more players than right now

This game is a rare gem, and very nearly missed the radar...

A technopunk MOBA/RTS that brings something different to the table..

Waitaminute, this sounds a bit like a MOBA, but with one person doing all the commanding, Hobbes, are you playing a MOBA-like? Is this the day you start looking at DOTA or LoL?

Final Thoughts

A Hidden Gem

Only played to Chapter 4 but loving the game so far.

The game has lovely graphics and atmosphere, and the main thing that swings it for me is that it's not played at too fast of a pace. Also doesn't have a steep learning curve which normally puts me off games right from the start.

An interesting approach on the RTS formula with lots of effort, unique world story setting, challenging AI.

It's a card system game, you can customize it and unlock new cards.

Gameplay itself is like this,
you have at start your commander hero the goal is to kill enemies commander hero.
There are like 4 or 5 resource locations to capture. Your units and defence buildings are teleported next to your hero, units and other defence buildings. You have a lot of upgrades for units and supporting or offensive spells.

Your spellpower does increase over time to summon more powerful units, mana/energy regenerate itself after you summoned units. So bigger unit does need longer energy regenerate time. You start with 6 cards and after some time you get new card.



What did truly surprise me is lots of effort for story design, the good AI in skirmish for this game and lot of gameplay customization options.

You can adjust game speed, resource income rate, and starting resources.
AI does have a balanced, rush and turtle setting, for 4 difficulty levels.
Hard and Insane AI can be a true challenge.

At first I was just happy to see someone finally made a real time/card game (RTCG?) five years after BattleForge was shut down. Golem Gates' art stlye wasn't really my thing, and the campaign seemed a little simplistic at first.

After spending a few hours playing it, I can say this game is great in on it's own merits, not just as a spiritual successor to BattleForge. The map and unit art gets more varied as you go own, and the campaign missions actually have some interesting mechanics later on. Very highly recommended.

Well - is it balanced? Probabaly not. User friendly? Nah.

Its rough casual RTS that brings back some sort of primal joy of playing old C&C games, building hundreds of tanks - and then loosing them all to single nuclear missile, cause ofc you just selected every unit and threw them into oponents direction.

Funny enough - game has quite a bit of depth to it:
- Do I want huge deck that will make me shuffle less but my consistency of draws goes to hell or do I want 30 cards deck that will give me consistency but I will have awkward 15 seconds of being unable to give commands to my units more often?
- Should I double down on spells and buff or just throw in few dispells and null-magic zones and just overpower oponent with units?
- Should I play my Hero now and risk it being countered with oponent hero or should I wait till oponent drops jis hero, destroy him and then play mine?
- Poor vision of your squads and ability to call in reinforcements inside vision range allows for quite epic flanking and backdoring - should I hide my Harbinger in some dark deep corner or should I stand my ground and gain more cards?

This is really an "old school" game in a sense that it has:
- Solo campaing
- AI versus modes
- Coop mode
- Solo chalenges
- AND It all provides you with rewards (you dont need to bash your heads in PvP to gain new cards)
- AND Multiplayer PvP in addition to all that
- It has NO cash shop so far and you gain power and rare cards by playing darn game and completing chalenges and achievements

Its not perfect by any means - pathing of units kinda sucks, combat can be a huge mess when you get to later stages of the game, no customization of your Harbinger so far - so everyone is smug looking metall dude with pimp-ass cape.

But this game has its own identity and it just wants you to play it and feel rewarded for doing so - and nowdays its a rare thing. How long will it last? - Dont know, but I really hope it will become something.

Perfect combination of RTS, Tower like game, even MOBI, and card deck building.
Love the challenges, new cards daiily which means this game is going to have great replay value.
Forge your own deck, challenge friends in multiplayer with voice built in game. Various game play modes, from storyline, challenge stages, multiplayer.
Great sound effects, music score, sound effects. This is AAA studio work from an indie dev team!!


Support Indie dev teams, they are the future of gaming!
http://razorsedgegames.org/

Edit: Nominated for the "Better with friends" award in Steam awards 2018.

As a CCG veteran (Magic: The Gathering since early days) and RTS dabbler since Windows 95, I wish I could say my worlds are finally colliding. In my opinion, the game is too little CCG and too much RTS. I was hoping for vastly greater specialization and variety in units. (Remember, I'm used to building decks from a 25,000 card pool)
I desperately hope the game gets enough traction to where that can become a reality in the future.

However, what it does do it does really well.

If you are expecting insurmountable vertical progression from 'rarity' or RNG, then don't worry. This is not that kind of game. You expand your glyph (card) pool steadily and easily through gameplay. (No micro transactions)
In addition to being awarded anywhere from 2-4 new glyphs after most games, you also get an in-game currency to buy glyphs from the 'forge', a selection of 5 glyphs which get refreshed every day.

The game is fast-paced and looks (and sounds!) stunning. Apart from some occasional pathfinding quirks it is also relatively bug-free.

I hope as many people as possible give this game a try, this is definitely the kind of game you already know if you're going to love or hate within the first 2 hours.

I was quite sceptical of the concept Golem Gates presented at first. Although I've competitively played and made money off of various different card games and really liked the general idea, adding elements from them to a RTS is a risky move, and I knew from the start that this game could crash and burn, starting from it's core. My scepticism might have been called for, but what Golem Gates actually became is something working and wonderful. Since it's a given that the devs will still polish a lot before 1.0 release, in this review I'm not going to touch small details that don't really affect the core experience of the game.
What I will say, however, is that the devs really pulled off something that's hard to pull off, and that's a good card game/RTS hybrid. However, calling this a spiritual successor to BattleForge, as some reviewers might, is not true. In BattleForge, the cards where more of a graphical element that let you customize your own faction and playstyle, whereas Golem Gates could be called a card game which lends a lot from RTS games. The main combat mechanics are RTS for sure, but as a competitive card gamer I find my self utilizing a lot of meta-mechanics and card management techniques akin to card games. Deck and hand management within each match, resource curves and many other such elements are just as important here as they are in ordinary card games. All in all the game is solid, and if you find the games concept interesting, buy it.

Pros:
- The game is refreshing and fun, and the core mechanics work well.
- The general game pace and match lengths are good and work for both a casual and competitive environment.
- Although some prevalent balance problems exist within the core games card pool (as they do in all card game releases), the potential competitive deck variety seems to be the highest I've seen in any card game release. I'm not saying the base game card pool is as smooth as can be, but it's one of the smoothest I've seen yet.
- Active and friendly devs that support the game and it's community a lot.
- UI is efficient and modern.
- You can actually get cards quickly by playing the game.

Neutral:
- Having no separate factions might end up in a situation similar to YU-GI-OH, where at least half of every competitive deck consists of the same tournament staple cards. Luckily this is still something the devs can keep in mind and address.
- The overall art style is great and very well thought through, but if you're easily distracted by a lot of unnecessary moving parts in the map, this game might annoy you a lot.

Cons:
- Some unit pathing and AI problems, which force you to micro manage support units the extra mile, and might cause some occasional clipping with walls or units clumping up too much.
- Some cards (glyphs) are extremely underpowered, and most trap glyphs are sub-par. This might change in the future, but would require large scale rebalancing.
- All relevant information is not given to the player.
- Survival maps are dull.

I don't often review games, but this one seems unique enough I thought I'd chime in. Found this one via twitter and really dug the art-style so here's my review of GG so far:

Gameplay: Standard "capture-the-tower/flag" stategy RTS but without any unit factory building. I never minded base building and GG lets you build turrets but beyond that the game is all about unit positioning which I find refreshing. I like how the cards (Glyphs) are both spells, traps, and units. This kind of removes the 'hero-on-the-map' element of MOBA's that I never liked and replaces it with a nice combination of deckbuilding/hand-management and RTS micro.
EDIT: There are heroes but they are special glyphs you add to your deck.

Artwork/Audio: Great job here, the UI is easy to understand and the units look cool. My only thought is sometimes I find it hard to distinguish certain unit types when you get like 15+ of them in a ball.

Multiplayer: Community is friendly. I hopped onto their Discord and was able to find a match with someone pretty quick, so definently check that out: https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?url=https://discord.gg/N8rRQgQ

SinglePlayer: No Campaign yet, tutorial is helpful to get started, and you can play matches against the AI.

Gotta mention, it seems pretty bug-free. Ran great on my PC and didn't encounter any bugs yet. Really solid for an early-access title.

Did u like Battleforge? Then try this game... it is in early access tho, but still has an amazing graphics, art, music and gameplay. Truly a gem. However it needs more publicity, because I've never found a player in quick match. (and I dont have friends to play with) AI is challenging so it is fun to play single player as well.
I paid for it and worth it. For me, its really hard to say this nowadays...

I really like the concept of this game. Its fun to play, and the Art is amazing. Honestly there isn't anything that I can think of wrong with it (other than the usual frame dips, and minor pathing issues that is expected in early access) after playing about 15 games in about 3 hours. Everything is functional as far as I can tell.
It is my hope that this game gets a little more publicity. I didn't even know about it till the day before it released on early access.
I played against AI bots in all my matches simply because of the publicity thing, and not many people playing it, but the AI is smart enough to make it fun.
The only con that I can think is all you'll really be doing is playing bot matches, or the every so often player match if you can get one, simply because the campaign is not implemented into the game yet, and its obviously built around multiplayr. But since its fun, quick to play and really easy to learn, its easy to just load it up and play for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. Also it should be easy to schedule a game with a friend who plays it since, again, the games are pretty fast.

p.s. I'm rooting for you devs :) I hope you get your spotlight. I really do.