Dunebound Tactics

A fun tactics game that could use a bit more depth. You're limited to three active characters at a time with three more in reserve. Characters gain a main attack, at least one passive, an active, and a map ability that can be used if they're in reserve. Those abilities are great, fantastic little additions that make the crew loadout a little more interesting to build around. The depth ends there. There are modules which can be purchased at the start of the run which can give you some more active abilities, and there are random traits that can slightly nudge how a given class plays, but generally one Mechanic is going to play like another, a Sniper is a Sniper, and so on. There is very little you can do to make the class your own. There is enough there for some skill expression in the tactical layer. I will say that I found the game to be profoundly easy. I defeated the tutorial boss by the skin of my teeth, but found you're supposed to lose that fight. I figured that would be representative of the difficulty. When I got to the same spot in the main game, the end of act 1, I found a much-reduced version of the boss instead of the one I'd fought tooth and nail against. The additio…

It plays like an early access title. Loading screens and very tediously slow travel on the map. The map is "open", in theory, but due to limited fuel and slow travel, deviating off the default course seems like a death sentence. No save feature that I could see. Any mistake could end a run. No "undo" button for combat movement either. For me, having the currency be both fuel and money takes away from the fun. I'd rather they were separate, as it seems to be tight, and spending it makes running out of fuel a very likely scenario. Needing to go through the early game over and over, which is what I was expecting to be necessary to make meaningful progress, is lazy game design. In a random event, I met a "programmer" and after expressing an interest in trading, it forced me to make a purchase. I don't even know what "access codes" are, and it wasn't even clear before I agreed to trade whether I was buying or selling them (I had just picked some up from a previous event, so I thought he might want mine), but once I agreed to trade it just gave me 3 choices of amounts to buy- no cancel option. What a bizarre oversight not to be able to cancel the transaction. After my compelled tra…

Interesting concept and world building. However it currently lacks both polish and content. Core gameplay is fun but is often clunky and unresponsive. Hours of content is also lacking, 5 maybe 10 hours if you are attempting to get all achievements. All in all doesn't feel like a 15 dollar game (even with a small dev team).

Recommended, but with some reservations. They nailed the atmosphere: the clay-like models, the sand-ocean and the decaying world aesthetics are all on point. When it comes to the actual game: the approach to the tactical gameplay is interesting, with a fresh take on the cover system and a lot of emphasis on environmental destruction and environmental... creation? (e.g. spawning pillars on the map to mess with the movement of an enemy melee unit). There is also a decent variety both of classes for your soldiers and of enemy types, but despite this variety, the gameplay, while fun, doesn´t have a lot of depth. Once you understand how line of sight/covers work in this game and you´ve tried every class at least once, there´s not much more depth to engage with. The other issue I have with the game is the lack of control you feel during each run: you technically can "explore" the map between one mandatory objective and the next, but in practice you have to follow a linear path and engage with all the "optional" events along the road if you don´t want to run out of fuel. To be fair, occasionally, the game will put some optional events outside of the linear path, but the choice is alway…

It's an interesting concept. Enjoyed it so far!

lots of fun