Preview: Spirit Oath (Steam Early Access)
Rebuild the world tile by tile and create patterns to summon units to your command, as masses of enemies attack your core. Cast spells to assist your troops in battle, and don’t stop until total annihilation of the enemy.
Pros:
- Decent graphics.
- 4893mb Download size.
- Four difficulties-curious, bold, brave, and blind. These effect map size and enemy types/amount.
- Strategy gameplay where it kind of combines the layout of a board game along with an RTS game.
- Connect symbols together to create a unit.
- Every turn you pick 1 of 3 cards to play.
- Special abilities that you can play wherever you want and can be things like an AoE attack.
- The world uncovers as you play.
- The soundtrack is Enchanting yet haunting at the same time.
- It’s kind of like a puzzle game as well as you juggle position and deal with the pieces you have that cannot be rotated.
- Interesting concept.
- Despite knowing very little it has something to keep you coming back failure after failure.
- The goal is to protect your source which looks like a tree from the flying rat looking enemies.
- Satisfying when you have a load of units protecting the source and nothing is getting through.
Cons:
- No tutorials whatsoever.
- Graphics settings are just a slider.
- Couldn’t click the settings option on the main menu.
- No resolution or v-sync type settings.
- No controller support.
- You have to piece together what to do by yourself.
- Wish I knew what was going on.
- So much is down to luck early on.
- No Steam achievements.
Summary
No idea what’s going on in this one? I managed to work out that you place one of three-card (tiles) onto the play area which is a gridded board game looking sort of deal. Some tiles will have symbols that you connect to other symbols to finish the link and create a unit that takes on the enemies, or it could be a blank tile that does nothing but extend the play area. On rare occasions, you get these powerful ability style cards where you can freeze the enemies or rain down a load of damage. I soon manifested a cycle of click tiles and place them quickly then pray I get what I need and build units before the enemy spawns. The enemy would indeed spawn and then take me out very quickly… Game over. I got used to game over very quickly and when I finally had a run last longer than 5 minutes, I grew anxious that I hadn’t died yet. My longest run was so satisfying though, watching units take down the killer flying rats and creepy bunnies was a true spectacle and I grew to like the game. If I just pretend it’s a lick based tile placing game rather than a heavy strategy RTS game I tend to get on a lot better. Lucky it’s in early access as it can be further improved, I mean it has one graphics option and it’s a slider! What’s that for then? I can’t click the main settings cog on the main menu for some reason and it’s all very alien to me. Overall its a really good weird title that is intriguing as it is completely baffling. But you know what? Il keep coming back update after update as it has something about it.
