GemCraft - Chasing Shadows

Let's talk Tower Defense. Not a favourite genre for many people, myself included. Gemcraft however, is different. The creators of this game started on Armor Games and other such flash sites, and have been making the Gemcraft series for a good many years. "Chasing Shadows" is the fourth installment in the series, preceded by chapter 1, chapter 2, and Labyrinth. The fifth game in the series: "GemCraft - Frostborn Wrath" is also available on steam.

The same but different

What makes a good tower defense? Well, towers for one,. I guess? And yes this game allows you to build plenty of those. Unlike most fairly flat progression tower defense games however, GemCraft expands on the genre by adding a multitude of options and maps. 23 Map sections, each with 5-6 fields in this case. A total of about 190 fields. Each map may be adjusted and replayed any time you like in regards to difficulty to improve your overall score for that level. Your total score will then determine your wizard XP and level - and this in turn will give you more abilities to improve. Such as higher gem power, cheaper walls, stronger bombs and many more effects.

Gems

The gems make up the meat of the game, and it's the monsters they will defeat as is usual in the genre. Critters come from 1 or multiple entry points, and will try to reach your orb. The fun bit is, in GemCraft you will be dealing with SWARMS of critters. It's not uncommon to have several hundreds of them coming towards your orb.

In the video above you can see you've got 9 gem colors, these can be moved and relocated among your towers. They can also be upgraded almost indefinitely, and combined to form dual, triple and any sort of color combination you like. A mana draining chain hit gem is a good way to level your score. Or how about a slowing gem with poison effect? Anything is possible.

The journey

This is one of the few games I went 100% achievements on. And this game has 419 achievements! Iron wizard was a definite challenge, but very doable. You unlock fields and earn new gem colors as you progress, along with new spells and curses. In normal mode you will be able to re-play fields to gain skill points which improve your strength. In iron wizard mode you get a flat number of skill points per beaten field. The number of monsters certainly won't decrease, so the challenge is quite rough if you're unfamiliar with the tower defense concept.

Setting higher difficulties (as in the image below) can be done to improve your score multiplier. This increases your score, and thus your XP, etc as mentioned. Faster monster spawns, more Giant monsters (big health and armor buffs), more swarms, orblets, etc. The game is very flexible and can be tailored to your skill in various ways.

The "goal" is to reach the iron forge, which will need to be unlocked by charging up a few pillars along the road. Meanwhile you'll get thousands of monsters coming at your orb while flinging spells left and right. Good fun.

Relics of an ancient past

Depending on the difficulty of the level you may also obtain some relic fragments. These you can equip into your very own pentagram charm, and this will provide you with various buffs on top of your skills. Debuffs for monster armor, increased gem range, extra skill levels all add up to improve your power and make it easier to get higher scores. In endless mode you'll find these things shine the most. Your gems can reach levels exceeding 100, but the monsters will have a few million hit points to compensate. The relics are random but they drop 1-3 or more per level, with varying values depending on the difficulty.

GemCraft is a game that should keep you busy for many hours. I've put in about 200 myself, and that was for the completionist badge. It's one of the best ways to spend 5$ honestly.

Release date: 30 Apr, 2015

Minimum system requirements: Windows Vista SP1, Intel Celeron N or better, 2048 MB Ram, Intel HD Graphics or better, 100 MB available disk space. Higher system specs are recommended however, especially if you play to summon a few hundred extra monsters on screen simultaneously.

Crosscode an RPG puzzle adventure

GGP Discord members will have seen me playing this game recently. Originally I picked it up during the 2020 summer sale. Sadly, it hasn't shown up in any bundles in the last few years (aside when it was in early access). Crosscode is available on various platforms, among which PC and thus Humble bundle. The price tag is worth it if you enjoy RPGs/Puzzles/Hack and slash.

Lea, Hi!

Comedy is a strong point in this game, and it is further enhanced with the main character's inability to actually speak more than a choice few words. Such as "Lea", "Hi", "Why" and a few others. Normally your run of the mill hero will happily chat, converse or ask directions from NPCs. In this case the NPCs seem to understand you happily even if you just say "Hi" and accept everything. They are just NPCs after all. Your "Player" interactions are a little more tricky, but that all works out in the end.

Secrets and puzzles

If you are expecting this to be a regular JRPG of even ARPG, you are in for a big surprise. The game's main focus is puzzles - lots, and LOTS of puzzles. Very challenging ones, and timed puzzles. There is no shame in lowering the speed in the game's settings for puzzles, or even the combat as it turns brutally hard by the time you get halfway through the game. You can always set it back to 100% in new game plus.

Secrets and parkour are also a big part of the game's design. Multi level, multi screen hidden pathways to get to a treasure chest will keep your brain very busy. In between dungeons you'll have plenty of sidequests and monsters to bash with your player friends. Take your time, look at things with different angles and you should eventually find out how to do things. But grabbing a guide can from time to time help you keep the enjoyment of this game on track.

Dungeon runs

Emilie - the spunky french girl challenge you to speedrun dungeons against her, and there's an achievement for actually beating her on every dungeon in the game. Aside her you can mix and match your party setup as you get deeper into the game, but she'll always be there to challenge you.

The dungeons are constructed as puzzle boxes. You go in, do a puzzle or two, get some keys and battle monsters in between all that until you reach the final room with a boss.

The boss fights are generally given a gimmick to beating them, whether with a specific element or trick in dodging and staying alive. The fights are very well made and quite doable, but certainly not easy!

It is a great game, well worth the price. I'd recommend playing it with a controller, but a keyboard is perfectly good as well. It's difficult to write about without spoiling too much of the experience, this is a journey best experienced first hand.

Crosscode release date: 21 Sep, 2018

Minimum system requirements: Windows XP, 2 GHx dual core, 2 GB ram, hardware accelerated graphics with 1 GB dedicated memory.

Honestly, if your potato can't run this game then it's time to upgrade to a lemon or hamster powered one.

Fancy detail - the game was written in HTML 5, and you can play the demo in your browser, for free - right now!

Grim Dawn

Let's start off with the key phrase you'll hear any fan of this game tell you:

"If you love the Diablo games, you'll love Grim Dawn"

And, they aren't wrong. Diablo 1 was ahead of it's time when it was first released. Diablo 2 was good, and with the expansion it became a lot better. (We will not talk about the terrible diablo 1 expansion here...) Bots and cheaters have brought both games down in regards to online play. But for myself I enjoyed both for a good few years.

And then there was Diablo 3. The initial reception was lukewarm, but it was a decent game even so. The real money auction house was a horror that (while profitable) was eventually removed by Blizzard due to excessive exploits and encouraging bots once again. The expansion brought the game to new highs in regards to gameplay. But it still lacked some of the darkness and atmosphere that Diablo 2 had.

Moving beyond diablo

Path of Exile is often mentioned when people look for alternatives to the latest in the Diablo series. And while certainly a good game it feels "gritty" and the trading and skill tree are more daunting than comfortable.

This is where Grim Dawn enters the discussion.

Grim dawn does a lot of things right where Diablo failed to meet expectations of the fans. Of course it isn't perfect, because what game ever is? But some highlights that really stand out:
- Full 3D (rotate camera etc)
- Flexible multiclass system.
- Dark and grim. As the name implies.
- Adjustable loot filter.

The usual suspects

Aside those it features much the same things you'll know from the genre, hack n slash, dungeons, boss fights and the like. Multiplayer, crafting, various dungeons, increasing difficulty settings and loot piñata galore with tons of items and varying stats.

Grim Dawn features a few expansions already, but you're encouraged to start with the base game. It's often found at about 5$ during the various steam sales and for that price you can't really go wrong. If you finish that though, there's:
- Ashes of Malmouth
- Forgotten Gods
- Crucible

End-game progression, is gear, always gear. Grim dawn brings you roguelike dungeons where some of the better items can be found, and some items are exclusive to specific monsters or monster types. Crafting epic and legendary items will greatly help you, but keep in mind the material cost of those can quickly rise. Great power comes at a price, and in this case that price is killing many monsters.

Growing power

The class system is quite versatile. With the expansions added you have access to 8 classes, and as you reach a certain level you can go dual class into their skill tree as deep or shallow as you like. This provides you with pets, magic, healing and plenty of other toys to experiment with.

Aside the class system there's the devotion system. Initially you have access to some 49 shrines in the world which upon activating will award you a devotion point to be spent into,. this. Which will vaguely remind you of Path of Exile as mentioned before, but with a lot more flexibility.

Curious yet? Can't wait for the next sale? Or, already own Grim Dawn perhaps? Let us know below.

Release date: 25 Feb, 2016

Minimum system requirements: Windows XP and up, X86 processor of 2.3 GHz or faster pentium, 2 GB ram, 512 MB Nvidia or AMD equivalent, DirectX 9.0c or up, 5 GB disk space.