It’s Christmas Eve. If ever there was a fitting day to play a game based around a crafting workshop, this is it. Instead of creating “toys and goodies,” I’m hocking a broadsword to every traveller that meanders into my store. Craftlands Workshoppe beautifully captures how it would feel to run a busy workshop. The game is essentially a feverishly paced blend of micromanagement and craftsmanship. You are either delegating tasks to your workers or doing the job yourself, all while droves of customers begin to pile up at your store counter.

The beauty of Craftlands Workshoppe is that you set the pace. While there is always a surplus of tasks to accomplish, the player is always in control. Want to spend an entire day gathering resources? Go ahead. If you instead want to leisure around and explore the town, there are no drawbacks to doing so. I found my groove gathering resources for several days in a row, crafting items the next couple of days, and then focusing solely on selling them, but you could mix it up however you want. It’s possible to gather the resources, craft the items, and sell them all on the same day, if you have the gumption to do so.

There are three possible options for crafting: alchemy, blacksmithing, and cooking. The goal of the game is to perfect all three professions and solve the mystery of what happened to your old master, Allcraft. I picked blacksmithing, and I found my daily routine seemed focused on a very small area of the map. I’d go up into the nearby forest to mine iron or gather wood, and then I’d travel to “He who smelt it,” the local blacksmithing supplies store. It was in this monotonous routine that the game began to feel like a bit of a grind. Especially since the vast majority of my customers seemed hellbent on buying only one item. I found myself crafting hundreds of swords in the first couple in-game days of play.

I’m no stranger to grinding. I understand that it is an essential part of games like Craftlands Workshoppe. The issue is that when you are forced to do the same menial tasks over and over, there needs to be some variety built into the way it is performed. In Craftlands Workshoppe, the test is always to time your click for when your cursor coincides with a green bar. This gets repetitive extremely fast. By my hundredth sword, I basically never missed the bar, and it began to feel automated in a weird way. There definitely needs to be variety added in terms of these mini-games.

Luckily, after a while, you unlock the Worker’s Basement, where you can, unsurprisingly, hire workers to automate these tasks for you. Once you master a certain item (by selling a certain amount of them), you can delegate this item to be made by your workers. The only issue I found with this is that at first it is prohibitively expensive and requires hours of in-game grinding to simply get the system rolling. But, it is nice to see a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of your own endless grinding of the mini-game. Instead, you are able to delegate the workers in the basement to the damning fate of endless toil.

Unfortunately, I encountered one of the few game breaking glitches I could imagine. My store was stuck closed. The game displayed my store as permanently open, yet no customers would enter no matter how long I stood at the counter. No amount of toggling would change the status of my store, and I tried restarting the game several times to no avail. This meant that I was left with no ability to generate income, and my journey in Craftsman Workshoppe had essentially ended. I don’t hold this too strongly against the developers, it’s early days for the game, and these things happen, but losing all your progress after hours of grinding is disheartening to say the least. The only other glitch I encountered was that my anvil got stuck on a single recipe. I could only create nails. A simple restart of the game fixed this bug, however.

Glitches aside, the real problem is that you never feel as if you’re ahead. The first couple hours are spend diligently grinding to be able to master your first item. Then, you immediately have to grind further to unlock the Worker’s Basement. But even when you’ve achieved that, the workers become another expense you can’t possibly float. You’re always behind the eight ball. I have no doubts that when you get to the point when everything is up and running the game will feel different, but getting to that point is an arduous journey to put it lightly. There needs to be a greater feeling of reward built into the early game.

For a passive gamer, the kind of person who likes to relax and sink hours into a game, Craftlands Workshoppe could actually be perfect. There is plenty to like. The setting of a sleepy town juxtaposed with eccentric inhabitants is reminiscent of the Legend of Zelda franchise. The gameplay, barring the one glitch I experienced, was smooth and well-thought out. I believe they designed the game with a dedicated player in mind rather than someone who wants instant satisfaction. Even the minimalistic story was intriguing enough. For me, though, the game in its current state is too repetitive and you’re seemingly at a perpetual disadvantage. I definitely see potential here, but we aren’t there yet.

Slay the Spire. There, I said it. It’s nearly impossible to talk about Neoverse (or any roguelike deck builder) without mentioning the cream of the crop. Seriously, go ahead and filter through the discussion surrounding Neoverse online and you’ll find that nearly every mention of the game is accompanied by a mention of Slay the Spire. There’s a good reason for this. Neoverse is essentially a reskin of Slay the Spire with added sex appeal. Is this a bad thing? It sort of depends at where you’re looking from. In a way, Neoverse is actually fairly successful as far as clones go. It’s fundamentally as playable as Slay the Spire, and to some subset of the population, could be even more entertaining due to its small deviations.

Neoverse runs in a fairly typical manner. You start with a deck of cards that have certain abilities. The goal is to move through a dungeon, fighting monsters of increasing power while improving your own deck in tandem. Your cards run the gamut from attack cards, defense cards, and status effect cards. The key, in Neoverse, is to maximize the effectiveness your deck. That’s where the enjoyment springs from in deck builders. You are going to experience moments where you play a card and immediately notice a better alternative. Eventually, you’ll get into a rhythm and begin to roll through the dungeon. I can personally get a feel for a successful (or unsuccessful) run about halfway through. This is because there is a fair amount of RNG baked into deck builders. If you are lucky enough to get a certain card or skill upgrade in Neoverse, it can change the entire playthrough.

Since comparisons are inevitable, it’s worth looking at where Neoverse deviates from Slay the Spire. To begin with, Neoverse has a fairly integral combo mechanic (called “Battle Tech”). If you play cards in a certain order (e.g., attack, defense, attack, attack), you will get a buff to your next attack. This is a nice addition, but in my early runs of the game, this feature was so important that I could not possibly afford to stray from the suggested combo. Your first couple of runs through the game will ultimately be dictated by this mechanic. The critical hit reward is simply too useful to pass up.

Another way in which Neoverse separates itself is the lack of defense decay. The armor gained from a defense card will persist until it is destroyed by any enemy. It will not decay in between turns. This ultimately makes defensive decks not just viable but super effective. Unless you run into the rare encounter where a monster has the ability to remove all your armor, you can make yourself virtually untouchable. Not just that, but it is not imperative to separate your deck between either offense and defense, since an offensive build can still remain relatively protected due to this persistent armor mechanic. This mechanic was one of my main gripes while playing Neoverse. It gives the player too much power. It’s an obvious point to exploit while crafting certain builds.

A skill tree replaces relics in Neoverse. You earn skill points through encounters and by completing missions. Missions in Neoverse are a set of parameters to be fulfilled in battle. For example, if you complete a battle without taking damage, it may earn you extra skill points. The problem is that the skill tree is populated purely by positive buffs with essentially no drawbacks. Luckily, the skill tree you are presented with is random through each playthrough, so you cannot follow the exact same build as your last run. But for the most part, the randomly generated buffs are overpowered. I began to employ a strategy of just accruing as many skills as possible. If you follow this strategy, you become so laden with passive effects that it makes it difficult to lose.

Here’s one more balancing issue that arises from missions: they aren’t automatically redeemed and they aren’t specific to a single encounter. Let me explain. If I take a fight and the mission I’m given is to “deal more than 20 damage in a single turn.” I now have this as a mission permanently until I fulfill that requirement. This means that if I happen to complete that requirement 5 encounters down the road, I’m still rewarded. Also, once I complete that mission, I can redeem the reward at a time of my choosing. So, if that same reward happens to heal me for 30% of my health, I can wait to use it until I need it most. If the reward is to evolve one of my cards, I can save it until I get a card that is worth evolving. This mechanic is also far too forgiving.

The store operates in basically the same manner as Slay the Spire, except that it can be accessed at any time, and refreshed multiple times in a single visit. It’s worth noting that you can also purchase skill points for relatively cheap while visiting the shop, so that you could feasibly fill out an entire skill tree within a single run. The cards offered in the shop are usually fairly affordable and the ones that are discounted are almost laughably cheap. If you are lucky enough to find a card on sale that is essential to your build, you’re set. You can also buy items (up to 3) that have instantaneous effects in battle that are similar to the ones in Slay the Spire.

If it sounds like I didn’t enjoy Neoverse, I actually did. It’s a clone, sure, but it’s a well made clone of an already great game. Beyond some balancing issues, there really isn’t much wrong with Neoverse. It’s just that the successful aspects of Neoverse (and there are plenty) have already been discussed ad nauseam when Slay the Spire released; they aren’t worth mentioning. As it is, Neoverse stands as a solid alternative with a bit of balancing issues and a different art style. It’s simple as that.

Runner Duck must be one of those Indie studios that delights in stressing out their player base. When they released Bomber Crew, the predecessor to Space Crew, they took their first steps to mastering the art of creating a game where you’re supposed to be in control but never quite are. Space Crew is no exception. Rubber Duck’s seemingly cutesy strategy game is a cleverly disguised lesson in the art of chaos (in the best possible manner).

After returning from one of my first missions, I actually felt quite accomplished. I had returned with the crew fully intact, and I had even dealt with that pesky fire that had broken out near my medical bay. We, the crew and I, surveyed a local asteroid field for alien activity (called “phasmids” here). We sought them out, destroyed them, and returned back to base to await our next orders. It took only two more missions before my state of blissful ignorance about the dangers of space was shattered. When I was attacked by a real threat, my entire crew was laid waste, and my ship’s reactor imploded in an intergalactic fireworks display.

Oddly enough, this is sort of what Space Crew does best. When I was completing my first few missions, I was rapidly growing bored. I thought I had figured the game out. For me, nothing can kill a potentially enjoyable game quite like an exceedingly easy difficulty curve. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for the crew of the inaptly named Asteroid Dodger, the game quickly got a lot harder. Among the random fires, rapidly deteriorating shields, and boarding enemy forces, the game seems to shine. The enjoyability is borne on the back of the chaos. I had no idea what I was doing, and I loved every second of it.

As you are being attacked by enemy forces, you have a myriad of choices to make. It becomes exceedingly difficult to make all the optimal moves. If you need to put a fire out, you may have to move one of your crew members from a vital position. By way of example, I deployed my engineer to fight back the alien crew that had breached the ship, and he was killed in action. This meant that I now had no crew to adequately repair my ship. If I had instead deployed my security officer or another crew member, my original ship may have survived the mission. In the heat of battle, these decisions are difficult to make. An underlying principle of Space Crew appears quite quickly: there is always a best candidate for each task and you have to choose accordingly. You also have to rapidly balance the internal and external problems assailing the ship. You may have to temporarily ignore a problem on board in order to tag the appropriate enemy ships.

After you complete a mission, you are rewarded both with credits and research points. Credits, unsurprisingly, are used to purchase upgrades. However, for most upgrades, you must acquire a certain amount of research points first to unlock the ability to purchase them. The equipment upgrades for the crew will primarily bolster the way they behave when confronted with threats onboard the ship, and the upgrades for the ship itself will bolster the way the ship maneuvers and deals with enemy threats. To this end, a surprising amount of customization arises out of these upgrades. You will again be confronted with choices. A defensive crew is not a fast crew. A ship that is only effective against shields will have problems dealing with unprotected enemies quickly. Apart from these upgrades, the ship is also massively customizable with aesthetic choices. You can pick the colour, the name of your ship, and decals to be applied to its hull.

While I quite enjoyed the ability to upgrade your ship, this is the aspect that primarily divides fans. The critics feel the game becomes a bit grindy. On this point, I have to agree. The reward amount from each mission is usually inadequate for a major upgrade, beyond perhaps the entry level upgrades. This equates to several hours spent in-game grinding for an upgrade on your ship or for your crew. When you account for the fact that your ship and crew can all be wiped out, the grinding begins to feel arduous. Granted, you never start from absolute zero again, but when you gain progress by grinding and that progress can be lost in a single encounter, it can be disheartening. Personally, the aspect of permadeath of your crew and spaceship is a positive to me as it ups the already high difficulty level, but the criticism is certainly valid.

It should almost go without saying, but monotony is not the death knell that some players believe it to be. For the right player, the grind and be rewarded aspect can be addicting. I can easily imagine players spending hours customizing their ships and crew to perfection. Space Crew is effective at exactly that aspect. You become attached to your ship and crew. You don’t want to see them destroyed. In order to truly enjoy Space Crew, you have to enjoy the challenge of getting your ship and crew through a very difficult game. If you’re looking for a relaxing time waster, this is not it. Space Crew is the type of game where you are rewarded for your investment. Put the time in, and you will become a better player. You will become more likely to make it through the game unscathed.

With that in mind, I would love to see Runner Duck keep up their end of the bargain. In order to maintain their loyal fanbase, they need to add content and add it quickly. The monotonous gameplay is enjoyable; the repetitive maps and missions are not. This isn’t to say the game is lacking depth. It’s not. But the type of player who will love this game, will pour hours and hours into it. Runner Duck needs to keep this type of player in mind. They will reach the point when most players will have grown bored and will want to push beyond it. There needs to be something there for them.

Let me take one step back. There is plenty of fun to be had for the casual gamer in Space Crew, but true enjoyment will come from fans of grinding and developing within the game. If you’re the type of person who loves to tinker and micromanage, pick the game up, you won’t be disappointed.