Skyshine's Bedlam

 PC
Metascore
67

Mixed or average reviews - based on 26 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 16 out of 26
  3. Negative: 2 out of 26
  1. Riot Pixels
    Dec 23, 2015
    45
    There are two sides to one’s experience playing Skyshine’s Bedlam. You either feel bewildered when you lose another character in a seemingly unavoidable catastrophe, or grind away, repeating the same routing over and over again. And there is no gameplay between these sides.
  2. Eurogamer Poland
    Oct 12, 2015
    40
    Skyshine's Bedlam needed a few months in some early access program. All we got without them is a game full of strange solutions, monotonous gameplay and a story lacking any depth. Interesting world is not enough if the gameplay is not well though out.

User Reviews

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User Score
5.0

Mixed or average reviews- based on 39 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 39
  3. Negative: 16 out of 39
  1. brian130
    Sep 17, 2015
    6
    An interesting take on the Faster Than Light rogue-like game concept. Start out as a group of humans attempting to cross a vast wasteland byAn interesting take on the Faster Than Light rogue-like game concept. Start out as a group of humans attempting to cross a vast wasteland by traveling from one dangerous point on the map to the next. You'll use meat and crude to get there and there is a finite amount of the stuff so you'll need some generous random events to boost you along the way. It's all very tense and exciting, hoping the next encounter (and many of them are well-written) will give you the resource you need to get to the next border crossing.

    Sadly all of the positive elements are overshadowed by a very poor combat system. You only have two actions per turn (spread out between your troops) meaning you can have one guy move once and one guy shoot or the same guy move twice, etc. It's awful. Troop health means some can be one-shotted, or if the AI takes both of his actions to shoot you, almost all of your troops can be two-shotted. And there's really nothing you can do about it, particularly because there's no way to position your troops for battle. They just plop down randomly. Combat was a huge part of FTL and you had excellent control over all of it's aspect, weapons, shields, damage control, troop placement, invasions. It was frantic and fun. Here combat is brief, bloody, and frustrating. An overhauled combat system would easily bump my rating up 2 points or more.    … Full Review »
  2. Hideyoshi123
    Sep 21, 2015
    3
    This game was on my radar for awhile and I was looking forward to it (I love a good turn based strategy game). Most notably that it was usingThis game was on my radar for awhile and I was looking forward to it (I love a good turn based strategy game). Most notably that it was using the Banner Saga engine, a great game if you haven't tried it!!!

    Sadly this is NOT The Banner Saga, its a close copy but without ANY and I do mean ANY of the combat depth (or meaningful choices).

    I was hugely let down within 5 minutes and after watching my entire squad get wiped out because I simply ASSUMED you could move and position your team (your "whole" team). However after watching the tutorials I realized they had basically implemented an absolutely dumbed down version of just about every other decent turn based strat game on the market.

    Your ENTIRE squad (depending how many you choose to take to battle) gets 2 action points per turn, the AI gets the same, you can either move or shoot, move twice or shoot twice, move once attack once, etc. So instead of a position / cover based system it ends up being a terrible zerg what you can without moving too much while you watch your squad members get nailed (you'll basically have to sacrifice a lot of them to simply level others up) because everybody has ridiculously low health.

    After completing the "main" objective of the game, I had seen so many of the not so random encounters repeat themselves again and again, which seemed to be par for the course, just a flat out lack of depth to the core game mechanics, although it does come in a very nice looking package.    … Full Review »
  3. Mikimax
    Sep 20, 2015
    7
    Interesting rogue like/indie/fallout/banner saga game with nice graphics, art style, music, characters and concept.
    Bad sides:
    I was    Interesting rogue like/indie/fallout/banner saga game with nice graphics, art style, music, characters and concept.
    Bad sides:
    I was expecting to be able to fight with Dozer, upgrade it even more. Fights are ok, but not deep enough. They should have used the XCOM style turn based fights. 2 moves are just not enough.
    Game needs more depth, mainly unit battles and Dozer battles.    … Full Review »
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