Steam Marines

 PC
User Score
5.7

Mixed or average reviews- based on 17 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 17
  3. Negative: 7 out of 17

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  1. Terenston
    Dec 27, 2013
    8
    Steam Marines first caught my eye on a cold winter morning, floating around the bottom of the Steam front page. Interested by anything that promised space marines and Steampunk in one setting just via the title, I bought it without a second though (2.49, not bad at all)

    After playing it for a handful of hours, I've actually grown to rather like it. Rouge-likes have never been my    Steam Marines first caught my eye on a cold winter morning, floating around the bottom of the Steam front page. Interested by anything that promised space marines and Steampunk in one setting just via the title, I bought it without a second though (2.49, not bad at all)

    After playing it for a handful of hours, I've actually grown to rather like it. Rouge-likes have never been my favorite, as random chance seemed to have more of a hand in my inevitable demise than anything else. Steam Marines rewards you for intelligent tactical decisions, and while it maintains the handful of random elements crucial to the series (Damn you, meteor scraps!), all making for a very well-balanced and enjoyable space-bound robot-based dying experience.

    All in all, its a fun game, and certainly worth supporting, seeing as its worth quite a few hours of fun even in its current Alpha stage.    … Expand
  2. ClkJester
    Oct 31, 2013
    8
    tl;dr- Want a tough game you can laugh about when you win OR lose? Get this. Get this now.

    This game is a wonderful throwback to older style war games. This game will not warn you when you do something foolish, nor will it say "Just so you know, this may be bad!" Nope. It lets you screw up, then hurts you for your mistakes. Hurts you bad. If you're looking for what we'd consider    tl;dr- Want a tough game you can laugh about when you win OR lose? Get this. Get this now.

    This game is a wonderful throwback to older style war games. This game will not warn you when you do something foolish, nor will it say "Just so you know, this may be bad!" Nope. It lets you screw up, then hurts you for your mistakes.
    Hurts you bad.

    If you're looking for what we'd consider a more modern, or casual, experience from your game this is a terrible choice for you. If you like older, harder games that simply let you make your choices, good or ill? I recommend it, highly. It only tells you what you need to know, and lets you make the calls yourself. It feeds you into nearly no-win situations, and sometimes? You get mulched without a chance. It's very X-Com like in that regard, and it's worse because you can't savescum. You make your choice, you live with it.

    There's a few bugs and design changes, but the dev seems active enough that he's keeping it all up to speed, and nothing gamebreaking. It's fast, it's fun, and it's -really- satisfying when you get good at it. I cannot recommend this enough to gamers looking for a challenge. Giving it a 8 now, simply based on current state, but when they've adjusted the classes, etc? I'd rate it higher, in a heartbeat.    … Expand
  3. Crumps2
    Oct 20, 2013
    2
    A really cheap and almost non-playable version of Sword of the Start: The Pit. The tiles are so confusing, I cannot tell the difference between a ground tile near door with wall coverage with door tile with wall coverage. Difficulty gimmicks like placing at start of the game random mines on floors/doors that you cannot do anything about and wall destroying robot ambushes on your turn(ifA really cheap and almost non-playable version of Sword of the Start: The Pit. The tiles are so confusing, I cannot tell the difference between a ground tile near door with wall coverage with door tile with wall coverage. Difficulty gimmicks like placing at start of the game random mines on floors/doors that you cannot do anything about and wall destroying robot ambushes on your turn(if you run out of Time Units, GG). UI is really bad designed. For instance, game doesn't really SHOW you from where you can shoot and what actually can do. You think attacking from angle will work because you see target? Well press on it, and WASTE Time Units, GG. You think that you can shoot from straight line? Sorry, you cannot, you WASTED time unit because you didn't checked your stat window and "range" attribute. You want to free aim with cursor/tile control for targeting or destroying wall for tactics? Nope, you will just make a mistake because game doesn't display well what you can do and what not. AI is really not challenging. Even Moon Bear were more scary and challenging in Pit, then these Reapers/Robots, that you can simply calculate their turns and lure them.… Expand
  4. nooza
    Dec 27, 2013
    2
    I took a flyer on this game during the steam sale after getting hooked on cheap 16-bit 'roguelike' games after an great experience with FTL. I'm also a long time fan of turn based strategy shooters with RPG elements such as X-Com, so when i saw this for $2.50 i said why not. well, let me just say the graphics and gameplay mechanics of this one seem unfinished and unintuitive. the musicI took a flyer on this game during the steam sale after getting hooked on cheap 16-bit 'roguelike' games after an great experience with FTL. I'm also a long time fan of turn based strategy shooters with RPG elements such as X-Com, so when i saw this for $2.50 i said why not. well, let me just say the graphics and gameplay mechanics of this one seem unfinished and unintuitive. the music is lame, the interface is extremely clunky and its just not very fun. I hope for the sake of gamers who bought it at the original price ($10) that it's nowhere near complete, but have a feeling that if the programmers intended to realize any potential here they'd have been too embarrassed to release this product to the public in the first place.

    There is also currently a game-breaking bug where the keyboard constantly goes out, forcing the player to exit and restart. Cheers    … Expand
  5. iseeall
    Dec 15, 2015
    4
    This turn-based strategy game has funny texts, stylish super-pixelated 8-bit retro graphics, and an interesting AP based combat system with reaction fire. But the controls are badly designed and are also bugged, which makes the game almost unplayable. Lack of save/reload forces you to lose soldiers while fighting with interface quirks and glitches eventually making you drop the game inThis turn-based strategy game has funny texts, stylish super-pixelated 8-bit retro graphics, and an interesting AP based combat system with reaction fire. But the controls are badly designed and are also bugged, which makes the game almost unplayable. Lack of save/reload forces you to lose soldiers while fighting with interface quirks and glitches eventually making you drop the game in frustration.

    The main problems:
    - stupid keyboard-only controls system where you use directional arrows to move and Z to shoot, R to reload, Q to overwatch. Instead, the game should have used a mouse-based system like in tons of other similar TBS games. Like, when you select a soldier, all tiles where he can move are highlighted, and you click on a tile to move there, and click on an enemy to shoot at it. Range highlight would also help. And for Overwatch, Reload and other actions there should be on-screen buttons.
    - vertical doors look like they belong to the tile just below them which creates confusion, so when you think you will open a door you start kicking a wall.
    - some doors appear to be rigged with explosives, but I only understood that after opening a few such doors because their graphics wasn't understandable
    - the GUI seems to be designed to only work well with 1024x768 resolution. At 1920x1080 all GUI elements are flung to the edges of the screen, and at 600x800 not everything even fits into the screen, with buttons simply getting cut off.
    - showing soldiers' stats on mouseover seemed to work in fullscreen mode, but in window mode the tile under the mouse seems to be calculated incorrectly, so you can no more see any soldier's stats (most importantly, range).    … Expand

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  1. GameWatcher
    Nov 4, 2013
    60
    Putting it all together, Steam Marines may be a tasty little challenge for some, but it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Perhaps it’ll be a nice addition to a rogue fan’s collection, and maybe a few indie diehards would like to pick it up to see what it’s all about.
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