Chambers of Devious Design

Fun and original. Charming flavor, often interesting strategy. I think it would work well PVP if you have friends who are up for it (I haven't tried that though), but in any case there is a campaign with a wide variety of scenarios, that on the surface of it look like minor variations, but generally they led to interesting and distinct places.

This is a well-designed game that really emphasizes strategic placement. This is also one of the few games I've ever encountered where the computer opponents (at the higher levels) are superior to the vast majority of human opponents.

A couple of notes: You can play against humans or the computer. You can play the campaign multiple times or set up custom games with rules to your liking. There are literally thousands of combinations you can try so it has infinite replay value.

Finally, this is a great game to have for those times where you just want to play a game for 15-20 minutes. It has a board game feel, so if you like them, you'll likely love this.

Chambers is a brain-melting competitive tile placement board game with an emphasis on a hefty singleplayer campaign. Your ultimate goal is always the same - to outdo other henchmen at building an evil lair for you master. So, buckle up for a frantic strategic brawl, constantly switching from duels to gangbangs, with lots of random as well as lots of ways to circumvent it. The closest things I can think of are Carcassonne and Cascade Cafe (I'm not really that knowledgeable). Except that this one is the biggest looker of them all, boasting a compelling colour scheme as well as a homely UI with appealing outlines and pleasant fonts. Gratifying animations and sounds never seize to deliver the impact of getting the score or destroying property while the music has just the right proportions of thoughtfulness and wackiness, its drums beating in unison with the whirring of your grinding gears.

You better believe it, they'll be grinding like crazy. This game's brilliant ruleset is all about adapting and outsmarting to exhaustion. Its expansive singleplayer campaign consists of whopping 48 missions where you eventually get to play as eight zany anti-heroes who come with a couple of unique abilities each. Despite that I can't say their playstyles are radically dissimilar, the game never gets old, succeeding at maintaining your interest by constantly changing the rules, making you move forward, curious as to what curveballs are going your way in the next mission. When you get there, it never fails to keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last turn. Who even expects a horse injection of adrenaline from such a game? Well, you should! Because Chambers of Devious Design doesn't pull any punches.

Solo, Not Alone

So, you wanted to chill with a wholesome puzzle to kill some time? Um, I guess I can say the overall experience was pretty chill, as chill as a cutthroat gladiator skirmish of streetwise swindlers tearing each other limb from limb in an inflatable pool overflowing with their own blood and guts can be. Without a doubt, AI makes or breaks a board game's singleplayer, hence, I'm glad to report that local competition is ruthless, capable of aggressive mind games of the highest rank without any rubberbanding. It's a game to play solo that doesn't make you feel alone. In fact, it makes you feel like a wounded seal in shark-infested waters. You'll have to earn your victories by considering many variables, learning not only to mind your personal needs but to use precognition when it comes to your opponent's desires.

Snatch rooms from under their noses, complete them by connecting all of the doorways, scoring yourself some helpful perks and devastating abilities. Destroy their property with turrets, corner them, block the doors off, deny your competition all means of expansion. Plan ahead, divide and conquer, sometimes at your own expense! Give some to get some. They do the same to you and each other, and boy, they do it well. No AI can yet drive a car properly, but it sure can drive a person mad. I promise you, the game is going to frustrate you, it doesn't always seem fair. Sometimes the luck of the draw decides your fate and your clever preparations are but mitigation, not complete prevention. These opponents will force you to think on the game's terms, see through its lens if you want to get anywhere even just on Normal. Although, I recommend trying the game on harder difficulties first to see if they fit your intellect.

Bad Ending

I started playing on Hard and was soon stuck in a ditch, being everyone's punching bag. My competition seldom made any mistakes while I struggled with every mission, replaying them ad infinitum, praying for mercy. Normal, on the other hand, didn't feel too cruel or lenient. It just lowered the number of attempts I took, significantly improving the pacing and my overall level of enjoyment. Again, it depends on your cognitive capabilities, maybe you'll manage. In the end, I was satiated with what I got, but you can double or triple my playtime if you decide to torture yourself. Speaking of torture, that last mission still gives me tremors. It took me 4 hours to beat! Word of advice: make a breakthrough to disable the top opponent first, then go after Andrei, for that fool tends to cut himself off. I did it eventually, but my senses were too numb to celebrate. That mission needs a nerf.

Yet, this personal bad ending didn't nerf the overall impression left by the game. It kept me invested by constantly introducing new kinds of challenges, and the element of random, while being a cause for frustration and despair, has added some serious tension. Not to mention the side dishes like Remote Play Together and endless custom games. What a package! And it only gets better the more experienced you get. After learning the ropes and memorising the game's ins and outs, you shall start seeing it with a new set of eyes, immediately recognising certain situations and thinking up strategies on the fly. At that point, Chambers of Devious Design is going to become your second nature, exposing the true heights of its ceilings. I'd love to see more singleplayer board games of this calibre in the future. So far, this one is the best.

My curator Big Bad Mutuh

A great game with a strong board-game feeling to it. You have to balance your own development with trying to counter what the AIs are doing, racing for specific objectives and so on.
The campaign is prety decent with enough missions to occupy you from 15h to 40h, depending on your pace and the difficulty you choose, and a good display of the variety you can incorporate in the game with all the special rules you can select and combine.
The AI is REALLY good, and provides a real challenge at higher difficulty without any "cheating", they play with the same rules as you, but they play really well. You can also play against your friends with a single copy of the game (no need for everybody to buy it)!

Overall, it's a relaxing nice strategy/puzzle game with a lot of customization from match to match that gives it good replayability, enough randomness so every match is different but not too much that it becomes just a luck-fest.

Strongly recommend for all of those who loves board-game, tile-placement, PvE with a very competent AI, etc.

Great game by a great dev! I don't usually like strategic OR puzzle games. But I wanted to check this one out to support Auro. And I actually love it! I was a little overwhelmed at first but I got the hang of it after a few games and now I can see myself getting seriously addicted to it. Definitely give this game a try.

Chambers of Devious Design is an interesting game that feels similar to other games. The campaign is okay, but nothing special. You are introduced to a few different game modes. I feel that some of them, for example surviving, are not enjoyable and can be tedious. It is not fun because you mostly play alone and wait for your opponent to fail. The normal game mode, which requires players to reach 80 points, has appealing mechanics and a better game length.
As a board game, I think the games lacks game-design. The idea is great, but sometimes I feel like the room designs aren't very well-thought-out. Maybe I am a bit too bad, and do not see a great combination for my rooms. I also think that the NPC and me should interact more. More types of cannons or other aspects to interact with NPC would be great.
However, the game does have some great features. I appreciate the different themes each room has, and the completion bonus is motivating. 
Overall, it is a fun little game that missed from my perspective a few chances to shake the game up and making it way more interesting.

unusually fresh design! kind of a turn-based, open-faced Tetris-like puzzler, with some tactical elements. quite challenging & addictive, I like. :D

This is a fantastic "board game on PC". Very well designed, lots of campaign missions, great fun! And, the developer is VERY responsive on the Steam forums, which is much appreciated. 500 extra bonus points to them for that!

Really fun take on the Castles of Mad King Ludwig board game. Funny story, good puzzle play, and pretty good characters. A++ would autistically build rooms again

Very unique game, feels more like a board game than a video game (not a bad thing).

One story section took me like an hour to complete and there are eight chapters to go through (linear progression) which means about 10 hours of solo content. Just from playing the first chapter I can see how there are a lot of strategy to the game and it feels really fleshed out.

There is an ONLY MOUSE mode which I love, great implementation for some chill gaming.

Only real downside is no multiplayer except for steam splitscreen but as a gamedev myself I can see why that hasn't been implemented (yet at least ;D).

Recommended!

Okay. I'm going to tell you right now. This game, like Redbeak's previous game, is tons of fun, simple to understand, and very unique in its execution. Absolutely worth a buy.

BUT.

Boy do I wish it had speed-up options. Characters talk slowly, animations are slow, the intro to each 'battle' is slow. To Redbeak, please add a speedup function, I beg of you. It's like playing Slay the Spire without fast mode. I can't take it for long!

Not gonna stop me from playing but having to sloooowly replay the same campaign cutscene intros with even the Skip option not feeling snappy is dragging my enjoyment down by a lot.

A 'restart battle' button would also be great.

Will revise this review if this is changed!

Update after several hours: Still recommended! Very fun game and I'm really enjoying myself. However, I have a lot of criticisms mostly involving minor UI flaws that need addressing.

- Rotating rooms isn't snappy. You rotate them pixel by pixel, even though there are only four valid positions. This needs to change to a snap-rotation with a single button press.
EDIT: There's a 90-degree rotate option in the options menu, I just overlooked it.
- Rooms should preview-snap into place when you're preparing to place them down.
- Sabotage weapons should clearly show the rooms they will or might affect. Right now, the laser sight can look like it's going to hit an enemy's room, but come up three pixels short.
- It's also somewhat hard to tell at certain points which rooms belong to which players, perhaps all room clusters should have a highlighted border going around them relating to their owner? You can hover over the other players' names to highlight their stuff but that can feel a bit tricky. Also maybe hovering your mouse over any individual room for a second will pop up the owner's name?

One really cool feature of this game: If you buy a copy, you can share custom games to anyone on your Steam friend's list, even people who don't own it! A great way to get people to try it out before they buy it!

So far, a solid 8/10 game and very unique in its premise! I feel spoiled. This is the second unique game I've bought this month, including Backpack Hero!

This game is not an easy one, but also not that hard. I like the difficulty, it is a good challenge.
The graphics are pleasant and the music is good.

The game is really fun and I give it a thumbs up!

The visual and sound are not perfect but this game has its charm

Bought the game to support the developer (he has a very good game devlog series), but got stuck in it for couple of hours. When you didn't plan to play the game but you can't stop, you know it's good :)

Honestly wasn't sure I would like the game, since it seemed similar to some board games I have been bored with in the past (pun fully intended). I decided I would give it a try anyway and, after playing through it a bit, I've realized it's much more deep than the videos and screen shots would imply.

Definitely worth a look, especially if you're a fan of slower paced, novel little games.

Very addictive gameplay ! Graphics are alright but once I learned how to play it, I was hooked. I lost many times and came back to beat the damn AI :) I usually skip or don't watch the full tutorials but I missed one thing that is the room activates when all doors are used(ie rooms attached to all doors) after learning that I started playing more tactically.

Nice game lads, Highly recommend to give it a try !

Cool puzzle game with its own unique game mechanics. Would recommend.

Tetris and Puzzle Fighter had a baby!

Casual slow paced strategic puzzle based fun!
https://youtu.be/080bR1T4O2Q

TLDR in case you don't want to watch the video:

1. If you've ever played the 1990s Capcom classic puzzle fighter, you'll likely enjoy this one!

2. Instead of matching coloured gems, you have to match and complete 'rooms' of various shapes sizes and types!

3. Most of the individual elements aren't anything new - but put together, it creates an endless and addictive puzzle gameplay loop!

4. Sadly, there isn't any proper multiplayer except via Steam Split screen for now - otherwise it would have been a blast!

5. Do note; the game is VERY slow paced so if you're looking for something faster, look elsewhere!

I would only recommend this to players who enjoy slow paced competitive puzzle games!

Simple, fun puzzle gameplay. Kind of like Carcassonne but you can shoot cannons at your opponents.

Definitely pleased so far. The game revolves around a fairly basic concept that's easy to grasp, but it quickly becomes apparent that there's more to it than initially meets the eye.

Looking forward to spending more time both crafting evil lairs of my own and helping out my fellow collegues.

Respecting player's time is an important feature of a game for me, especially for such a game with quick tactical gameplay. It is completely at odds with the introductory "scenes" of each campaign that goes on and on and are neither funny, interesting nor witty. Just a weird waste of time. So this game is not for me.

Really enjoying this so far. I like the theme here compared to Mad King Ludwig. Each character has their own campaign to work through with ~6 matches, which is nice. Not a huge amount of match variety, but enough to switch things up (especially since number of enemies also increases).

I'd like it if the unique character abilities felt a bit more impactful. Right now, I think they are overshadowed by abilities gained during matches.

Fun, chill game. Challenging enough on normal that if you make mistakes you can get punished for them pretty hard.

What an awesome game, I'm having loads of fun already! I'm only scratching the surface but from what I can tell the campaign looks nice and long! I love the different types of battles against the AI, I wasn't expecting that at all after playing the demo earlier.

I think I found a small mistake in the game though. The difficulty setting was on Master by default, which many new players might not realize to change when starting out. Just letting you know in case this wasn't the purpose.

I'm very excited to keep playing through the campaign!

Maybe the most "board game ready" video game I've ever played. Chambers' is a addicting tile placement game where you aim to build a base better than your opponents, whether that's the biggest base, the most dangerous, or the one worth the most points. Really it's biggest flaw is the lack of a bespoke online mode so you can challenge others.

This is a really challenging turn-based puzzle game with enough moving parts to keep it highly re-playable. I'm working my way through the campaign, and I look forward to playing the custom games when that's done.

You have to build lairs for your evil Master and for that you have to place rooms. It is not only a puzzle that you solve here, you have to be tactical while you are building your base, as the different type of rooms have different effects that you can combine, plus you can gain abilities - which are also useful - plus there are sabotage rooms as well. I think from the videos and the pictures you can have a very good idea about how the game plays. But in general you and your opponents can pick rooms from a pool and collect points by building bigger and bigger lairs, combine those effects and abilities and shoot each others' bases - the score provided by your room is also the HP of that given room.

I'm not the best with "puzzle" games, but the tutorial was good enough so that I was able to figure out things and play on the higher difficulty levels (where I had some trial and error, but I like challenges).

The game's mood and aesthetics are nice and overall I think it really feels that the developer cares about the details a lot - so it feels polished! I also enjoy the silly humour in it and with Steam's "Remote Play Together" feature I will try to play a few games with others as well in the future as it just screams for that.

There is some randomness as you play, since the game feels a lot like a board game, but it was never something I could blame when I lost a game haha

It is a lovely game, recommended without thinking!

Loving it so far! I'm a fan of Castles and this scratches the same itch for me. The sabotaging is a really fun addition. If you want a challenge, give the master difficulty a try. It is kicking my butt so far, but I will get better! Highly recommend!

Accidentally started the campaign on "Master" difficulty. Took 5 tries to beat the first level. 10/10.

It's a great little strategy game that can be played in 20-minute chunks, with lots of new content since the demo/beta. It's one of my favorite indie games this year.

Chambers of Devious Design is a tactical base building game. You are tasked to build lair or base for evil masterminds. (Watch out Felonius Gru!)

Easiest way I can describe it is like tetris, where you try to destroy your opponent in various clever ways.

Pros:

* Smooth and clean UI design. Easy to read.

* Actually has a lot of strategy and depth

* Music is good and relaxing

* You can use different abilities to wreack havoc

* The game looks pretty difficult at first, but its very fast to learn

* It feels satisfying to combine rooms and get bonuses

* It's fun to destroy enemy base

* Fun to play and place rooms

* Colorful design

Cons:

* It's not always 100% clear why you win

* I would enjoy a bit more of the smaller blocks in selection

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I'll try to update the review when I have more hours on the game!

;TLDR awesome fun little game. Time flies fast when you are playing.

Great unique game. You build up a base by selecting rooms and strategically placing them to outcompete your opponent. It already feels very polished as well. Get it, if you're into puzzle games!