Gem Wizards Tactics

Gem Wizards Tactics
N/A
Metacritic
81
Steam
54
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$14.99
Release date
16 February 2021
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
81 (43 votes)

Choose your faction and test your skill in this one-player tactical masterpiece, where positioning is everything! Clear forests, pave roads, knock enemies into pits, yank them out from behind their defenders, then blast them with an epic finisher - all on randomly generated maps!

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Gem Wizards Tactics system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
  • Processor: 2 Ghz
  • Memory: 1 MB RAM
  • Graphics: 1280x720 minimum resolution, OpenGL 2.0 Support
  • DirectX: Version 8.0
  • Storage: 400 MB available space

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
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Limey Boy
Limey Boy

The story and theme is about as subtle as a brick but it has a lot of charm and the occasional line did make me laugh.

The gameplay is a very interesting mix of traditional hex based unit combat, unit special abilitys and terrain manipulation. Unit placement and ability usage tend to be much more important than unit stats in this game, which tends to lend a more strategic style of play rather than just "Bigger number wins". Also each faction is meaningfully different in both theme and play.

The mix of graphic styles is a bit odd, about 2/3's of the game is very well designed pixel art and the rest is mostly high fidelty minimalism. It clashes.

janichbumbelby
janichbumbelby

Not "great on Deck!" It should not be marked as such. This game doesn't have controller support. The devs last year said they were trying to add controller support, which is a "huge task." But the task is done! The game has been ported to consoles, where presumably it has controller support. The fact that controller support was created, but never backported to the PC version is disappointing. Why do devs do this?

No cloud saves, either, apparently. This is to encourage players to replay the awful unskippable tutorial. Why? Why make a tutorial you can't skip?

DaftSkunk
DaftSkunk

Core gameplay is great, definitely deserves the design award. The story and 'roguelite' campaign mode however I find a bit lackluster.

Story mode was fun, I liked the characters, dialogue, and framing - but it ended very abrupt at a point in the story that to me felt more like where the campaign should have actually really get going. The missions in general felt more like an extended tutorial, and during Derby's Story you also encounter very few of the many cool units, abilities and situations the game has to offer.

Now, the replayable campaign mode is decent, but the interface feels unpolished, and the gameplay suffers from a lack of different possible objectives.

Overall, it's very impressive for a 1-person team and while the game has it's flaws/rough edges, I do recommend it to anyone who enjoys small-scale turn-based-tactics.

darkeisbein
darkeisbein

This is the best Tactics game I've ever played.

If you enjoy tactics games you owe it to yourself to give this one a try. If you enjoy the idea of a tactics games but found all the ones you've tried before lacking this is the one you've been looking for.

On the surface it's just an ordinary tile based tactics game but it's the details where this shine. All the units are really well designed unique and all come with 1-3 interesting abilities. The factions are all just really coherent and all the units within just have so many interesting synergies with each other.
The gameplay also isn't just repetitive hitting the same enemies with the same attacks over and over again. You actually gotta use the abilities wisely and take all the different environmental effects into consideration which makes it so that even after 174 hours I can't fall into a routine at the higher difficulties and have to keep using that noggin.

It also offers a variety of gamemodes:
There is a story campaign, a sort of smaller scale XCOM style campaign and my personal favorite, the ability to just play a quick scenario at one of 20 different difficulty levels.

Meneliki
Meneliki

Fun game. What other game allows you to pit Demons vs Potatoes? In all seriousness, I enjoyed the simplicity of the game, as well as some of the combos you can go for when you mix and match different unit abilities. All of this wrapped up in a hilarious and zany story line. A solid, competent game and a decent introduction to the tactics genre.

HypeWagon
HypeWagon

A real good effort that'll get there with time and with enough updates.

The campaign mode has just the right length (9 missions gives you ample time to build up your units, but it's short enough that you can complete a run in an hour), but there being only one mission type (capture X amount of flags), coupled with the infinite reinforcements mechanic (which itself is not a problem since the game gives you warnings and time to prepare) means that the ways you tackle the maps are similar. Derby's story (which was added after release, from my understanding) added "Kill all enemies" objectives, which could be cool to include in the campaign somehow! That and different mission types (Defend your flags for X amount of turns maybe, or engage in a property race with the AI à la Advance Wars) would greatly reduce the repetitiveness.

Each faction has unique units, and the campaign is all about mixing and matching different combinations together to make the best force possible. And this is fun! There's something very satisfying about getting a convoy of trucks and bulldozers together to push three enemies off the map at the same time. Or setting half the map on fire with the Business Demons. Or just something as simple as using the ice cream truck unit to refill a unit's action points to capture a flag in one turn. There's lots of combinations to mess around with, which is good, because your squad of 5 to 8 is almost always outnumbered. This, again, is good! I was pleasantly surprised by the difficulty curve here (ranges from ranks 1 to 20). I do think most of the difficulty (at least early on in campaigns) can be a bit RNG-based (if your first map has the neutral units tucked in a corner somewhere, or if mountains prevent you from pushing people off, etc), but for the most part this is a challenging but fair experience.

With that said, after 6 hours and numerous campaign runs with every faction, I feel like I've seen most of what the game has to offer. The samey maps, the same objectives, the unit roster, all of it is a bit limited -- considering the fact that this is a one-man dev team, this is very impressive. I also encountered some bugs that hampered the experience; sometimes a bulldozer unit would get bumped and appear on one spot on the map visually, but be located elsewhere; and by the end I couldn't complete a campaign without having units from a previous campaign show up and trigger the game's cheat detector, preventing any progress towards my achievements.

I would recommend the game but there's probably not enough stuff in there for 50 hours of content. Grab it on sale, or if there's a big content update (which will assuredly come).

Rayeneth
Rayeneth

Purchased this game thanks to a twitter post. So far t reminds me of a frenetic advance wars with way more strategy to consider. It's not just about utilizing terrain, it's about the interaction of unit placement, terrain, and terrain modification through abilities, and exploitation of all the above with skills that have further interactions upon use.

For example in the tutorial you can electrify water with a storm doing damage to everyone in water, but it spreads water in the process destroying forests in the flood. So I had an enemy standing in in a forest near a river and I used another unit's water shooting ability to knock him into the river while adding further water to the map to electricute said water and killing all the enemies at once.

JoeFro
JoeFro

The world and lore is hilarious. The writing and dialogue is also top notch. The UI is janky. The art feels mismatched in some places but I absolutely love the pixel art spites. Bottom Line, once you learn the unique unit actions and flow of the rules the game is fun.

ephemeral661
ephemeral661

Great, challenging! I don't care about story mode, i prefer single missions.
I hope someday you will be able to implement multiplayer.

Big Boss
Big Boss

this game is really fantastic! it is not an easy one but it is really deep. if you like tactical turn based games this one is a truly unique and deep experience. I would totally recommend it.

I am new to the game and I might edit this review later.

Kabeliel
Kabeliel

I'll go straight to why I don't recommend the game and if you want to know the details continue reading the next paragraphs.

The game has bugs and the developers are parching it, but so far there is still some breaking experience stuff. Today I lost my save twice, each for the new updates; there is no much of a plot so you aren't in front of a story driven tactics game; the art is ok, I'll explain it in more detail later; and finally as a strategy game it's unbalance, the developers are making changes along the release so today may be some changes in the units' skills. I paid 90% its prize, I regret that, but well I would suggest you to buy it half its prize because the content isn't there yet and this practices aren't a good sign either. If you need a score, its a 4/10 until its fixed, then it would be 5/10. I must clearify that I played 7 hours so far, there are some good ideas in it but it's not enough work there to make it worth its full price.

The bugs - Yesterday it was working fine, I guess, I didn't played it that much to notice much of a difference, but today it was another story, super frustrating. In the first update a lot of problems pop up: The grim reaper skill wasn't working, the vampire unit's graphics would disappear once it spends its AP(action points), The HUD would disappear in my turn so I couldn't choose skills, the game failed in saving my progress and sometimes the units would move more or less than their AP available. In another update I lost my save again, well it did start normally but I had no units to choose.
This is for me the main reason to complain, because the game shouldn't be release if its not ready and I hate when they fix it after the fact and I also don't like the idea of a refund, because the developers have spent a lot of time on this, but it didn't work as it should have and for that there must be consequences.

There is no plot - This is as simple as you can get, the story is that some evil is going to take over the world and you have to stop it, the cristals are the key to that. What about characters? conversations? motivations? so far there are none. (unless you count in saving the world). Even though I'm very confident about it, I may change this review after I finish the game, to add anything or find out something else worth sharing. The special units have fast dialogs when they spawn, but those have nothing to do with character development or anything important, I guess they are meant to be funny which is fine for an arcade type of game, but is weird for a tactical game.

I dislike the art - but that's my personal taste, if you like what you see that's fair, I was looking for the art to be clear and work well with the gameplay; some sprites aren't that easy to figure out and the character's design is ugly atmost. There is also paintings, but those are the worse part, too lazy.

Unbalance tactics - This part was heavy in my desicion to buy the game, because I saw water and fire interactions, pushing and jumping, similar to into the breach (a really cool game) and it seemed cool and interesting to try out. The game is not any challenging but unfair, the maps are generated ramdomly just as the units you can get and also the enemy units as well. Other games like Into the breach do some similar things but better executed, because even random events should follow some logic to keep the experience with enough challenge and not going to far that it becomes imposible to win.
An that is the main thing that makes the experience so unreliable, you may get it easy and boring with almost no challenge, only weak level enemies and spawns on the other side of the map and the cpu doesn't use its full advantages in combat making stupid desicions, like not attacking when there wont be counter attacks. or you may spawn in a bad configuration for your party, many enemies with high levels, several more spawning in your back and your skills stop working properly or something impredictible happens.

The game's forte is the synergy with units' skills, they are meant to complement each other, but they didn't test it enough because many of those combinations are not worth doing along your creative options, You can either risk and see if you screw it or keep everybody close, killing enemies one at a time until you have the advantage.

Some of the other reviews say that the enemies continue spawning so you must hurry to get the flags, but with the more powerful units, like the vampire and the bunny warrior, you can slowly dominate the whole map and get up to 4 or 5 new units.

This may sound like this is how the game is suppose to be. I cannot debate that, but the developers are making changes, now that the game is on sale, so there are things to fix and cannot be negated. I can say from my personal experience that the game gets boring pretty quickly, every map is the same mission and progressing is tedious. This is not like advance war or Into the breach, this is an attempt of a tactical game.

Biggimus Wiggimus
Biggimus Wiggimus

I am loving the game so far! There is incredible tactical depth here with loads of units and abilities that interact in interesting ways that make you feel like a genius when you make something cool happen. I'm looking forward to playing more of the game and coming back regularly as more content is realeased!

sickxapples
sickxapples

This is an awesome game! I hope that the creator reads this because I have an issue to report. When selecting the "Potatoes" faction in campaign mode, the battle just loads to a pink looking background with the actual map off to the side. I know that games aren't the simplest things to code in the world, but I hope that this gets resolved soon so that I may play as the Potatoes!

Dredmor
Dredmor

This game right here is a masterpiece in game design as far as I'm concerned.

The short version is that it feels a bit like a wacky version of advance wars, but that wouldn't be doing it justice, because it is something different entirely. It has a very narrow, focused scope, and concentrates on strategical fights on randomly generated maps. There are no bases, no constant rebuilding of cannon fodder, just two armies duking it out. It IS possible however to rescue units during battles, and they will stay with the army, provided they survive.

Then why is it so good?

Precisely because of that. The game removes all tedium, any "war of attrition", and instead focuses on the fights and strategical depth. And boy, there are so very many things to do.

Every unit has at least one, often two, very unique skills, that range from terraforming, bumping units one or more tiles, dig the ground for oil, flinging fireballs, switch positions, dragging units, converting units, summoning, and many more.

There are currently 4 "factions" in the game, 3 plus "neutral" units such as dragons that one might get to rescue and keep during battles. All of them are fundamentally different. One of them for example has a completely unique game mechanic where the leader of the faction is a CEO that earns money by building roads mid-battle, and can use the acquired funds to upgrade units!

What I like most however is that even though the factions are so fundamentally different, they can still work really well together. One would think that synergies and combos would be mostly restricted to the faction you're playing. You'd be wrong. In one of my favorite combos, I used a demon unit to drill a hole into the ground. Not only does this serve to dig up resources, the resulting hole is a death trap from that point on. So I drilled a hole two tiles behind an enemy unit, and then used a unit from the potato faction, to catapult that enemy into the hole.

There are tons of fun combos to discover just waiting to be exploited. I had tons of "Wait, what if I ..." moments, followed by "Oh my god, this actually works!" and laughter. There are also some fun things in there that are not immediately obvious. For example, if you catapult a character on top of another character, it will do a mario hop on that character, hopping on 2 tiles and damaging the character jumped on. I managed to do a 3-hop combo once, it was pure bliss.

What's the icing on the cake for me is the blessings that can be received between fights. Basically, a random passive from any unit can be passed onto a unit of yours, permanently. Want a knight who not only valiantly charges, but also paves roads on the way? No problem! A vampiric, life-leeching bulldozer? Sure, why not! =D

Bottom line, if you're looking for something that is simple, fun, and different enough to stand out, I wholeheartedly recommend this.

Tried_And_Truant
Tried_And_Truant

This is a bit outside my usual wheelhouse, but it's undeniably fun. Weird mobility powers and terrain effects make for a lot of devious combinations. Lobbing enemies off the map hasn't got old yet. And who could turn down a chance to vanquish colonizing Business Demons using weather magic and trained turtles?

Brachistosauro
Brachistosauro

So far played 3 ranked missions. Each battle is a satisfying experience, no time wasted. Seems extremely well designed and with even greater potential

ozkriff
ozkriff

A very unique strategy game with lots of innovative game mechanics. Definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of turn-based games!

demon_otf
demon_otf

This thumbs-down is with the caveat that if the dev ever made a proper story mode I'd be all-in on a thumbs-up. I thoroughly enjoy the gameplay and I think the design is incredibly smart. Interesting mechanics and interactions, features that are both intuitive as well as thought-provoking. I like everything about this game...except that this is a single-player game with no single-player content. What's worse is that there does exist a snippet of story in the form of "Derby's Story" which plays out like the prologue to an actual story mode that is never delivered. If this game were in early access with a plan to add real story content later, this would be a very different review. As it exists, however, there seems to be no story mode in sight; therefore, I cannot recommend this game.

dTb
dTb

I did not play a lot, but I can see I'll play more than Wargroove because games are much faster: around 15~20min which is perfect for me. There is nice humor, each unit is pretty fun to play. I would say it's in a nice spot between Wargroove and Into the Breach (♥♥♥).

Anonymous
Anonymous

Suddenly the newest update disables recruiting units. That knight was 100% recruited and then after the mission he's gone.
What the fuck.

RT1
RT1

Exceedingly good and long-lasting gameplay value for those with limited time--each match lasts anywhere from 20-30 minutes at most. The player factions are varied and fairly balanced from my limited exposure of each. Gameplay is simple at first glance, but the synergies among units adds deep, tactical and surprising complexity to the Advanced Wars-like formula.

About the only thing that would add value to an already enjoyable game would be at least two or three more player factions, but the developer has already hinted that this is a possibility. Could we get a robot faction please?

There is something of a story mode in this game, with the world's lore established early on during the tutorial and progressively emerging through story tidbits gained through the collection of "Omni Gems", which serve to fuel player units' special abilities as all as add to the game's backstory compendium.

For those who simply wish to play without much storytelling in the way, something of a custom mode exists in Mission Mode whereby a play may customize the difficulty of a match, select their faction as well as terrain and how unrelenting the A.I.-controlled enemy faction becomes in seeing to your defeat.

Overall the difficulty curve in this game is quite forgiving. At higher difficulty levels, however, the game scales quite generously for those inclined to a challenge and could be made exponentially more difficult given the player's ability to choose how often enemy reinforcements spawn into the game to hunt them down.

Conclusion? A great game for thinking players with limited time to play games.

RadFox
RadFox

A very fun and charming game that's fit for anyone who's a fan of tactics games. I especially love the environmental mechanics (e.g. casting lightning to a river to electrocute anyone in the water). The only real flaw I can think of is that the game is a bit buggy and likes to softlock. At the time of this review there's a bug where the game can just randomly lock up after an enemy attacks. Thankfully it seems the developer is actively working on this game and bugs seem to be quickly fixed after cropping up, so don't let that deter you from playing this game!

Edit: It seems Steam is saying product refunded still, despite me repurchasing this game so don't let that confuse you any.

Edit 2: Looks like that bug I mentioned was just patched! Goes to show how dedicated this dev is.

imaginarythomas
imaginarythomas

An outstanding tactical game with emergent gameplay and fresh new ideas. Cannot recommend enough. Buy this!

AllHailKingArthur [BALD]
AllHailKingArt…

Brilliant Evergreen Design!

First and foremost, *learn the rules*. there is a slight learning curve to this. Because it looks and smells like most tactics games, you might think that your primary action will be whacking enemies until their hitpoints hit zero and they disappear. While you technically can do this, you will almost certainly lose! That's not what this game is about. If you take the time to learn the abilities, learn about positioning and flanking, terrain effects, and the "stack pushing" mechanisms, you will quickly become invigorated by the possibility space.
Also, the objective isn't to just wipe out the enemy. The objective is to capture flags and satisfy the win condition. Enemies are only a *part* of the tactical/strategic arc. Once you factor all of this in, the brilliance of this tactics system will reveal itself.
It's been reported that this game is a bit thin on the content and the story campaign. I don't personally mind this, and what content is there is hilarious and charming. Besides, as I said, once you learn the rules, playing a match of this game is like a game of solitaire or chess. it never gets old.
The game is obviously being supported and patched constantly. I'm sure it'll only get better with time.
Truly. Pay once, play forever. A must-buy for those who love tactics games!

FantasticPancake
FantasticPancake

When I bought this game at first, a recent updated made the game unplayable. I reported them on the community forum and the dev fixed everything within a single day.

The game is incredibly clever and dynamic. Your individual units have fairly simple abilities, e.g. "charges forwards two tiles and pushes anyone in the way" but those abilities can combo to create an incredible number of options on a given turn. There's a lot of depth here and a wild creative energy to the mechanical design.

BattalKruvazor
BattalKruvazor

A step back from into the breach, a step forwards from advance wars/wargroove.

Peksali
Peksali

Excellent tactics game that has a lot going on below the surface. It's fast paced, requires lots of adaptation and improvisation without compromising your plan and all the missions have sense of urgency without feeling unfair. The game keeps throwing you into surprising and seemingly overwhelming but entirely survivable situations, which is my favorite aspect of tactical games.

AfroBot
AfroBot

Gem of a game. Not sure what any negative reviews are moaning about, this game is great value in terms of content. A great side story and 4 unique campaigns should satisfy anyone's tactics itch.

Wears its influences from the creator's previous game, Auro, on its sleeve, and that's a good thing. The gameplay is just plain good and extremely varied. Every single unit (and there's quite a lot of them) has a unique set of skills and passives and the bumping mechanic is great for comebacks.

Also, the music is great. I would play the business demons for their jammin' tunes if they weren't capitalist pigs.

Dylan
Dylan

Deep interactions among unit abilities and terrain types. I'm having a good time discovering more of the "broken" combos. Great tactics game - very creative!

P4r5nip
P4r5nip

I had a lot of fun playing Gem Wizards Tactics; however, this game still needs some additional content.

*Previously, I cam across some problems that are now resolved. So, there is not much more to say until I play some more and see if I can rise to the challenge.

- Do I recommend this game: If you are looking for a final product (one that is out of development) this might not be for you. But if a story mode (fairly short but refine story), short campaign (9 stages of combat), and AI combat (fight AI at a selected rank) is all or more than enough for you, then go for it. It plays well and has interesting strategy tile-play.

With all that said, I’m still a little bit on the fence (if I were to recommend this game to a friend) this is a lovely, quirky game that has interesting tile mechanics which give rise to interesting synergies, but you can only interact with others and the game separately at the moment. I will certainly continue to play and enjoy as more content is added; no complaints to date.

[edit: (*)Removed the problems that I cam across as they are now patched-out of the game, as well, changes to the review]

leoleez
leoleez

This is a short and sweet tactical game. The synergies between the different factions and wonky combinations are the main selling point. That and how short matches are. It is only single player, and not concerning itself with balance. I wouldn't expect much of a challenge either. $15 USD seems pretty steep, as it won't engage tactical junkies for more than a few hours. I'd say get it on sale.

wizbane
wizbane

A charming, light-hearted tactics game with a ridiculous amount of complexity in how units interact. The tutorial and first campaign starts you off with the basics, but nearly every match you're learning new and interesting ways to combine your units powers and positioning.

It can be a little frustrating if you're not able to capture the flags as quickly as possible, with the game dragging on but you're in a losing position. Overall though, a refreshingly fun and deep tactics game.

abda7kado
abda7kado

Worth recommending?.... Yeah why not? I'd argue "there's potential" in this game

- Seems to have interesting ideas regarding battle mechanics
- The UI still needs work because it literally feels all over the place. Wargroove or Advanced Wars are more comfortable to use.
- There are inconsistencies in what constitutes an "Action" (moving is, but meele attack isn't) and the game would probably be deeper if abilities and movement had different "Action Point" cost
- The half-baked and shallow politics/economics embeded in the story is truly the greatest defect of the game

[i] Scooba Nate
[i] Scooba Nate

This game has a ton of depth, and the audio/visuals are very charming. Highly recommended, the combos that come out are really cool

lunacyn
lunacyn

(Ignore the playtime, I played this a while on the switch beforehand)

It's rare when a solid tactics game gets paired with such a vibrant, bubbly aesthetic. As someone who is a big fan of both, this is an easy recommend from me. The only other game to capture both for me was Outwitters a decade ago.

But unlike Outwitters (which was an excellent game in its own right), the faction variety here is *huge*, and they play completely differently from each other. There's lots of strategic depth here, with a variety of placement- and terrain-manipulating moves available for each squad.

The only real downside is the AI, which is only capable of getting more difficult through brute force (i.e., a bigger horde of enemies) rather than better strategy. A bit of a shame, but understandable given how complicated the game is strategically.

Overall, it's been a great time. Came for the adorable aesthetic, stayed for the ITB-esque SRPG gameplay and strategic depth/variety.

Mr W
Mr W

From a technical design and balance point of view, this is pretty good, but I don't really feel compelled to play it as I think there are better tactics games out there.