Thought I'd pop a thread up to send appreciation for Skyward Collapse. It wasn't a game that was strongly on my radar, but it really surprised me. Had to share a quick story, since it was one of the more tense strategy moments I've had in a long time.
So, I had played the tutorial and one quick game on normal, decided to bump it up to challenging (world and score). Around turn 35ish I was getting ready to toss in the towel - it was about 30 Norse to 110 Greek pop. I had overcompensated for all the extra bandits in the beginning, and the Norse were unlucky where the bandits dropped, leading to a massive Greek army incoming, including one Greek mythological unit that was so leveled that it took out 3 Norse summons in a row. As I was considering hitting up a new game, I decided to see it out to the end, which is pretty rare for me in a strategy game when it looks that hopeless.
It was hopeless, but I thought I'd see how long I could stretch it out. I used the Greek's god token to drop more bandits, figuring nothing worse could happen, and to give the Greeks something else to shoot at to stall the army and give a bit of time to collect resources and plop enough land tiles to start a new town. The Norse dropped to about 5 population as the Greeks finished off the towns they were near, then bam. Something I had forgotten about as I considered my doom - a woe hit. Ragnarok. Wiped everything but 1 city per faction.
So suddenly everyone was starting near from scratch around turn 50, but a mass of bandits were dropping in everywhere all over an obsidian cauldron of death. The latter half of the game was a mad scramble to get out as much clay and pottery and seers as I could to churn out summons to try to stem the bandit tide. I wound up on the edge more than a few times with almost nothing, but the labyrinth really saved me towards the end. I barely squeeked out the 90 turns, and sat back thinking . .that was great. GG.
So, sorry if its in the wrong section, but for a first (well perhaps second) day impression, I thought that it was interesting that a small focused game had given me one of the best strategy moments of the year. Admittedly it was more dumb luck than real strategy at a key moment, but its a good game that can at least give a player an opportunity like that. Assuming I don't figure out how to cheese the system, I can see myself playing this quite a bit. Cheers!
