There are hits on Steam, there are insider tips and there is Infested Fortress: The new strategy game on Steam has 92% positive reviews and players who say it is highly addictive, but hardly anyone even touches the game when it is released. It seems like RimWorld in a fantasy dungeon. Maybe that’s better, says MeinMMO author Schuhmann. Because the game is addictive and is a danger to leisure activities.
What kind of game is this?
The trailer doesn’t look like anything, but the game has it:
Official launch trailer for Infested Fortress
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A mix of Dungeon Keeper and RimWorld in a fantasy dungeon
How does the game play? Surprisingly good. Like in the ancient “Dungeon Keeper” or in “Dwarf Fortress”, you get your own dungeon, which you can expand by digging and building walls, so that you will soon build an impressive fortress. With every cell that you dig, you get new raw materials such as wood, stone, magma, gold, ores or simply mother earth. Again and again you will discover farm animals in the dungeon such as chickens, pigs or cows, for which you build farms.
In the rapidly expanding vaults you can set up rooms freely and have various economic cycles up and running within a few minutes:
You should make sure that your fortress is built sensibly and that the rooms are sensibly separated from each other with walls so that the effectiveness remains high: Because if you simply arrange all the rooms in a huge open space without any design, the effectiveness of the rooms will decrease dramatically. In addition to long distances, there is a risk of loss of effectiveness, hunger and a waste of time.
If you build poorly, you will quickly have no chance in battles.
A group of heroes like in a role-playing game with items and skills
This is the appeal of the game: In “Infested Fortress” you are actually constantly under pressure, because enemies wait at regular intervals for you to defeat them, otherwise they will rob you, tear down the fortress or simply start the fight themselves.
In order to master the hordes of monsters, you have a group of heroes at your disposal: You start with 3, but you get replenishment regularly. On day 15 you have around 6 heroes available, all of whom you can take with you into battle.
Anyone who falls in battle must be replaced. This invites you to constantly reload or even restart.
The collection of heroes is different and amazingly diverse:
The classes have a fully-fledged skill and level system: you will quickly notice your progress in power. While a level 1 priest can do practically nothing except twirl his stick and send a bolt of light at the opponent once per round, a level 5 priest has several healing spells, chain lightning and a holy whirlwind at his disposal.
It is also important that – as in Monster Hunter – you create new equipment from the defeated boss opponents: a troll like this quickly becomes a special sword, a poisonous manticore becomes a shield.
And the animals provide the raw material leather and the resource meat for the grill.
Infested Fortess is addictive, but has hardly any players
And is that fun? In fact, despite its modest graphics, Infested Fortress is highly addictive and damn tricky. Even at the second highest difficulty level, the game is a tough nut to crack, even for experienced strategy players. Because Infested Fortress mercilessly punishes weaknesses in the structure of the dungeon or errors in tactics. The game confronts the player with a steeply increasing learning curve:
The initial idea: “My knight just tanks the mobs and the rest does damage” quickly fails when the tank is mauled by 6 skeletons in one round.
“Kiting” mobs also presents difficulties. The game is much more demanding than it seems, because the opponents also use ranged abilities and so a skeleton magician is much better protected by magic formulas and tougher than such a ratty skeleton would ever be.
A role-playing game without dialogue – broken down into combat and crafting
Because what looks a bit rough in the trailer turns out to be a clever and challenging puzzle that delivers the full “role-playing kick” that many are looking for.
A kind of “essence of a role-playing game” without much dialogue and plot, but broken down into the game systems of combat and crafting.
Infested Fortress has a high difficulty level and you tend to make mistakes, fail and start over again.
The game doesn’t seem to have gotten around at all on Steam yet, as it has almost no players, despite already having 92% positive reviews.
In March 2023 there were 17 players at the same time. The release of the game has now apparently completely fizzled out and in the last 24 hours the player peak was at 2.
Highly addictive for strategy and role-playing fans who place little value on graphics
What do the reviews say? Players rave about how tricky and challenging it is to build an effective dungeon and defeat the waves of monsters the game throws at you.
If you want to give a game that looks like nothing a chance, you should definitely take a look at the demo and then decide whether Infested Fortress is worth the €19.50.
But warning: I discovered the game on Saturday and played it until 4am. I didn’t touch it again on Sunday because otherwise it would have completely ruined my weekend.
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