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Steel Sky Productions’ “Warhammer Underworlds: Online” is a turn-based card and dice game, that’s set in the Warhammer universe. A universe where four warring groups trapped in the Mirrored City of Shadespire, only one group can emerge victorious.
Cards are used to affect your players or your opponents. In other words, you better think through your moves carefully BEFORE you actually make them. As your actions and card/cards of choice come with conseqences.
Furthermore, unlike most games of this genre, this one is pretty complex. Fortunately, there is a two-part tutorial to help get everyone acquainted with the rules and gameplay.
And trust me when I say this…It is really needed, as the game is probably overly complex. Played over three rounds, the objective is to score as many glory points as possible at the end, and thus claim victory.
Okay…Real talk, who’s who amongst this mess of characters? I honestly can’t tell most of the time…
Other than that, each round contains many “activations” (hopefully before the game comes out of Early Access, you will be informed properly of what each activation is for, because at the moment, aside from a small prompt at the bottom, you don’t really know what is going on)…
People can say and think what they want of “Warhammer Underworlds: Online”, but no one can deny the fact that the game is very visually stunning when it comes to graphics and animations.
You see, Some of the moves you’re supposed to be able to do don’t seem to be implemented – whilst you can sometimes play a card, most of the time nothing much happens (even with a generic card), and there is certainly no warning message saying why you can’t play a card or why something can’t be done.
The game’s board setup is really nicely done bptj in terms of looks, feel, andease of use.
Well…for some classes, the number of characters that can be moved is extremely limited, whilst others aren‘t.
In addition, everything has to be confirmed by a confirmation button press afterward, which really slows things down.
Truth be told…The game’s tutorials are more fun than the main game itself.
As for combat and such, fighting uses dice rolls to determine who wins, with the loser taking damage (unless an appropriate card has been activated), and possibly being pushed onto a nearby tile.
Unfortunately, this is indicative of the current state of the program – you manually select where the opponent should go, but there is no audible or visual notification to do so, which is worse if you can’t see any of the “sort-of” flashing tiles which you need to select…
I would also like to add that the game’s dice symbols are…Well, pretty darn weird…I mean, whilst they are (somewhat) explained in the tutorial, it would be nice if they were detailed during the main game as well.
I think it’s safe to say that I lost quite badly in this particular battle situation. Oh well, better luck next time!
Anyways, I think you get the idea, moving on! Once three turns have been used up, the final tally of glory points are awarded and the winner declared.
You do get a fair variety of gameplay setups – there are different board layouts, which can be rearranged, and you can choose where you put objectives, and of course there are different classes to choose from.
The sound design in “Warhammer Underworlds: Online” is beyond perfection! And that goes from everything to the game’s dice rolling, combat, to the atmospheric sounds themselves (everything that you hear in the game world, the environment so to speak).
At the end of the day though, they all play the same of course – the only difference are how many hexes they can move and the amount of damage they can take.
So, in overall, “Warhammer Underworlds: Online” is a rather slow, laborious game. However, I have no no doubt (whatsoever) that it’s a game that the tabletop players of “Warhammer” would love to sink their teeth into with great delight for sure.
Pros:
+ Very nice graphics.
+ The ambient droning noise is pretty atmospheric. There are few other sound effects, beyond dice rolling and fighting.
Cons:
– Somewhat buggy as moving cards onto the playing area isn’t always detected
– Some temporary text during the second tutorial is visible.
– Expensive.
– Few notifications for various actions.
– No-one playing online.
– Tutorials play better than the main game – and have a story too.
Gameplay: 3/5
Graphics: 4/5
Sound and music: 3/5
Controls: 2/5
Replay value: 3/5
Story: 3/5
Verdict: 3/5
“Warhammer Underworlds: Online” is a game for the sort of people who play the tabletop version of Warhammer – it’s slow and pretty uninteresting really, with no-one playing online either….
Furthermore, It’s currently too inaccessible for the average card player and too slow for turn-based players.
So whether the pacing will change or not is unknown, but hopefully the developers will put out a demo to help people to decide whether or not to buy the said game.
Title: Warhammer Underworlds: Online
Developer: Steel Sky Productions
Format: PC
Genre: Turn-based card and dice
Resolution: User-defined
Release date: 2020-08-01
Difficulty: User-defined
Spent time: + 2 hours
Average grade internationally: N/A Gamerankings.com
PEGI age rating: N/A
Price: 8.99 Euros (via Steam)
Credit:
Robin Ek – Editor
Nicholas Kingsley
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @sku_te
More by Nicholas Kingsley:
Tags: Deckbuilding, Indie games, Online, PC games, Steam, Steel Sky Productions, Strategy, Tabletop, Warhammer, Warhammer Underworlds
