The skeletons don’t care about the storms I’m lobbing around the place. They’re marching onward, through the maze of walls and gates I’ve constructed, and a little bit of rain isn’t going to deter them. I was hoping for skull-splitting bolts of lightning but instead I’ve just made everyone a bit damp.

Rise to Ruins is a village-building simulator that’s somewhere between the complexity of Dwarf Fortress and the relative simplicity of The Settlers or Banished. I’m currently preparing to watch my latest creation collapse.

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Retro-Pixel Castles [official site] is a game I’d been meaning to play for a long time. It’s still moving through Early Access, with regular and meaty updates, and is often described as one of those fabled ‘Dwarf Fortress with a neater interface” games, a select group in which Rimworld is the undisputed master (disputes to take place in the comments!). I fired Castles up this morning, having spotted that it’s 50% off in the Steam sale right now, available for 3.49 until July 4th. It’s more like the Settlers as a strategy roguelike than a sibling of Dwarf Fortress, and I can see myself spending a lot of time with it.

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