Long review. Sorry.

Mines of Titan has that je ne sais quoi that it needs as a roguelite with obvious inspirations from its corner of vidyajames. You might be down here because the review score isn't as good as similarily sized titles, though that's the case because it's not quite a crowd pleaser with its mechanics.

Now that's not supposed to read as "Cruelty Squad", but it does mean that there is A Lot of a lot to keep track of, your mistakes are punished and that you are very much dared to outsmart Titan. Many reviews complain about things that are par for the course like durability mechanics or time sensitivity, which is a shame to me since it drags down a game that does a lot right and isn't afraid to break the mold in some places, even if it can be an acquired taste.

Mines of Titan, despite noticeable inspirations, walks its own path; similar to the first Subterrain you are put in a situation where time seriously works against you. Monsters get stronger and sections of the mine get busier as it passes.
You're in an arms race, which you don't quite realize in your first bit of playtime when you're still squashing rats and little slugs.
Your second or third time in the mine lets it dawn on you though, as you realize your neighbours have grown big and strong and quite unpleasant while you were taking your sweet ass time with all of it. It makes you think twice about what you are setting out to do, rewards you for being efficient with your turns and seduces you to take risks you otherwise wouldn't...

The game knows this. For example, like two of the first quests the colony gives you have you walk into different places and do maintenance on pipes and computers in the safe zone. The average player is going to see this, think "oh a fetch quest" and mindlessly walk where the arrow points them to and then go make a review about how the quests are boring. However, if you are the kind of person that Lives this type of game, you'll think to yourself that you can be smarter about it and just scratch those off the list when you're walking to those places anyways to buy or sell things or do other stuff. This works for half of the objectives and the other half that have you go out your way and meet the people you wouldn't have otherwise talked to, as well as dig through their rooms for copper wire. It's the kind of game that makes me feel like i'm a smart boy when I do things right. Yay.

The story is a good premise but the delivery is heavy-handed. It's kind of heroes journey but hasn't been too predictable up until where i'm at. I'm drawn to the mine and want to see all its levels and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up ♥♥♥♥ that happens in them.
The characters are somewhat trope-y and archetype-al but still feel like they contain multitudes with quirks, hobbies and fears, hopes. They feel human in short. You can find their outfits in their rooms and they have cute little flavour texts attached to them, which are well written. That's nice.

The side quests you get by meeting the characters are either utilitarian, like one being you having to find spare parts for someone's mining drone to be fixed (You can glean from the dialogue that the character in question seriously cares about the drone after having worked so long with it. There's care given to the presentation.) or kind of... whimsical? Another quest has you deliver someone's poem to their crush. Aw.
At first glance it can be kind of jarring, doing benign stuff like that when time is ticking. However, in my ten hours of playtime 30 days have passed in universe. If you've ever watched something like M*A*S*H you've learned that this kind of small stuff is what keeps people sane in horrible drawn out situations. It just makes sense if you take in consideration that these people have been living in hell for god-knows-how-long.

Though there is an argument to be made about tone. The tone is relatively light everywhere else as well.
I genuinely care about the characters. They're sympathetic, characterized well and their side quests give really good rewards, some permanent upgrades or unique accessories that don't have durability for example. It'd be so easy to break my heart by showing a bit of drama. The game hasn't (yet). I wonder why the decision wasn't made for the overall tone to be a bit more serious, of course the feeling of impending doom is something that is properly conveyed through dialogue and gameplay, but outside of that the story hasn't taken any risks up until the point I have played. No all too sad stuff, no big choices to make with consequences. A little let down, something like that would have put a lot of weight into the story.

The game is very heavy on resource management. It's been balanced well for my playtime, money is short and the game is good at making you think about what you're bringing and what you're using and how. After researching the bigger repair kits i realized that they're really expensive to craft, at 500 credits per 5 uses, which is a big step up from the 60 credits for 3 uses base line kits. Second level repairs 50 and the first level kit repairs 30, with the big difference being that the advanced one only lowers the total durabilty of an item by 10% for each use, with the other one lowering it by 30%.

So what happened is that I sat there throwing numbers over eachother, checking the durability on my gear, how much that costs, if the material costs are a factor or not and how it compares to the credits per use of the kits. Any other game would have made the second repair kit a direct upgrade. I realized that my harvesting tools have around 120ish uses, which is perfect to use the small kits on because losing 30% of that isn't that big of a deal for a bunch of cheaply repaired extra uses, the big repair kit would be a waste, especially seeing that they dont costs all that much to build anyways at one or two hundred credits each. Now my armour on the other hand only has 50ish durability and much more uncommonly loses it. Losing 30% of it would be a big deal since it's like 500ish credits to build for each piece and I would lose more credits replacing it than I save from not using the big kit.
I liked doing that. Made me feel smart. I'm smarter than Titan.

Down in the mines you're also managing the ♥♥♥♥ out of your resources. Now I'm very cautious when it comes to these kind of games, I prepare more than I need and I double check if I have everything. But the thing is, every bandage you use could have had its resources recycled to credits. Even if I haven't had any close shaves as of now- I do remember encounters where I got caught out of cover by a spitter, whose attacks tick up your bleed, poison and nanoinfection counters. What I didn't feel in my health bar, I felt in my wallet. Sure, materials are mostly renewable, but credits take time to get, time that you don't really have. Smart choices are lucrative. The harvestable acid plants spill goop around them when you fail a harvest, unlike the poison plants you can't outrun this AOE. Walking into a room that has a lot of plants to harvest, I check my character sheet, noticing I have some acid buildup from an earlier run-in with titan slugs. Acid is only really dangerous after it hits a certain treshold and unlike nano-infection, it ticks down as turns pass. So I go ahead and spend turns harvesting mushrooms first, which I had to check with a calculator for if they were more profitable to recycle or to sell to the barman Alp, letting my acid gauge tick down to safely harvest the acid plants without running the risk of having to use my neutralizing spray or take the hit to my equipment durability from the acid.

Combat has the expected complexity of a modern roguelike/lite to it. Abilities throw enemies into walls or rush them down. You think about what ability to use. You think a lot in Mines of Titan. It's a thinking mans game. I like it. It makes me feel really smart.

Long review. Sorry. Mines of Titan has that je ne sais quoi that it needs as a roguelite with obvious inspirations from its corner of vidyajames. You might be down here because the review score isn't as good as similarily sized titles, though that's the case because it's not quite a crowd pleaser with its mechanics. Now that's not supposed to read as "Cruelty Squad", but it does mean that there is A Lot of a lot to keep track of, your mistakes are punished and that you are very much dared to outsmart Titan. Many reviews complain about things that are par for the course like durability mechanics or time sensitivity, which is a shame to me since it drags down a game that does a lot right and isn't afraid to break the mold in some places, even if it can be an acquired taste. Mines of Titan, despite noticeable inspirations, walks its own path; similar to the first Subterrain you are put in a situation where time seriously works against you. Monsters get stronger and sections of the mine get busier as it passes. You're in an arms race, which you don't quite realize in your first bit of playtime when you're still squashing rats and little slugs. Your second or third time in the mine lets it dawn on you though, as you realize your neighbours have grown big and strong and quite unpleasant while you were taking your sweet ass time with all of it. It makes you think twice about what you are setting out to do, rewards you for being efficient with your turns and seduces you to take risks you otherwise wouldn't... The game knows this. For example, like two of the first quests the colony gives you have you walk into different places and do maintenance on pipes and computers in the safe zone. The average player is going to see this, think "oh a fetch quest" and mindlessly walk where the arrow points them to and then go make a review about how the quests are boring. However, if you are the kind of person that Lives this type of game, you'll think to yourself that you can be smarter about it and just scratch those off the list when you're walking to those places anyways to buy or sell things or do other stuff. This works for half of the objectives and the other half that have you go out your way and meet the people you wouldn't have otherwise talked to, as well as dig through their rooms for copper wire. It's the kind of game that makes me feel like i'm a smart boy when I do things right. Yay. The story is a good premise but the delivery is heavy-handed. It's kind of heroes journey but hasn't been too predictable up until where i'm at. I'm drawn to the mine and want to see all its levels and the fucked up shit that happens in them. The characters are somewhat trope-y and archetype-al but still feel like they contain multitudes with quirks, hobbies and fears, hopes. They feel human in short. You can find their outfits in their rooms and they have cute little flavour texts attached to them, which are well written. That's nice. The side quests you get by meeting the characters are either utilitarian, like one being you having to find spare parts for someone's mining drone to be fixed (You can glean from the dialogue that the character in question seriously cares about the drone after having worked so long with it. There's care given to the presentation.) or kind of... whimsical? Another quest has you deliver someone's poem to their crush. Aw. At first glance it can be kind of jarring, doing benign stuff like that when time is ticking. However, in my ten hours of playtime 30 days have passed in universe. If you've ever watched something like M*A*S*H you've learned that this kind of small stuff is what keeps people sane in horrible drawn out situations. It just makes sense if you take in consideration that these people have been living in hell for god-knows-how-long. Though there is an argument to be made about tone. The tone is relatively light everywhere else as well. I genuinely care about the characters. They're sympathetic, characterized well and their side quests give really good rewards, some permanent upgrades or unique accessories that don't have durability for example. It'd be so easy to break my heart by showing a bit of drama. The game hasn't (yet). I wonder why the decision wasn't made for the overall tone to be a bit more serious, of course the feeling of impending doom is something that is properly conveyed through dialogue and gameplay, but outside of that the story hasn't taken any risks up until the point I have played. No all too sad stuff, no big choices to make with consequences. A little let down, something like that would have put a lot of weight into the story. The game is very heavy on resource management. It's been balanced well for my playtime, money is short and the game is good at making you think about what you're bringing and what you're using and how. After researching the bigger repair kits i realized that they're really expensive to craft, at 500 credits per 5 uses, which is a big step up from the 60 credits for 3 uses base line kits. Second level repairs 50 and the first level kit repairs 30, with the big difference being that the advanced one only lowers the total durabilty of an item by 10% for each use, with the other one lowering it by 30%. So what happened is that I sat there throwing numbers over eachother, checking the durability on my gear, how much that costs, if the material costs are a factor or not and how it compares to the credits per use of the kits. Any other game would have made the second repair kit a direct upgrade. I realized that my harvesting tools have around 120ish uses, which is perfect to use the small kits on because losing 30% of that isn't that big of a deal for a bunch of cheaply repaired extra uses, the big repair kit would be a waste, especially seeing that they dont costs all that much to build anyways at one or two hundred credits each. Now my armour on the other hand only has 50ish durability and much more uncommonly loses it. Losing 30% of it would be a big deal since it's like 500ish credits to build for each piece and I would lose more credits replacing it than I save from not using the big kit. I liked doing that. Made me feel smart. I'm smarter than Titan. Down in the mines you're also managing the shit out of your resources. Now I'm very cautious when it comes to these kind of games, I prepare more than I need and I double check if I have everything. But the thing is, every bandage you use could have had its resources recycled to credits. Even if I haven't had any close shaves as of now- I do remember encounters where I got caught out of cover by a spitter, whose attacks tick up your bleed, poison and nanoinfection counters. What I didn't feel in my health bar, I felt in my wallet. Sure, materials are mostly renewable, but credits take time to get, time that you don't really have. Smart choices are lucrative. The harvestable acid plants spill goop around them when you fail a harvest, unlike the poison plants you can't outrun this AOE. Walking into a room that has a lot of plants to harvest, I check my character sheet, noticing I have some acid buildup from an earlier run-in with titan slugs. Acid is only really dangerous after it hits a certain treshold and unlike nano-infection, it ticks down as turns pass. So I go ahead and spend turns harvesting mushrooms first, which I had to check with a calculator for if they were more profitable to recycle or to sell to the barman Alp, letting my acid gauge tick down to safely harvest the acid plants without running the risk of having to use my neutralizing spray or take the hit to my equipment durability from the acid. Combat has the expected complexity of a modern roguelike/lite to it. Abilities throw enemies into walls or rush them down. You think about what ability to use. You think a lot in Mines of Titan. It's a thinking mans game. I like it. It makes me feel really smart.