Titanium Court review: a silly game for silly people | a guest post by Dodo

I’m Dodo, Luna’s “editor” and partner (blame nepotism). But today I am also a reviewer for Titanium Court! I immediately played this game on release and quickly poured 15 hours into it. I’d like to share my experiences with you here.

The kind of games I am usually most interested in playing right on release tend to have either some sort of unique gameplay mechanic or a very unique setting. Titanium Court has both! The gameplay manages to mix match-3 gameplay with strategy base defense and roguelike elements. Meanwhile the story is a surrealistic meta-narrative taking place in a world that is both frightening and exciting at the same time. The game also has a varying amount of endings. I will go over each of them here, without spoiling anything.

Thank you Sey from Good Game Lobby and the publisher Fellow Traveller for providing Luna’s Gaming Log with a game key for this review!

Screenshots of the game

Gameplay

The gameplay has you match tiles together on a grid both to harvest resources and transform the landscape at the same time. Enemies also appear on the landscape, and after a set amount of moves the game turns into a base defense strategy game. During the matching phase (high tide), you want to set yourself up into a strategic position while also maximizing resources gained. This adds an interesting amount of forethought into setting up a fight (low tide), while also adding a lot of randomness in the form of the tiles appearing.

The game features various stages followed by a boss fight. On the way to the boss there are many mechanics and unique events to mix up the gameplay. Additionally, you will unlock new abilities and ways to play as the game progresses.

Despite the variety in gameplay, the game can still start feeling repetitive quite quickly. Due to the nature of the game being a roguelike, you’re expected to re-fight stages and bosses over and over again to progress the story and game. That said, the multiple endings discussed below solves this issue somewhat.

Narrative

The story has you transported to a strange world. You soon find a court of fairies who you then try to defend from various enemies. As you progress the game, you try to find a way to return home.

Despite being your allies, the fairies of the court can find themselves to be… difficult to work with. Being pranksters by nature, they hardly ever answer anything directly and speak mostly in riddles and half-truths. Often they are also just spending a lot of time joking around and pondering about what life must be like for mortals. Such as when spotting a ‘dead end’ sign and pondering on its meaning being related to the inevitable death that awaits all mortals, rather than being a mundane car sign. Jiving well with the unique story and hijinks will probably make or break this game for you.

Multiple Endings (no spoilers)

I can’t really get too much into the endings without spoiling anything, but what I think is very clever here is that the game lets you complete it at varying stages. I think I was able to ‘finish’ at around 5 hours in, but I decided to keep going, and was given another option to finish the game about 10 hours in.

That didn’t stop me from going completely crazy and spending 15 hours on the game to get every achievement, which also offers another ending. This helps somewhat with the repetitiveness of the game, since depending on how much time you want to invest you can still end the game in a satisfactory way. It also means the more difficult later challenges of the game are effectively optional. And don’t worry, you’re not missing out if you decide to end it early, all the times where you can end the game are valid endings in their own right.

My own love for the game

To conclude I want to summarize my own love for the game. I am the kind of person who loves when a game gets ‘meta’. If it goes out of its way to address strange elements of the gameplay in a tongue-in-check fashion. For example, you can run across a self-defense instructor who can sell you some defensive units and spells to use in combat. He’s accompanied by a student in judo clothing who is clearly thinking of personal self defense instead, and constantly getting confused when the instructor refers to resources, the interface, or watching your castle’s health. The student then typically tries to make sense of the lesson regardless, or just figures he probably needs to ‘train harder’ to understand what his ‘sensei’ means.

The faeries being obtuse and sometimes unhelpful can be annoying or fun depending on what you like. Personally, I love getting jerked around in games! A useless tutorial is the best kind of tutorial for me. I don’t just want to learn how to play the game, I want the instructions themselves to be engaging and entertaining.

I also really loved the art style and music for this game, same with the story. In a lot of ways this game feels like it was made specifically for people like me. I suspect for a lot of people this game will be either a hit or a miss. I recommend giving it a try for an hour or so and if it’s not to your liking, you can always return it.

About the guest: Dodo

I’m Dodo and I’ve been playing games since I was 4 years old. I grew up with two older brothers, a Nintendo Entertainment System and an uncle who would burn floppy disks and later CDs for us. Growing up with a wide array of games available to me, I enjoy a lot of different genres! Though I am more partial to the ‘classics’. I love indie games partially because they return to the charm of a time before everything turned 3D, and when smaller teams could still make videogames. I am also a big fan of strategy games as I love to think a lot while I play. I’m also an “editor” at Luna’s Gaming Log and occasionally a contributor! I hope you enjoy my ramblings.