Ark of Charon

by Aethyna Jul 27, 2024 | 1 Votes | 80 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Simulation , Strategy

Graphics:

Labels:

Building , Colony Sim

Platforms:

Publishers:

SUNSOFT Ark of Charon is a unique tower defense-style, base-building roguelite where you not only get to build various structures to store goods and house crafting stations on the back of a massive creature, but you’ll also get to farm, mine, and gather various resources from whatever environment you stop at, fight hostile beings while traveling between locations, and ultimately, make it to the nursery to start the world anew. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Ark of Charon is a unique tower defense-style, base-building roguelite where you not only get to build various structures to store goods and house crafting stations on the back of a massive creature, but you’ll also get to farm, mine, and gather various resources from whatever environment you stop at, fight hostile beings while traveling between locations, and ultimately, make it to the nursery to start the world anew.

Plotline

There’s a great tree, known as the World Tree, that nurtured all life. But one day, it withered, plunging the world into darkness… and with it, monstrous creatures started plaguing the world. Life, as the world knows it, perished.

However, over time, a new sapling sprouted. To help itself survive the journey to the nursery to start the world anew, it spawned golems to aid in its defense and growth, and the massive behemoth to be its trusty “mount”. If successful, a new world tree will grow, finally dispelling the darkness and ushering in a new life.

Gameplay

Ark of Charon is one very unique game and such, it’s fitting for it to have an intriguing and entertaining gameplay loop consisting of elements from various popular subgenres like base-building, colony management (to some extend at least), and base defense.

The game starts off with its base-building aspect. You’ll have three Golems who you can then order to perform various crucial tasks including resource gathering and construction. Different golems will have different affinity to different tasks, and it’s also good that you can have the best golem for each job by using the task priority system. Simply increase the priority for the tasks the golem is good at and it’ll focus on those tasks first. You’ll start with only three golems but you’ll eventually be able to “create” new ones with Souls harvested from fallen enemies. Each golem can have up to three souls, with each soul affording them a perk.

The resource gathering features that addictive mining-oriented gameplay that made games like Minecraft so popular, albeit in a 2D perspective. You’ll highlight tiles that you want the Golem to mine and sometimes, you’ll need to build ladders and platforms for them to access the tiles.

Not all tiles will yield resources, however. It all depends on which tiles you mine. For instance, you can get wood from root tiles, while you can get iron ores to stone from their respective tiles. Sometimes, you may encounter resource nodes behind certain cluster of tiles. For these, you can set up a drill and have the Golems drill for the resource instead.

There is also surface space for you to grow and harvest a variety of crops once you have them unlocked. You’ll have to set up farming plots first before you can do so, and you’ll need to have fertile soil to grow anything. Plants will only grow during daytime as well, and their growth will halt during the night.

Resources that are left on the ground will “expire”, and hence disappear, after some time, so it’s crucial to have your golems to store them properly in the storage area you’ve designated at your base. Stored items can last indefinitely, including food items. Storage areas don’t need to be housed within a “room”, though, unlike the many crafting stations you can build. Note that you can only build on the back of the creature as indicated by the stone base.

The area you get can be a bit small-ish, but you can always build upwards. Some amount of physics apply in this game since bearing strength plays a huge role in determining if your structures will remain upright. Just make sure you have a strong base, by constantly replacing the materials used for the rooms at the bottom with stronger materials you may have unlocked, and you should be fine. New technologies, including unlocking new materials, can all be done via the game’s pretty extensive tech tree. You’ll gain experience by gathering resources and defeating enemies, though, I noticed that you seem to get more experience points from winning fights than gathering resources.

Crafting in this game is made easy and convenient, thanks to its “production line” system. You can simply set how many of an item you need, and whether or not you need to have a fixed stock of them at any time, and have the Golem automatically fulfill what you need. You can even arrange their priority in order of what’s needed at any moment, similar to what you can do with the golems. Of course, this can be offset by the lack of certain resources, which the game doesn’t seem to indicate clearly enough.

Depending on which game mode you’re paying, you may have all the time in the world to gather resources before heading to a new location; or you don’t since the Dark Storm will swoop in after a few days and force you to move on to the next location. In fact, if you chose the Normal mode (a.k.a. the A New World mode), it’s probably best to quickly move to the next location once your base is ready to take on the various enemies you’ll encounter during the journey. The faster you move on, the more time you’ll have in the next location to gather what you need before moving on again.

The location you travel to may feature different resources as well as their respective abundance. Similar to most roguelite games, you get to choose which location you want to head to, usually out of two choices. So, if you are in dire need of stone and iron, for example, you might want to head to an area with those resources in large supply.

Now, in terms of combat, the gameplay is somewhat similar to a tower defense game. Here, you build various offensive structures from ballistae to trebuchets so they could be utilized to defend your other rooms from being destroyed by creatures from the Dark Storm that will attack your base while you’re moving from one location to another. You could have them work automatically, which requires regular ammunition resupply from your Golems, or you could manually take over a weapon and attack the enemies yourself. It can be a bit hard to land a successful hit, however. It does take some practice before you can get used to the way the projectile arcs across the sky.

After every victorious fight, you’ll likely need to take stock of the weapons destroyed, replaced them accordingly, and have any damaged structures repaired.

As fun as the game is, there are definitely some room for improvement. For instance, it is surprisingly difficult to replace the structures of a built room as opposed to manual structures like pillars and platforms with stronger materials once you’ve unlocked them. It’s also difficult to completely remove parts of the old structure if you decide to replace the entire room with a new (and stronger) room of a different size. There will be some “residue” structures that can be very tricky for your Golem to clear away.

Graphics/ Sound

Ark of Charon features beautiful graphics that are both functional and clear. Differently colored tiles clearly indicate different soil or material types, though, there are also tooltips to help. Icons are clear and informative as well. I love how clearly the game displays everything you have stored be it within the storage areas you’ve designated or the helpful list of items on the left side of the screen.

In terms of sound, the game features a selection of soothing tunes to serenade you as you gather resources and build stuff. However, this changes drastically during fights. The music became much more dramatic.

Conclusion

All in all, Ark of Charon is not only a unique game in its own right, but it is also the kind of game that fans of base-city-building roguelites never knew they wanted! The game is surprisingly strategic and in-depth while allowing for creative play as well. If you like what you’ve read so far, make sure to hop on over to the game’s Steam page now and wishlist it, or even buy it outright. You won’t regret getting it!