Oakenfold

by Aethyna Nov 20, 2022 | 2 Votes | 26 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Strategy

Graphics:

Labels:

Turn Based , Roguelike/roguelite

Platforms:

Publishers:

Studio Taghua Oakenfold is a highly tactical sci-fi-themed roguelike, featuring a unique turn-based strategy and time manipulation element. Playing as one of the last human survivors, Asha, it’s up to you to secure one last batch of Dilithium just so humanity can have a second chance out in space on the living spaceship. Will you be able to make it? Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Oakenfold is a highly tactical sci-fi-themed roguelike, featuring a unique turn-based strategy and time manipulation element. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth where humanity is getting decimated by the biocides, the “autoimmune system” of Mother Earth that was activated, no thanks to over-mining of a precious fuel, Dilithium, from Earth’s core.

Playing as one of the last human survivors, Asha, it’s up to you to now secure one last batch of Dilithium just so humanity can have a second chance out in the stars on the living spaceship, Oakenfold. Will you be able to make it?

Plotline

Oakenfold is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has pushed Mother Earth a bit too far by overmining Dilithium, a crucial fuel from the Earth’s core, resulting in the creation of the biocides, the autoimmune system of Earth, which decimated the human “virus”.

Sadly, only a handful of humans are left. Thankfully, during the war with the biocides, a secret “living spacecraft”, and humanity’s future home, dubbed Oakenfold, was born. The humans knew they will lose the war and had a backup plan set up and ready – to escape from planet Earth and seek their salvation elsewhere in outer space. The thing is – they just need a last batch of Dilithium to fuel its boosters.

In this game, you play as Asha, a female warrior who volunteered to retrieve the Dilithium needed to save what’s left of humanity. This is your story.

Gameplay

To begin, you’ll need to first choose a difficulty level, out of the three given, namely Normal, Hard and Insane. You'll also need to choose one of the three combat classes a.k.a. mindsets you’ll have Asha be, namely Survival, Agile, and Scientific. You see, in this futuristic, albeit post-apocalyptic world, humans have some pretty advanced tech that allows someone to assume different roles simply by changing their mindset. Different mindsets will drastically change your playstyle since each mindset comes with a set of three unique skills.

There’s no way to add more permanent abilities as you progress but you can obtain one-use abilities and also augment the set of three skills you have with up to three upgrades via the crafting station. Note that by one-use, we meant that the ability can only be used once in a fight; not in an entire run. The abilities here are usually quite helpful in combat, but some of them, like the clone one, take quite a while to really master.

The upgrades, on the other hand, range from boosting the damage dealt to adding an additional effect to every use, such as pushing adjacent enemies away or pulling them in to deal extra collision damage. That being said, what upgrades or abilities you’ll get at the crafting station is completely randomized, so there might be a time when there’s nothing you’d like to buy from the station. Thankfully, for cases like this, you can save yourself a trip to the crafting station by first viewing what kinds of stuff it offers by clicking on it even if you’re far away from the actual station. Usually, you can only use the Crafting Station once a fight as well.

Considering how typically helpful these abilities and upgrades can be, it’s important to save up enough “currency” to use the crafting station when it does appear during a fight. This “currency” includes TimeBank and Energy. You can get energy by picking up Energy Orbs left behind by slain biocides while you can get TimeBank by banking in any excess time you have once you’re done with your turn.

Now, unlike other turn-based games, where you get to perform a limited number of moves based on action points per turn, in this game, you get a timeline of twelve time slots, which is quite similar to another game we’ve reviewed before, Super Bullet Break. There are also several waves, usually two, per fight, which would refresh the total timeslots you get and spawn new biocides on grids that are clearly indicated on the playing field. You can try blocking the spawns by having something standing on those grids, such as Asha herself, but she’ll then be forced to take a single damage for preventing the spawn... something that you might want to avoid since she has limited health.

Every action you make, including movement, will usually take up one time slot each. There are situations where an action may consume two slots instead, such as when you are timelocked either by stepping on a timelock tile or getting timelocked by an enemy with that ability.

Timelock is quite the annoying obstacle in this game, not only because it increases the cost of actions, but also because it prevents you from making full use of one of the most unique mechanisms in this game – the TimeScrubber! This unique mechanism allows you to easily undo any move you’ve made right up to the very beginning, even across waves, allowing you to try and try again to come up with the perfect strategy for each wave of the fight. However, every time you get timelocked, you’ll then be prevented to reverse time beyond that point.

As a quick tip as well, the upgrades and abilities you bought from the crafting station won’t get refunded if you reverse time, allowing you to essentially use them from the start, which may allow you to come up with brand new strategies that make more use of the time slots you have.

If you have any time slots left, once you’re done with a wave (a.k.a. turn), you can save them using the Timebank system, which, as aforementioned, will be used at the crafting station. Time slots that are saved in the TimeBank can also help you escape from a fight which you think you couldn’t win, provided that you can reverse time back to the start of every wave. Timelock would, naturally, put a stop to that. This feature won’t be applicable to boss fights either. Granted that the escape would likely cost you most of what time you’ve hoarded, but if it’ll let you inch your way closer to the final boss of the game, it’s probably worth it.

Enemies, however, will typically only move once you’re done with your time slots. The only times when they will move before you’ve used all twelve time slots is when they have the Hastened boost which would let them move one time slot earlier. These biocides can also evolve into stronger versions of themselves – the Elites – by picking up Energy Orbs that you’ve left on the playing field. Similarly, friendly robots like the Robosweeper that the Scientific Asha can summon, can also pick up these Orbs to heal themselves.

The goal of almost every fight in this game involves not letting the biocides destroy any of the crates containing crucial Dilithium deliveries to Oakenfold. This is why in most battles, the biocides would target the crates rather than you. If you lose all your Dilithium shipments, then you’ll lose the game and have to start all over. However, some fights may be slightly different. There are fights where the goal is for you to reach your stash of Dilithium in one piece, for example. So, obviously, if you lose all your health, you’ll die and have to start the run all over again as well.

Besides main goals, there are also plenty of side objectives that you can complete for additional rewards, mostly Energy and TimeBank. Side objectives can range from preventing the biocides from destroying the robots sent to gather resources for the people of Oakenfold, to destroying every single biocide the game throws at you in the fight; to even making sure you complete the fight without losing any health.

In this game, there are three maps you’ll have to travel through to get to Oakenfold with your delivery of Dilithium, with each featuring a roguelike mapping system, giving you some amount of choice in deciding which path to take to reach the boss at the end of each map. Naturally, you’ll want to choose the path of least resistance, just so you can make it to the final boss with many crates of Dilithium still intact with Asha having the most amount of health.

Of course, the more maps you’ve cleared and runs you’ve made, the game does ramp up the challenge by introducing new elements like timelock tiles, teleport tiles, and more… a.k.a. the “traps”, as I call them. Once you’re done with the campaign, the game also comes with Weekly Escapes that you can dive into, giving the game sufficient replayability even for years to come.

As an avid turn-based strategy fan who has a soft spot for games with a really well-done time manipulation element, Oakenfold is an engrossing challenge that had both surprised and delighted me to no end. That being said, the game could probably use a bit more balancing. For instance, the biocides you’re going up against can sometimes feel rather OP (overpowered), with some of them being able to easily leap (there are seemingly no rules as to how far they'd leap so you can't predict exactly which crate they will be targeting in the next wave) across chasms that you’ll often have to walk around and that you’ll often find yourself facing multiple biocides in every wave, not including the ones from the previous wave that weren’t slain. The biocides can sometimes feel more “flexible” in combat than you.

Throughout the runs I’ve played, I’ve only encountered one potential bug – it was during a fight where I was supposed to have unlimited crafting chances. The issue here is that the Crafting Station that is supposed to be available in that fight isn’t there. It just wasn’t spawned. Probably an oversight on the developer’s part when coding the level design, and it’s really not a huge issue.

Graphics/ Sound

Oakenfold features incredible hand-drawn-like graphics. The biocides actually look dark and creepy, albeit in a more alien-like way than something you’d expect to come from Earth itself. In terms of sound, the game makes really good use of cool sound effects, and its selection of amazing, mostly techno soundtracks, to really immerse its players into the game and its sci-fi theme.

Conclusion

All in all, Oakenfold is quite the challenging roguelike featuring a unique turn-based strategy design based on time manipulation, with a story focused around the human race’s salvation; their second chance at starting anew. Each of Asha’s mindsets here offers a different gameplay experience due to how you’d need to adjust your play style based on the distinctive abilities each mindset has, and of course, the roguelike element meant that every run feels novel.

For the price it’s asking for, Oakenfold is definitely a title that’s highly recommended to fans of turn-based strategy games and roguelikes. You can purchase the game now on Steam.

Win One of Two Steam Codes for Newly-Released Strategy Roguelike, Oakenfold, in This Giveaway!

by Aethyna Nov 20, 2022

If you've been eager to sink your teeth into this game, this is your chance!

by Aethyna Nov 20, 2022

Oakenfold is a highly tactical sci-fi-themed roguelike, featuring a unique turn-based strategy and time manipulation element. Playing as one of the last human survivors, Asha, it’s up to you to secure one last batch of Dilithium just so humanity can have a second chance out in space on the living spaceship. Will you be able to make it?