December Rewards and its Holiday time! So we've restocked!

Posted By: GamerDating Team - December 19, 2022

GamerDating's December Rewards! It's the holiday season, a time for relaxation, spending time with loved ones, and gift-giving. For many of us, it's also a time to get back into our favorite hobbies, like gaming. This year, we've restocked and added some exciting new titles to our collection. Whether you're looking for the latest releases or classic hits, we have something for every gamer to enjo This month, we are offering even more games

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Frozen Flame – a Survival RPG that needs a little thawing out

Posted By: Elena Walker - December 12, 2022

Frozen Flame is a multiplayer survival fantasy RPG, in a world once governed by Dragons and is now in the aftermath of what appears to be a post-apocalyptic world. It was released in its Early Access form on the 25th of November by fresh-faced developers Dreamside Interactive. I’ll be honest – my first impression was that the game looked generic. The style was immediately reminiscent of the many aesthetic copycats of cartoony an

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November includes Core Keeper, Golf with your Friends and Moving with your subs

Posted By: GamerDating Team - November 01, 2022

GamerDating's November Rewards! It's November! Christmas is coming, games are flowing, and its time to plan your gifts! We aim to keep the subscription cost down, while we can offer indie games or popular titles so that you can game, whilst we find you a match. We offer games every month with our 2 and 4-month subscriptions. Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. Subscription grants you the ability to read

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Fueled up a chaotic couch co-op reviewed

Posted By: Ryan - October 28, 2022

Space-borne chaos or a shiny re-tread of old ground? Couch co-op party games are a small, but still popular, genre. As evidenced by games like Overcooked and Moving Out, there’s a need for one-to-four-player games that rely on communication, a willingness to make mistakes, and an almost sadistic urge to test the strength of friendships. Make no mistake, much like its chaotic forebears, Fueled Up will also put your relationships to the

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Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Closed Beta Preview

Posted By: Dan and Team - October 19, 2022

This weekend October 14th to 16th our team had the privilege to try Fatshark's closed BETA of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. We gathered together, jumped into Discord in varied group sizes and chugged through the delights of Darktide. You can play with any variation of your custom characters, a refreshing step away from Vermintide.   The Poundshop Paladin, WoodTier, Farske and Zahur gathered together to dip their toes i

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Games while you date! Imp of the Sun, Potioncraft, Spirit of the Island now available

Posted By: GamerDating Team - October 06, 2022

GamerDating's October Rewards! It's October, autumn is here, winter is coming and the new games are flowing! It's the time of year where curled up on the sofa, with hot chocolate and gaming all evening is ideal. We aim to keep the subscription cost down, while we can offer indie games or popular titles so that you can game, whilst we find you a match. Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. We offer 2 or 4-

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Pokemon Killer Temtem? Ryan Reviews

Posted By: Ryan - September 26, 2022

TemTem - Pokemon killer? An indie, monster-taming MMO with PvP built into its foundation, and a full PvE story, was always going to be a sure bet for fans of the Pokémon franchise. Temtem goes out of its way to emphasise how much of its gameplay experience is focused around competitive play, so much so that it’s nigh impossible to escape, but, if PvP isn’t your thing, all is not lost! I’m not a huge fan of PvP in m

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Smooth Summer Update to make your experience better.

Posted By: GamerDating Team - August 22, 2022

Say hello to our summer fresh update!  In this update, we focused on some quality of life updates, better email interactions, improved performance and bugfixes. Our last big update was earlier this year when we updated messaging with the use of emojis, gif support, improved updates and optimisation. Now we have introduced a new notifications sidebar, improved email notifications and new anti spammer/bot measures to make your experie

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South of the Circle Preview

Posted By: Ryan - August 15, 2022

A narrative experience about the power of regret. Emotional, story-driven games like South of the Circle (SotC) are not, for better or worse, everyone’s cup of tea. Originally released in 2021 for Apple Arcade, it was developed by State of Play, published by 11 Bit Studios, and is a compelling story of ambition and love set around the Cold War. I played SotC on the Nintendo Switch to write this review and was pleasantly surprised by w

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Overcooked! Our sous-chef reviews a top coop.

Posted By: Will Smith-Parsons - August 01, 2022

Overcooked: All the fun of watching your kitchen burn down, none of the messy clean-up. Overcooked! is a top-down, high-pressure cook-em-up that pits aspiring chefs against the clock and a series of strange circumstances to prepare ingredients and cook dishes to the satisfaction of hungry customers. After each level, players receive a score and a number of stars based on how many orders were completed, how many were missed, and how many wer

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Tails of Iron, House Flipper, Foxhole and Overcooked! 2 added for August subscriptions

Posted By: Alex - July 29, 2022

GamerDating's August Rewards! It's August! The perfect time for some game dates, followed by nice walks in the evening. Our goal is to keep subscription at a low cost, offer unusual indie games or popular titles so that you can game, whilst we find you a match. Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. We offer 2 or 4-month subscriptions which allow you to read and send messages to any user, your messages allow

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Gloomhaven, Kitaria Fables, Farm Together, and Tavern Master now available with subscription

Posted By: Alex - July 01, 2022

GamerDating's July Rewards! As we roll into July, the peak of the summer season, and we have new games for our subscriptions. Our mission is to keep subscription at a cost low, offer popular or unusual games so that you can start gaming whilst we find you a match! Our list of games is available to view, with updates each month. We offer 2 or 4-month subscriptions which allow you to read and send messages to any user, your messages all

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Wingspan, Cuphead, Children of Morta and Outriders available in our June subscription.

Posted By: Alex - June 02, 2022

GamerDating's June Rewards! It's June, new game time! Available for new subscriptions, we have limited stock, so first come, first served. Our goal is to keep subscription cost low, and always offer new games so you can find a match, start chatting and play a game with your date, preferably one of those new ones you've just got! Our full list of games is now available on our static page which we'll update each month. We offer 2 or 4-

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Games available in our packages

Posted By: GamerDating Team - June 01, 2022

Our gaming offers bundled in with our packages Check out our entire list of new games added and available. Our games we offer are separated between two options of subscription to GamerDating, a gold option and a silver option. Remember you can choose two silver games for the gold option instead of just one gold game if you'd prefer. Each month we add new games, restock and seek out the unusual games for those game dates and couples da

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10 Reasons to Date a Gamer

Posted By: Alex - April 13, 2022

10 Reasons to Date a Gamer There are many benefits to dating a gamer, be you a gamer yourself, or an open minded non-gamer who is looking to support their partner or perhaps even become a gamer. It is also not uncommon for couples with a gamer in the mix to convert the other and introduce them to what it’s like to date a gamer. We reached out and asked some of our successful couples to give a list of reasons why it is good to date a g

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April Rewards - Easter new games for your subscription!

Posted By: Alex - April 05, 2022

GamerDating's April Rewards! Spring Bunnies and Happy Hearts. It is the month of new love, relationships and the blossoming of true love. Love, date, game. Each week we add more new games that are available with your first subscription, and each month we update that selection. We keep our subscription cost low, and at the same time offer you games with your first month so you can play. So get gaming, get matching and find your ideal part

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March Rewards - It's spring and we have new games!

Posted By: Alex - March 09, 2022

GamerDating's Spring March Rewards! It's spring, everyones talking about Elden Ring, and it's time to give them a ring!. Sorry, I couldn't resist. The rhymes flowed, and I was on the road to overload .. and... and... and it's time to, just get on with this update so you can go on a Game Date. Each week we add more new games that are available with your first subscription, and each month we update that selection. We keep our subscription

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Valentines February Rewards - Latest games for you!

Posted By: Alex - February 16, 2022

  GamerDating's Valentines February Rewards!   Happy Valentines Day, and if you are here, maybe you have yet to reach out and connect with your potential special co-op gamer. Well reach out now! Each week we add more new games that are available with your subscription, and each month we update the selection. This month we've added a selection of new games, but also a selection of ideal co-op games or games to have

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Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall - Swing and a Miss

Posted By: Alex - February 16, 2022

Swing and a miss, but literally. Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall is a VR-exclusive action-adventure game. A game that I was super excited about, because who doesn't enjoy being a Stormcast Eternal! When the combat worked, it felt great, but the game didn't support that! I was super stoked for this, as a fan of all things Warhammer I leapt into the game with excitement, looking forward to playing a skilled Lord-Arcanum of

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Pupperazzi, cute game of dog photography

Posted By: Ryan - January 26, 2022

A wholesome, casual video game for lovers of dogs and photography everywhere. This review was written based on my experiences playing the Xbox Game Pass version on an Xbox One X. Pupperazzi has a simple premise: take pictures of adorable dogs. That’s it. There’s no overarching story, there’s barely any lore to speak of, and that’s okay. The world has been a dark place in the past few years and sometimes it’s ni

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Fort Triumph Review

Posted By: Ryan - December 16, 2020

Game

Rarely do I enjoy physics-based gameplay so much.

As 4X, tactics games go, Fort Triumph is a largely enjoyable entry to the genre. Before going into the meat of the review, I want to state something straight away: this is NOT the game for you if you’re interested in a serious, expansive game in the same vein as the XCOM series. If you’re interested in a more light-hearted, but still challenging, take on the genre, this might just be something you want to pick up.

Fort Triumph Gameplay is certainly a treat

From such simple beginnings…

Visually, Fort Triumph is a treat. Lush, almost cartoony visuals are full of vivid colours and everything, for the most part, is easy to distinguish at a glance. The four main character classes are visually distinct from each other and retain enough traits when spread across the various factions that I rarely struggled to tell what abilities an enemy was likely to have at a glance based on previous experience or my knowledge of what my heroes could do.

Both the overworld map, itself full of points of interest, and the tactical map of the quests are easily understood for the most part (importantly it is VERY easy to tell where cover is, the direction of physics abilities and the areas affected by area-of-effect abilities) and cutscenes are presented as easy-to-read text with character portraits indicating the speaker. Unfortunately, the bright art style can contribute to some confusion. Key information, like which enemy unit is currently highlighted or which square is selected for an attack or movement action, can be lost among the visual clash between bright models, animations and gameplay indicators. On more than a few occasions I found myself selecting the wrong target because I didn’t have exactly the right camera angle to tell what I had selected.

You will randomly be treated to close up murder.

Where the visuals aim for a fantasy comic/cartoon feel, the audio is much more traditional fare: rousing action music and evocative weapon/movement sounds. Nothing really stands out as truly impressive, save for perhaps the unsettling spider movement noise, but nothing was a low point either. The music was good, if not particularly memorable.

The same could also be said for the UI and UX of the game. Obviously, there is little room for innovation within both the UI and UX of this style of game and Fort Triumph uses those who went before to great effect. The left-hand side of the screen shows your units, their health and their remaining Action Points (most abilties cost at least one Action Point), the bottom shows the abilities of the currently selected unit and the right-hand side shows the enemies visible to your heroes.

You can click on a unit card to select it and you can hover over enemy cards to see where that particular enemy is, something that is very useful when combined with the fact that the game shows the ‘to hit’ chance of each enemy when an offensive ability is selected, as well as any effects currently active on the units present on the map. Rather, it WOULD be useful if the red highlight the game applies to the unit whose card you are hovering over were easier to see. As hostile units have a red outline when they are behind cover, or otherwise obscured from the camera, the effect used to show the unit tied to that card is too subtle to easily see and I frequently gave up using it mid-quest and manually selected each enemy in turn to find the one I wanted. I also felt that the controls for selecting and using abilities could have been redesigned: a left-click selects an ability, but a right-click activates it. I found myself right-clicking to cancel an ability too often in the opening hours of the game and accidentally consuming the ability. This is, perhaps, entirely down to how my own brain works though, so your mileage may vary.

Fort Triumph steam gameplay showing the mid game

It looks like there is a lot going on here, but it’s easy to pick up on what’s really important.

Not that this really hinders the gameplay in any meaningful way. That is, largely, tried and true 4X, tactics gameplay. A couple of viewers who caught the streams live as I played through the main campaign for this review remarked that it reminded them of the Heroes of Might and Magic series and  a small amount of research revealed that there are similarities. Broadly speaking, the game is split into two distinct portions: the overworld and the quests. The overworld features a large-ish map full of random encounters, decisions to make for rewards and resources, and is played out in a turn-based fashion.

Each ‘turn’ is termed a day and at the start of every week your home base(s) are refilled with new heroes to hire to fill out your adventuring parties (you can have up to three parties of five heroes each). The start of each week also sees the hostile units on the map get stronger. When the player turn is complete, the AI then has a turn in which is claims resources and its own armies/groups move (sometimes absorbing the static units on the map and thus growing stronger). If one of your parties encounters a static unit, one of the enemy’s armies/groups or assaults an opponent’s base, the game switches over to the tactical system described previously.

Fort Triumph xcom fantasy with bodily physics

You’ll find a lot of things like this scattered around the overworld.

The main thing setting the tactical segments of the game apart from other games in the genre are the physics-based effects. Explosives can still destroy walls but more importantly, terrain objects can be manipulated to move cover or, in a more enjoyable manner, flatten enemies. If more tactical considerations are your concern, you can push certain pieces of the environment into enemies to stun them and cause damage, as well as pushing them backwards. It is very possible to chain stun in this way by cannoning enemies into each other/the environment and each class has a way of interacting with the map to unleash physics-based carnage/hilarity. It’s always worth remembering that whatever you can do, the AI can do as well so you should ALWAYS be prepared for one of your units to be stunned at the wrong moment.

This never gets old.

It is also worth noting that you can change the colour palette and name of your characters at any point and that they gain experience for taking part in quests. At certain levels, three abilities are randomly generated (mostly from the class but occasionally those from another class will appear and allow you to make flexible character builds) from which you can choose one, and each ability has a couple of upgrades to unlock when levelling. This results in a flexible character advancement system that means you can make the characters you want to use, rather than be forced into a specific class build. The various buildings available in your home base(s) also unlock passive abilities, but these, somewhat annoyingly, reset between each of the game’s three Acts.

Fort Triumph Character sheet

Whilst you can see your hero’s various ability scores here, you can (more importantly) customise their appearance.

All of the above is framed by a narrative worthy of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. This is a game that doesn’t take itself seriously and is full of humorous conversations, oddball characters and moments of reflection that I believe many people would benefit from. The story itself is nothing spectacular, although I would rate it as above average, but its delivery is wonderful and is built around the randomly generated characters in a mostly seamless manner (I remember only one instance of an incorrect pronoun being used). The characters, both player and non-player, are well-written and I genuinely enjoyed every line of dialogue. If the main campaign isn’t your thing, however, you can create skirmishes (both with local co-op and without) to explore the overworld maps and the tactical side of things at your pace without having to follow a narrative. If you choose to do this, you can play as any of the game’s four factions (each of which has access to unique passive abilities), instead of being locked into playing as human characters.

Fort Triumph offering sage advice to help you with your gamedates...  I think?

It’s important to now how to skulk properly.

Aside from the issues explained above, I found little else that affected my enjoyment of the game. It’s reasonably well-polished (the AI made questionable decisions a few times during my playthrough) and I found nothing that seemed to be a bug other than (occasionally) excessively long enemy turns whilst the AI decided what actions to take. There was certainly nothing that put me off returning to Fort Triumph after the 15 or so hours it took beat the main campaign (on Normal difficulty) and I can easily see myself playing many, many hours of the Skirmish mode against bots. At £19.49 on Steam (at the time of writing), I would whole-heartedly say that there is value for money here. Technically the game is endless, but even on the merits of the campaign alone I would say that the variety of difficulty levels, sheer number of ability options and enjoyable writing make the price point perfect.

Where are you going?!

Ultimately, of course, it’s up to you as the reader to make your decision but if you’re looking a fun, light-hearted tactics game with an enjoyable story and enough variety in its factions and enemy types to overlook the annoying soft reset of progression between Acts and the sometimes unclear visual presentation of the gameplay, you will not go wrong by buying Fort Triumph.

In the language of the internet: YEET! But strategically.

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