Refence is a roguelite based idle defense game, where you can choose heroes and their traits, upgrade your castle, and manage resources to fend off enemies from the Demon Realm who are trying to attack your castle.
What players are saying
▲ Recommended13 hrs
I'm really enjoying Refence but it's got quirks that will turn some off. But for me, it's like the developer had a list of things I enjoy in idle games and implemented them.
+ Love the town building stuff and permanent upgrades
+ Nice pixel art with fun character and creature design
+ Love to see the upgrades compound ala Vampire Survivors in the mostly hands off wave based combat
+ It's good that there's a completely idle alternative to actually playing the game (haha)
+ Nice price for what is likely to give me a few days, if not weeks, of idle action
- The wave combat takes too long and feels a little mind numbing if you try to see them through all the way
- some of the powerups feel useless or even negative
- it's difficult to understand why a character is under/over performing
If you like what you see in the trailer you'll probably dig it. The demo is pretty full featured and offers long term progression.
The basic idea is nice enough but unfortunately all of the individual components (roguelike, idler, tower defense) are very shallow and offer only limited synergies with each other. Except for the random hero selection, the tower defense has very little in terms of strategy or different builds and eventually you'll have picked all of the talents anyway. Idler progression is very short and uninteresting, too. You'll soon have unlocked all of the heroes, their personal ranks only add the odd new talent for TD here and there and most remaining upgrades come in the form of +X% and so don't open new gameplays or builds either.
It needs work. It's a very light roguelite which quickly turns into an strategy-less idle game. It also has some residual mobile mechanics like limited daily gems, daily rewards and a gem shop that I don't like.
Your castle is under attack! Protect it from new bosses! If you cannot defeat the bosses, perhaps you should travel through timelines to try again. By traveling through different timelines, you can unlock new features in all aspects to help defend the castle. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45416978/d5b9fe50df88fc3c64feca6ce83c67c9c4ab7900.png Defeat all the bosses from the Demon Realm to save the world. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45416978/5f1bfa80fd1cff6f24f52c2872ef2f6a6e4944b1.png ✨What's new Timelines have been added: Travel through timelines to defeat new bosses. 9 new bosses and related materials have been introduced. Badges have been added: Defeat the bosses to earn them. Heroes' max stars have been raised to 20, with approximately 40 powerful new traits added. The cap for difficulty and building levels has been increased. More researches can be unlocked in different timelines. Additional relics and relic upgrade can be unlocked across timelines. The Ball of Space and Time has been added to dump resources. 7 new game modes have been added. A place to dump excess copies and rank XP to provide skill power boost. A new layer called New World which can be unlocked after saving the world, allowing players to upgrade badges by defeating the bosses. More QoL functions have been added to the game. Minor tweaks and fixes everywhere.
* Makes it easier for heroes to level up after level 50 * Fix the building cap increase that is applied before the first ascension * Fix the auto restart that is applied before purchase * Add a faster restart option in the Settings * Minor bug fixes
Tweak of save export/import Improve the stability of saving Both swipe and click are working now Add auto paper to research tree A research to slowly gain rubies after reaching daily ruby cap A research to soft ban heroes from battle Separate settings for showing/hiding texts Make it easier to read the research node state Improve the performance of research tree Tweak of Nilm's skill to make it less laggy Shortcut for choose card in one key Fix Steam achievements progress issue Fix critical is not working for summon heroes Fix the Blad attack bug Fix the Paper Buff issue The requirements of All For Power and All For Effect are changed a bit Other minor bug fixes
Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.
