Refence

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.

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.

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.