NieR:Automata™
NieR:Automata™
Game
Game2022
ORX
Developer johnbell
A new take on tower-defence and deckbuilding roguelike genres. ORX is like playing Carcassonne with your table on fire. Build your perfect deck, use powerful artefacts, master 3 unique factions. Prove that you are the King of your castle! From the Steam store page
190 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Oct 3, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
61
Fresh
109 positive · 71 negative
95% range 53–67%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 109 | 71 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 2 | 0 | 8 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
197 of 292 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
61% recommend · 111 yes, 71 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 182 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mixed (471 of 685 positive).
Players praise the unique mix of Carcassonne-style tile placement and tower defense, calling it innovative and fun. [1][2][3] Many reviewers note the game suffers from game-breaking bugs, especially late-game lag and crashes. [4][5][6] Some players find the balance poor, with overpowered combos making the game too easy or tedious. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [4]
Its fun but once you get to Tier 4 , the lag is nuts im looking at frame rates of 3-5 fps. Also its true there isn't much strats, once you figure out how to mill the deck and spam it. Id wait until they flesh it out a bit and fix the lag.
- [9]
Update Now I give full kudos to devs who read reviews and feedback then bust their humps to fix issues for their Early Access game - those are the devs that care about their game. And given that it's in Early Access, let me give a little more feedback... The Good List This game's got some sparkle, and it actually has personality as well! • Beautiful artwork and style • Unique gameplay - who would have thought to …
- [18]
It's ok, but not great. I could go into great detail about the pros and cons of the game but I don't think it's worth the trouble. Some key points are: -The game does a really poor job of explaining things. I don't want my hand held, but some of the mechanics are really weird and need some explaining. Make a better tutorial please (is there even a tutorial? I don't even remember). -The game manages to be very tense …
- [13]
The art style is what drew me in, the tower defense and real time strategy is what kept me around though! I love the massive differences between the two factions, along with the style of gameplay being so distinct between the two. It makes each campaign feel unique and each faction fits another persons playstyle better. If they continue to make another faction or two I will LOVE this game unconditionally. As of …
- [2]
9/10 Game is a mix out of Carcassonne board game mechanics and They are Billions. Just loved it. Its still in Early Access, but its already very polished. Did not run into one bug, just here and there some performance issues when the games spawned like 500 Units or so. The two missions you can play atm are very funny and the mechanics are so different that you think you play different games. Biggest and with that in …
Summarised from 34 of the 192 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 13, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Players who liked ORX talk about unique blend of deckbuilding, tower defense, and board game mechanics; those who didn't talk about frequent game-breaking bugs, especially late-game lag and crashes. Which matters more to you?
Reactions
60 of 190 · most liked firstIt's ok, but not great. I could go into great detail about the pros and cons of the game but I don't think it's worth the trouble. Some key points are: -The game does a really poor job of explaining things. I don't want my hand held, but some of the mechanics are really weird and need some explaining. Make a better tutorial please (is there even a tutorial? I don't even remember). -The game manages to be very tense and very boring all at the same time. A lot of the economy stuff (building…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Its fun but once you get to Tier 4 , the lag is nuts im looking at frame rates of 3-5 fps. Also its true there isn't much strats, once you figure out how to mill the deck and spam it. Id wait until they flesh it out a bit and fix the lag.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has a long way to go. From the first moment of the Demo, I was excited about this game. The combination of Real-Time and card game was and still is very appealing to me, I really enjoy the "Carcassonne"-Like elements and the general idea behind it. But: It doesn't work. I thought, only the Demo would be badly balanced. But the issues remain. Once You get enough economic and "+1 hand cards" cards, You just start cycling through Your deck brainlessly while gathering huge amounts of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Bold strategy making a major content update that removes 70% of the content. Very fun to come back to when I was hoping the update would fix the game breaking bugs that I was stuck on BEFORE the update. I want to like this game so much I bashed my head into multiple game breaking bugs before waiting for an update and all it did was fix none of them and nuke all the fun from orbit.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want to recommend the game. When it works it's great - it's fun to expand your base and build castles that would make the grandest of fantasy writers envious. But the crashes. At low levels it's fairly rare but once you get into late game it becomes literally unplayable. The game cannot handle the number of Orx being spawned on late campaign/waves. Since it doesn't save your progress throughout a level you have to start from scratch each time. It's really frustrating when you are on…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game was a lot of fun UNTIL they updated it to the newest version of play mechanics. The game is butt now. It seems like someone high up on the production wants to tank the game for nefarious reasons. This game was far superior during the beta then the trash it has become now. Maybe they are leading to something, but I can not fathom how this garbage can be saved. Whomever thought the current version was a good idea deserves to be tarred and feathered.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Been in EA for over 3 years stay away from this title unless devs launch a full release with proper optimisation
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This was a hard thumbs-down to give, because to be clear: I ADORE this game. I love tower defense games, I love board games, and ORX takes clear inspiration from Carcassonne and mixes it with the TD genre very well. The only real issue is the lack of in-game references to know what many of the stats do - it IS surprising that descriptions for things like "detection" aren't included, as after 22 hours I'm still not really sure. That said, the reason I have to really commit to the thumbs-down is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's an interesting concept for a tower defense game. But the designers didn't really take balance into account, and it's really easy to build a combo that scales to infinity. To the point where one castle will do 500 damage 300 shots a minute from one tower, while other castles do 8 damage 16 shots a minute. Also is surprisingly slow paced, a level can take upwards of an hour. And most of that is tedious busywork of placing the same 4-5 structures in a pattern.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Using a data-driven approach to make a small asteroids-like game in 1h using #orx with: - Local multiplayer - Fully customizable - Music (Amiga MODs) & SFXs - Animated background - Persistent high score - Seamless wrap-around the edges - HTML 5 export - etc. youtu.be/5Bdt_c0LGnE #gamedev #indiedev
neutral · AI labelView post →Update Now I give full kudos to devs who read reviews and feedback then bust their humps to fix issues for their Early Access game - those are the devs that care about their game. And given that it's in Early Access, let me give a little more feedback... The Good List This game's got some sparkle, and it actually has personality as well! • Beautiful artwork and style • Unique gameplay - who would have thought to make Carcasonne a tactical action battler? • Love love LOVE that I can move around…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A special edition of ORX Engine 's Live Sessions is now available: youtu.be/5Bdt_c0LGnE You'll build a full Asteroids-like game, while leveraging ORX's Data-Driven features. A good overall introduction to ORX too. #gamedev #indiedev #gameengine #OpenSource #tutorial #Orxengine
neutral · AI labelView post →I was really excited to buy this game but I deeply regret buying it. It's been out for two years and the gameplay controls are so frustrating. There's a bug with how W.A.S.D continues moving in that direction until you use the mouse click to move. This discourages you from using WASD and use the mouse instead for the majority of the time because of how often the bug happens. Often as in constantly, every 5 key presses. Now with the mouse, as you're trying to move around the map to place your…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Needs optimisation a lot. Played game during early days and it was fine and fun, now purchased polished version and it is simply unplayable. During Orx Archers attack fps dropped from 60 to 9-15, changing quality to low mode did not helped. Did another run without archers and reduced resolution to min (1300x700), fps still shows signs of instability, jumping between 50-60 in later waves. Now, there wasn't much going on in terms of development since july (for about 6 months so far), i am a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →3 hours after I bought this game it got an update, which made it unplayable: card drawing mechanics changed completely, hand rerols doesn't work, Act 2 mobs doesn't take damage and just crush my base. Job well done with the patch!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Was fun, but recent changes increased difficulty by just tanking performance. The new player experience is worse than it's ever been. They added a lot to the game with little actual clarity as to what you are doing and why things are happening. The maps are easy, until they are not, by just spawning thousands of enemies every few seconds. There is no real curve for you to understand how the game is flowing, I can't tell if it's bugged or they decided to do away with losing a campaign still…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Today we have an early (surprise) Christmas gift for the #orx community: Web/HTML5 is now officially supported! (Beta) If you want to check it for yourself, go play @fullybugged.bsky.social's Boohablox here: orx-project.org/orx/boohablo... (Thanks for letting me use your game!) #indiedev #gamedev
neutral · AI labelView post →This is not the game that was in the Demo. The flow has completely changed, please look at the promotional material.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Changing my review since first time. Drastic changes to game. +Easier to play, but still not right balance. It went a little too far in the other direction, perhaps? +Choosing power up, cards, and orcs abilities is good change. +Doesn't seem to be as slow to play as before. -Huge chunks of content seem to have been taken out of the game. Suggestion: Add the difficulty back, but don't make it a roguelike. I think the genre is the problem. Deckbuilding would be great. A free build mode…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game does not work after a couple games because of the quantity of orc's attacking you. It works super slow and crashes many times. Waste of money.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is an amazing game. Played it for 11.5 hours and enjoyed it a lot. When advancing in the campaign the game keeps freezing in the boss levels. My hardware is new and can play any game out there easily. In the current state I recommend you not to buy it. Especially since the forum show a reply to this specific problem in April 2022 saying they would look into the problem tomorrow...
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is really fun, with interesting mechanics and planning required as in Catan. However, performance issues, coupled with not being able to plan in the moment, as ORXS swarm the screen makes the game increasingly irritating to play.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Horribly unbalanced. If you know how to get your gold revenue flowing, the game becomes way to easy and boring.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really need to stop buying EA games. check the other reviews..
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game if fun but my computer crashes and slows to a grind during the final missions making it impossible to finish the game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TLDR: I like this game but at its current state I cannot recommend it. I watched a gameplay about a year go and I thought it might be ready now, but it is not. Give it a year or two, I think it will be great then. What is this game? Carcassonne-style Tower defense with a mix-in of deck-card building. You draw cards and you build a city to defend against hordes of orcs. You progress through the act FTL style, you get an upgrade between maps. Pros: 1- Fun gameplay. I like the Carcassonne…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I tried the first few mission to see how it would go, but placing the castle pieces is so extremely awkward. This could be fixed by adding more pieces that are part of a castle but have no walls. I found myself making a U around the initial base, using slanted walls, and then just doing 2 or 3 piece castles. There are special pieces that can do what I am referring to, but a basic one to show up more than once would make this much less odd.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I remembered this game fondly, and just saw and thought should try it again but i dunno what happed but i seem to immediately on lowest difficult got stuck in some impossible battle after 2 battles... when i look online it seems campaign mechanic worked alot more different and more interestingly even in the trailer videos.. soo i got no idea what's going on here ... ^^" but seems like botched update perhaps..? The concepts seems so simple based on a certain famous boardgame but the cards have…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →crashes 3 times while 2 hours gameplay
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game use to be fun, but how they designed the map. the rounds are too short and i find no joy in setting up a defense just for the mission to be done once i finally get comfortable in them. there are far to many background things you have to pay attention to.elemental damage, type of enemy etc. i just don't understand why they flipped the game completely to what it is now..
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was highly motivated to play this game as I got recommended it by a friend. It's not really what it's touted as upon the trailer videos and such. The game is a card based tactical builder, though it throws you to the deep end and lets you figure it out through trial and error. The cards stay the same once you pick a path regardless of how many times you restart, making it not quite so randomized and more so if you choose the cards incorrectly you're stuck with an un-optimized build. Even…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Time of review: v0.12.2.5 It seems as though once you get to the boss stage in the first act it's a broken game. I was first playing it on the Steam Deck. Even with the UI scaling maxed out, when you play it on the SD the descriptions for your cards in your hand are a little hard to read. Any time you get to pick a new card to add it's INCREDIBLY difficult to read. The cards should be scaled larger, there's nothing else on the screen at this moment. It's annoying but not game breaking.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very good concept and mechanism is fun, however 70 hours into the game and I still don't understand it. Any other deck building game would have a much easier learning curve and then you can really start enjoying it. However this game might be just too complicated to be honest. You are punished too harshly for the decisions you make and it ruins hours of progress in a finger snap. Game being unpolished and lags on complex structures could've been tolerable if the progress weren't unnecessarily…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Took a 2 year break, just played now on 6/14/26 and idk what they did but the game kind of sucks now. You have absolutely no starting cards at all.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →⠀⢀⣀⠤⠿⢤⢖⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⡔⢩⠂⠀⠒⠗⠈⠀⠉⠢⠄⣀⠠⠤⠄⠒⢖⡒⢒⠂⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠇⠤⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠈⠀⠈⠈⡨⢀⠡⡪⠢⡀⠀ ⠈⠒⠀⠤⠤⣄⡆⡂⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠢⠀⢕⠱⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢳⣐⡐⠐⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠁⠇ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠑⢤⢁⠀⠆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⢰⠀⠀⠀⡀⢄⡜⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⡦⠄⡷⠢⠤⠤⠤⠤⢬⢈⡇⢠⣈⣰⠎⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣃⢸⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢪⢀⣺⡅⢈⠆⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠶⡿⠤⠚⠁⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⡤⢺⣥⠟⢡⠃⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Here I will leave this beautifull capybara, whoever pass by can pet it and give it a thumbs up (I need Steam points)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Art 10/10 Music 10/10 Game mechanics 8/10 The game is great!... when you can play it. The nomad tribe is completely unplayable due to bugs, the act 4 of the boreals was a complete nightmare of a resource hog that if you didn't just spread across the whole map right and kill the enemies immediately as they spawned your game would melt to 1-2 FPS and become unplayable. Until the resource management issues and bugs are fixed, I'd stay away for now unfortunately.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If Carcassonne had a violent, redheaded stepchild.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The gameplay is very fun and addicting. The major problem is the game is horrible buggy i cant recommend this game until most of the major bugs are fix.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Conceptually it started strong, as the years churn on it becomes worse. The factions beyond the main one are completely unplayable because of balance issues. Completely irritating lack of agency in gameplay.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So about ORX: First of all, it is Early Access!! so it's an early review, too. Second, it has a demo! I can't shout loud enough to show how much i love that in modern days. I'm sick of blind purchasing rubbish. Thank you a lot! But about the actual game: ORX is a deckbuilding board game with some focus on economics and defense mechanics. You have to balance between economy, expansion and military, while puzzeling through the land/environment. How long should a road be to get the best out of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, ORX me once, shame on - shame on you. ORX me-- you ORX once-- you can't get ORXed again.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The art style is what drew me in, the tower defense and real time strategy is what kept me around though! I love the massive differences between the two factions, along with the style of gameplay being so distinct between the two. It makes each campaign feel unique and each faction fits another persons playstyle better. If they continue to make another faction or two I will LOVE this game unconditionally. As of right now the campaign us short to run through, but very fun and at times very…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Never made a negative review before, but for the first time buying a game, I felt that the money was wasted. Completed Act 1 with Rune Warden and Dune Reavers and it is so mindnumbingly easy that I was just waiting for it to be over. I love this genre, really do, but Dune Reavers did not hit my itch in any way, did not enjoy that class. And when I returned to Rune Warden, I had to do Act 1 again. I love optimizing and being efficient, and before wave 1, I could easily create a base that would…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I played this several years ago and thought it was good then, you had access to decent cards and were offered good upgrade selections. I stopped playing though because the game felt too easy and too simple, like it was missing something. Now, having tried to play it again recently I can see things have changed significantly for the worse. The starting deck your given is utterly terrible. The campaign explains nothing about what you're trying to do. Each battle is trying to divide your…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Id highly recommend at least trying out the game, though its a must play for every Carcassonne enjoyer. Incredibly fun game with a boatload of bugs. Receiving regular updates and bug fixes, fingers crossed the game will be perfect one day.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's Tower Defense where you play tiles like the popular board game Carcassonne to create towers via completing structures across multiple tiles. Different factions create different structures via their tiles usually with roads and castles providing money and military needs. Not much more needs to be said. The premise is simple but it lands with a fun gameplay loop. The game itself can be a bit buggy, especially if you get a run with a set of multipliers that can cause a number somewhere to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game has many many critical bugs which make it unplayable. It's in early access since August 2022 and will probably never reach a stable/full release
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's like playing a board game, tower defense, and puzzle all-in-one. Haven't come across any issues like others have mentioned and there is now a pretty good and dedicated tutorial to get the basics. Expanded tool tips would be great for certain key words (like when picking upgrades for your castles/towns) to get better familiarized with the various mechanics. Overall I think this is a solid strategy game with a lot of gameplay potential to unpack.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →They made it good again
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →9/10 Game is a mix out of Carcassonne board game mechanics and They are Billions. Just loved it. Its still in Early Access, but its already very polished. Did not run into one bug, just here and there some performance issues when the games spawned like 500 Units or so. The two missions you can play atm are very funny and the mechanics are so different that you think you play different games. Biggest and with that in my opinion only issue is atm the balance. if you know a wombo combo it gets…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My game don't progress at all after I clear a wave. Have to restart the whole level, nothing more I can do. It happened to me 4th times already. In this state I can earn gold, I can build, but game is infinite, no new enemies coming, no countdowns and no win. I tried to find some missing enemies, but I didn't. Very frustrating. I go uninstall.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →cool fun game, it would be great if there was a sandbox or editing mode. The graphics are funny, the butts of the orcs look funny, I will wait for updates for more game modes
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game during the demo (Tower Defense) , during Early Access (Tower Defense with several Acts) , and now (Quest style) is totally different You will like the game if: - If you like playing games with Quest - You must play through different styles, from placing Castle , placing Soldiers & "Newest I couldnt be bordered to try" - High chance the game style will totally change , so it is like playing a totally different genre game You will hate the game if: - You like castle games like…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Currently the game does not run
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →-The Good- This game has some really great novel mechanics. It was fun. I play a lot of strategy games, so I found this to be pretty easy in terms of deck strategy. The RTS element kicked my but at first until I got the hang of it. -The Bad- The beta is full of game breaking bugs and it has some steep balance issues. If you buy now, you'll be paying $20 to be a game tester for them. I would recommend you don't buy this game on Early Access. Put it on your Steam wish list for later. I'm…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unfortunately the recent amount of bugs and the laziness that the devs displayed in fixing them has me not recommend this game. Ironically with the initial launch of the game, there were less issues and game breaking bugs that made the game playable and it was at least enjoyable to play while encountering some issues. However, the recent flood of issues just made it not really fun anymore. Early access is there to provide the player base an instrument to help the devs, not do the work for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →impressive innovative adds to the tower-defence genre. Really like the game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a castle building game where you dont actually build castles... the game only gives you castle WALL pieces, so you end up building strange snake-like outer walls that fuse to make essentially just disjointed sections of stone wall that is now a 'castle'. As others have said it makes zero sense visually what you are looking at, and the fact that you build castles primarily with just the outer wall portions makes for a completely wtf game experience. I spent the entire time wondering…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As the time of writing, I can say the only thing that seems to be fully optimised is how it doesn't take up a ridiculous amount of processing power. Everything else is a hot mess. Castle building is initially more confusing than it needed to be for what it was trying to do. It feels like it's more than possible to have designed the mechanics in a way that is both simple and get what the devs were going for too. The solution they implemented with highlighting the borders of tiles with colors…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I can't recommend in its current state. It's too bad because I really want to like this game. The tutorial is the equivalent of teaching someone how to shuffle a deck of cards and then having them put on a magic show. My steam deck was a separate save and I can do the same thing there and on the PC and get wildly different results. There's something here, because I have come back to give it another shot numerous times, hoping I was just doing something wrong, but it is more frustrating than fun…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
Posts are quoted from public profiles with links to the original. Want yours removed? Contact us.
