Aurora Dusk: Steam Age

In short. If you like RPG and semi-autonomous city building. This game will be addictive like cocaine for at least 8 hrs. Worth the price without a doubt.
Pros:
+ persistent progress of your avatar’s stats between campaign/custom games/skirmish maps.
+ Stats develop. Similar to Skyrim ability growths.
+ no level cap. It doesn’t even break the game… doesn’t make sense but I’m impressed.
+ your town is grown by your towns people even if you decide to go full Rambo.
+ gear/magic includes tier and upgrades.
+ artwork/sound is fine. Some may say sub-par, I bought a game not an orchestra ticket.
+ replay ability via campaign difficulty and skirmish/custom
Cons:
-Campaign can do with more content.
-As diverse as the tech tree is it could expand a bit more
-AI is a bit on the week side ATM
-Some form of memory leak? If you play for 5+hrs straight visual glitches start making UI/game elements invisible. Saving and restarting the game fixes it. The game does not lag however.
-I need more, if this had workshop integration it would be lining up for game of the year in the RTS & RPG genre, provided modders do their magic.
-Story has no voice over, I’m lazy so that’s a minus but a minor one at that.
Overall highly addictive and enjoyable game if you like progression. But very heavy on the time consumption so wouldn’t recommend for people who want a 10 min wonder, try Sacred 3.

A pure sandbox game allowing you to create your own avatar and use him again and again into whichever map you want with how many foes or allies you need.
Lots of items to craft, all with their own use. Same with the skills, some are situationnal and some are must have. And you're not limited because the avatar is persistent and can master everything in the long run, allowing you to tackle harder difficulties.
The creator keep on improving and tweaking the game and is responsive when a bug arise.
The game is completly playable with a campaign ( with 6 difficulties ), a survival mode ( you get a little time to prepare before the hordes appear in any number and waves you want ) and a skirmish mode ( with up to 7 IA controlled lairs or villages ).
As a con the game is repetitive and the difficulty in the campaign is just HUGE numbers of ennemies per waves ( even on the second difficulty you will get over 500 mobs on the lvl 18 or 19 map by the last wave ). And the only difficulty here would be to craft the right items to destroy the fastest mobs then take a HUGE amount of time to finish off the 400 or so useless zombies unable to kill you unless you fall asleep on the keyboard.
The IA of the villagers with you is ... lacking. They struggle to be anything else but some useless diversions littering the map most of the time. Then suddenly they awake and start to mass construct towers and golems and to spam the hordes with spells. Weird, would love them to be more consistent when fighting.
But despite that the game keep on improving and we can hope for some more control over them and maybe even some multiplayer in the future.

Really neat game that I recommend. I passed it up for awhile because the graphics didn't appeal to me. Steam kept popping it up as similar to other games that I liked and then a friend of mine said "I need to try it.". I really like it and have had great fun playing it.
The bad -
Not much bad. I wish there were more graphics options, character models, faces, outfits, etc. There needs to be many more skirmish maps and more options to customize the skirmish games. Even more stuff - building types, weapons, etc. There are 100's of things to make as is but more would be better. More dungeons + NPC monster factions in skirmish mode. There doesn't seem to me to be a great variation in the different races, I'd make the variations bigger to really make the race you chose more important. It needs cloud saves.
The Good. - It's fun. Your character can be anything they want and if you want to play something else just start working towards it. Like if you are a mage type and decide you want to be a knight, make some armor and weapons and start melee fighting..
Awesome sandbox skirmishes. I made suggestions to improve them above but even as is they are great fun. I haven't played co-op but it'd have to be great. I didn't encounter any bugs, in free camera mode the camera sometimes doesn't want to move when I mouse to the edge of the screen but it'll end up moving so more of an annoyance than a bug, other than that no issues. It's a small download.
I know I didn't write my most detailed review here but I like the game. For me to like a game with this type of graphics says a lot because if you look at what I normally like it doesn't look like this. Besides there is a demo. I didn't play the demo so I'm not sure how much it shows but I'd imagine it'll be fun enough no matter how limited it is. It won't be my favorite game of all time but even after I beat all of the campaign missions on hard levels, I'm sure I'll still play a skirmish from time to time. For me that's a tremendous value as 99% of games after I complete them I never go back. I hope they add to it and I'll be watching their future games.
summary = Thumbs up - try this game.

Have to say that this was a very nice enjoyment of a game.
first off let me tell you that I love both 4x and god games (where you have the power to do whatever you want)
The twist that you are just ONE of the citizens is enjoyable. they do things that can both hinder and help your plans, just like the first come first served mentality. wish you could dismantal buildings though, or target enimies buildings that you can use as a kind of superfuge.
The game however is enjoyable for the story yet not really that replayable, outside of difficulty just getting more and stronger enimies per level. I do however wish I could convince my friends to pick this game up so I could test the co-op or vs modes in multiplayer.
With a little more pollish, and maybe some graphics overhall due to the RPG/game maker feel, this game could be one of the best games in the city builder/god genre
*Tip to creator if they read these*
Placing other modes into the non story modes would be better. another plus would be to control your AI builds for citizens (like having the same option you have for your made characters)

Aurora Dusk has a lot of content and a unique playstyle for the pricepoint. At $9.99 ($8.49 currently on sale) it's a wonderful value.
I wish more games did what Aurora Dusk does, which is lets you create your own character and build a town and fight other towns. It's simple, it works, and it's great. You can either do everything yourself, or have NPCs helping you out. I haven't delved too far into the campaign, but I look forward to doing so once I've had more of a fill of the skirmish mode and trying different things out.

+Pros+
+Interesting Concept
+16 mission campaign
+Customize your character in true fashion
+Co-op Mode
+Semi-autonomous
-Cons-
-Weak AI
-Camera and UI need polishing
-More maps for skirmish
-Mod support would make this game shine
The Concept:
I really enjoy the concept of this game. You can make any character you want - whether it is a wizard, a knight, an archer, or the mixture of them all. Want to be a battlemage? Check. Want to me a gunslinger? Check. Want to kill your enemies with a rocket launcher? Oh, yes. Check. You’ll give the character the standard creation (e.g. name, gender, face, clothing, etc.) and then you have the skills/attributes that come along when you partake in a particular action or activity. Let’s say you want your character to become a knight. Well, you make a weapon, find an enemy, and attack away. You’ll level up your stats in melee. Want to progress in magic? Learn some spells and bombard your enemies.
The other interesting concept of this game is the fact that this game is somewhat autonomous. Basically, you gather your own resources – anything from wood, to metals, to food types; as well make your own equipment. While this is all happening you’ll gain stats in farming, mining, baking, etc. Now, while you’re doing this on your own, your village members will be doing the same. They’ll make their own house, gear, food, etc. You can set up the buildings for them to contribute to achieving that goal, or you can do it all on your own. They’ll also place down buildings that they deem is necessary for the village at that particular time – such as a tower for defense or a shaman hut to make ointments. You cannot, however, control the village people. They’ are left to their own devices.
The AI:
This is where the weak AI comes into play. Some of these village people are village idiots. They’ll do their own thing by themselves and attack a fully defended base on their own and then proceed to get killed – losing most of the items on them. Yes, one can resurrect them at a shrine or church, but that defeats the purpose especially if you’re hoping for most of your villagers to coordinate a solid attack on the enemies.
At times they’ll also just stand around and do nothing. You have the ability to grow resources – which will grow into a tree, an animal, or a metal. They too, have this ability and it isn’t used as often as one would like especially if you’re under constant threat from multiple enemies. There is also a lot of retreating. Fancy Pants decides to attack the enemy only to run away, heal up, and repeat this notion a few dozen more times. Instead of being a contributor to the village, they want to play hanky-panky with his neighbors.
The Story:
The campaign explains about the lore, history, and the current turmoil that is happening; it’s your job to save the denizens of this world. This title adds a lot of references from other games and places them in here as units, buildings, or even villains/heroes. I’ve seen an enemy that is well known in a particular shooter, or a certain building that is homage to an older RTS game (I won’t spoil it, but you’ll see and be like – nice!). The campaign starts off easy and then progresses to become more difficult than the last mission – maybe homage to the older RTS games? Either way, the campaign was a fun experience and the story was delightful.
The Unpolished:
Honestly, there isn’t a lot of gripe towards this game, but they do take the biggest hits. The UI is not so friendly towards the player. For example, if you make multiple characters that are not of the village people, you can hardly see which one you’ll have clicked. There is a tab feature that brings up all the characters you made, but it doesn’t allow you cycle through them or allow you to see if you clicked that one correctly. There is an auto mode for your characters, but remember they’ll fall under the game’s AI and may just send them to their deaths.
The other thing that was frustrating was the camera. There was no speed increase when one would pan the camera, but you could pan very slowly, or use the middle mouse button which would also forward or back out your view. Honestly, if there was a pan camera speed for when one would use the cursor against the edge of the screen it wouldn’t even be a camera issue. Unfortunately, the current camera is just not finished.
Also, there is only one Skirmish map. You’ll play the same map over… and over… and over. No objectives, no other modes, no nothing. I think if there were more options in terms of skirmishes and way more maps the game would do better in this department as well.
Also, if there was a mod support for this game, it would be fantastic, but there is not.
Verdict:
Overall, a great concept and an enjoyable game that needs some polishing here and there. With a one man dev team (as far as I know) and a game that plays smooth for the most part, I would recommend as full price purchase. You’ll definitely get your money’s worth.
Recommend.

Reccommendation is qualified by saying: WAIT TO BUY. Give it awhile longer for the developer to get further a long.
I'll start off by saying this game has NOTHING but potential. But It remains to be seen if the developer will realize the games potential. I'm giving the game a "thumbs up" because of potential and concept, and because poor reviews aren't going to help an in-development game AT ALL. However, At the moment its also not very pleasant to play, being extremely poorly optimized. I would recommend to most to hold off, unless you really want to get involved with the community and provide lots of feedback and testing info to the developer.