Citadel Anew Review: Promising Bones, Rough Edges

Citadel Anew, a solo-developer mash-up of base defense, tower defense, roguelite mining, and mech combat from Radical Byte, sits at 50% positive across 10 Steam reviews. A sample of 11 English-language reviews spanning launch week through several months later shows a genuinely split reception -- reviewers who see real promise fighting for attention against a release that clearly still needs work.

An Ambitious Genre Mash-Up

The game's own pitch -- "an unholy blend of base defense, tower defense, roguelite elements, and some colony management. Also, mechs" -- is echoed almost exactly in reviewer descriptions. One reviewer summarises it as "base building/turret defense game with level up skills between maps, research tech tree and mined resources; make clones to help mine, farm, craft, and research," adding that "waves of enemies come at unknown intervals that make the gameplay a scramble to fortify and research while adding a layer of strategy." That reviewer specifically credits the concept's growth since its demo, saying they've "enjoyed seeing this game grow and develop to full release." A second reviewer calls it simply "a tower defence game with a lot to do," praising a play session that ran far longer than expected: "downloaded game around 18:30ish last night, next time I saw the clock it was 21:51."

Crashes and Missing Signposting

The sample's most detailed review, from a reviewer with 41.6 hours logged, opens by explicitly withholding a recommendation over stability: "the game crashes a few seconds after loading a game. Though this does not happen for everyone." The same review lists a string of specific, checkable design gaps: no map or compass to locate the base or resource patches, no indication of when waves will start or from which direction (with gaps reported to range "somewhere between 5 minutes to an hour"), and a flashlight whose lighting behaviour is described as "strange" at certain times of day. These aren't vague complaints -- they're concrete missing features that a player would notice within the first few sessions.

Inventory and Building Friction

Multiple reviewers converge on interface friction as a genuine sticking point rather than a one-off gripe. The 41.6-hour review describes reloading turrets with ammunition as requiring manual drag-and-drop through several menu steps, with "no shift / control click to instantly move to the other inventory." A separate reviewer criticises the building system directly, reporting they "can't zoom out to see what I am building" and that the first-person-only perspective made it hard to align a simple perimeter wall segment: "things don't naturally click together... I can't see what is happening in any meaningful way." That reviewer draws a specific, useful comparison to No Man's Sky's rough early building tools, suggesting the underlying idea is sound but the execution needs the same kind of iteration.

A Responsive Solo Developer

Set against the rough edges, several reviewers specifically credit the developer's responsiveness as a reason for cautious optimism. The 15.6-hour review notes "this solo developer has made continual updates and improvements... the developer has consistently been responsive and is quick to implement change," and the 41.6-hour critical review itself acknowledges "a lot of the reported bugs were already fixed" by the time it was written, even while cataloguing new ones. A more recent review from December 2025 makes the trade-off explicit: "the negative reviews are accurate, especially [an earlier reviewer's]... but I do find that for the price and what appears to be a solo dev's first go, it's actually quite good." That's a useful frame for the whole sample -- criticism and enthusiasm aren't really in conflict, they're describing the same unfinished-but-improving project from different points along its patch history.

A Harsher Minority View

Not every critical review extends that same patience. One reviewer, who logged less than half an hour, delivers a blunt one-word verdict ("No"), and another describes the game as needing "serious polish and better effects," calling the UI, sounds, and animations "boring" and reporting confusion about core progression even after the tutorial. That review does credit the mining tool's design and acknowledges limited playtime as a caveat on their own harshness. It's a useful counterweight to the more forgiving reviews above -- not every player extends first-release goodwill to a rough interface, and that's a fair reaction on its own terms.

Price and Where It Fits

At NZ$16.99 with no discount at time of writing, Citadel Anew sits in the same price band as many single-developer genre hybrids, and reviewers weighing that price against the current state of the game land in different places. The December 2025 reviewer who acknowledges the earlier criticism as accurate still calls it "quite good... for the price and what appears to be a solo dev's first go," treating the price as appropriately modest for a first release still working out its rough edges. A reviewer with less playtime takes the opposite view, noting they "didn't want to waste my TIME on this one when I have a backlog of much better games to play" despite paying "less than 10 bucks." Both reactions are reasonable responses to the same underlying fact: this is a young, still-developing project, and how forgiving a buyer should be of that probably matters more here than the exact number on the price tag.

Final Verdict

Citadel Anew is a genuinely ambitious solo-developer project whose mining, base-defense, and mech-piloting mix earns real praise from reviewers willing to look past its rough state, and its developer's visible responsiveness to bug reports is a meaningful point in its favour. But the sample's complaints -- crashes, missing wave and location indicators, and clunky inventory and building interfaces -- are specific and recurring enough that this reads as a first release still finding its footing rather than a fully realised game. Genre fans curious about the concept and willing to tolerate friction may find plenty to like; anyone wanting a smooth first impression should wait for further patches.