Rend vs Strife
Rend
Rend is an up-and-coming, Nordic-themed, team-based survival game that is set in a wild and ruthless, fantasy world filled with fantastic creatures, where only the strongest are able to ascend to the realms of the gods. In this game, players are separated into their respective factions at the beginning. They are then given the freedom to explore the many biomes and harvest resources from the environment whether solo or co-operatively. The resources obtained can then be used to craft better weapons and tools or can be reinvested into the faction stronghold to fortify it from potential attacks from players from a rival faction and to advance your base just so you can unlock new technologies. Players have their own skill systems and talent trees as well, and these are the main ways for a player to customize and tweak their characters to their liking.The ultimate goal of the game, however, is to reap as many warrior spirits as you can by battling and defeating rival players and deposit the souls at the Divinity Stone in the middle of your faction base, that is if you're not slain while carrying such precious loot. Somewhat similar to grand strategy games, Rend is more of a continual game. It has game cycles of 2 to 3 months, in which the winning faction of each cycle will get a nice pile of rewards at the end of a cycle.
Rend has a really unique take on the survival genre and this might just give the game the fuel it needs to rise to the top. The game is currently in Alpha and its release date is still TBD.
Strife
Strife is a MOBA that balances both its casual and competitive aspects perfectly, despite containing quite a number of standard MOBA fare. The game is an easy game to pick up and thus, is really newbie-friendly. Not to mention, the skill ceiling in the game is lower than that of more competitive MOBAs, further increasing its approachability to players new to the MOBA genre. Furthermore, despite the smaller hero pool, the crafting and pet systems made the heroes in the game so much more customizable and diverse. The shared gold system in Strife also allows for a generally more stress-free match, particularly for the support class and carries.If you would like a break from the overly-intense and sometimes toxic matches in DotA 2 or LoL, perhaps you could consider Strife as a good casual alternative! Dominate the enemy and carry your team to victory in Strife today!