Where This Site Gets Its Numbers
Every number and quote on this site comes from one of the sources below. They are all public and all openable — if a table here disagrees with what you see in game, check the source and tell us.
Official — Crux Games and Steam
| What it gives us | Where | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Store page: price, platforms, genre, release date, feature counts (7 guilds, 21 combinations, 120+ buildings, 100+ heirlooms, 13+ councillors, 10 ranks) | store.steampowered.com/app/4075620 | Read 2026-08-30. |
| Patch notes and announcements v1.0.3–v1.0.6, the 2026-08-28 roadmap post, and the Next Fest demo notes v6–v9 | Steam news feed for app 4075620 | All 16 posts read in full; the ones we cite are dated in the updates ledger. |
| Global achievement percentages for all 21 achievements | Steam's public global achievement stats API for app 4075620 | Pulled 2026-08-30. These move as more people play — every table using them carries its own date. |
| Review score: 646 reviews, 630 positive | Steam's public review summary for app 4075620 | Pulled 2026-08-30. |
| Launch trailer and the announcement trailer | The CruxGames YouTube channel | Embedded on the homepage. |
Community — Steam Community guides
| What it gives us | Where | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Rogues and Arcane unlock chains, the Merchant vote arithmetic, and the Martial + Commercial gold opening | 'Guide: Unlocking Rogues & Arcane' on the Steam guides hub | One author, but the steps are specific and checkable in game. |
| Per-guild mechanics and key cards; the adjacent-versus-range targeting lines; the card anatomy breakdown | 'Combolands簡易説明書', a Japanese-language guide on the Steam guides hub | The single most useful mechanical source we found. Facts used, wording ours. |
| The existence and scope of unofficial Simplified Chinese and Russian translations | Two translation-patch guides on the Steam guides hub | We cite that they exist and what their own loaders report about the game's text volume. We do not link or host the files. |
Community — Steam discussion board
| What it gives us | Where | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The best/worst guild vote tally behind our tier list | 'Best & Worst Guild' thread, 15 posts, 2026-08-28 to 2026-08-30 | Opinion, and a small sample. Labelled as such wherever we use it. |
| Endless-mode scaling numbers, the Megalopolis XXXV break, and the out-of-bounds building trick | 'I Beat The Secret Final Boss' thread | Player accounts, not developer statements. |
| Steam Deck legibility reports from players who have actually played on one | 'Someone plays this on Steam Deck?' thread | Two first-hand accounts. |
| The demo being pulled; the macOS and GeForce Now question going unanswered; transform-then-trigger behaviour; the 'when triggered' confusion; the Ranger councillor mult bug | Five separate launch-week threads | Where a developer answered we say so; where nobody did, we say that too. |
Press
| What it gives us | Where | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The Cities: Skylines meets Balatro framing | Polygon preview, 2026-08-12 | Also the piece Crux Games credits for the game breaking out. |
| The Terra Nil designer connection and the itch.io prototype backstory | GamingOnLinux articles from 2026-04-15 and 2026-08-05, both syndicated into the Steam news feed | Sam Alfred designed Terra Nil; Crux Games also credits help from Landfall. |
What is not a source here
| What it gives us | Where | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Datamined files, leaked builds, or spreadsheets we cannot trace to a person | — | Not used. |
| Key resellers, repack sites and crack listings | — | These dominate the search results around this game. We do not link them and we do not summarise them. |
| Our own play sessions | — | We do not claim in-game testing we have not done. Where only one player has reported something, the page says one player reported it. |
How we handle disagreement
When two sources conflict, this site does not pick a winner quietly. Numbers that came from the Next Fest demo are labelled demo-era wherever they appear, because the 1.0 build overhauled progression and the developers have not restated them. Claims that rest on a single player's account say so in the sentence. Things nobody has answered — what a railway connection actually does for range effects, whether anything can be placed on scaffolding, the two hidden achievements — are marked unconfirmed rather than filled in with a plausible guess.
What we cannot do
We do not have a way to benchmark this game ourselves, so nothing here is presented as our own testing. That is also why the review page carries no score of our own — it reports Steam's numbers and the community's complaints, both attributed.
Found something wrong?
Tell us and we will check the source. Contact page — corrections that come with a link get fixed the same day. Combolands Compendium is not affiliated with Crux Games.
Source list reviewed: