Recent reviews by Hazode

So, it's been nearly 250 hours... I should probably write a review now.
Firstly, most of my playtime has been on the experimental branch, which as of writing this review is the precursor to the 0.023 update; bear that in mind whilst reading this.

This game is like a very early version of a first-person Project Zomboid, in that it has a fair amount of depth, and aspires to be similar in depth to games like PZ. With that being said, this IS early access. VEIN has been on steam since Oct 2025... PZ has been in development for 10+ years. Expect bugs, issues and a lot of placeholder things if you're wanting to play right now. As of writing the team only has 3 or 4 devs working on it, with the bulk of the game being made by just two people.

The experimental branch is being updated pretty much every day, and the devs are quick to fix bugs if they can - although I sometimes feel like they lack transparency, but they're not obliged to indulge us with every minute detail of their days.

If you enjoy games like 7DTD, Project Zomboid, DayZ, Rust or other open world survival craft games, you will probably enjoy this! Currently it's still quite rough around the edges, there are issues and bugs, and there are a lot of things subject to change, but personally I would still recommend it in its current state (especially if you're not averse to bug reporting).

If you're looking for a new sandbox to play in, maybe try out the demo to this game. The worst that will happen is that you waste some of your time.

I'll rewrite this review once the game hits 1.0 (or something drastic changes regarding development)

Not really a recommend from me. The game plays fine, and the gameplay loop is okay, but the way the story is told and the way the acts turn out is a bit disappointing. Act I is great, loved every second. Act II came around and I kinda felt like I was tricked, the gameplay is quite different from Act I and I wasn't a fan. I trudged through it, kinda paying attention to the story but also kind of not, because I was just wanting this part to be done with. Act III came around, and the gameplay was similar to Act I, except it used a different style map where you didn't have your path laid out in front of you, you have to go back and forth between different areas like in Act II.

Overall, the core gameplay was enjoyable enough, but I felt like the game had an identity crisis and tried being too many different things at once. If the gameplay stayed like it was in Act I, it would be a huge recommend for me, but since I've just finished the first boss on Act III seven hours in (half of which I was just going through the motions) and I don't feel like completing the game, or seeing the conclusion of the story, I can't say I recommend this game. Especially not when all of the screenshots and videos on the store page are from Act I - to me, it really feels like a bait-n-switch.

Wow... just wow. I bought this game on the 27th of October; today is the 29th and I've already played for 15 hours, and the 27th didn't really count as I'd spent a bit of time getting it to work for me, so it was late by the time I was able to generate a world.

A lot of the reviews draw comparisons to Daggerfall & Morrowind and they're really good comparisons, but I prefer to kind of think of it as a much smaller scale hybrid of Mount & Blade and The Elder Scrolls, with a little hint of Runescape. You can befriend or kill anyone. You can create your own faction (which I've yet to dabble in). You can create spells (and oh my god there are so many spell effects). You can steal, persuade, barter... basically, apart from getting married, there's not much that you can't do from what I can tell. The entire world is your oyster, oh and by the way, the world is big! Before starting a game, you have to generate a world - my PC is a potato, so I had to limit my worldgen to 2 or 3 threads to avoid crashing (or BSODing), but from what I can tell it only affects worldgen speed. I don't mind waiting 5-8 minutes so that the game can generate a nice 144 km^2 world (The game recommends 100 km^2, but I felt like adding a bit more area wouldn't hurt too much). And just in case you read that and thought "What the hell, how am I gonna change how any threads it uses?!" - don't worry, the game literally has an option at the worldgen screen for you to change - super simple, super easy!

Like I said, I'm only 15 hours into this game, and I can already tell I'll be spending hundreds more on this, over many different worlds and characters. Hell, I'm not even level 30 yet I don't think, so I've got a little bit before the big 50 comes around. I hope that I can continue levelling my skills up after I hit level 50, but I'd understand not being able to hit level 10 in all your skills.

Pros:
* In depth skills with decent perks that make sense and give a good sense of progression
* The crafting system is pretty simple and intuitive, albeit perhaps a little cluttered sometimes
* Big world with lots of freedom! I've not even bothered going to the spire yet, I'm quite happy making my guy overpowered and building my homestead
* From what I can see, the dev is very active on the discussion forum and has so far been making weekly updates
* The game has a clear vision and knows what it wants to be, which feels like something that is a rarity in early access titles these days
* The levelling system and skills gel together very well, and you have the freedom to spend you attribute points wherever you like, which I imagine with certain builds could get very broken (in the best way)
* The world is littered with towns, villages and dungeons, so there's never a lack of places to see

Cons:
* Whilst the crafting system is intuitive, I was confused at the start about how to start crafting. I wasn't aware the table that is in most houses was a crafting table until I watched a Youtube video
* Due to the procedural generation, some dungeons generate... poorly? Maybe it's the seed my world generated in, but pretty much all of the dungeons I've come across have been fairly simple with very very little complexity.
* The world feels quite dead - I know this is an apocalyptic setting, but in a world filed with towns, villages and dungeons filled with bandits, where are all the people? I very rarely see an NPC outside of the town/village/dungeon they live in and it feels like there are no animals. Sometimes horses spawn, as well as manrooms and slimes, but they're quite few and far between even at night for me.
* There's no variation in dungeon styles - they're either disused keeps/prisons taken over by bandits/ghouls, or they're caves. Thematically, it does make sense, but maybe some different styled keeps and prisons, just to give a bit of variety. Maybe pyramid styled dungeons in desert biomes, stuff like that?

All in all, this is well worth the £12.99 I spent on it, and I'm excited to see where the game goes going forward! I haven't felt this way about a game since I first played Morrowind in 2003.

For a free to play game, this is honestly really great! If you enjoy PvE content, and survival craft games like Rust or Ark, this game will probably be your cup of tea.

It feels like a hybrid between survival craft games and an MMO, with massive inspiration taken from all things cosmic horror. Like Rust, the game has a wipe cycle; in Once Human a scenario lasts for 6 weeks and then it ends, however there will now be permanent servers - I still have two weeks left on the scenario I'm on before I can see what that's like. The base building is intuitive, the skill tree is interesting, the deviations that you can capture are basically pokemon/pets, you can drive, you can farm, you can grind for the perfect build; this game ticks so many of the right boxes for me.

Levelling is for the most part fairly quick, but I felt it become a bit repetitive and grindy between level 40-50, most missions break down to "go here, kill this/find this/watch this, now go here, repeat until you kill the region's boss, repeat in new region", but I'm excited to try the other scenarios to see what's different in the future.

There are IAPs and microtransactions, but they are pretty much all cosmetic, aside from a privilege pass which gives you some minor buffs. So far I've not spent a penny on this game, and whilst I do enjoy the game a lot I don't really see me spending money on it either, because to e the cosmetics aren't worth it, and the ones you get for free are fine.

My favourite part about this game is the fact that we can relocate our bases incredibly easy at zero cos, minus a ten minute cooldown, it makes transitioning from one region to the other so much simpler! The only criticism I have of the building mechanic, is that there isn't a way to upgrade structures from wood to stone or stone to reinforced. Unless there's something I've overlooked, if I want to upgrade my wooden walls to tier 2 or 3 walls, I will have to demolish and rebuild them. (EDIT: I did indeed overlook something, you can upgrade your buildings. Thank you ZanyZman)

A great physics sandbox inspired by DanBall's game

Got too frustrated in the first 10 minutes of playing.

Expected a hybrid of Dishonored and Mirror's Edge, instead got an experience in masochism.

Where to even begin.

This game had so much potential, but the 1.0 release has been SO bad, which is honestly made worse by the fact that it was in Early Access for, what, 2 or 3 years? And we didn't get any updates for well over 6 months. When 1.0 came around, we were inundated with bugs, poor optimisation, cracked AI, and a bunch of new mechanics that were so poorly implemented, they're still broken now. The game looked, ran and played better when it was in Early Access.

It's been two months since the initial release, and honestly there's been ♥♥♥♥ all progress in making this game half-way enjoyable. Oh, and you have to reinstall the entire game every time they release a "hotfix" (Yea, that's what they're calling these 5gb+ updates, they're "hotfixes", not patches. Even though a hotfix implies a level of speed that is not present within Void.)

Stay well away until they A, stop releasing patches that force you to reinstall the entire game, and B, make some actual substantial progress in rectifying the games blatant issues with AI scaling, optimisation, and bug fixing. These issues should have been fixed LONG before 1.0, they were present during Early Access, and now they're worse.

♥♥♥♥ Void for being part of the problem with EA releases

Quota go brrrrrrrrrt

Recent update makes the game crash on startup. I meet recommended specs. Over the past few months this game has been getting updated with zero patch notes, and the most recent update has caused my game to no longer run, even with minimum settings and zero mods. I have requested a refund, and hope that Steam will accept my reasoning.

Just go play PPG, it's leagues better.

Where to begin... 2024 has been the worst year for Phasmophobia. Basically zero meaningful updates, and an increasing lack in communication from devs. I was hoping it was just due to the console release, but honestly their most recent update just makes me feel like they don't care about us Steam users. Patch notes are no longer available on Steam, also the update that came today gave us... a VERY grindy "community" driven objective that also locks behind it some game content (new weather). So, what the plan when we inevitably DON'T complete phase 3? Just scrap the entire thing you worked on? Give me a break. Either the feature was never intended to be released, or we're getting it anyway.

Time and time again games have released "community" goals that unlock some type of limited game feature, and I have NEVER seen it received well. Stop forcing players to play your game using FOMO. Give us ACTUAL content!

Also, an early access game releasing on console before they even finish the game is a HUGE red flag. I've been around the block, and I've been here since Early Access first started, and every single game (no exception) that has tried to port to console before releasing has either failed entirely, or dropped support for their console version (Rust and Space Engineers are the biggest culprits I can think of)

Giving this game a negative review is painful, as the game itself is quite fun - but I can't knowingly and willingly support a dev that doesn't give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about their fanbase on Steam (the platform which gave them the popularity they have today). Console was a mistake. Segregated patch notes were a mistake. Deciding to go radio silent to their steam community is the biggest mistake, and the most unforgivable. I get game dev is hard, but Kinetic have made millions - maybe they should hire some actual community managers as opposed to whatever the christ the actual devs are doing.

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Original review below, written at 44.5 hrs game time on 22/4/22
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I started playing this game in February, and I've so far not been disappointed in the volume or quality of the updates.

The game itself can be quite scary, although personally I feel like the fear wanes quite a bit once you understand the mechanics behind the game - but that's not to say that it doesn't still scare me!

The game is much more fun with friends, but it is still quite fun solo as well. I can't comment on the VR side of things, as I don't own a VR headset, but it does seem like it's fun in VR after the overhaul from what I've seen from content creators. But again, I have no personal experience on that.