Recent reviews by Jobium

A very interesting and challenging game, The Banished Vault does not like to make things easy for you. That adds to the challenge, and there is a very real sense of peril as you send crewmembers on journeys without the resources to get back if things go wrong. But the game also feels like it is sometimes being wilfully difficult, like hiding all pertinent information behind a PDF rulebook. The style and the visual design is impeccable, if rather like someone wanted to make a board-game, not a computer game. I cannot overstate how much I love the artwork, or the fact the game forces you use a slide rule to calculate your fuel needs. Play if you enjoy a real head-scratching challenge, avoid if you don't like getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over by chance.

This game held so much promise and while it is in many ways faithful to the source material, it falls far short of telling an interesting story within the realm of Star Trek. The events and text are fun, and show a real love for Star Trek lore, but the game itself is a pale shadow of what it could be given the scope of Star Trek. Each faction feels like it railroads you into a particular style of play rather than enabling you, the galaxy feels small and empty despite the inclusion of several well known minor empires, and the setting only covers a short portion of the Star Trek timeline that is most familiar to modern fans. There was so much the developers could have done, and the game feels fundamentally incomplete and buggy even after several updates.

I am keeping the game in the hope that they may, eventually, rework it into something significantly better like Paradox did with Stellaris, but I am not convinced it will ever happen.

Absolutely fantastic game, combining city builder and survival/resource management. The ability to build vertically really set it apart from similar games, and the droughts always feel challenging no matter how far into the game you get. The beavers are adorable and I get so invested in ensuring they live good, happy lives, and there's something really satisfying in seeing more and more of the arid map turn green as you expand your hydrological empire and bring water back to dead ground.