Recent reviews by Nothrin

Plays great on my steamdeck. I keep a lot of the side activities for when I'm "out and about" and can only play for a few minutes here and there, then mainline the story quests when I have actual time to play. It works well for both types of gameplay sessions I get, without needing to wait for when I'm home and at my Playstation.

A great game that only has a few minor faults. I just finished watching the end credits after about 5 hours of gameplay. I consider that an acceptable amount of time in game for the price that the devs are asking here... and I still have more things I can go do and see which should add on a few more hours as well. I've enjoyed my time playing this game and do have a few things I think could have been improved on, but thanks to the great writing, narration, gameplay, and overall experience the few things I take issue with feel kind of minor.
The main thing I feel that some people will have a problem with is the amount of re-visiting of old levels. You'll often find yourself experiencing an area that you've already been through. You may be on a different path through the level, and the reasons for being there might change; but the different levels become very familiar. Later visits will have you being able to unlock new areas, these often give nice bonuses but do not fundamentally change the story or experience. That said when you finally unlock a void door that you walked buy ages ago to see the other side… nice feeling. I also lost a bit of the previously mentioned nice feeling when I realized I could farm these areas for the bonuses they provide.
This game is very much designed for console players and it plays significantly better with controllers. There are a few cases where the game showed me the wrong controller prompts for particular buttons (I use an Xbox controller and would in some rare cases see PlayStation button prompts). These instances were rare and only happened in the menu system for me though so not too big a deal and something they can likely fix.
Gameplay wise this is game uses a counter system much like many third person action games these days. Happily you can’t just get away with hitting the counter/attack button a million times a second. Early unlocks reward better timed play, and counters require you to give a direction to counter. It’s a simple system, but at the very least it’s not like more recent examples from other games where spamming a button allowed you to win.
Difficulty wise I felt like I didn’t have much of a challenge. The game is definitely on the easy side. It is still a ton of fun, and I don’t regret my play time, however a hard mode or new game plus would make me happy. The lack of difficulty comes from a few things: enemies die fairly quickly and there aren’t very many of them in most groups, I found the AI a bit overly predictable, and often even if you do die the punishment is a respawn right before the encounter with 50% health. Things get even easier in late game when you can get a skill that lets you one shot most enemies. Again as I said, I still enjoyed the hell out of this and will be playing more but most players aren’t going to have a problem.
My last issue is that the game builds up the emperor or other characters at times as major enemies, then handles them in cut scenes. There’s no boss fights for a game that feels like it should have them. I believe that when it comes to a game I’d much rather do something than see or be told about something my character is supposed to have done. They player does get some agency in things though through making choices at the end of several cut scenes that direct you through the story, which helps some. But it does leave all the enemies just feeling very standard.
All in all I do look forward to playing more, and plan to finish the other paths I didn’t bother with initially. I’m also planning on keeping an eye on the devs for whatever their next project is as this game was great fun and gave me a lot of what I’m looking for even if there were a few things I see as space for improvement.

I saw Etalyx playing this on his youtube channel. Gave me a similar vibe as Banished with how it's about that delicate balance of population and resources to grow overtime without burning out.

I'm a few hours in and I can see there are some problems with the colonist behavior, there's also some information about the game mechanics you wont get without experimentation or by reading the help documents in the game.

Some of the wierd things I saw for colonist behavior:
* Say a solor flare is coming. You set the base to Yellow Alert to make everyone stay inside. They appear to check for alerts only after completing their current task. So the guy who's just left the airlock to go drop off materials for your new complex... he'll keep carying his box all the way out there then come in. Even if he's only 3 steps out the door.
* Robots will also sit in line to get inside on Yellow and Red alert when priority obviously should go to humans getting to safety.
* Trade ships will leave before getting trades done when large numbers of resources are being exchanged.
* You have a bunch of sick people so you set a priority on the Lab that makes your medical supplies. As you're currently out of medical supplies an bio plastics (one of their 2 ingredients) your medics are off getting coffee or something. A worker finishes making the needed bio plastic... and caries it to a building site rather than to your Medic's workstation.

A lot of the above sounds bad. It's not nearly as big of a deal as it sounds like and a lot can be fixed by the devs allowing you to directly tell a colonist what to do or where to go, or just putting in a check for "Wait this priority thing like an alarm should change what I'm doing" to the colonist state engine. While I'd personaly be the nutso who wants to make the shift schedules for all my colonists I also understand the choice to not have players exhibiting that level of micro-management. This isn't Prison Architect on Mars.

All of that said... I'm still hooked on this game. Sitting at work and watching video of other players and getting ideas on how to change my planning and playstyle is not something I do for most games but I'm doing it here. Despite the flawed colonist AI the basic game of balancing colony growth is still delightfully well done and I still reocmmend this game to several of my friends, though I do tell them to swing by and try it at my place a bit first before they buy.

Saw a video on youtube of Wanderbot playing this, knew within his first minute of gameplay that I had to have it. Just got done playing my first session.... this game and I are going to be very good friends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEsXobBfxtA

Playing this game brings me back to the joys of play the original Unreal Torunament. Everything is fast, and everything is beautiful. For years now the only arena shooters I've seen that have looked good have been all console based (can't blame them, there's gobs of money there), where the controls didn't have precision and even the fastest shooters go by at a crawl compared to the shear speed of this one.

I love this game. This is what indie gaming is about, a well crafted story that makes you think and could never come from a large studio. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat.

I will admit I've always loved digging games. This one has jumped right up to being one of my favorites. While I do wish the game was longer (expansions or sequels please!) I think the developers did a great job creating a digging game with atmosphere, good upgrades, and a variety in gameplay that you rarely see in a genre plagued with cookie cutter boredom.