Recent reviews by TheNovaBox

TL;DR: If you have a life outside of gaming, best wait until the devs artists come to their senses and remove the real-time aspect of the water mechanic. Its not positive for anyone. The people arguing for it spend enough time gaming that it doesn't have the effect intended by the devs, and the rest of us hate it because it harms our desire to play the game.

First, let me say that I love this game. If I start naming the things I love about the game, I would just end up describing the whole game. So we won't get into that.
But this game has a problem.

The devs spoke at length in their promotional material about how they didn't want to be like the big companies who use predatory mechanics. Then they added a predatory mechanic.

Lets talk about water. In this game your water is used up at one unit per-day until you run out. when you run out, your progress is wiped. The intent, as stated by the devs, is to have you thinking about the game when not playing. To create a sense of anxiety.

I have enough anxiety in my life. I really don't need my entertainment to create more. And using Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) mechanics to pull your players attention when they are away doing things like...I don't know, playing with their kids...touching grass...voting...whateverthehell. Well its pretty scummy imho.

This is the same tactic used by mobile or Facebook games (think Farmville, Clash of Clans, etc) Those games keep you coming back by making you fear you will miss out, lose progress. And short of them planning to turn water into a way for them to make money in the future (which they have explicitly stated they would not do) the mechanic seems extremely poorly thought out amongst an otherwise masterpiece of mechanical design.

Fundamentally there are two types players playing this game. And this division is born out in the content of the reviews, split over this very subject.


These are the "hardcore gamers" the "get guds" of steam. These are the people who typically have the time to play games every evening. Often they also only play one game until they finish all the content or are completely bored with the game before they move onto something else. Or they just don't have anything else going on in their lives such that they have the time to play games all the time.

For this group of people, the water mechanic is "not as big a deal as the other reviewers are making it out to be." (funny thing, these people also seem to have a very underdeveloped ability to view the world through any perspective but their own) And given how much of their lives focus on playing games, it truly is NOT a big deal. When you can expect to be able to put in more than 2 hours of gaming in a week, well then the water mechanic becomes a non-issue.

And if its a non-issue for them...then the mechanic (water) is not fulfilling its design intent

Then there's Us poor saps who grew up. Who got married, had kids, a career, etc. We love gaming. But we also love other things. The feel of grass. The fresh air found outside our homes. We have other hobbies. We even have OTHER games we like to spend time in because we don't hyper-focus on one game at a time. (Can you imagine?)

For Group B, the mechanic is indeed serving its purpose. But to such an extent that playing the game becomes an emotional burden. Thus harming our enjoyment.

I don't know if I wan't to get back into it (I do) because if I spend MORE time, I'll get more invested. But that won't make me spend more time on gaming overall. All it will take is one week away from my computer (doing that grass touching thing) and suddenly my will to get back into the game is deleted along with my progress.


Require the user to select what kind of game they are playing (hardcore vs grass-molester) And if the user wants to change gameplay types, require a progress wipe to do it.

OR

Make each mission have an in-game time cost (justify it as travel time to get to and from the location)

OR

Make running out of water apply a heavy debuff.

There are options.

I fully expect the "get guds" to roll their eyes and continue failing to comprehend the plight of the rest of us and the grass we fondle. But I hope something I have said will catch on in the Forever Winter zeitgeist and drift into the minds of the devs. I'm even okay if they think its their own idea. And what they planned all-along. Hell, they could even save face by saying it was just intended to create some mild drama as free marketing for the game. I dunno.


Thank you for coming to SCAVx and listening to my SCAVtalk.

I have been following the developer's progress on this game for quite a long time. I love the general concept and the art, and most things about it. But if driving a car in real life required you to repeatedly stab yourself in the eye, everyone would walk.

This game has a great deal of potential. But currently it is stunted by some very poor design decisions. All quite fixable mind. And if the dev gets off his high horse about his interaction design and fixes these issues, (people have commented on them in his youtube progress videos) then I will buy the game again. At the moment its mostly unplayable due to how painful it is to do everything.

My specific issues.
- No inventory: It was a nice idea. But stop. It doesn't work. its too much of a pain to walk back and forth carrying a single item at a time. The truck is clearly an attempt to solve the design issue without actually addressing the problem. But game inventories have become prolific for a reason. they work.
- - Possible solution: A small inventory. if I can carry 4 items at once that would make the issue almost non-existent.

- Dropping items...To your right?: This is a very odd design choice. I guess it sort of makes sense because you are "holding" the item to the right. but come on. games don't have to be realistic. And this is terrible affordance. Just let me "drop" items where I point with the cursor. If you have to make it pop into existence where I click, so be it. It won't throw off my experience. Honest.

- Having to pick up single items one at a time: Oh lord. this is the epitome of tedium. I assume the intent is that you fix that tedium with automation? But I shouldn't have to stab myself in the eye repeatedly to have fun in the game. This would be fixed by having an inventory because you could pick up items in an area into the inventory. Which means you aren't going back and forth constantly.

- Currency as items: I'll grant that this was kinda cool at first. But the initial novelty of the idea ended pretty quickly. This mechanic doesn't produce enough fun to counteract the tedium that it adds.

- Keybindings: It's almost like this dev never played a first-person game before. This game throws all conventional control logic to the wind and starts again with a new set of actions that are hard to keep straight because they don't match up to what we are used to as gamers.

- Conveyance: This is only a minor nitpick. The main selling point of this game is automation. Which I love. But the game only shows you that you have piles of buckets and shovels in your future. The only possible future automation it tells you about in advance (as far as I can tell) is the water pipes. Which you can put your pan under to speed up the process of scrubbing dirt. But its a real pain to get that pan under the pipe because the interaction mechanics are so bad.
Ideally The game should give you an idea what level of automation will be available to the player in the future. Then some of the grind becomes more enjoyable because you have a better idea what you are grinding toward.

Again. I want this game to be good. I like a lot of things that the dev is doing with it. But I cant recommend it in its current state. Tedium and grinding can be fun. But they have to be FUN tedium. Not just a slog.

Most of these issues can be fixed very quickly. I'm a game developer myself. I have some idea what would be involved. (well the inventory concept would take more time.) The issue is not if the game can be fixed, but if the developer will accept input and make the changes. If this happens I will buy the game again, and update by review. But for now, I'm getting a refund.

Mechanically, it's a mobile game. If you enjoy that kind of thing, I'm sure you will like it. I prefer a modicum of complexity in my games.

I loved Stardew Valley. But in SDV, almost everything you did felt satisfying in some way. In this game, everything felt like a chore.
I believe the game has potential. But I think the dev's have some work to do on the basic interaction mechanics.
The music was stellar.

Also, No island or town as THAT many wild flowers. Particularly not with that much color variety. Ouch. my eyes. oh how they burn...

Fantastic concept. Fun to play. but absurdly frustrating. It has this loop that happens every 30ish seconds that is fun the first two times it happens, then it starts being annoying:

0. Get yelled at by Russian that the pressure is too high
1. fight with the stupid hitbox issues so you can turn the valves to release the pressure.
2. finally open the valves.
3. try to close the valves, (this is usually easier than step 2 if you don't take your hands off them)
4. Get yelled at by Russian that your O2 levels are too low.
5. refill the O2 you just vented into space. (again, with hitbox combat)
6. Get yelled at by Russian that your O2 levels are too high.
7. Vent atmosphere into space.
8. Get yelled at by Russian that you are off course.
9. fight with the absurdly fiddly joystick to get back on course
10. Repeat steps 9 and 10 4 times.
11. GoTo 0. (by this time its taken so long to do all the other steps that the pressure is too high again.)

If you are lucky enough (and skilled enough) to get all that done in good time, get ready to do it all again in about 30 seconds.

And it never stops. You have to do that same thing over and over again. sometimes you get a break from the yelling Russian because other story line audio clips start playing so you get some brief respite. But you will never be free of it.

If they get rid of this stupid feedback loop, or at least make it so it is FAR LESS frequent, AND fix all the fiddly issues with collisions for the control panels, Then I recommend you play this game. Because it is beautiful, and a great concept.

NOTE TO POTENTIAL VR GAME DEVS: You SHOULD play this game, despite its issues. Because this core concept is a great thing that we need more of in VR. and while this one has been executed poorly, there's a lot to learn for us game devs.

This game is fantastic...if you like games that are hard only because of completely random chance. Seriously. I thought I hated Risk (The board game) for its replacement of strategy with random chance, but Tharsis takes the friggin cake on this one. In Risk I at least felt like I still had a shot at success. Tharsis? You haven't a prayer. You will play this game. Think that your decisions will might make a difference. And then the random chance kills you. Nothing you can do about it.

The poor core game design aside. Its a very pretty game. Great art. Good voice acting. And some interesting decisions to make. like should I eat the corps of my dead crewman to stay alive? Its really sad that this game suffers from random sickness so much. I wanted to like this game. I really did. But as a player, I want to feel like I have SOME control. Some effect on the outcome.

Edit: Though this was posted on April first, it is not a joke.

This game might be half decent. If they had any concept of user experiance and interaction design. Short story, avoid this game. Its pretty, it has potential. It has a really neat combat system. but its not playable because of how terrible the interface is. It took me and my friend an hour just to figure out how to use the stupid sling. All the while 3 hawks drove us insane with their screetching over and over again using the same audio.

Avoid this game. really.

The Graphics may not be much to look at. The colors need unification. But that one gripe aside, this is a bloody fantastic game with a very clever set of mechanics. It also has some decent writing to the story. If you like puzzles or strategy games, play this one.