Recent reviews by Microsoft BOB

I'm limiting my play sessions of this game to an hour or less because I'm afraid it will permanently alter my brain chemistry.

This game is the best roguelike I have ever played. Period. The combat is like crack.

Mircomanagement: The Game

All you do is babysit a group of people, constantly instructing them to do the most monotonous of tasks. They're starving to death? Manually tell them to eat something. They're dying of thirst? Manually tell them to take a drink. They need a shower? Full of urine? Bunker is smeared with feces? Anything under the sun is wrong? You have to manually tell them to do it. The core loop of this game is send out someone to do an expedition (that you take little action in), bring back a minimal amount of supplies, and then build/upgrade things. Rinse and repeat while commanding a grown woman to remember that her dog needs food to every 2 minutes.

You want a fun management game? Rimworld or Oxygen not Included. Not this.

This is seriously one of the best roguelikes I've ever played. So many ways to play, and so much to learn. I'm only 4 hours in and I can tell that I'm no where close to seeing it all. Get this game!

EDIT: Dang, responsive developer as well. You're the best, Kyzrati!

I can't do this anymore.

I really want to like this game but I have had enough. I'm done forgiving.

The grind is INSANE. It borders on ARKs, except you can't even rememdy it with a resource multiplier. Trees give you miniscule amounts of wood, requiring you to spend 10, 20, 30 minutes grinding for just a few base pieces (that will break in about 5 hits from a bear. Nice). I'm begging you ColdGames, triple the wood income, ideally even more. Having to spend literally hours in total hitting trees in order to make a decent base is the opposite of fun. It's maybe the worst thing about this game on its own.

Animals give you a reasonable amount of meat at least. Problem is, bullets are extremely expensive, and do practically nothing. At least, that's the pistol's stats. The shotgun is actually passable in damage, but the spread is so wide that it just spews valuable casings and gunpowder at nothing. I'd tell you about the other two guns, but because of the extreme grind I've never gotten to try them.

The bow is the only weapon that has an OK damage return based on resources spent. Problem is, unless you're cheesing the AI by jumping into your base, it's unusable on anything other than a chicken or rabbit.

If the point of the game is that ammo is really scarce, that's fine. But you can't have high scarcity + low damage. They don't mix, and just get you killed.

At least your hatchet can be used on enemies! Barely. The range on the hatchet is so pitiful that you have no choice but to hug the bear that you're trying to kill. Half the time it doesn't even register pointblank hits, which leads to you getting killed by a wolf on 3 health while you are at full.

Even if you land the hits--don't bother. The damage is again, pitiful.

Back onto the subject of grind, I think this game is listed in the dictionary definition of "grind". Everything is very overpriced to craft. And as I've stated before, you get very little from any source of supplies. Even getting a simple foundation placed is a pain. Ironically, the base command unit is one of the only items that I'd say are fairly priced. The energy and mass system on your base is a cool idea (although it doesn't make any sense outside of running machinery), although they're less of a resource as they are progression blocking timers. Reminds me of those facebook games.

The reason for me even writing this review and calling it quits is because of an infuriating addition to this game--cougars. A really cool idea that winds up being the bane of your existence. Not just because they are far more dangerous than any hunter could hope to be, but because that you MUST kill one in order to get sinew (or play the lottery of spending vast resources on lockpicks so you can cross your fingers for an elite crate and then hope there's sinew inside).

The sinew is require to get rope, which is used in many different recipies. I honestly like this idea, it's just that because 3/4 of the time you spend playing this game is spent on grinding resources to get things that never feel worth it, it becomes another thing that you constantly groan about. I spent about 2 hours getting enough resources to construct a shotgun with about 10 shells to supply it, so I could take on a cougar "safely". I realized that I hadn't made any clothing yet, but the number of hours required to hunt creatures to get a single piece of cloth at a time made me loathe the idea of farming for any longer before killing a cougar.

But ♥♥♥♥ me, I guess. This is what I get for wanting to do something other than mindless grinding. Because of the previously mentioned spead, the shotgun dealt practically nothing the first 3 times I shot it, and the cougar 3-hit me in about 5 seconds. I'm dead. Come back to a barely alive cougar and try to kill it with my hatchet. I'm dead again.

Came to this game wanting to have cool battles with hunters, left with 20 hours spent hitting a tree.

4/10

>Wake up in base
>Feeling bored, decide to go connect with the locals
>Whip out guitar, sprint to the road
>Perch on the mailbox of someone's compound
>Play music to the moon
>*headshot*
>Wake up in base
>Still bored, but now with -1 guitar
>Sprint to the road
>Apparently I was playing music to no one, the compound was already raided
>Just enough materials left to make another guitar
>Hide in the top level of the compound as the sun finishes rising
>Airdrop close by
>8 dudes in full gear sprint by towards it
>I come out of hiding, guitar ready
>I watch as WWIII breaks out over an airdrop
>Table in the middle of the grass
>Step on the table
>Start playing a somber song as I watch distant people get gunned down
>Someone notices
>"Yeah, dude. Nice song."
>Play to this guy
>Another person walks by
>"Hell yeah, man!"
>I have just created my own concert in front of a still active warzone
>I finish my song, throw the guitar to the ground
>First guy picks it up
>Gets on table
>I join second guy to watch
>"Let me play you the song of my people"
>Beautiful music
>Tears whelming in eyes
>Approximately 400 bullets rain down on our tiny table
>Two others die in moments
>Dead man drops guitar
>Bullets still raining down on me
>I grab it and start playing a panicked, sad song while dodging dozens bullets
>Cannot believe I'm alive
>Hit once by zerg guy with python revolver
>This is it
>He gives up
>I make it home
>Place my guitar in my chest
>Cry for my fallen music lovers

10/10, would spam left click on guitar again

You are a gifted child.

Who can't tell the difference between Cyan and Blue.

Score: 9/10

I had my doubts walking into this. 25$ was pretty steep for an EA game, and I don't remember having particularly high enjoyment values out of a management game like this one. All I could think was: "This is going to be really simple, isn't it?"

WRONG.

The simplicity of the visual artstyle is very disarming, and leads you into a false sense of confidence, for underneath lies a complicated ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of depthful mechanics.

A good example is the gas system. Make sure there's oxygen or you're dead. Simple, right?

WRONG.

You have to account for gas pressure, the spread and blockage of oxygen being able to spread due to harmful gasses, infectous gasses, gas density, vaccums, even geysers and voids.

Ok, no big deal, you can learn, right? Just filter out all the bad stuff, and keep the good stuff pumping in. Easy as pie... Right?

WRONG.

You need electricity to keep the oxygen flowing, to get electricity you need resources, to get resources you need able duplicants, to get able duplicants you need to keep them from stressing, to keep them from stressing they need decorations, to get decorations you need resources, to get resources you need able duplicants, to get able duplicants you need edible foo--♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WE'RE OUT OF FOOD

And this is just dipping your feet into the pool of mechanics, there's a lot more to be discovered here. However, one of my favorite things about this game is the lack of RNG.

Other than spawning the world and adding in new duplicants, there is almost no RNG to be found here. If your colony's dying of suffocation, that's not the game creating a special event that removes x% of oxygen in the area. Your colony is suffocating/starving/overheating/freezing/dying because at some point in the past, YOU made a mistake. Remember that block you dug out under that water pool? Well guess what? The water escaped through the cracks and now everyone is drowning!

If you've been looking for a management game that is punishingly difficult while also being entirely fair, buy it. If you've been looking for a management game that has more than just happy/food/tempurature management, buy it. If you love learning through trial and error, buy it.

The only reason why I'm not giving it a 10/10 is that it's been a while since the last major content update (plenty of hotfixes, don't worry) and it is admittedly quite barebones in some areas of gameplay. Extremely well done mechanics, but a small lack of actual content.

Get this game, seriously.

The cycle of the Nuclear Throne:

>Start a round
>♥♥♥♥ start, barely any rads
>Loose most of your health
>1-2, finally enough rads to get a mutation
>♥♥♥♥ choices for your character
>Big bandit wrecks you
>Stay determined
>ONE MORE ROUND
>Awesome start, lots of rads
>All the right mutations
>Kick Big Bandit's ass
>Make it all the way to 5-3
>So happy
>♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ LIL' HUNTER
>dies
>rage quit
>You contemplate punching your computer monitor
>Throw your headset instead
>Ductape headset together
>Load up Nuclear Throne
>Begin at line one

If your screen is bigger than a Nintendo DS, don't bother. Resolution is hardcoded into the game at 640x480, revolting at larger screens.