Recent reviews by locusofthought

As advertised. A balanced slow burn progression.

Going from the demo to this, I am immensely satisfied (except vehicle physics still need polishing in regards to terrain traversal, especially the bike). Excellent game.

Edit: Just finished. Good game. Solid developer. Automation update was a great help. Driving any vehicle done a sufficiently steep cliff is still not great.

Great demo of a presumably also great game. Not seeing the truly mobile base yet. It's not a truly mobile base If I can't take the printer and crafting station with me. (That's outside the demo content though.) I do like the rover/wagon setup, and it works fantastic most of the time. There are a few issues, but nothing without a workaround (like "crawling" underneath the rover to force it airborn). Did I mention items on the backpack can look artistic when properly arranged?

This will be one of the better 4X games even before it leaves Early Access. The game is not there yet, but the potential and the determination to attain the goal are. The developers are truly pursuing community-driven development; the weaknesses I've seen and read are being addressed, more than one at a time. I'm glad there are increasingly more games being developed like this.

Default settings work my GPU pretty hard (and as always the water can still use some work).
Gameplay-wise it seems as good as any. Mantling, climbing trees for honey and furnaces for why not, a grapple hook, gliding, shapeshifting, parkour courses, and so on. On Normal, combat seems doable even with a stone axe. Metal tools are quite satisfying once you get them. Good balance between chest loot and unlocked recipes: rather use a "found" Forged Iron Pick recipe than the unlock from the Knowledge Table (saves points for other things).
Fairly impressive co-op implementation for a demo. Some games can't get that right even years past 1.0.
I'm wondering how much more good content they still have up their sleeves, given what is already in the demo. I wouldn't find it strange if the main game doesn't have quite the same progression as the demo.
It's like Ark + (what I imagine Palworld to be) + Valheim + Enshrouded.

Recommending against primarily for multiplayer issues, such as poor quality loading when joining friends via Steam (stalls at various stages with no clear progress, potentially for tens of minutes or more).

Puzzles are good. Plot is sufficient, but... the ending is disappointing and limited.

Awesome. If you like the base game, you'll like this.
In terms of playable characters and secrets, this DLC offers as much content and replayability as the base game and all the other DLCs put together.

Not quite as good as the first game, but I'm still interested in another entry in the series.
The puzzles are reasonable but they do require paying attention and thinking carefully in some cases. I recommend the older version of puzzle (not the current branch) over the newer one. It makes more sense.
Honestly, I felt it should have been longer, which is part of the reason I want a sequel.
The narrative is still interesting, and the dark and shadowy backstory becomes clearer. The ending raises more questions than it answers.

I like it. I would consider buying an additional game in this setting, whether a direct sequel or not. After finishing the game and finding most if not all of the lore notes, the narrative is interesting.
The game which exists is of good quality, though there a few small glitches unsolved. I'm not sure if it is worth the $20 price. It does feel a bit short, and it would be nice if the Annihilator (ship-mounted death laser) was more useful.
However, it is clear that it isn't everything it could have been. There are items which have gone unused such as the Fygar fish, and buildings such as the Factory for which upgrades are pointless. The laboratory tab has one tab, Eva's Tech, when clearly there was space for more. Dialogue lines for island clear rewards are extremely repetitive, though island clearing is fun.
It would be nice to have some larger swarm enemies to fight, such as a ship-battle with the first swarm boss, much like there are large Falcon ships to fight.

I presume there was either not enough money or not enough time to finish the game as it was intended, though the former is most likely. I hope the developer has learned from this and continues to produce good or better games.