Recent reviews by [Razgriz]Yellow-17

I doubt I'll use most of these except in exceptional circumstances, but they're all really awesome ideas and I love the art team's hard work. Each has their own challenges to work through to get their advantages, which could mix up some train playthroughs.

These are all very niche in concept (which is good, nothing is strictly necessary.)
- Electric Trains - Overhead clearance requirement is a problem in a lot of setups, works well with new bridges if you want to do sky bridge trains. No need to fuel is an improvement though depending on power costs.
- Gas Turbine Locomotive - SPEED, this'll be fun to play with and fuel. Its size and need for a tender makes it require larger stations which puts a hinderance on it, but for the improved speed and long distance transportation it might be worth it.
- Nuclear Locomotive - Needs dedicated refueling system and seems wayyyy late game. I can imagine moving your network over to them in the late late game stage will be fun.
- Molten Materials - I see zero reason to use this strategically, except for introducing weird steps or self-imposed challenges. Which is fine because its just cool. I wish it was part of the base game though instead of DLC.

An amazing factory game and one of my favorites. Every big update for the game is massive and sweeping with tons of new content and expansion to the base game. The developers are constantly improving the game and even though its EA I think its a pretty complete game even without most of the updates, nonetheless by Update 3 and the coming Update 4.

It can be very difficult, save a lot, or keep your settings turned down (I play it a bit easier than normal for that reason.) There are death spirals if you aren't careful, but they teach you to prioritize sections of your factory and make sure they're always running.

The use of vehicles, pile physics, etc. really is a ton of fun and scratches itches in the brain. Its really fun to just demolish mountains and dump them in the ocean.

Cannot recommend trying it enough to factory nerds.

With one player its a cute boss rush FFXIV raiding meets Touhou Game

With two players its a hectic way to test your friendship

With three players its a molotov cocktail thrown into a bachelorette party's dance floor

With four players there is no god, there is only flashing colors.

It is wonderful, if you like raiding or schmups and good ol build planning and diversity madness you will love it. Highly, highly recommend.

This is a wonderful sandbox game that teaches you so much about physics and space survival. I have learned more about the ideal gas law in the most brutal ways possible than could be imaged.

I find this game rather relaxing once things get going, and highly recommend easier difficulties until you understand the systems. Don't shy away from Easy in this one, its name is a lie. This is also a game that you _will_ feel yourself get better each time around, I pick it up every 3-4 months and do another run and find myself improving on everything each time.

It can be fiddly, the controls are interesting to say the least. The extra steps on everything make everything deliberate and ordered, like building IKEA furniture. It has a great ingame wiki built-in to help with understanding, and some tutorial maps to get you going.

If you enjoy survival games and want a challenge, if you like science and want a learning experience, if you enjoyed the Martian and want to replay that experience this is the game for you.

One of my favorite match 3's from before the era where they were oversaturated. I'd argue this is the grandfather of "mechanic match 3's".

It has a ton of progression, side grinds, extra mechanics, and things to do. Each class plays really differently which offers a lot of fun replayability.

Highly, highly recommend this one.

Adorable and hilarious, just so much fun and worth the price.

Absolutely a blast, one of my favorite party games already.

Its just.. madness. I don't know how else to describe it, but absolutely fun madness.

I wouldn't necessarily call this APICO with Frogs. Give this a good look before making that leap if that's what you're looking for.

It is in the same style, it has some of the same DNA and mechanics in a lot of ways, and its great for that, but this is more puzzler and less sandbox game. Regions and mechanics are unlocked with specific progression through the Frog variants, there's a new ancestry mechanic that means each step of progressing frogs must be done in order to insure a specific bred Frog for a specific gate.

Its very neat in its own way, and its definitely its own game, and I appreciate it for that.

Also the frogs are cute as heck.

My cons are small:
- Zones are messy, if you like clean bases this can kind of be a pain with it. This is improved when you get access to piers at the big story start but its still messy as there's lots of clutter details you can't get rid of.
- I think navigation is really confusing a lot of times, the zones are two tiered and there's a lot of sub-islands and unlocking access to places is part of that, but there's also jumping between dimensions and other things that makes it feel.. overwhelming. I think I spend most of my time walking while playing this, and a lot of backtracking because I found out I forgot a key of some kind. You will use R to respawn a lot to fast travel back to base. Its neat, and the game's systems require it, so I can't fault it but it is a bit much sometimes.

This game has so many ideas I think could be neat, but I never made it to where I'd get to enjoy it. I had the most fun in the tutorial where I got to interact and enjoy the mechanics, the blacksmithing stuff and lathing and everything is actually really cool so whoever built that loves those things.

Mining was a chore, and could've been fun if I had some sort of easier way to manage what I picked up or buckets to store it or whatever. Instead I put up to 3 ore into a chest on a cart that teleported back to my base and that was the limit of the giant chest? I liked the hitting rocks bit and that was dopamine inducing at least, lots of empty ones though.

Performance was a NIGHTMARE. I literally hit 4 FPS in my shop without adding anything to it, just at the start. I have a very good computer so there was a memory leak or something somewhere. I returned after mining to try to start smelting and it was a disaster that was literally unplayable with no way around it. Changing settings didn't fix anything. This happened to me three distinct times (out of four.)

The dialogue isn't quirky or fun, its terrible, just absolutely bad. Its vulgar in the wrong ways, there's child slaves for your employees, the characters all talk crass in a not fun but just 12 year old's idea of what edgy characters might sound like. Just ditch all existing dialogue and rewrite the whole game and characters, please its so bad and not "so bad its fun" just bad. There's also so many options where you just get killed outright? After spending forever getting through the prologue I finally just skipped it to start playing the game itself without getting the cringy dialogue and random kills.

Review is targeted at Survival.

I want to love this game, I put so much effort into loving this game.

It has so many good pieces, but they are just not assembled in a way that's fun. The component farming mechanism for progression is a pain, the world size is a pain, if you happen to lose your cockpit far from home you're wrecked. Survival sometimes feels like an afterthought to add a feature that was highly requested, but didn't quite make it there. The worst part is its _almost there_.

I lost my vehicle twice far, far from home by getting randomly sniped in the cockpit by a bot. Then had to manually walk all the way back to my main base to craft replacements and all the way back. I wrote off my saved game both times and decided to give it another go, but ultimately it killed my enjoyment.

If I were the devs looking to drastically improve survival I would consider the following:
- Replace components with a leveling system, let players unlock things in a blueprint tree one by one instead of farming components non-stop. Its the same method (kill to get progress) but makes non-component dropping bots feel better, and also makes the defense feel more important. You could keep components as a drop to limit access to crafting certain things, but as the raw upgrade/progression they're so rare.
- The required jump to obtain a Spud Gun from no gun is drastic, and the fact that enemies require it at a certain phase without any warning except they will repeatedly snipe you is super unfun and feels terrible. I am punished for exploring the world and seeing a cool thing then going over there to find the same loot but with insanely harder enemies guarding it. Nothing is as fun as losing your vehicle to a robot you've never seen before just chopping it in half or sniping you out of it without a second thought.
- Biomes are "neat" but ultimately feel really hollow. There doesn't feel like any progress in getting to them, why wouldn't I just stay in the lower tiers and farm components? Ember and Chemicals are about the only other thing out there and both are close to home.