60 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
2
2
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 53.2 hrs on record (52.1 hrs at review time)
Posted: 16 Feb, 2023 @ 10:53am

Early Access Review
The game is really fun as of now, but it feels wrong in alot of ways that are hard to explain. Its a colony sim that wants to be a city builder. And in most ways it just doesnt work that well. Honestly the biggest problem with it is that the time scale per day is that of a city builder, where a day goes past in a few minutes, but your colonists still walk at a realistic pace, so they are unwilling to walk across the not very large map for a job, meaning you end up needing to build smaller colonies near resources in order to harvest them rather then your citizens just being willing to commute a bit to their jobs. This also means you cant really build districts, you cant have a entertainment district or a refinement district, you need to build everything everywhere and cluster things around resources. This is made worse by the fact houses dont act as houses, citizens will not eat at home, and will not goto the bathroom or bathe at home, you need to provide all these services communally. And because citizens wont actually walk to where these services are provided you need to build entertainment and food and all of that where your citizens are. This makes the game feel awkward at best, and really as if its having a identity crisis. Also there are numerous parts that feel unfinished

The map is way too small for 10,000 citizens. 10,000 is the max size you are supposed to reach, and with the size of maps this is a stretch. You will need to fill up 90% of the map inorder to actually house and entertain all of those people. This makes building anything that looks aesthetically pleasing basically impossible at the later stages of the game

Bridges, why the hell cant you build bridges? Deep water is impossible to cross and can lock you off from very large sections of your map if your unlucky with map generation. And this just seems dumb. Why hasn't this been added to the game?

Storage buildings will not automatically level off with each other to a similar quantity of every resource. You need to basically do this manually. So you can have one storage building on one side of the map full of resources, but one on the other side of the map will be completely empty. It would be alot nicer if they would automatically swap resources between eachother to stay at a similar level. This causes alot of issues later in the game and forces you to build alot of haulers and transporters, taking up valuable space. Why cant I just assign warehouse workers to do this? Why do these need to be separate buildings?

Export and import depots also take up alot of room for what they do. This really seems like something that should be managed directly from a warehouse, why do I need to fill up space that could easily house 200 citizens just for depots? Depots can also only accept one type of resource each, so you end up needing alot of them, and all over the map for larger colonies that have multiple mines that you want to export from. Its silly and takes up alot of valuable space

There are probably alot more issues with the game right now that I am simply forgetting. This game really is very fun, I just want it to be a bit better, currently it feels like its on the edge of perfection, with a few tweaks and maybe a few overhauls in some areas it could be extremely fun. But now its extremely fun and addicting but also extremely frustrating in alot of minor ways. And that is arguably worse then the game just being bad. I really hope this continues being developed into something amazing, I just cant really recommend getting into it right now

Also the game desperatly needs Z levels. The maps wouldnt be anywhere near as cramped if you could just build two or three floor houses and work shops.
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21 Comments
大黄太阳枪 24 Aug, 2024 @ 4:45pm 
Every single time someone posts a negative review of the game, they get bombarded with "skill issue/ get good" comments lmao.
iSurvivedRKelly 16 Apr, 2024 @ 6:30pm 
Omg a review not made by a virgin.. :dw_yes:
Nomad Hermit 1 Apr, 2024 @ 4:35pm 
I've been playing with the demo, and I agree with the core of the criticism. Though I don't think it's enough to not recommend this game. I also feel that the days go too fast, but yeah, that's a design compromise to be able to be both a city builder and a colony sim - that is, to work both the micro and the macro at the same time. I can see why that design decision was made, and I don't think it's a bad design decision, but it creates those inconsistencies. The timescale for colony sim and personal interactions with your subjects is very different from the timescale for migration waves and scaling up to big cities and regional powers. I'll see if there's a mod that plays with the timescales. The game itself is great, though.
MaxWar 2 Mar, 2024 @ 9:35pm 
As of version 0.65, you can make bridges over deep water just by building a road over it.
RoosterSuplex 3 Dec, 2023 @ 10:09pm 
I've only played the demo IMO its a beautiful and phenomenal game.
BottomFeeder 23 Sep, 2023 @ 11:20pm 
Its ok. Smart people will read it as what it is. Your not saying that tools to cope don't exist, but rather they don't operate in a way you find fun due to the inefficient ways your populace satisfy their needs mental or physical. That you didn't enjoy the forced micro management shoe horning your cities layout to accommodate your pawns poor life choices. Making you focus on the very thing you don't like just to play.

I appreciate the weight of your perspective.
an entire Roman legion 18 Sep, 2023 @ 5:14am 
im not going into details but a lot of what you wrote is just wrong
JDLS 17 Jul, 2023 @ 3:43am 
People literally saying nothing about the review. Tell me why its bad or why you disagree. WTF does anyone gain from "This review is bad" Like cool why?
ProNoob 17 Jul, 2023 @ 3:40am 
@Endoskeleton_Jim this comment stonks
Endoskeleton_Jim 13 Jun, 2023 @ 3:58pm 
this review sucks