Recent reviews by GTX

The RNG demigods will destroy your best runs and force you to force restart constantly on the 2nd hand. While there can be a skill aspect to pick out great builds for future planning, the majority of the time you'll spend the first few hours of play just trying to get beyond the first few hands, and then when you do you'll get a Big Ante that will be literally impossible to complete no matter how good your build or skill is.

It was fun at first and an exciting concept, but now it's just aggravating and stressful. The RNG that only exists to end you sucked the fun out of the game.

I am not having the same crashing issues as others for some reason.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
64GB DDR4 3200 RAM
NVidia RTX 3060 (Currently on driver 531.29)
SK Hynix 2TB M.2

Initial load times were very slow. "Building Shaders" took about 30 minutes. VRAM is maxed out during gameplay. However, once loaded and into the game there have been no issues during gameplay. Almost all scenes I can get 60fps with nearly all settings to Ultra (Shadows at Half Resolution). Some detail-heavy outdoor scenes will drop me to around 55fps, but no stuttering.

Mouse controls stutter lightly but have not negatively impacted my gameplay.

Overall, works fine here.

An excellent moderate-to-slow-paced city builder. Learning the game does not take a lot of effort as it is not overly complex. There's no real endgame to be had at this time (basically, just don't let all of your beavers die), as the game focuses more on creativity and natural problem solving. You'll find yourself building elaborate dams, or making your main city-center look aesthetically pleasing, or just focus on expanding across the entire map to see if you can!

It's meant to be relaxing. Initially, the primary challenge is survival: Getting food, water, and growing your population and balancing it. You will experience droughts, and if you're not fully prepared, that could be game over as water runs out and crops dry up The game currently features three difficulty modes (Easy, Normal, Hard), and Normal can provide a nice challenge on some maps for most players without being annoyingly difficult. Hard mode requires thoughtful planning and can actually be considerably difficult on some of the included maps, which may be a welcome challenge for some.

There's currently an excellent community behind this and the developers interact quite often. In my time of owning this game there has been a couple of major updates and tons of bug fixes. Honestly, at this point, it seems rare to experience any bugs. Amazing support all around!

If there was any negatives I can think of, it's that there's no clear-cut endgame or goal, and no achievements either. Sometimes I find myself bored on a play through because I can't think of anything new to do. I'm hoping for updates such as scenarios, challenges, achievements, and more that may help remedy this.

Straightforward, easy to learn, not a ton to it.

For skilled/dedicated/oldschool gamers, this game may be a bit too simple for some. It's nice to pass the time but the novelty wears quickly. However, it's not a bad game. Only a few minor bugs, and the developer is close with the community to continue making new content and fixing things.

This game may be best for a younger audience who will appreciate the simpler design and play style.

Don't go into this expecting the complexity of something like The Sims, Cities:Skylines or other AAA builders. Go into it knowing it to be a casual, fun, simple game and I think you'll enjoy it as such.

Update 08/29/21: Issue is caused by conflict of GPU's in Multi-GPU-specific high-end laptops. A workaround is to force the game to run either on the CPU's integrated graphics chip, or hope your system has a CPU-processed HDMI output and set Windows to utilize the dedicated card's physics rendering to maintain high performance. Still attempting to break down why this is happening.
-----------
After about a week of troubleshooting, working with both the developers and the Steam Community discussion threads, there is currently no known working fix for my issue and there are seemingly thousands of other players with these issues.

Mine relates specifically to a memory leak, where on startup the game will use an unlimited amount of ram (tested on a system with 256GB of RAM, and then another system with 32GB of RAM but a 1024 GB page file) and the game utilized 100% memory on both.

There are currently no known fixes, and users have reported issues like this since Day 1 of the Steam Launch and there have been zero fixes or updates released to resolve these problems, including the reports of stuttering even on high end systems.

There is no point in purchasing this game until the developers recognize these issues and focus their efforts on fixing them rather than releasing new content that their users cannot use. As of this post I've requested a refund on my purchase, but may consider buying again in the future if devs acknowledge and fix the real issues users are having.

I think I'll just play.... one more day.

Oh, my crops will be grown tomorrow. Ok, I'll harvest them real quick.

....there's a festival tomorrow? Ok, another day it is then.

....why is the sun coming up?

10/10 time stealer.

I will recommend this game for those who are leaderboard attackers and love asinine challenges.

The challenges, I believe, are strictly for more hardcore gamers who will stop at nothing to complete them. While the first few challenges are obtainable, others will leave you crying in your beer while repeatedly stabbing at your gamepad or controller hoping that by some miracle the challenge will simply complete itself.

The levels do change daily, which can add for some replayability, but there is no end-game in sight, no common goal to achieve (other than leaderboards), and you will ALWAYS die.

I grew bored of this game in less than an hour of playing it, sadly. Perhaps something new will come of it later.

Dust is an incredible game to play.

Three solid days of playing nothing but this game. That's how much it captivated me in nearly everything it had to offer.

While many say top quality in this game is the artwork, "I" place top quality on the SOUND of the game. I played the game entirely with headphones, and every little sound was there, from the packing of snow under your feet to wooden floorboards sounding like real floorboards to the enemies and background sounds. So many sounds, but not overwhelming. Couple that with an incredible soundtrack and this game was nearly more fun just to LISTEN to than it was to play.

Of course, you also cannot forget the story. While the dialogue seemed a little broken in areas, it still brought forth a compelling storyline while delivering emotion and detail. EVERY voice actor in this game brough top-notch quality of their abilities, whether or not they just had one line or had the lead roles. Nothing was weak.

Third on my list of awesome things about this game now is the artwork. Yes, it placed third, and yet it was still an epically amazing sight to behold in the game. It felt as though no detail was left out and the style remained consistent throughout.

Controls and Gameplay were very good to me. While I was a bit confused at initially trying to use keyboard (as the game wouldn't recognize my gamepad), it didn't take long to get very good with the controls. Even the defaults were laid out very well. Gameplay was excellent, giving forth a challenge that was fun without being difficult. Even on a moderate (not the hardest) difficulty, I didn't find myself struggling to beat enemies or bosses, however they were still challenging enough to provide amazingly fun battles.

If I had to list something I didn't like about the game, it would be perhaps the anime-style cutscenes felt a little out of place for the style, and that I wish there were more attack-based abilities you could get to make your fights a bit more epic, however neither of these take away from the game at all.

One of the best games I have ever played. Seriously.

One of the Real Time Strategy games that defined RTS's of today, along with top games such as Starcraft and Warcraft. Age of Empires 2 brings many new civilizations to choose from who each have a variety of bonus attrributes and units. Sure, the Britons have the longest ranged archers in the game, but up against the Persians they stand no chance due to the Persians advanced calvary and bonuses against archers, yet the Persian calvary are weak against the Britons Champions or Halberdiers.

Age of Empires is a "build up and fight" style of RTS, requiring large towns consisting of production buildings for units and research buildings to upgrade those units. Several defensive structures exist such as Castles and Walls to help hold your enemy at bay while you secrety carve a path through the forest with villagers to sneak in behind the enemy force.

Classic and straightforward, if you're a fan of RTS games and you missed this one, best to back track and get it.

If you've never played this game before, now you have to, so long as you're an RPG fan. One of the best Final Fantasy storylines to date (and one of the best RPG storylines in RPG history) is right here with Final Fantasy VII. The story progression evolves in a way that you get a little bit more information as you go along, but not enough to solve the puzzle that is Cloud, your main character.

The gameplay offers much for those needing a break from the storyline. Dozens of sidequests open up ways to get insanely powerful items or to reveal additional backstory details. Mini Games are present, such as Chocobo Racing, to also give you a break from the story while still allowing you to get additional GIL, special chocobos, or rare items.

Often enough you'll find yourself playing the game for hours on end, wanting to find out what will happen next, or what storyline segment will be revealed. The story has so much depth that it will be difficult to follow along during a first playthrough, depending on your play style and pacing.

A must have for RPG fans. A absolute need for Final Fantasy fans. And "this is the one to play" if you're curious about getting into the RPG scene.