Recent reviews by TimeTravelAstronaut

After dragging myself through to the end, it took a crash inbetween the terrible checkpoints on the final level to snap me out of my morbid curiosity to play this game in its entirety. Even at 50% off I don't think this was worth the price to experience this fever dream of a game.

A passable game marred by a a godawful final fight.

I enjoy the Metroidvania genre, but am in no way an expert player. While I finished the game on the default difficulty and enjoyed my time with it, I feel most of the value here will be for players that are interested in replaying the game multiple times, taking advantage of the random map generation and arcade mode.

The random map generation seemed very competent during my playthrough; the spacing of the save points was reasonable and for the most part rooms didn't appear repetitively. However, on more than one occasion did I open a chest to find an inferior weapon or piece of equipment, which was frustrating. In general I feel I missed out on seeing several pieces of equipment due to my map seed, so I would have preferred a default map with more curated treasures, and then the option to use a random seed for further play.

If you're the type of person to only play through a game a single time, I wouldn't recommend this game unless it's on sale for under $20.

Satellite Reign thrusts you into a dystopian world as a competitor to the Dracogenics Corporation, which effectively runs the world. Conversely, you run nothing, quite literally. Your duties are restricted to controlling a squad of 4 agents in a single city, albeit a large one. The city remains firmly in the grip of your opponents no matter what you accomplish, although you'll occasionally receive a congratulatory message when you complete objectives.

The entire game existing in a single large level is an interesting concept for the setting; the city is broken up into the "neutral" streets where you can do as you please as long as it doesn't break the law, and the "hostile" compounds where enemies will actively try to detain or kill you if you're detected. The first stumbling block for me was that the neutral areas are mainly there for aesthetics, very little gameplay actually occurs there for how much of the map they make up.

The bulk of your playtime is in the hostile compounds, several of which can become rather sprawling. Again, the size of the areas feels more to emphasize the scope of the city than to facilitate gameplay. This becomes exceedingly frustrating when your forays into the compounds fail, and you're forced to leave, causing all the guards and cameras to reset. Then you find youself re-treading old ground to get back to where you were in the compound. Usually a small side-quest is available to unlock an alternate solution to the compound, but I still found myself foiled more by AI patrolling erratically at a critical moment, rather than being confused at how to approach a solution.

The 4 agents under your control are forced into seperate Archetypes, with their own skills that help differentiate them (in some cases, the other archetypes can purchase equipment that accomplishes the same thing, such as a cloaking device). In a world full of clones and cybernetic implants however, I was annoyed with how I was unable to modify or reset the skill choices on these characters, as some skills were very underwhelming initially. The speed at which you acquire new skill points is also punishing if you try to salvage the skill choices on one of your agents.

These 4 characters you control for your entire playthrough are severely lacking for aesthetic customization, especially for the genre. There is a single male and female version of each archetype, and no matter what array of armor and cybernetic implants you equip them with, they will look the same as they did when you first launched the game. Their heads can be slightly customized, but this is hidden behind a convoluted system unrelated to appearance.

A good way to give your agents an edge is to improve the quality of their clones; this is a rather involved process that consists of kidnapping people that are superior to your agents (which I feel further trivializes your role as the commander of this super-soldiers) and using them as clone stock. On its face this is an interesting system where you can amass a library of clone stock to tailor your agents, but there is a fatal flaw with the system; whenever your agents are killed, the clone degrades, eventually to the point where the stat bonuses are completely gone and you'll need to kidnap a new person. So a player prone to failure when exploring compounds will find themselves have to kidnap new clones again and again and again.

By the time alternate weapons and equipment upgrades were given to me that would allow me to better tailor the agents to my playstyle, I lost interest in the game entirely. The scope of the massive city is an illusion; the compounds are isolated and seperate entities that will recover from your assaults every time. Even a massive gunfight in the public streets will eventually become a faded memory and you can continue as if nothing happened.

As of writing this review, this game costs 29.99 USD and I cannot reccomend it all for that price.

While tagged as a City Builder, Timber and Stone fits more closely into the "Stay alive as long as possible" genre, with games like Dwarf Fortress and Gnomoria. This game is attempting to kill your settlers and destroy your settlement, although the simulation isn't especially complex in its current state, so most of your failures will come from your ineptitude as an Administrator of your settlement rather than the sort of incredible disasters you may encounter in a game like Dwarf Fortress. A 3rd party mod exists to disable enemies and make the game more forgiving, but by it's nature this isn't a traditional city-builder in the vein of Simcity.

Despite the fact that I've only listed cons, I've enjoyed my time with this game; I consider these to be things that may turn you off as a potential player who is used to this genre of game, but will likely improve during development.

Going with the assumption that this Early Access title continues to be improved upon, and you find the cons tolerable in the game's current state, I can reccomend purchasing this game.


Cons:
- Many, many things are not explained in-game. You can learn much more about the game by visiting the Official Forums or the Reddit community on r/TimberAndStone.
- Stockpile management does not exist beyond increasing your maximum capacity. Once a resource is placed in a stockpile it is available at all other stockpiles of the same type. Simply place all the relevant stockpiles next to a workshop and your Settler can craft without interruption.
- Settlers can only perform a single job, and will not switch jobs unless you do so manually. Until you amass a larger number of Settlers this means a large amount of micromanagement switching Settlers between jobs to keep production moving forward.
- Food production is currently very unbalanced. Livestock are incapable of breeding and produce resources at a considerably slower rate than the Farmer. Likewise, the fisherman will often wander outside the safety of your settlement to find what he deems is an ideal fishing spot which means he also generates resources slower than the farmer. The Farmer is the only job that can reliably feed your entire settlement and generate a surplus to attract new Settlers.
- Your Settlers have little depth. They eat only when starving, sleep only when injured, never drink, and require no shelter. A relatively safe job like the Farmer could potentially live their entire life never sleeping a wink, and never abandoning their post assuming there's always work for them to do.
- Many Jobs have a shortage of tasks to do. As they gain experience from crafting items, some jobs (notably the blacksmith and engineer) will have nothing to do but craft low-level recipes, break the item down, and craft it again. Other jobs will have an abundance of work in the beginning, then become much less relevant as time goes on.
- Currently the only enemies in the game are Wolves, Goblins, Skeletons, and Spiders. 2 other special types exist, but don't appear nearly as often.
- There is no passive method of base defence currently. Even high level doors will only delay enemies briefly, and no trap system is currently implemented. One of the most effective ways to deal with attacks is to force enemies to follow a winding path to your gate while being pelted by archers.
- Settlers will commonly let you know why they won't perform a task, but there's no feedback about what is actually causing the issue. As an example, a Builder will comment there's no Timber available for a construction job, but he won't comment that there's no carpenter in your Settlement to actually make him the timber. This means things can sit in your queue that can go unnoticed for some time.
- It feels like steps are missing from some items in the crafting system. All settlers eat raw food, and get the same nourishment from it. Weapons and armor have no intermediate ingredients, simply various combinations of ingots and textiles. For the most part this takes away from the sense of production chains in your Settlement.


12/1/2016: I've changed this review to not be reccomended, as development has largely ceased and in its current state is not worth the price; the game is unfinished.