Posted on: December 27, 2022
yanamal
Verified ownerGames: 429 Reviews: 6
Interesting programming mechanics
First, if you play this game, I highly recommend starting in Enlightenment mode with bot recharging turned OFF. Enlightenment mode was apparently the original mode made for the game, and it plays better in my opinion. And bot recharging just adds busywork that doesn't present any interesting problems to solve. In this game you program bots "by example", by recording what you do and then editing the program as necessary. The affordances of the programming language and the way the world is set up to support it all work really nice, in my opinion. The bots generalize your examples in very sensible ways, but there is still room for interesting optimization and streamlining. So definitely worth checking out. I have two major quibbles with the game: 1. The UI can be clunky. Everything takes a few too many clicks. It's hard to tell what a certain click will do, and often even what it did just do after I click! Copying programs with the disk item is a small nightmare. Don't do it, just build the bot database. 2. It gets grindy and tedious, especially for an automation game. At the beginning, there is an opressive amount of manual stuff to do in order to bootstrap basic quality of life automation. And toward the middle of settlement mode, the advancement became extremely predictable: upgrade each existing industry by building this new dohickey and start a new industry to support the new need of your higher-level "Folk". I was kind of looking forward to trains and rails, but could not muster up the motivation to keep grinding. I started over in Enligtenment mode, and at least there is some more breadth and flexibilty (different paths to the same objective, don't have to upgrade all industries in lockstep). Even so, the simulation of the world feels very shallow: the answer to "what effect(s) can this thing have" is always just "it is needed to satisfy the need of Folk at level X". Things don't even really grow, reproduce, or interact without your direct intervention.
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