Aven Colony

Aven Colony is a classic city builder game, focused on resource and morale managemenet. It has some strong Anno 2205 vibes. It gets repetitive rather quickly, unfortunately and requires quite a lot of micromanagement. You cannot set production limits for example, while storage space is expensive. The back story is nice and helps build some immersion. Grraphics and audio are very ncie and relaxing. Overall, a solid game that could have been great, if only it was more polished.

The good: the approximately 1/3 of Tropico that they copied. Tropico in space is a good idea. I like the winter frost screen effect. Also, I saw few bugs and no serious bugs or crashes (audio underruns for me but there is not much of it anyway so easy to just turn off). The bad: the missing 2/3 of Tropico, the overworld map that they added with simplistic repeating missions where you click and wait, the strange day/year combination, limited map/overview options, every scenereo is almost exactly alike (you would think that by at least the fifth or sixth time researching the same exact things you might bring some notes to the next mission but no), the severe limits on trade, the generic rebels (no politics system like Tropico and rebels are mostly on the overworld map) who are forcibly reindoctrinated when defeated, and the really poor quality story that comes accross as badly written Chinese state propaganda (and not in a good way). Also, I'm willing to suspend disbelif about a lot of things, but how do you make and test a game without anyone mentioning that as a human being you should probably be aware that vaccines are preventative not a cure. Figuring out a language doesn't happen by chapter either. There are more. The download is unreasonably large for the very limited amount of content (about the same size as the first four Tropicos combined if I count correctly; I guess related to 4k support but still). The one reason I would suggest someone might try this game (on sale) is if you have already played Tropico (any version) and thought that what you really want is a simplified version with customizable difficulty (I don't and didn't try any but the default difficulty so no idea how well the difficulty settings work). For me, it all feels like busy work and doesn't look as nice (in some ways) or as livable as Tropico or Banished or Sim City. If you just want a simpler game try Banished. I put the developer on my do not buy list.

I played the whole campaign and enjoyed it. About midway through the campaign I reduced the difficuty level. I didn't try the challenge maps becasue I don't like time limited success/fail objectives. After the campaign I tried a sandbox but found at that point it was boring and I had done everything already. There are some minor bug/play problem issues but nothing fatal. I do recommend it but don't expect it to thrill you for multiple play throughs.

I don't often write reviews but I wanted to add my view on Aven. What a brilliant game! I really enjoy the challenge of balancing everything. And I mean everything. Power, water, food, nanites, potash etc etc etc. Sounds like a normal sort of economy game doesn't it. But there is the whole problem of spending so much time without enough people to run all the mines, water pumps and everything else you need. So things work, barely, until you have enough people. But how to get people when your colony is doing badly? And don't talk to me about winter! Low amounts of food produced, nione if you are only relying on normal food and farms, less power; I could go on. Ok, so the game play is good, what about graphics? I like the style of the game but I have turned down the graphics level, not because it won't run smoothly, its just I don't really like the amount of small detail showbn in the way of plants. Silly I know, and I apologise to the gfx artists who no doubt put a lot of work in to the game. So, do I recommend it? Yes Will I be playing in a year? I will be really surprised if not as I think that there will be a lot of replayability here. right, that's enough for now, I have a colony calling me back!!

If you want to sit down and relax while your city is growing and neighbourhood is being explored, there is no better option. The game is as complex as it's necessary to have fun and not frustrate, also there are some various unexpected dangers and challenges, although it's mainly focused on building, improving, organising and expanding. In my opinion some negative reviews are given by people that misunderstood the purpose of this game.