Aven Colony

I'll be focusing on gameplay. The graphics you can judge by the screenshots. There is a story, but it's fairly predictable as far as I've gotten in the campaign. The Good: You can directly control the growth of your population. The idea is that new people come via shuttles form a colony ship in orbit around the planet. So if you want faster growth you can build more buildings that accept the incoming shuttles and if you've overstretched you can deactivate said buildings. Getting the information for managing your colony is fairly well done. There are various overlays for the map and various statistics can also be viewed. After one instance of a building has been upgraded you can directly build the upgraded version. The Bad: I think a good game presents a problem and multiple solutions to it. For some things Aven Colony does this, but for others it does the opposite: Some alien creatures are coming to destroy your buildings or big chunks of ice are falling from the sky or alien drones attack your colony? Build Plasma turrets. The Chemical plant, Mill and Bar & grill are also pulling double or triple duty. The overworld is a lot shallower than at first it seems, including settlements. A lot of the game is spent waiting for nanites, the building material, and you can't really speed it up. They can be created from mined metal ores or a processed plant that can be grown on farms. Mines run out and even before, they can only supply one Nanite processor. Or you can use a quicker mine that wastes the ore and you run out even faster. The processed plant option doesn't run out, but is a lot slower and requires a lot more workers so until you build up your colony you're stuck waiting. There are also some technical and design issues. About 1 in 10 startups the game crashed. Can't select an overworld POI if the exploration vessel is too close to it. If a building doesn't get a raw material for a while, then production won't resume even if the material becomes available again.

First, I'll say I like to play in sandbox mode so this will apply. This game is fun to play until later on, when your colony has expanded quite a bit and into space as well. Pros: Great graphics. Some of the worlds are fantastic, colorful, full of beauty. There are quite a few challenges to getting started on some of the worlds where earth food doesn't grow so it never gets boring. The menus are easy to find and work with. I have a gaming computer which more than covers the max specs of this game but.... Cons: When I have more than 800 colonists and expand into space, no matter what settings I use in options, the game engine can't seem to keep up, with freezes (not my computer, just the game) , jerky movements, etc. I have to pause it to continue placing buildings and other items, then let it run to do the building. It is almost as if they didn't expect the player to build large cities, even in sandbox mode.

An underappreciated game that appeals to an audience that is apparently much less niche than I realized. Maybe that includes you, if, like me, you like builders mostly because you like gazing at your little city rather than slaving over big spreadsheets full of numbers. Aven Colony pulls this off very well while still leaving some room for you to use your cranial calculator so that you don't feel like a complete loser. Colonies and their environments are attractive and adequately detailed, and give the impression of real, living places. It's a fun game to play. I wasn't really expecting much going in due to the somewhat hokey name, but AC is well worth anyone's time who isn't looking for a Mount Everest-level puzzle challenge.

I've played this game for the first time today, since lunch to dinner, without stop... and really enjoyed it! It does 3 things I need to enjoy a strategy game: (1) It has very deep mechanics to master on one hand (which translates in a lot of fun in the long run), (2) while being very easy to learn and navigate on the other (which translates in no frustration to start playing). (3) It is, also, stunning looking and immersive! Usually, strategy games fail on one of this three basic pillars. This one don't, and gave me the vibes of entertainment that once Age of Empires did in the beginning of the Century. I really recommend you to try it! :)

Alot better then most give it credit for an underrated gem of the city building genre. A very pretty game plenty of buildings to choose from. You need to keep an eye on your food oxygen levels crime etc. Glad to see it on gog a great game.