Aven Colony

yet without humour, politics or advanced logistical management. Pretty, but unchallenging, graphics and world. Derivative, plays like Anno, Tropico, and etc, but as a strategy/city builder/ sim fan, I feel like I've been sold a product with only half the required content.

Aven Colony is a decent game: the graphics are pretty, the gameplay is balanced, and overall it's enjoyable. It has good bases, but infortunately never go further. First, if you are a citybuilder veteran, you'll find Aven laughably easy. Fulfilling your citizen needs is very straightforward, there isn't that much to do. Water, food, health, entertainment and that's all. In most games of this genre, you'd need to provide more and more different services and goods to attract better classes of citizens who'd in turn either staff advanced building and/or provide money through taxes, but not here. That could be ok, not every sim game has to be complex. It could be just a nice chill and casual game. If it wasn't for the second negative point: a glaring lack of content. The main campaign has 12 missions, and since the first two are tutorial, that makes actually 10. Granted, the last 2-3 are rather long to complete (and again, you'll need patience rather than skills) but that's still ridiculously short: the old Impression games (Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor) have each 30+ missions. As of 2020, but game is still sold for 32€ full price: it's awfully pricey for what you get. It came three years ago already, and the only additional content it ever received was a sandbox map (Cerulean Vale) shortly after release. I'm not sure the studio (Mothership Entertainement) still exists. So forget about any DLC or extension. tl;dr: Aven is a decent game, but neither challenging or long. And once done, you won't feel like coming back to it. Get it on a -50% sale.

The game does not vibe with me. First of all, I quickly realized the utopian post-modern blobitecture isn't my cup of tea. My main issue is readability. If you look at a farm in AoE (as an example) you know it's a farm immidiately. Aven does not communicate the function, which makes building things very confusing at times. I was also disappointed how how brainlessly generic the production chains and overall gameplay is. You build a wheat farm and a grain mill and you get food. You mine ore and you smelt it to get metal. This feels like a reskin of a medieval village building game, except grass is purple now. If you've played any Anno type game, you have already played this game, only less shallow version of it. On a technical level it's perfectly adequate I suppose. Overall it feels like they tried to make a corporate promotional video a strategy game. If you are a human that consumes food and exchanges money for goods and services, it might be a game you can play.

So it's got good graphics, there's nothing really new, here except it's a sci-fi builder,music is nothing special so nothing groundbreaking but it's a good game with a sci-fi vibe, it's a decent game, if city builders are your thing, but worth the price of admission.

The game overall is modestly decent. It gives you a lot to do at first, but the experience can be quickly picked up in the first hour or two. The campaign mode can seem pretty short, but each of those maps took me roughly 3 hours or more to complete. While I like the concept of its research, the entire list requires going through the same things each time. I would have preferred stronger techs for the expedition ships, and perhaps, the expedition ships should have proved a better asset. The focus, of course, directs toward the beauty of the city and the systems used in successfully keeping it together. Unfortunately, once I found a prosperous route to starting a city, all maps played nearly the same. The "normal" difficulty appeared more like "easy mode". On that level, barely any challenge existed. The Campaign also poses with a weak story-line. Despite all this negativity from me, it has many positives to counter those. I do wish it had a more random style of presenting challenges and maybe some variety to the voice acting, especially for "referendums". Still, I would vote this game as a solid buy when on sale if you like the idea of managing a colony. I do rate it 4 stars, because in my mind, it is an expansion away from awesomeness.