Sphere - Flying Cities

Apparently this game had a rough start a while back in early access, but the game is quite solid as of now. There is some very cool features and in some ways it reminds me of Frostpunk, but different and doing its own thing. I'm progressing better this time through the campaign, but some things the ingame manual eludes on. Starting to think you have to be very discrete on what you mine and how often. You can easily overload yourself with materials, even if you built three dozen storage structures. Tech progress comes from mining elements that are scattered all over in different quanity. The games story, which is good so far, explains why this is. No cheese detected, seems quite logical, in the near future if we did survive ourselves. Not likely. Its a matter of building your base, strengthing the device core, researching, and flying around what was the planet of Earth. Pretty cool concept, matching story, post apocalyptc, SciFi game. Appropiate sound track, dynamic gameplay, killer graphics, and interesting gameplay. More structure types to build would have been nice, but really it covers all what you need. Food, Health, energy, manufacturing, etc. Its all there, and I like it.

The game's pacing is glacial and the interface for exploring and navigating is tedious and frustrating to use, as if the city doesn't want to move. The city-building itself is okay, but as mentioned in the tutorial, staying on the move to acquire more resources is core to the game. Unfortunately, that core part is not well-implemented.

I like the storyline but after the initial survival hurdle is passed, the gameplay becomes repetitive. Spending large amounts of time looking at a screen flashing red, orange and blue constantly is wearing on the eyes. It needs some more polish.

I was completly unable to control the mouse and keyboard movement in the game. A waste of money.

It is as if this game was made by a 1 armed Indian man who has only ever played SNES but decided to use AI to make a game. There are no meaningful hotkeys. Aside from moving the screen, everything must me moved via mouse clicks, like its 1998. The game uses the same 5 second cutscenes several times a minute. Perhaps 10% of your game time is seeing the same AI voiced cutscenes. The AI voice tech is horrible. If this game had came out in 1986 it would have been hailed as a legendary masterpiece, instead we get an SNES game in 2021. Four dollars was too much for this game.