based on the amount of bugs present and that the last update was in 2020, i would assume this is abandonware. looks nice, concept is great, clearly dungeon keeper evil builder meets don't starve cutie graphics, yes i want to play that. But the idea of it is not enough to just imagine while you soak in the game breaking bugs it has left on the table. I would say, for sure do not buy this title.
Not even the decency to navigate menus with the mouse let alone play the game. If i get over the mouse thing and make it back for the game play, I'll be sure to edit this review.
It is not poorly designed, but it is not the kind of puzzler i like at all. It comes off like it might be a SpaceChem style, lots of ways to solve the problems, and seldom can one way of solving a puzzle make the bell on all efficiency tracking at once. So puzzles are quite open ended and beg to be played multiple times to solve for different forms of best efficiencies. These puzzles however come with constraints that mean each level really does have just one maybe two possible ways to beat them and meet the requested efficiencies. So this is more like putting together a puzzle. You are not solving problems so much as just seeing if the pieces fit right or not. Once all the pieces fit right, you have "solved" the puzzle. Some specific designs that i find really poor here: You get a budget for the parts you can buy and can't go over budget, this is not an efficiency this is a hard stop you can't go past. based on how levels work, this means the budget is obfuscated time sinking. If a level demand is to make X food item, then this means we already know a set of parts has to be purchased no choice about it. So why not start the level with the demand parts already and just a lower budget then? This is not a real puzzle to solve in the way the game is designed, it is just obfuscation that is the illusion of puzzle solving/agency for the player. When in reality it is a no choice situation, an obfuscated direction of just doing what you are told to do, that makes it look like you solved a puzzle of some kind. So after about 9 levels i was done putting together puzzles pieces, and uninstalled this to go find an actual puzzle to solve. However for what it is, if you like this kind of thing, then it is probably a very challenging version of this, put to together the puzzle, kind of game. I just don't get in for these like i do actual my brain solves the problem puzzles.
So not bad for what it is, but know what it is. Basically the normal game play is pretty low on the challenge level. The real player demands are in village lay out of buildings and needing to manually mange certain tasks the AI does not take care of well on its own. The basic frame work gives us so much automation of everything that it seems the player is able dial in the automation to be just right for their current sized and tech level village. Readjusting as group size and new tech changes the balance of situations. And then basically be on auto pilot for the most part, the player's direct input only being minimally needed for very specific situations. Like special hunting of dangerous animals. The AI will hunt basic animals decently enough on its own. But dangerous animals need the hunters to stay more well grouped up and more working as a team to take down such animals. And that makes the task more player manual input needed relative to how your unit's AI behaves. A sort of singular hunting AI based only around regular for food animals like deer and hogs and such. That is not going to work properly for the different situation of hunting dangerous animals. In general it seems deigned such that as long as a player does not try to race their advancement as fast as they can, then the challenge level remains fairly low over all. A few design choices seem to reveal a somewhat amateur design take on matters. For instance when you take control of the camera pan in game (mouse wheel button held down as is common in many games) you are still also controlling the game mouse cursor. The game should release control of the game cursor whenever the player is taking control of the camera panning motion. Too many examples in too many games for too long now, for an experienced designer to wind up with the implementation they released this game with. So not bad, but maybe not what you're looking for, if a meatier challenge is what you seek in a game.
You probably played this already, but with more depth, and challenge, and some more rational design choices. But if you have not played such settlement style games before this is probably not a bad place to start. If for nothing more than that the other more well fleshed out versions of this genre will be older and so likely less graphically interesting to current audience POVs. But otherwise i can't really say I got anything out of this one, that I ain't already had before in a more robust package. Neither great nor terrible it is basically nothing to bother "writing home about" as the phrase goes.
Generally yes this is a good game, challenging, and mostly fair. I'd recommend it. Here's the critiques. 1: I prefer to get to play my own role style in a character sense(not class). In a PvE MMORPG i would not PvP. So the forced "PvP" fight story turns me off. But as it does not matter if you win or lose, i just got up and walked away to make a snack while the "cut scene" rolled. And in my mind that story and character did not exist. It would be more satisfying for me, to just ignore such a fool and not give them the satisfaction. of my attention or interaction. 2: Can't make sense of control customization plan. Game pad allows only swapping of l/r buttons, nothing else. Keyboard allows full custom (as i would expect of all controls for a PC game). But then no mouse customization. A seemingly arbitrary situation here, what gives? 3: To the designer of the Penguin boss fight. There is a special place reserved in hell for developers that take away the camera in a fight and you can be killed while unable to see yourself or the enemies that are still attacking you off screen. And the save the cargo shipment fight in the desert feels less player agency and more just luck. With many enemies at once and moving on and off the screen. Preventing them from destroying the shipment seemed more luck and need NPC party members help based, than that my efforts mattered much. All in all great work, put just a smidgen more polish on it, and i'd have thought a high exp dev with a fat bag of money made this.
