I'm not too far into the game, but it's definitely fun and worth the purchase. The only thing is that certain character sprites seem to be detailed uprendered versions and others are a blurry mess. What gives? And more importantly, when you use a controller, the game doesn't translate the input to show the controller buttons. It still shows the keyboard keys. I'm glad GOG conserved this game, but a little more work would have gone a long way.
In an outer system where everyone's entire lives are controlled by a corporation, you are given a ship and a gun to do as you like. I'm doing a standard everyone's hero playthrough, but I can see this game being really fun playing as a murder hobo, too. The writing is fun in a quirky way, gameplay is standard for the genre, and so far I'm enjoying the heck out of it. My only complaint is that the view distance is way too upclose and I've had to fiddle with the field of view slider. I experienced some nausea while playing this. I normally don't, having played first-person games since Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM. But, you get used to it and the game is worth the mild discomfort. Highly recommended!
This review is based on the pre-release demo. The game looks beautiful, has wonderful music, and the vertical building aspect is certainly novel, but it's a bit lacking when it comes to gameplay. Without the option to rotate buildings and preplan layouts, it taking a step back too far for the genre. There is also no base resource which means you can just build any building as much as you want. It removes resource scarcity from the game, making things far less challenging. The game seems to want to just let you build and focus on the supply-demand balancing act part of city builders and not much else. But then, there is the avalanche system, which destroys large swaths of your city. This part confuses me because the rest of the game feels very casual and laid back, but then an avalanche wiping out your city is severely punishing. It's two extremes of gameplay and creates a stark dissonance without reason. After an avalanche, what is there left to do but rebuild the buildings that were destroyed? You don't have to worry about not having enough wood/stone/metal to rebuild, so it's literally just replacing them. It seems pointless and just there to provide an illusion of challenge. Maybe there will be more in the full release, but at the moment, the game is just meh.
It's basically solitaire with a twist. The core concept of the game is amusing. Match cards in ascending or descending order to charge your actions. The more you match in one turn, the more combo points you rack up, which boosts your actions. Simple. But, that's where the game falls short. It doesn't know whether it wants you to play your actions or go for combos. You charge actions (attack, spell, defend) by picking up cards of the same color (attack = yellow, spell = orange, defend = blue.) But once the action is charged (i.e. 3 yellow cards for basic attack,) additional cards of that color that you pick up go to waste. But, since that's how you build up your combo points, you're left with two choices: 1) Use the action as soon as it charges, which is weak and ends the turn, but at least you have more options next round, or 2) Build up your combo points for a boost, but then be left with meager pickings next round. It's a lose-lose situation. Another big issue is that practically everything ends the turn. Play an action, ends the turn. Use an item, ends the turn. Run out of cards to pick up, ends the turn. Reset the board, ends the turn. The core gameplay is picking up cards, but once you do, you don't have much to do other than end the turn. And honestly, all of this wouldn't be all that bad if it weren't for the fact that the game solely relies on full RNG. While a handful of cards are faced up, the rest are faced down in stacks and you have no idea what the next card will be. You can't strategize and plan out your next turns, only pray to RNG-esus for one playable card. I have had battles that took me 7 turns to win, but on a retry, only took me 2 turns. All based on pure luck. This isn't a good mechanic for a tactical card game. There are easy ways to fix it and improve gameplay. I'm honestly surprised it was released this way, but I guess that's also why is giving it away for free.
It feels so underbaked. You could tell that the dev team was inspired by various roguelikes and tried their hardest to piece together some of the best features. Unit talent tree with specializations, various weapons with mod slots, the ability to actively scan nearby areas, quick dungeon crawls with the ability to leave and return, in-dungeon quests and bounties, and more. In theory, yes, all of these features should come together to provide an unbelievable roguelike experience, but this game fails in the execution. This is one of those indie games that would have heavily benefited from being overseen by a respectable publisher, like let's say Paradox. So much of this game falls flat or comes up short that it screams amateur. Be it something as small as how long attack sequences linger on the screen to something obvious like pressing the Escape key doesn't back you out of the active menu (it brings up the system menu) or dragging a mod out of the slot doesn't unequip it (you have to double left-click it?!) But the biggest issue is exploring each derelict ship, or let's put "explore" in quotations. You spend all of your time in the "scanner" map where you click boxes until something happens. You get zero sense of walking through an abandoned spaceship in the dead of space. Zero ambiance, zero tension, zero thrill. Even when you enter an irradiated or poisoned box, you can walk through completely unscathed. It's not a bad game, but it's not a good game either. It could have used some significant tightening up and oversight by experienced advisors to make it into a worthwhile game. As it is, I've only gotten 4-5 hours of gameplay before the realization of boredom set in. But, I also got the game for free from a GOG giveaway, so I don't feel as salty about it as I would have had I actually paid for a copy. So maybe this is a 2-star review rather than 3.
This is the first Steamworld game that I played. In terms of a deck building game, it's pretty average. You're limited to 8 cards per character and vulnerabilities and resistances are common, so you really have to pay attention to what you're carrying into a fight. The game world is somewhat elementary, the humor a bit too on the nose, and the characters very cliche, but it all comes together in an entertaining way. I've been enjoying my playthrough for the most part, but there are some glaring flaws in the UI design and game mechanics that make me wonder whether or not the dev team playtested it at all. The UI itself is horrendous. It's like they didn't know whether to make the game touchscreen friendly, all mouse-only, or all keyboard-only. The result is a horrible experience where a lot of the interactions don't make sense. One example is in the menu, right clicking takes you to back a screen, which is annoying when you're deck building and right click a card to remove it only to exit the deck screen. There are also inconsistencies like switching between heroes in the game world is Q/E but Page Up/Down (?!?) in the deck building screen. Who uses Page Up/Down when playing a M&KB game? And then there's the gameplay itself. By default, you can only have 6 cards max with 2 redraw cards per round. Each turn, you draw back up to 6 cards. It you didn't play any last turn, you draw nothing. Some cards require energy, which is generated by playing basic cards. Without basic cards or energy, you can only redraw 2 cards or end the turn. The problem arises when two of the three members of your party go down and their cards are stuck in your hand. You can't play them and trying to redraw basic cards for the live character is unlikely, which means certain TPK in a big fight. A simple discard system or free energy when you don't play any cards would have been an obvious solution. I could say so much more but I hit the review character limit. Only buy this on a deep discount.
