I absolutely adore this game. Guess it ticks all the right boxes for me! This is a space agency simulator, more akin to a management sim, rather than a space flight simulator (which it's not, at all!). It has a tight gameplay loop surrounding taking your space agency through various milestones in space exploration across history, from first rocket flights, through to manned missions to Mars. Along the way you make decisions as to which areas you'll research across missions, support buildings and rocket technology, which missions to fly, juggle rocket designs and contractors balancing cost to reliability, and optionally engage in a mission puzzle mini-game where you try to maximize the mission potential. While in easy and even normal difficulty this is largely little more than mindlessly progressing through goals in a very linear fashion, achieving success in the harder difficulties requires just enough planning and engagement to make it rewarding without being a chore. If you're a fan of the space programs and looking something relatively easy to pickup as opposed to a hardcore rocket simulation, this is a really fun title!
Great game! Looks lovely, great sound effects, and a pretty and functional UI. It'll keep you coming back again and again to master. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much replay value. The first time you complete the main story will pretty much be the last time you play that. There are additional scenarios to play, but likewise once mastered, there's no value to retrying them either. The RNG of scouting events might make it easier or harder on another playthrough, but it's not going to affect the outcome, coming down to an ultimate absolute win or absolute loss (for example, losing a scenario where you have to gather 8000 coal by a certain date, and the game failing as a loss and you all dying because you only collected 7950 by that date). Once you've achieved the win, there's not a lot to keep you coming back to get that same win again. For the price, I'd want to see a much longer campaign, and hope to see future expansions of this title to keep the interest levels up!
