This game is pretty good, it gave us either mouse control or keyboard control and let us bind the keys if we felt that it doesn't fit our playstyle. I actually having fun playing this game since this game is easy to mold into our playstyle so much. You ended up with tapping keyboards pretty fast. BUT My personal problem with this game, is the panic moments during rush hours. This is maybe the game that gave me good perspective of how it feels working as a wagey under an asshole manager that refuse to employ extra worker to help me out. So here I am trying to wash the dishes as fast as I can but 4 customers left because no one tending the cashier and fryer. I want to strangle that customer who ordered a large cup of WATER (No wonder most fast foods are providing self service drink). I was too panicked to see the orders are and running out of time to notice that my fried chicken was overcooked. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CAN YOU JUST FLUSH THAT FURSHLUGGINER TOILET!? it's not that hard just push that one button and leave with your decency intact. So yeah, 4 out 5 stars. Love this game, I'm just an idiot.
So I purchased this game with discounted price. I never play this board game before and I must say it's actually pretty fun even for solo player. The tutorial is not really helpful but it only took me 2 games (1 tutorial and 1 game) to understand the basic rules of the game. I deducted 1 star because whI only received a single map and it require me to purchase a boat load of DLCs to get different maps. Why not giving first time purchaser more than 1 map? Maybe 3 maps will be sufficient. It will help new buyers to see if it's worth it to get the DLCs as well.
So I knew the developer of this game from their older game series "The Cube" where they deliver surrealistic horror point and click games, The older games are simpler (probably due to cost) but this one is obviously way longer but still affordable in price. Even though the game follow the typical David Lynch-esque horror style but the puzzles are surprisingly easy to understand and they even peppered us with a lot of hints all over the place. Even parts where it's just too weird the game pointing it out to us just to make sure we don't stuck in weird limbo (We literally get mushroom for cooking ingredient after Mr Owl called us to check his painting, no worries it's not a spoiler, just part of the early game). Even though I only played the first night so far, but I must say the dreaded pixel hunting problem that plagued many point and click games are nowhere to be found. But you still need to complete the conversation and taking visual hints littered all over the game. And the game challenged us to complete each night by being thorough. For just $2 (or even $1 as I purchased this game at a discounted price) this game worth a try and maybe can fulfill your point and click itch. Oh, and when in Mr Rabbit's room, try clicking on the window.
I purchased the digital deluxe season pass during GOG summer sales rather than space colony package (because it's just giving me the basic version) and I think it's the best choice I ever did. This game alone gave me hours of fun managing my colony on Mars. The type of "I started at 9 in the morning and where the sun goes?" kind of game. Sure it's started kinda slow in the beginning but it start to pacing is better as your colony is up and running. The limited resources is difficulty is a toss up between easy and hard. Some resources can be imported from earth but at later game when very important resource like water is depleted you need to find other source ASAP and the right research to get new source of water due to large amount of water demands. The natural disasters also gave you a good enough challenge (and I got both sandstorm and meteor shower at the same time). Even with all those challenges the game gave me advanced warnings so if something wrong happened it's my own fault (no, this is not the dark soul of city building game, that title still held by Dwarf Fortress) so as long I anticipate the warnings I can reduce or stop the problem. The only time I effed bad was during water crisis during sandstorm and meteor shower combo event and people died of dehydration. Enough with the praise and let's talk about the cons. The game is great but there's still problems that bother me. The first one is the dome interconnectivity. Sure domes can connect via tunnels but turn out there's also area of influence for each dome so people refused to live in domes a bit too far away and it's hard when some domes are pretty cramped during the last part of the game, Regarding birth rate of Martians even though I knew it's a small amount of people in the colony but I felt that they are less sexually active and Martian born kids are so low in number I had to keep recruiting people from earth to man many facilities even during late game where I have big enough population.
So I bought this game at a discount even when I'm aware of the reviews for this game. I thought as a hardcore detective genre fan for the like of Poirot, Holmes, Edogawa, etc I can tolerate the shortcomings of this game. I was wrong. First of all I actually never read the ABC murder so I came to this game pretty fresh storywise but in the end it's it's still pretty underwhelming and the plot twist can be seen from a mile away. It's like the screenwriter for this game watched too much BBC's Sherlock and trying to be clever like the series but ended up with half baked story. For the gameplay, it also felt underwhelming. The puzzles are too easy and felt unnecessary. Hercule Poirot, compared to Sherlock rely more on dialogues and character buildings to create the mystery and twists. For them to use cheap easy puzzles to pad this game felt a bit too insulting for Poirot fans (except the grey cells part). And don't forget about the character interface. It felt like cheap mobile game where we are required to find some stuff by tapping around. Also Poirot looks like an awkward penguin when he's walking around. For God sake people Poirot is kinda portly but not overwhelmingly fat! The replayability is weak. The game keep reminding me that it got 50 trophies to gain but to be honest after finishing the game I have no desire to replay the game again. There's no smart or witty dialogue to keep me interested and Hastings and Poirot banter was supposed to be the glue that keep reader to stay. But in this game Hastings sounds like a spoiled teen. On the other hand pros are: Great artwork for this game, great dubbing and the grey cell part actually a highlight for this game as it's actually a good way to show how Poirot mind work. This is why I still give it 3 stars than 2 stars. If felt like I'm watching a TV movie about the ABC murder story. It's just okay and you can see the budget limitation everywhere.
