A very good game design sadly weakened by a poor AI and a lack of multiplayer. Multiplayer IS available... just the players aren't. The missions have optional objectives will provide the hours of fun to make this game rewarding. Skirmish mode has a few more hours but the maps are fixed and even at its hardest, the AI simply won't be able to challenge you once you survive the initial onslaught. This is a great game to pick up and consider, a steal if you get it on sale.
Reworked and re-released. It was has wonderful tactical depth, but I'm curious about some audio and UI choices that could have been updated while stay keeping the theme with the original retro.
Love this old indie game, unfortunately the developer had to step away so the bugs that are in remain. But it's a fun one when you want a light simulator of guiding your gnomes to survive; digging out the earth and farming the surface while holding out against animals, goblins, and other critters.
Had fun playing this as a kid, great dose of nostalgia.
I'm going to agree with another review, this is a puzzle game with an RNG. It gets billed as a 4X with everything but the eXtermination. That is a bad billing. TL;DR: If you're a min maxer or hate RNG, avoid this game like the plague. If you don't mind the game punishing you for not seeing over the horizon, and like just trying to put things together, I think it's a good fit for you. I love it, and I loathe it. Thus the middle road review; hopefully this will let those of you who will love it find it and those of you who will hate it, do something else. The game play is this; there is an area of "explored" space that opens up around the starting wormhole and any settled planets. You launch probes at these "signal" spheres that remain to reveal them for what type of planet they are. Then you start settling planets and connecting them to form trade routes and (hopefully) satisfy their needs. If it doesn't work for you, there is a rewind button that restores time and puts it back to before things. So far, so good, I love it. But the rewind kicker? You can't have revealed new information. Forgot to check your council and belatedly do so? Half a second later, you'll be kicking yourself for not rewinding to when they offered their tasks. This throws me out of the flow so hard I get whiplash. Settle a planet at the edge of known space just so that you can expand? Better hope you guessed what the RNG is going to throw at you or that planet may suffer from no resources that it can import. Seen those fancy tech bypass tricks and things? I hope you're not waiting on them at the start of your empire, because by the time you unlock, you'll be working on an entirely different area and racing the clock. This game pulls hard on the desire to min-max, and then cuffs you upside the head when you try. Play for the zen, for the fun, for the novel.
