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This game is an interesting shooter, where you need to plan ahead what you are going to do during the next half second. It's a little bit like FTL where in the middle of a fierce fight you can take a moment to actually think what to do. But here time actually flows, just very slowly, also when you stand still, so you still need to think fast, e.g. which way to dodge a bullet that is flying your way. All in all, it's entertaining, at least for a couple of evenings (as there are additional modes after you finish the main game).
The game is a nice point-and-click with interesting riddles and puzzles, but the story is unfortunately could be better, have less strange gaps etc. But overall it was still a nice small game to play, just right for two or three evenings.
In the turn-based combat, the player moves after the opponents plan their attack, but before they actually execute it - it's a brilliant idea which turns almost every turn into a small puzzle by itself - which opponent to push, which to destroy, how to make one opponent shoot another one instead of their desired target. The arsenal of player's weapons is big, different squads have unique characteristics, and different ways of cooperation. Still, there is something more that I expected, and that I didn't find here. A single game is somewhat short (its length actually depends on whether the player wants to complete 2, 3 or 4 islands before attempting the final battle), and somehow, despite the variety I described above, there is something very repeatable in it. For example the structure of the final battle is every time the same. After playing the game once, the levels are not interesting, only the actual situations that occur on the board are (but on the other hand, it's even more true in the game of go or chess). There is the mechs and pilots development mechanics, but somehow it feel a bit weak, maybe it's just because the game is short. And I'm definitely missing the realtime part of FTL. To sum up, definitely worth trying, but don't expect it will give you many, many hours and hours of entertainment. Although it might, it depends on what you like.
You start with just the generator, and at first it's quite obvious what to do - send people for wood and coal. After the minimal base exists, more choices appear. What technology to invest in? Do I want to build hospitals that need crew, or send those people as hunters to get food? How much time should explorers spend outside of the city before finally bringing what they gathered back to the city, where it will be used? These are interesting questions, and the changing temperature creates even more problems, e.g. should I develop the technology to get more coal, or rather to get more heating? But more heating uses more coal, so... Use automatons to get coal, or better workers, who work faster, but only during working hous? Force them to work 24h? Interesting! There are however disadvantages to this game, let me mention some: - I hate socialism, and there's a lot of socialistic thinking in this game. Imagine this: the city is starving, just before midnight hunters finally arrive with food, but it needs cooking. But the kitchen won't open before 8:00 BECAUSE IT'S NOT THEIR WORKING HOURS! Can you imagine this situation in reality? And if I force them to get to work immediately, everyone gets very angry, instead of happy for getting the freaking food. There are multiple socialistic absurdities like this, as if it was a big factory and all the money was going into my pocket. No, guys, we are fighting to survive, stop complaining and get the heck to work, or just go find another city. - There are some unpolished edges in the mechanics, e.g. I promised high temperatures at homes for 2 days, but it dropped below that level FOR LITERALLY TEN GAME-MINUTES, but folks already got very angry at me and I failed the task. Many similar things. - Current technology not highlighted when selected, but not yet worked on, because it's night. I was confused at first. - On my laptop the framerate drops sometimes even on low graphics, worse than on other games, the game also crashed once.