I got this in the free offer recently. I thought I'd surprise my mom with it so she could play. She loves Myst, Riven and even tried to like Uru... So, I downloaded the game this morning, moved it to my USB disk, and then to her Macbook Air. After extracting the zip into Applications and starting the game I was told the game is from an "unidentified developer" and could not be opened. Fine, run anyway... (There is a override) Then it got stuck on "verifying obduction" which took 10-20 minutes, only for macOS to again tell me the game could not run because the dev is unknown. And what's up with the zip file saying (in the file name) I have version 1.7.2 but then the actual downloaded file claims 1.7.0. C'mon Cyan, get you shit together... Or is this one of the games puzzles, get a perk if you get the game to run :(
I like the game, played a few games of it over the last few days. Until I realised that this game can't last... I always prefer sandbox/freeplay so I can do what I want, and not follow some silly mission narrative. Or fix some pointless problem I don't care about. But what's the point if every water well runs out and all mines bottoming out at some point mean I can't continue my game - Sigh... The AI/personal placement is lacking too. One colony failed because I couldn't get metals. Fine, place a better dome, right? Wrong! It didn't work, because workers refused to live in the dome for mining. So no jobs would get filled there. Resulting in the whole thing failing. Why wouldn't they live there to save their lives? Because I had a bunch of empty residences elsewhere... You know, upcoming expansion. In the spirit of survival stuff, just like with games like Banished and Planetbase, this is a game breaking flaw. Why is it allowed to NOT operate a mine that is so super vital for the entire base (and thus my games enjoyment) to fail JUST because people prefer to life in housing elsewhere, too far from said mine. C'mon AI. Screw you :( The mysteries are weird, uninteresting, and more annoying than anything else. I dealt with the cube one, which kept breaking buildings in my base without notification. Or purpose other than to make it more difficult for the player. Random events are more annoying than anything else, too... Spend billions on a rocket with all kinds of stuff to save a colony and it explodes on landing... Fine, shit happens... but 2-3 times in a row? Moxies randomly exploding/disappearing without warning? Running out of applicants (on earth) just because the game thinks that's ok? Geez... How can one progress like that... So yea, I'm sure for a whole bunch of people this is a really fun game. And I'll try it again in a few weeks I think. I think it's a good enough game overall. But some flaws and bad luck that ruined it for me this time around.
If all your food production breaks, maintain the damn things. but no, they rather idle around and die. If you really really need plastic, and you have starch. Idle around endlessly instead of using the plastic maker. Because screw progress. If you're a engineer and have bots and machines to operate, lets walk random errands around the base instead of doing the task you should do. That's planetbases infuriatingly stupid AI in a nutshell. It creates a very intolerant and frustrating gaming experience and the amount of times my colony failed because the colonists are just too damn stupid to do their job, prioritise or walk in an efficient route is pretty much every time I tried. But that just make the game more challenging right? No, because the margin of error is so small that there is practically no margin of error. Make one mistake now, see your AI screw up continually and 2-4 hours later you run out of food or ore or something, realising you just played several hours for nothing. All the while pulling out your hair because the AI keeps screwing up. Don't buy this game. Really, don't. It's a waste of money and time of an otherwise potentially great game. Just fix the ret*arded AI and loosen up on the margin of error a little bit. You know, better colony management UI. Some warning system. Or even just a better consumption indicator vs production number in the stocks. Oh why bother, just don't buy this crap game.
This looks like a nice game. Similar to Banished, but with a combat element. Yay! But, the vikings and dragons are a pain to defend against. They just roam around without real purpose breaking your stuff as they go along. They don't loot or actually do anything. So when either comes, it's just annoying and frustrating. With weak defenses and squads to counter it. Maps are smallish and silly. Barren land can not be terraformed to useful farmland. And there is not much usable land for farms overall. Storages are too small once you get going and build options are too few. And to actually build a functional town you have to abandon the common structure/layout you see in real life because workers are walking too slow to where they're supposed to work, wasting resources all the time. Same as in banished, where the farmer lives across town so he spends too little time on his farm because he's walking half the time from and to work, wasting his crop. So, fun game? Sure. It's ok. But after a couple of days and a few games I didn't care for it at all. Tried a few more games without enemies, just to build stuff, but then the maps are too small again...
Absolutely unplayable on my 2012 27" iMac :( 3fps when scrolling, moving the mouse or zooming. Even on medium/low settings. Gonna try the Windows version soon... hopefully that goes better.
