No fun to play with larger bases: Tradeships are death sentences as the AI has probably no priorities towards staying alive (food, water and o2 needs are seemingly the same priority as working = people just die). Reshaping your Base is a pain in the ass due to the connection mechanics. If you want to get up the sweet new blueprints for energy production you have to build redundant circles. Resource economy is atrocious, you are constantly scraping for resources as you can only passively prioritize the actually needed resource production. This game is easily in the top 3 of the worst (resource management) games I've ever played.
Another lazy programmer mistaking a to-do list as a game, just because you can click stuff and have some graphics. The controls are frustrating at some points, the limitations of top-down-view are clear as water. There is no progress, you can check off to-do-lists to get upgrade points, which don't actually change the way you play the game. You always do the same stuff in the beginning and in the end. Less "challenges", collectibles, jumps and races and more functions/story would make this a nice little gem. But what makes Triple-A-Games tedious sure as hell makes a B-List-Game tedious as well. Boring & uninspired.
Cons: - missing depth, playing for cosmetic items instead of new possibilties to play the game/optimize your playstyle - partly unbalanced, e.g. some minions have maxed out level in a couple of weeks, hardly ever level up - redundant (or even obsolete) mechanics, e.g. production, which comes with slight bonuses or gold, you need neither - stupid mechanics, e.g. creating a bottleneck due to the "payday"-mechanic - mechanics don't build up on one another, they only coexist - often missing crucial information regarding your minions - no reasearch, progress is solely reputation-based, no feeling of exploration - no challenge, enemies are weak, minions are easily replaceable - too many different minions, there is no progress or need for training. Every job needs exact one specific minion, if they level up they just do their jobs slightly better and cost more gold - raids (world map) are literally just text-based rewards with a probility to fail and no noteworthy loot - rudimentary amount of animations (srly...thats half of the fun in games like this: watching your minions do things in a stupid way) - rudimentary amount of traps (thats the other half of the fun) Feels more like a mobile game for time-wasting. Pros: - Funny, sometimes even hilarious - looks nice - the idea is great - lots of potential It's actually 2,5 out of 5 stars, rounded down to 2 stars. If you're looking for a decent (Dungeon) Management Game, rather go for Fallout Shelter, Evil Genius 1 (even 2 is better and this was...ugh), Dungeon Keeper, Dungeons (all 3 are at least mediocre and better than this) or as an Indie-Alternative Shelter 1&2. If you want to have them all and don't mind repetitive gameplay, go for it in sale. I love the idea, I love the setting, but I was deeply disappointed by the lack of progress.
I played it for a couple of hours and all I did was staring at my money going upwards. But not because of the movies I created, but the other companies I bought shares in. The Movies I create might differ in title, genre and plotcards, but there is literally no distinction between them at all. They make money, you might win an award....thats it. The procedurally generated posters kinda look nice though. And the clicking...oh so much clicking in a clunky UI... Except for the research, everything in the game does not feel rewarding in the slightest bit: There is no progress, no new game mechanics to discover or use. The few things you get are solely for tweaking the two numbers, that establish the quality of your movies. The Skilltree of your writers and directors (yep, thats it, thats your whole staff) is neglectable, everyone has the same couple of skills. So...this game is basically for people, who have done everything else in their life.
I would give 2,5 Stars, cause this game definitively has potential. Unfortunatelly it does not deliver on that. In short: All you have to do is crunching your numbers up. Action Points are completely off-balanced, you will literally run out of time before you run out of Action Points. After a while (or by powergaming some mechanics) Money will come to you easily too. There are no setbacks or independencies, where you have to decide, what to prioritize: AP, Money, Natural Resources. Diplomacy might look fun, but even for local powers war brings you way faster to your goals, especially the resource-heavy ones. Once you realize, how this game works, all you do is pushing your numbers up through projects and buildings. The Events are merely a funny distraction without any impact. Even though a lot of this game is explained in tool-tips, some things just leave you wondering. For example, I stopped playing, cause my parliament would not allow one project I need to get to my goal, even though they were lobbied (you just buy them, basically, for a short amount of time). There was no explanation why this specific project was not possible. All other projects, I needed to lobby for, were accepted without problems. It seems, that this game was rushed and put together without much thought about what players can be offered. It tries to be a combination of Diplomacy and the combat system of Europa Universalis/Hearts of Iron, while lacking massively in both parts.
Another game that confuses grinding numbers with depth (as so many players). Only because a game gives you a lot to do, it does not mean it has a lot of content... Maybe I should have played more than the first few battles, but the ground-combat, which is mostly the main part of this game, feels totally boring. Different weapons? Don't matter, just kill stuff. Usable Skills? Don't matter, you just get more DMG. Perks? You get more DMG. Combos/Interdependencies (which skills/perks combined gives you an advantage in which situation)? Not in the game and wouldn't matter, just do more DMG to kil stuff. The rest is just grinding to get your numbers up to unlock new weapons and they do what? Yeah you guessed right: more dmg. Space Combat is as boring as in Starpoint Gemini: Figure out how you can play then rinse and repeat. Over and over and over and over again. The problem with procedurally generated worlds/games is, that you have to put in content that's not just repeatable. There must be a clear goal and subgoals, which are fun to achieve or at least challenging. I know, this is an Beta, but after 6 years of developement, I still encountered a "need-to-reload"-bug cause of clipping in the third (!) visited area, something an isometric RPG should not really have any trouble with, ever. If you like to just grind like in 25 years old RPGs and repeat doing the same stuff over and over again, go for it. These who hope for something similar like Wasteland/Atom RPG, this is hardly for you. Maybe in a couple of years.
Short and hurtful: Getting errors on game start, leading to instant crashes. I could circumvent it somehow (tried as admin, in compatible mode etc.) by just ignoring the error/crash message and swapping to the game menu with alt+tab. Tutorial does not deserve the name, it explains basically: you can look around by looking around. After the first expedition one of my family members could not be selected anymore, so I stopped playing. I get it, that survival games should be hard, but most ease you in on start by giving you some easy accessible items. This one not only fails to do so, but actually I got nothing from my first expedition. I don't mind the eye-cancer graphics, which probably should simulate "retro-style", but these starting problems and the unneccesarily clunky UI made me stop wasting my time on this. Not even worth in sale, in my opinion.
First off, I know, that this demo is an alpha build, barely scratching what the developers probably trying to achieve. I still want to give some criticism, which I believe should have been considered BEFORE bringing out a demo. The starting mission to pay off like double your starting money is rather harsh, doable, but harsh. You have to follow a specific path (only promise 50k to bribe, pay off the other guy with 50k, then accumulate 50k while by basically just waiting) or just ignore it, cause the bribe-guy will only destroy a couple of buildings, which are way cheaper than 50/100k. Still, it just don't sit right as a glimpse of missions you will expect from this game. But the main problem are the logistics, first they are unnecessarily complicated: You have to drive your weed to the warehouse, from there to the lab to dry it, back to the warehouse, to the packaging station and finally to the aerodrome/port. Then you have to pick up the money there and guess where it goes? Right, back to the warehouse. Later you will unlock some buildings, which will skip some of the trips, by connecting two or more locations directly...but still, that's a lot of driving around. In second you cannot change the production quantity. That means, you will not only have an inefficient production line, but the police will try to shut down buildings with a full stock. So you have to use your lieutenants to micromanage your production line(s). Let alone, that every production building is producing materials at higher speed than some of the processing buildings can handle... Last, you cannot properly organize, which of the selling buildings will be supplied. If they are in range of your packaging station, they will be supplied. But I'd rather want one packaging station, which hides drugs in vegetables only delivering to the port, cause the aerodrome can sell unhidden drugs. Right now, I won't play the demo, let alone buy the game. The potential is there though.
If you want people to focus on the (not really existent) "story", maybe give a little bit more time. It's the indie-pendant to a facebook/browser-clicking-game. There are no consequences to your deeds, only that you get a game-over, if you run out of money. And that's basically everything there is about your work: Either you get (enough) money or not, this is it. Not a particular interesting mechanic. Plus the graphics and UI is just hideous, especially when the game wants you to compare pixels... Reviews are mostly made by hipsters, just celebrating things, that are different instead of good.
I really tried to like this game and with my newfound addiction to turn-based strategic games, I figured this one would not be so much off the mark. Unfortunately this was not the case. I don't mind the mixture of a top-down-shooter, where you can aim yourself and the real-time strategy, where you can issue commands to the entire team in succession. It's a rather unorthodox approach, which has great potential but not the way this game delivers. It's either too speedy/risky or too tedious. The fights are always the same, there are basically 3 types of enemies: human mercenaries, zombie-mob and special zombies. The latter two can get killed by the same tactic, the former too, if you don't mind healing your team afterwards. The maps are big, but there is nothing there except for some loot, which becomes obsolete, because you level up your weapons anyways with a currency, you get from killing zombies and scrapping your loot. The RPG-Part, where you level your soldier and unlock new skills, would be nice, if you actually needed these skills. You don't, see above. The story is nearly non-existent, which would be totally fine, if you had a decent gameplay-experience, which you don't, see above. I can see, what the devs were trying to do, I actually found the gameplay-mix a refreshing experiment, but only for an hour or two. Overall, they threw in way too many different approaches without fleshing out any parcticular strengths or combine the elements to a fitting experience. It's a shame to say, but this game is rather disapointing.
