Tunguska is the kind of game to easily get obsessed with if you let it. First impressions might make you notice its shortcomings more easily and think it’s clunky. But you will also notice the wealth of options and ways you can play with it differently. It’s a wonderful light RPG survival game where you’re thrown in the middle of nowhere and you need to manage while moving the story forward. Items and ammo are not easy to come by at first, travelling takes energy and you have to watch out for anomalies, mutants and rival factions. You can harvest crops/loot, craft stuff, make serums and make sure you have enough weight/space to carry out your objectives. There is a tutorial after a set of actions, just enough to inform you on the basics but you still need to figure enough on your own too. It strikes a good balance of being approachable if you take the time to read but it doesn’t handhold the player either. The sense of exploration, experimentation, management and economy is incredibly satisfying. There is a lot of detail with even minor things, the world is alive & breathing, the story beats are enough to keep you going without being too much and they’re pretty engaging if you’re okay with mostly a text format.

There are a few shortcomings but there are also solutions to minimise some of them. So the clunky impression mostly comes from fights, aiming with your weapon when using mouse and keyboard in particular. The default settings have manual aiming but this can be changed to automatic and it makes things muuuuuuch better. The inventory management can get out of hand, it became very tedious on my second run. Then I found out late that you can use an item that is NOT a consumable, it should drastically improve this aspect but I haven’t gotten around to use it much to confirm with certainty. Then there is the completionist aspect if you want to get all the achievements. Keep in mind that you will at least need to complete the game 4 times (most likely 5 times if you don’t get the no damage run on your first playthrough) and you’ll need to buy 2 DLC to get all the achievements. They cost around €7-8 when they’re on sale together. So in terms of time and money investment, that’s quite a high barrier and I’m absolutely not a fan of that normally. I’ve completed the game twice now and I’m planning on playing 3 more times after getting the DLC. I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about the game after playing it 5 times but I’m still super excited so far. With the price, I find it easy to justify personally. Not only did I get a great game, but I can say with confidence that Tunguska is the most supported game I have experienced when it comes to indies at the very least. The game has been getting updates for 4 years and often on a weekly basis without a break. The developer listens a lot and he added so many requests that feel like they were always part of the game. In fact, I still hang out on the game’s discord and the developer fixed a bug I mentioned while I was playing the game. He’s truly dedicated and amazing. I’m going to go out of my way to get all the remaining DLC (not just the 2 for the achievements) while knowing that I’m in good hands.

If it’s not clear yet, Tunguska is a great game that I highly recommend. It’s not without some flaws, so you need to find out if you care enough about them. But if you like what the game is trying to do, the slower and careful approach, then you’ll definitely have a good time. It took me 57 hours to complete the game extensively 2 times and I’m planning on leaving reviews for the DLC when I complete them.

Fun game, definitely a bit unique. Good deal for the price

Steam keeps pestering me to leave a review, so here's a negative one. I'll be leaving the same rating for every game steam pesters me to review.

Response to dev:

In short: I've paid for the game and I don't "owe" Steam a review, so if they're going to be annoying and petty about making me write one, I'm going to be annoying and petty right back!

Longer: Because otherwise Steam keeps giving me an annoying popup every time I go to start the game, and even if I dismiss it it'll pop up again. I've barely even played the game, there's no way I can give a "proper review" after just four hours of gameplay. When/if I get to finishing the game I'll most likely edit my review, but until Steam adds a "Stop pestering me." option to disable the annoying pop up - this is the only way I can "fight back".