Recent reviews by Athoros

This game is a lot better than I expected. I expected factorio-lite. Which it kind of is. But there's also way more combat and war-based expansion. The campaign reminds me of besiege a bit, but more open-ended. And you can lose sectors. I thought I had sectors locked down for good and later had my teeth absolutely kicked in by a random invasion. I really like that, it doesn't feel stale to progress. Genuinely feels like you need to make smart design choices and stay on your toes.

I also really love how many unit types there are, and what all they can do. That was a surprise. You can get sneaky with some of the drones and get a full base up and running very quickly. You can also have units complementing other units, & block based systems. It all ties in very nicely. Would like to see more content for that type of stuff, as there aren't a lot of games out there that have that.

Also random note that I really like a lot of the sound design. Didn't expect myself to get so much satisfaction from watching my pixel guns go off, but the sound of a line of ripple's tearing into something is just *mm*

Main thoughts for the future is it would be cool to have a more realistic campaign type. I like the mechanics to defending. But I feel the waves system doesn't fit as well for offense. When I try to invade a sector with an active enemy base, I feel it should go a little reversed. Meaning, initially they are hitting you hard with existing units and trying to push you out. They are repairing and using real/finite resources like another player would. You have to battle that to take the sector.

But that's my .02.

Overall the game is great and I'm milking way more fun out of it than I expected to. Great job dev(s).

One of my favorite games of all time. If you haven't played through vanilla you definitely should.

Reason for the not recommended is simple - Main appeal to this game for most people I know is modded servers. Dev's issue no version control and update the game incessantly for hot fixes. This makes it literally impossible to manage a modded server. Things break constantly without notice and there is nothing you can do to stop it happening. Read the comments on every patch update and look at people complaining of it breaking their game. Steam forces you to update if you're on the latest branch, and they don't post older versions for us to be able to use.

It's a really simple issue to solve and the fact they keep ignoring the modding community has really started to get under my skin. There are a ton of amazing mods out there that a lot of people have put tons of work into, and they're making it way more difficult for both the mod authors and the players than it needs to be.

Every game I've played before that has a large mod community lets you choose the version you're downloading. We all appreciate the continued work on the game, but it kind of defeats the point when it prevents us playing it. Just let me click a box so that my files aren't being messed with and I'm not constantly fixing issues... that is all.. please...

Mistlands/ Ashlands update: Yeah I may be done with this game. 1,300+ hours, this game was one of my favorite games of all time. But these biomes are just not fun. It's not about difficulty, I love a challenge. It's just poor design and tedium. I like the final boss in ashlands. I was also one of the few to not completely hate the mistlands boss. But the biomes themselves are just not good, and not inline with what the rest of this game is.

Furthermore, I feel this ties in with my main point. The modding community has done more to make this game better than the devs have. And the devs seemingly go out of their way to make life difficult for modders & people who play modded copies. What I said above about appreciating the continued work.. yeah not anymore, really. Honestly I'm at a point where I feel like I wish the devs would just stop and let the mod community take over. Most of the content I enjoy the most is because of mods, but It's become more work than it's worth what with everything breaking constantly from hotfixes.

I'm not down with the direction they've taken this game. And I probably won't come back for deep north, because I don't want to grind through mistlands/ashlands again, ever.

Extremely impressed...

Bad: Some glitches, I'm having a memory leak or something every so often. Frames drop to basically 0 and only way to fix is to alt tab for a minute and bring it back. Also the old glitch of the water sound when cannibals chase you is still there.

Good: Attention to detail is just wow... I stared at the tide coming and going for longer than I care to admit. This is definitely not just a reskinned forest, it's a whole new deal.

Construction has been rethought. It's way more interactive and I love it. I used to do bushcraft stuff for fun irl and this is by far the closest it's ever felt in a game to the real life thing. Yes they removed boats as far as I can tell, but there are more ground structures. And honestly I think that was probably a good move, boats kinda felt like cheating imo.

Also side note is that having some access to guns is nice. Ammo is limited so far, so you'll still be poking stuff, but it is nice to actually have a real weapon without having to scrounge the island for a POS pistol with no ammo...

On the index, this was so janky I would call it unplayable in VR. I don't understand the reviews. Maybe it's better in flat version, but the glitches and inability to interface stuff was crippling.

Novel idea and thoroughly enjoyable experience. Short playtime, but I'm really hoping for more content. Right now I think there's a good balance between humor and dystopian lore, but I hope there's more of a push towards the latter in the future, personally.

Awesome value, especially on sale. Though not perfect, it's obvious that a lot of thought went into this. This game, for me, is a perfect balance between active playing and idle progression. I like to play it while I work, so that I can get some work done while things progress without my involvement, then go update things as needed when I take a break.
These types of games really help my productivity. If anyone knows of other games that are similar to this and worth the time, I'd appreciate any recommendations.

Elegantly simple, yet surprisingly challenging, puzzle game. Wonderful value.

I play a lot of games in VR, and a lot of flight games also. Everything from Star Citizen to E:D to DCS.

This is my favorite VR game at the time of writing. I don't say that lightly. I gobble up every game I can get my hands on, but there's just nothing like this. A really polished flight sim with the controls in game. Completely eliminating the need for a HOTAS setup.

Also, crazy concept, it actually teaches you how to play the game. This is much more accessible than DCS, and doesn't require you to spend time on youtube before you're having fun. There are training missions that ease you into the basics.

The cockpit design, to me, is the greatest feature of this game. Flying other sims with real world gear is great... but this is better. Being able to actually reach out and flip switches and hit buttons is just so amazingly satisfying. I hope that development is continued on this for a long time, because it's already amazing.

This is surprisingly great, especially for the price. It's a bit difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it it's a real treat, especially with the pro kite. As with anything VR, it's hard to explain why the mechanics work. It just feels really good to do.

Just wanted to toss my review into the pile of positives here. This is a lot of fun, and despite current locomotion issues it's shaping up to be quite a gem. I'm definitely happy with my investment and I can't wait to see what else is in store for the future of this game.