Recent reviews by Fefe

Dinky Guardians is a mix of crafting and automation, with a mix of tower-defense-elements in between. You start on your first planet, clone your first Dinkies, and give them their first tasks - gather some food and resources and place them in a container.

As you progress, you unlock new technologie through the research lab - such as towers and mines, new resources, or more complex buildings. You’ll eventually get to build a rocket and visit four more planets, with each of them providing new resources as well as another tower-defense-challenge to protect your village.

The goal of the game right now is simple: Fulfill the world goals for each planet, keep your colonies safe, and automate everything.


If you like automation games, this game is for you. While there are a few (very basic) tower defense elements, you don’t have to think about that too much. Place a few towers close to the spawning points of the enemy bases, make sure the is always enough ammo, and you’re good to go.

While crafting is a big part of the game, you’ll only handcraft in the beginning. Later on, you will have to automate as much as possible.


Yes, quite a few. Right now as I am writing this review, the game feels more like an early access version. There are a lot of bugs - not game breaking, but really annoying. For example, if you leave the planet - even if just for a few seconds - everything stops working and you have to manually refill energy a few times. Which should be automated. But it isn’t.

The game is played in 3D, but there is no top-down-view, which makes it really hard to neatly place buildings. And while the game tells you exactly how many of your Dinkies are currently idle, finding a single idle Dinky in your colony is really hard to do since they are walking around and everything gets confusing.

I’ve also encountered a game breaking bug, where the 3rd planet was completely blurred.


It really depends. The game is still being developed as we speak and there are a lot of updates over the past few weeks and months. The game gets better.

So if you don’t mind a few bugs here and there, buying the game now isn’t a bad idea. I had fun for a few hours and I will hopefully have more fun in a few weeks or months. Until then, I will wait for more updates to come.

If you don’t want to be part of the journey, check back in 6 months or so, read through the forum, and find out how far the game has progressed.


Autonauts, Forager, Factory Town, Astro Colony, Dyson Sphere Program, Satisfactory

The DAVE THE DIVER game is fairly unique. It mixes a lot of different genres and borrows ideas from RPGs, exploration, adventure, simulation, but you should also expect a few action sequences sporadically.

You’re playing as Dave - a diver who is exploring the mystic and magical Blue Hole, which has multiple biomes and a different layout every time Dave decides to dive. While you’re mostly catching fishes during the day and manage a Sushi bar at night, you will also have to do a lot of other stuff: Crafting, questing, farming, fish management, and more.

Also, there are a few mini-games that don’t get too repetitive and offer creative variety to the already diverse gameplay.


If you’re into single player indie games with different gaming elements and a great story, DAVE THE DIVER is for you. You can always play on your own pace, because you can’t really permanently fail any quests. You could also ignore the main quest line and instead just explore for as long as you like.

The graphics are great, the humor is entertaining, and the gameplay will easily hold you for 20+ hours.


After the release, there were still a few bugs, which are getting patched as we speak. There are also a few other annoying aspects I personally didn’t like:

Firstly, some boss fights are super-duper easy - to a point where you basically shoot them a few times and dodge their attack maybe once or twice. Other boss fights get harder, but mostly because I wasn’t really sure what to do. So I had to try a few different things before I could kill them, which didn’t feel like great gameplay.

Secondly, especially if you’re trying to go for 100% achievements, the game will get fairly grindy. So expect a lot of farming, a lot of fishing, and a lot of Sushi making.

Thirdly: While the quick time events and button-mashing is interesting the first few hours, it does get annoying later on. There is some variety in which buttons you mash to fish with your harpoon, but still.


Yes. Honestly, unless you don’t like single player games, DAVE THE DIVER is a really great game. You can probably finish it in 20-ish hours, but you can also invest 50+ hours if you want to max out everything. The game is worth its price and I highly recommend playing the game.


Honestly, DAVE THE DIVER is fairly unique. Maybe check out some farming games like Stardew Valley.

Subnautica is a mix of crafting, survival, and story-exploration. In the game, you’re the sole survivor of a spaceship that crashed into an uninhabited planet. From now on you have to survive on an ocean planet by crafting, exploring, and looking out for your water and food intake as well as your oxygen levels. And try to descend deeper into the ocean to unlock new vehicles, building parts, equipment, and even more story.


If you have any interest at all in crafting or exploration or survival, honestly just go ahead and try the game. The atmosphere is a one-of-a-kind experience, the game mechanics are great, the story is interesting, and you can also spend a lot of time with the base-building - if you want to.


You sometimes encounter annoying bugs or glitches, which aren’t game breaking, but still feel stupid. But other than that, I haven’t had any problems with the game.


Yes. It is worth whatever you buy it for. You can easily take 40+ hours for a single run-through. Or 100 hours if you love the exploration of everything.


Breathedge, Green Hell, No Man’s Sky, Subnautica: Below Zero, Planet Crafter, Stranded Deep, Grounded

Breathedge is basically Subnautica, but in space. You’ll start as a lone survivor of a spaceship crash and need to find food, water, and a few resources to craft the basic survival equipment. From there you start exploring your surroundings, find new resources and start crafting better equipment. Later on you also need to build a base and find the truth behind your family and the explosion of the giant spaceship.


If you’re into exploration/survival/crafting games, Breathedge is the game for you. The story starts out strong, the atmosphere is great (at the beginning at least), and it especially the sound feels like you’re stranded in space.


Yes, quite a few: The first two of four chapters are really great, but once you start with base building, things get rough: There are graphical glitches, and once you’ve finished your base, it is basically useless. It feels like a lot of potential is wasted.

In chapter 4, the story also gets really weird and the great humor from before is gone. You also have to walk through artificially enlarged tube systems, which are made to increase the playtime. That’s annoying and simply a bad design choice.


I am not sure. I had fun for the first 25 to 30 hours, but after that the game started to annoy me. If you’ve loved Subnautica 1 and 2, and you can’t wait for the 3rd Subnautica to come out, Breathedge might give you a bit of the atmosphere you’re looking for.

Maybe pick it up in a sale.


Subnautica, Subnautica: Below Zero, Raft, The Forest, Green Hell, Valheim, Stranded Deep, Grounded, The Planet Crafter, No Man’s Sky

Raft is a mix of survival, crafting, and following along a story about how our world might look in the future. You start out on the wide and seemingly endless ocean with only a 2x2 raft and a plastic hook in your hand. From here on you need to start using the surrounding garbage to build more tools, expand your raft, and follow along the storyline of the game.

There are a lot of different islands, tools, and places to explore. Oh, and you also have to deal with Bruce, an ever-respawning shark that will attack your raft, that can be harvested for flesh after killing him, and that will provide some companionship on the endless ocean.


If you like crafting and/or survival games, picking up Raft should be a no-brainer. It has great game mechanics, an interesting story, and is overall more on the casual side of the genre. You can also go for all Steam achievements, which will give you additional challenges and playtime.

It also has multiplayer, so you can play with friends.


There are a few glitches and bugs, but nothing game breaking. Combat can be somewhat annoying from time to time, but I never had any real trouble with the game.


Your first play through can easily take 30+ hours. Playing in multiplayer won’t really be much faster, because you will also need to increase your production of food, water, tools, etc.

I recommend buying the game. It’s great, entertaining, and especially in multiplayer a lot of fun.


Green Hell, Subnautica, The Forest, Breathedge, Stranded Deep, Grounded, The Planet Crafter

Final Upgrade is often described as ‘Factorio in space’ and there are a few similarities. But if you’re coming from Factorio, don’t expect a somewhat similar clone. Instead, the game manages to do its own thing in the automation genre. And you will have to automate a lot of components and resources in order to progress to the later stages. There are also 7 levels of difficulty, which will change the way you need to approach the gameplay.


Honestly, if you’ve played Factorio or similar automation games before, you can find hours of fun in Final Upgrade. It’s less complex than Factorio, but you will need to do some planning and logic puzzles to reach the end goal - which is to have 1 billion people in your faction. If you’re really into space games, you might also enjoy the combat system. Maybe.


For me personally, combat is really annoying. The automated combat sometimes attacks your own ships (yes, there is friendly fire). If you’re using the premade blueprints for new combat ships, your own space ships will look like the enemy’s combat ships, making it annoying and unnecessarily hard to fight enemy factions. It’s also stupid that the more enemy territory you conquer, the more (and stronger) ships the enemy faction will spawn from outside the galaxy to combat your fleet. You can’t really cripple their economy to win the war, while they can easily cripple you.


I don’t know. The automation part is really fun, the technology tree is promising, and without the stupid combat system, I would easily recommend the game to everyone. Sadly, in order to finish a run, you will need to start war with factions to get more space for a bigger population. So combat isn’t something you can just ignore.

Give Final Space a try if you’re really into automation and strategy games. Otherwise, maybe wait for a Steam Sale or an overhaul of the combat system.


Factorio, Mindustry, shapez, Factory Town, Dyson Sphere Program, Autonauts

“Factorio in 3D” - often described that way, Satisfactory is a First-Person-Factory-Automation-Game. You start out mining your first iron ore and copper ore by hand, start crafting your first building for the automation process, and before you know it, you’re 100 hours into the game.

The goal is fairly simple: Feed the space elevator with new and complex items. There are different ways to unlock new stuff. And don’t forget to bring your rifle while exploring the planet, because there are unhappy native creatures out there, looking to eat you.


If you’re into relaxed building/automation games, Satisfactory is the game for you! While the game is still in Early Access, there have been a lot of big content updates, allowing you to easily spend hundreds of hours ingame before you’ll reach the current end.


The combat is fun, but very simple. And as of right now, there are only very few enemies that basically never ever pose a challenge - unless you didn’t bring any weapons or ammo.

Also, as a first-person-game, it is sometimes annoying to place buildings clean and proper - especially if you’re trying to align everything together. And if you like to be as efficient as possible, you will have to produce odd amounts of items in your factory, because not everything in a product chain lines up perfectly.


Yes. The game is great, has a huge value for the time you can spend ingame, and you can also play with up to four players (officially) or even more (unofficially.

If you only want to play it once, though, I recommend waiting for the final release - which can take months or years. There are still big content updates planned. But as of right now, the game already has a lot of content.


Factorio, Astro Colony, Dyson Sphere Program, Final Upgrade, shapez, Autonatus, Factory Town

This game combines elements of crafting, resource management and tower defense. You basically ‘attack’ another planet and defend yourself with towers. Each killed enemy will drop a resource (depending on the planet). Once you’ve finished your mission, you can use those resources at your home base to craft and upgrade stuff. You can even automate all of your crafting.

As of right now, the only goal you have is to get all Steam achievements. There isn’t a final goal in the game, and in theory you can grind even after reaching level 1,000.


Don’t make the mistake and see this game as an actual automation game like Factorio. Instead right now most gameplay is on the tower defense. And even that part of the game isn’t really balanced or polished at all.

So if you’re really into tower defense games, and you don’t mind playing a game with not a lot of content (as of right now), it’s a grindy game to pick up.


The game is still in the very early phases of Early Access. There isn’t a lot of content, most things aren’t really connected, and the maps aren’t hard or challenging. Also, graphically speaking, the game isn’t looking all that great. It looks and plays like a hobby-project.

You will have to play the same map a dozen times, grinding for the resources. And if you’re using the endless mode, you will have a LOT of idle/afk time. Also, sometimes the game crashes and you lose all the progress of the last map you’ve played.


Honestly, unless you want to be part of the early stages of this game, I would recommend waiting for more content. Right now, there aren’t a lot of different things to do, the grind gets boring very fast, and the automation part is minimal at best. Unless you love the grind, like I do, the game isn’t fully there yet.


Mindustry

Shapez is best described as a combination of automation and puzzle. While there are some similarities to Factorio, it is far more on the casual and slow-pace side of things. Each level gives you a certain shape that you have to combine from three different colors and 4 different shapes. As you progress, the required shapes get more complex.


If you’re looking for a causal automation-puzzle that could also be played as an idle game in the background, Shapez is a good pick-up for you. If you’re looking for a more action-heavy game, this game isn’t for you.


Some game mechanics aren’t really explained in the game, making it somewhat annoying to understand how to get certain shapes. Also, after level 26, every new level has a randomized shape required to advance. So while you could keep on playing after level 26, it does get stale fairly quickly.


Honestly, I recommend trying out the (shortish) demo version first. If you like the game, feel free to invest the 10 bucks. Or wait for one of the Steam sales and pick it up for 3 or 4 bucks. The Steam version gives you access to achievements as well as the option to connect to your Itch.io account and play the game inside your browser.


Final Upgrade, Mindustry, Factorio

The game is best described as “Satisfactory, but in space”. You play in a 3D environment and have to start by mining small asteroids per hand. Once you unlock the first new buildings and technologies, you can start automating your first production chains. You can also upgrade your space station and start flying through the galaxy, hopefully avoiding cosmic events like electricity storms, comets, and black holes.

The goal right now is to progress through the tech-tree and eventually build a Stargate onto a black hole, which in return will get you through a wormhole into another universe.


Basically, if you like crafting and automation games, picking up Astro Colony should be a no-brainer for you. The game is still in the early stages of Early Access, but more content is added. So if you liked “Satisfactory”, Astro Colony is the next step!


Yes! The game is still in the early phases of development, so expect some stupid bugs - especially the multiplayer right now isn’t worth your time.

It is also annoying that a lot of functions and ingame-mechanics aren’t really explained in-game. Instead, you will need to use the official Discord server or the Steam forum to find the answers you are looking for.


If you like the automation genre, buying the game should be a no-brainer: A single run-through can easily take 25+ hours, and there is also (some) replayability.

If you’re still unsure, wait for a Steam sale and more updates. But even at full price, the game is still worth the money.


Satisfactory, Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Captain of Industry