Recent reviews by Alfred E. Neuman

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

An interesting concept that attempts to replicate the type of story told through the novel 'All Quiet on the Western Front' hence the similarities of the names.

The commanding officer proves to be comically villainous to the detriment of the story. For what I hoped would be an educational experience, it continues to push the 'lions lead by donkeys' narrative with the enlisted man worked like a dog while the officer lounges in his tent and relays near-suicidal orders from up top during offensives.

The combat is an OK abstraction but repeats a lot of tropes: you will be ordered to charge machine gun nests; you will have artillery landing on your own soldiers; you will be made to engage manned trenchlines. On the other hand, you will not be made to wear steel helmets to protect you from debris; you will not follow a creeping barrage; you will not be assisted by aerial reconnaissance in taking objectives; and you most definitely will not reach the enemy's trenchline and find out that taking it was never the problem - holding it while supplies and reinforcements try to navigate No Man's Land which is zeroed in by enemy artillery is.

The controls for your soldiers in combat are insufficient too. Your squad, much like the armies of 1914, have to move as a cohesive formation, greatly limiting your options. This persists until the end of the game in 1916, so I'm certain it's a gameplay limitation and not actually making a statement on the evolution of tactics by way of delegation to fireteams. This means even basic maneuvers like flanking a machine gun position are not possible, so when you inevitably take a loss it results in frustration at the engine rather than feeling shocked that my six man blob had somebody gunned down.

What you're left with, then, is the stories told while in the trenches or in the camp behind lines. And I can't help but feel these stories sit as what somebody's idea of World War 1 is rather than the reality of it. Instead of pulling bloated corpses off the top of trenchlines and dealing with the flies, mosquitos, and maggots in the summer heat, you recon for an enemy sniper. It's not the rain or mud drowning soldiers, necessitating duckboard to be replaced and laid down - it's your commanding officer making you dig a communications trench. Your soldiers will speak for eons about their family and origins, but never the crippling boredom of sitting around in the midst of war or waking up in a cold sweat from combat trauma. In fact, I don't think I saw a single mention of shell shock or perhaps even more darkly self-harm. Even the artillery is lacklustre - the Battle of the Somme used just under 170 shells per second in the week long bombardment prior to the offensive. Picture being a German, sitting in your bunker, listening to that through the night, desperately hoping the ceiling doesn't cave in on you - hence the origin of the term 'shellshock'.

So long tirade aside, I can't recommend this game from an educational perspective. This game is a repetition of the echoes of pop history, an attempt to evoke emotions from you by repeating the same post-hindsight analysis of every amateur World War 1 historian. It was the mass-scale industrial nature of it, the unprecedented evolution in tactics and strategy paved in blood, the psychological impact on all whether officer or enlisted that made it so horrifying, not the imagined f*ck f*ck games of the officers on the enlisted.

A very marginal recommend.

At its core, this is a very simple point and click adventure. The main selling points are the dog, the cozy atmosphere, and the relaxing story. It's immediately recognizable that the bulk of the work has gone into the art and assets that make up the game.

Where it falls apart is in a number of bugs and QOL issues. I've tried to find a better channel to report these, but currently they are:

- I could only interact with the giant's hair after reloading my saved game
- The save and load buttons both highlight upon hovering over one or the other
- The requirements for one of the instruments do not correctly take into account items already given
- Clicking an entrance or exit cannot be canceled
- Cycling interactions with objects with right click isn't immediately intuitive

After 2.5 hours, I finished this game and was by no means rushing. The final section of the game resolves very quickly and I was surprised by how abruptly the credits showed. I did enjoy the pictures showing the inspiration for the game, however.

$28 NZD is a steep ask, and I think only worth it if you're the type of person to appreciate a picture book converted into a game with a wee bit of jank thrown in.

However, this is an indie game where I can tell a lot of thought and effort has gone into it, and I just wouldn't have the heart to outright not recommend it.

A great example of 'less is more'

A good game conceptually but it needs a lot of polish. The mechanics of the game do not synergise well and at times it feels like I'm playing a collection of Unity assets meshed together. As some examples:

- The game has a Little Bird for passenger transport but no attack variant. Maybe the attack variant wasn't in the Unity store?
- There is no real difficulty once you understand the meta. Unit pathing is awful so airborne units reign supreme. Purchase grenade launchers, get an ammo depot, and have hunter-killer packs of assault troops armed with grenade launchers to rapidly eliminate enemy structures and units.
- Speaking of airborne units, if you assign a destination they will sometimes overshoot the target and have to circle back. When you unload your helicopter the rotors of the helicopter will interfere with your troop selection. Both minor annoyances but annoyances nonetheless.
- You will be short on money at the start and have far too much at the end. This is because the game rewards you in order of significance for killing infected, securing capture points, and evacuating civilians. The most optimal way to win is not to secure and contain the outbreak but rather to farm zombies for XP and DNA in your hunter-killer packs of grenade launchers. By the conclusion of a game, I might evacuate 5% of the population, have 40% infected, and kill 2%.
- You need to collect 650 units of DNA before you dump your hunter-killer packs of grenade launchers on 'Patient Zero'. Cue microing a scientist in a little bird to land, dismount, grab DNA, and then remount. This is not a satisfying gameplay loop.
- Every now and then a worm will penetrate behind your lines and destroy your base for as long as it takes you to recall your hunter-killer packs of grenade launchers. A challenge supposedly but more of an annoyance that just serves to interrupt the flow of your gameplay.
- The pictures suggest that you should be manning your base with soldiers but in actuality the unit cap is too small to facilitate this. Instead you use automated turrets to secure positions or alternatively use manned towers. You may want to keep an engineer and scientist on-site to carry out repairs/scan infected civilians but that's about it.
- You have fine control of units in ways that don't matter. You can attach suppressors, activate flashlights, and fire in the air to scare off civilians. Why are the first two not automated? And why is the last one a thing at all given the existing mechanics for civilians? You can argue in favour of stealth mechanics but that could be its own class with NVGs and a suppressor.
- Default airstrikes will do minimal amounts of damage (why?). You can unlock Willie Pete which also does minimal amounts of damage (why?). There is also the option for poison gas which is nice I guess and precision strikes that for some reason do more damage than unguided munitions.
- Your APCs can be equipped with cannons and mortars both of which carry minimal amounts of ammunition. Meanwhile your infantry will be carting themselves around with 10 magazines each. When you go to refill your ammunition, your infantry need to be dismounted which is a tedious bit of micro.
- There's a lot of jank. The UI isn't good at all and you will find yourself fighting it to do what you want. For example, unit formations will keep resetting themselves, selecting multiple helicopters of the same type changes the landing hotkey, you will find yourself hunting around the map visually for places where you can install operations centers, and when you're building a base there's no quick way to swap between buildings and defenses. Also sometimes you will order something built and it will not come, requiring it to be demolished and for you to try again in a different location.

I really do like what the game is trying to do but it's just not satisfying, and while there's ground vehicles and roof snipers and spec ops superhumans, the path of least resistance (both in terms of gameplay and coping with jank) is hunter-killer packs of grenade launchers and that's just not fun.

Mediocre.

A strong start, a middling middle, and a fantastic finish. 7/10 overall.

This game is by far my favourite within my Steam library. Created by a single developer, it offers a complex military system, satisfying population management and governance, ample political intrigue, and a gripping world environment for every game. Some systems aren't as fleshed out as you'd like them to be but that's a given due to the ambitious nature of the project. It offers a unique take on the 4X genre and an answer to the increasing simplification of grand strategy games.

I highly recommend reading the manual prior to playing as there is no tutorial system.

I really tried to like this game but I can't. It has a host of flaws that turn it into an immensely frustrating experience. Off the top of my head:

- The AI will circumvent your defenses to the best of its abilities. This means tracing paths along the edge of the line of sight of your trenches and circling around the edges of the map. Don't expect any frontal attacks supported by artillery barrages.
- A control point isn't considered 'contested' until there are no longer any enemies in its zone of control. Running out of time and your opponent has bugged their units into a communications trench? Too bad, there goes your 'sweep' which is needed to take a star off a zone.
- Speaking of communications trenches, units of opposing factions will glide right past eachother without a problem. You cannot engage in combat with a unit until it sits in a trench, meaning it is viable for you to dance your soldiers through the enemy's trenchline destroying their machineguns and artillery as long as you don't allow them to settle.
- The star system is awful. Want to take Verdun? You'll need five 'sweeps' all played out on the same map. That means capturing between three or four points (A, B, C, and a command trench) five times over. The campaign very much incentivises paths of least resistance (with two stars) that allow you to encircle enemies and quickly win the game. I understand World War 1 wasn't a war of mobility but at least make it less repetitive by reducing the requirements to inflict a star of damage on a hex.
- There is no weight behind the war. I was initially hesitant to use German's elite divisions until I realised they just get replenished at the end of the turn anyway. Those hordes of conscripts you had mowed down as a probing attack? Good as new by the end of the battle. There is no cost-benefit analysis involved in choosing which troops to deploy since they all magically respawn anyway.
- Unit pathing is awful. If you issue a command they'll freeze up for a few seconds (great for when they need to duck into a trench and are under fire). There is no attack move which is frustrating when you're carrying out an attack and would want some to go for the trenches and others to hold behind at engagement range.
- I have frequent issues with the UI where I want to order an artillery barrage and end up clicking a unit icon instead. As a whole, the UI actually feels very laggy and I've noticed that the loading screen flashes when you're exiting the map (likely from the battle results and loading screen overlay conflicting).
- Units will slide across the map which I find greatly amusing when they're laying prone. It reminds me of an approaching horde of seals. As a whole combat is floaty and after a while becomes immensely repetitive. Costs are not balanced at all and heavy artillery is almost worthless in comparison to light artillery.

I appreciate the game for what it's trying to achieve but it needs a lot more work before it can form a cohesive experience. At the moment the strategic map feels half-baked and the decidedly average tactical map gameplay doesn't make up for its shortcomings.

A very marginal recommendation. The core simulation around pops and the economy is very strong and ties into the political system well. Unfortunately, there are many QOL issues that impede the overall experience.

Diplomacy is non-existent. There is no point to establishing puppets or dominions as their market contribution and tributary payments are virtually null. Directly developing the resources owned by them is the superior option and in that case, puppets serve only as an intermediary to an 'annex vassal' diplomatic play. The AI will escalate diplomatic plays nonsensically, and so deciding to annex Sulu as the Netherlands will see Qing involvement who will happily sacrifice millions to keep you at bay. Prussia is constantly at war with France as it carries out unification to secure German borders, and if you dare try to take land in Africa where France and Britain will have interests declared owing to their colonies, they too will fight you to the death for it.

Warfare is frustrating at best. Quantity of troops has no relevance to your ability to defend or push - you can hold off armies many times your size with superior (i.e. higher quality) troops as battles are often conducted on equal numerical footing. Fronts are advanced one battle at a time with very little ground taken until you unlock later military techs. These later military techs require rubber and oil which the AI will not develop and allow you to trade for, thus leaving it to you to expand to secure these resources. Do not expect to be able to enable hospitals for your soldiers as you will not have access to opium.

Colonisation is poorly balanced. There is absolutely no cost involved in establishing a colony and therefore no reason not to establish a colony wherever you can declare an interest. As a result, Russia will always colonise Hokkaido in Japan as well as much of the pacific, the French will snake their way throughout Africa, the British will be unable to colonise much of the Africa interior themselves thus relying on their puppets to do it (which they won't), and the US never manages to secure its current borders (instead opting to snake partway into Canada and to keep a Mexican enclave and Indian territories puppet).

As a QOL example for warfare, you will attempt to conduct a naval invasion only to find out that your troop number must match the ship number or otherwise suffer a significant malus to your offensive capabilities. This is not indicated anywhere in the tutorial or in the tooltips. For the economy, infrastructure levels are not declared when building ports and railroads (needed to expand market access). Expanding your economy will see you constantly building whichever goods are in shortage, which to be quite honest could be broken down into an automated algorithm perhaps with presets. To play optimally, you only want to adjust employment methods (thus decreasing labourer employment and freeing pops for higher wage jobs) lategame which is a frustrating affair.

The pops are satisfying to engage with and interact with. Your improvements to the economy will see their wealth increase and so will their influence on your politics. The creation of your industry will lead to the overthrow of the traditional land-owning class and as your factories increase in employment and specialisation, your trade unionists will begin to appear. Thus, by being targeted in your construction, you can influence the laws of your nation without risking revolution or severe radicalism. The biggest change to your politics will come with the advent of public trading which will double the number of capitalists in your economy and thus spell the end of your aristocrats.

The political system is acceptable. Taking a long time to pass laws is very much due to a lack of legitimacy and political strength and so not the best criticism. If you look after your nation well enough, it is very possible to maintain an autocracy until the end date. I feel that there needs to be more nuance to the laws as as described by other reviewers, the 'meta' strategy is to adopt multiculturalism with universal suffrage - while I appreciate the complexities involved in endorsing such things as 'national supremacy' there should be an appreciable reason to retain the law other than for an authority boost.

Finally, as mentioned, the map is beautiful and will reflect many of the economic changes you implement as you construct your Victorian empire.

Overall, the game is promising and parts of it work well such that you can spend a reasonable number of hours watching 'line go up'. Unfortunately, the economic loop falls apart from a lack of automation and the other features that you might wish to explore will leave you feeling deeply unfulfilled, almost to the point that you feel like the only nation actually exerting any influence upon the world. By your third or fourth game, a sense of deja vu will set in and the complexities you once battled with will no longer keep you entertained.

I appreciate the ambition of the devs and the scope of the work that they have undertaken, and I'm certain a lot of bugs will be resolved and features added upon the game to make it more engaging. The simple truth is that no amount of paid QA can compete with the testing undertaken by millions of different players on a game with a complexity such as this, and so I look forward to seeing what the game has to offer in a year's time once many of its kinks have been ironed out.