Recent reviews by BinarySplit

"I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding."[x.com] - very much echoes my sentiment. I like these kinds of experimental small-scale games, as long as they respect my time (i.e. no unnecessary grind), which ASTRA certainly does.

It tells an interesting story, supported by good world-building, graphics and music. It didn't overstay its welcome, and ended on a high note.

I enjoyed it and feel it's the right price, but YSK before buying: it's only ~75 minutes including optional sidequests, and the character customization is exactly what you see in the description: 3 stats with 3 levels each, some options for appearance, and a tiny selection of items/equipment. Don't go in expecting a Morrowind or Dread Delusion level of depth.

Not for me, but a good game worthy of consideration.

I was drawn in by the story and the promise of a factory-building game that wrapped up in 20 hours and didn't try to eat my life. The exploration & factory-building was reasonably fun, and the story was intriguing, but the pacing quickly exhausted me.

The main quest feels slower and slower as the game progresses, requiring more walking, more resource gathering, etc. for less story with each objective. The most frustrating part was how the tech tree doesn't really build on itself. It never felt worthwhile investing time in making a tidy, high-production factory for one component, as many components are used for one objective and never again. Anyway, I'm a particularly impatient gamer. Other people probably won't find this as bad as I did.

If you consider yourself relatively patient, you'll probably enjoy this.

Mixed review / recommendation with warning. The first 15 hours are great - it's exactly what you'd expect from the screenshots and done well. I enjoyed meeting aliens, shooting aliens, probing planets, exploring, and building my ship. While you have a continuous stream of new things to discover, it's a lot of fun.

It just became a bit of a chore at the end: finishing up all the sidequests, grinding for resources for shipbuilding, slowly travelling between locations trying to figure out some clues from your logs... If I were a rational player, I'd have stuck to the main quest and it'd have been over in 20 hours. Unfortunately I have that completionist urge, and it wasn't until the 25 hour mark where I realized I was just doing busywork trying to clean up my quest log and there was no more fun left for me. I beelined towards the ending, and it felt both long-overdue and unclimactic.

Played this after seeing Ross's Game Dungeon. It was worth playing after watching that video. Great worldbuilding and character interactions. The kind you only get when a true author is involved in development. This vision of an alternate future is going to linger in my memories like Chronomaster and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

The gameplay is a bit weird - you spend most of your time talking to people. So much talking. At first I resented it for how much time it took, but now that the game is over, I miss hearing opinions and gossip from all the characters, and exploring the world. Shame they ran out of money while making the sequel, because I want to see more of this universe.

If you play it, check PCGamingWiki for the "Culpa Innata Fix (v2)" (+dgVoodoo per the fix's instructions) and the uncut patch.

A short and sweet first person platformer, with fun movement mechanics and a spectacular art style. I found it very cathartic collecting Nature's boons so I could afford that sweet deluxe condo. I only wish it were so easy and fun in real life!

Cute characters & a fun adventure. I only wish some of the characters got more screen-time.

A pretty neat little The Witness-style puzzle game with a retro-computing horror theme. It was short (100 minutes for me), but had well made graphics, good progression of puzzle mechanics & difficulty, good pacing, good ending, etc. Definitely worth the $5 and, more importantly, my time.

More games like this please!

A great factory builder, that builds upon the lessons of previous games in the genre! If you enjoy Factorio, Satisfactory, FortressCraft Evolved or Dyson Sphere Program, you'll probably enjoy Techtonica. It's a mix of all the good elements from those games, streamlined, in a new setting, with a good voice-acted story.

One of the things I really appreciate is that the main story doesn't force you to build duplicates of factories, or rebuild them because upgrades change machine sizes. In the end I was still using my original metal mine/smelter line designs with some upgrades, and I think there was only 1 task (iron/copper frames) where I felt I needed duplicate assembly lines to avoid waiting hours.

I didn't finish all the missions, but I did get to the end of the Early Access storyline, and 24 hours with options to keep playing is a pretty good length for the price & gameplay quality.

Regarding performance, I'm on a 3090 Ti, running at 1440p, and at the end my base was dipping to 50FPS on highest settings, but it was still surprisingly smooth at sub-60 FPS. IMO, this is acceptable for an EA game on highest settings, but lowest detail mode really needs more work - it doesn't add many frames. If you have an older card, you'll need to turn down the resolution too. I doubt 120Hz during end-game is even possible with any available hardware.

Review: Mixed.

The art, setting, voice acting, anomaly design, and concept are exceptional. No notes. These had me hooked from the beginning and are the reason I kept playing to the end.

The gameplay has some great bits, but it's also super grindy and repetitive. You have to repeatedly drive through the same low-level zones with every expedition, and unlocking a new zone on the world map requires doing a full trip through all the early zones to first scout out the path, then another trip to actually get to the new zone. You'll spend hours driving just for the sake of unlocking bits of the map so that you can progress the story or get to higher-level zones. This. Is. So. Boring.

Late-game you get an upgrade that promises to let you skip some of the redundant travel. It barely helps. It just converts the easy zones into straight-line highway zones. They have almost no content in them, and take 2-3 minutes to drive through. It still takes a long time just to get past the low-level zones to the level-appropriate areas, and you have to do this over and over.

The pacing is bad. There was one period where I didn't get any story progression for 5 hours because of a couple deaths and all that repeated travel (and preparing for it). Then once I got used to blitzing through the boring bits, the ending came all at once. Even though I did a LOT of scavenging, apparently I found less than 1/3rd of the collectables & audio logs. I would have loved to pimp out my car and hear those audio logs, the customization was neat and the story was pretty intriguing, but I'm not spending another 40 hours after the ending hunting for them.

Do I recommend it? Only if you have time to burn and you're ok with lots of grind. The setting is amazing, but by the end I just wanted to skip the gameplay to see the end of the story.

It's Pokémon crossed with Genshin Impact with a morbid sense of humor. Pretty awesome if you just want turn-your-brain-off entertainment.

In terms of Early Access, I haven't hit a single crash, game-breaking glitch, or not-yet-implemented section of game world in 20 hours. The only signs it's incomplete are that there's not much music and there's basically no story after the first big milestone. Still, these things don't stop you from enjoying all the progression, exploration & monster collection. Just beware that there's probably no ending - you'll probably just stop when you get bored, hit the level cap, or capture every kind of Pal.

There's more than enough polished content to justify its price already.