Recent reviews by Cellidor

All I'd want from the game at this point, is more of it. More ships, more tools, all that. Very satisfying, taking them apart piece by piece, seeing careful deconstruction work in your favour, or alternatively, forgetting something and having a chunk of the ship blow up.

Cannot recommend on PC. Not in its current state at least.
For reference, I'm running an AMD 6950 XT, default settings in AMD software. System's got plenty of power for a game like this.
Game crashes on start, 100% of the time.
Tried updating drivers, tried verifying game cache, tried restarting, re-installing, tried modifying settings in the AMD software, etc etc. 2 hours of troubleshooting and it still crashes on start.
This game needed more time in the oven if it's this unstable on release, especially with the time I've spent on troubleshooting possible causes/solutions. Really disappointing.
From gauging other reviews, it seems this isn't an uncommon sentiment, it may be roughly a coin-flip whether the game will actually work for you or not.

Even having beaten it, I still find myself returning to this game now and then. Coming back to play a single level, maybe two if my heart can take it.
How do I describe this game, as far as rhythm games go?

The music is simple. The beats are simple. The controls are straight-forward.
I'm glad for all of that, since it leaves nothing to take away from the pure adrenaline rush you feel when playing this game.

If I were to describe it in one word, I'd call it "Raw".

I can't think of another rhythm game that evokes the same primal feeling I get playing this game, the intensity of hitting each note, of slamming into the walls for ever turn you make, knowing that even though each section only lasts about 30 seconds, it's 30 seconds you'll find yourself laser focused, only for it to bring you right into the next 30 seconds between each checkpoint. What I love is how half the time when I lose my wings or die outright, it's not because of the level per-say, it's because I got greedy, tried to fly up and do a tricky slam because I wanted to watch time slow as the level *bends* around the gravity of my actions.

So if you want to know what it's like to stop blinking or breathing for 3 minutes straight, only to let it out when you've beaten a level boss, this is the game for you.

Damn, don't need coffee with this game around.

For me personally, this one is a no. Ultimately it just comes down to difficulty. The game absolutely has variety, there are a staggering number of spells and passives available to you can mix and match, but unfortunately the game difficulty ramps up so rapidly each floor that you generally find yourself having to use specific, pre-existing builds in order to make any decent progress, and experimenting will generally just end your run, sometimes as early as the second or third floor. The quantity of enemies, the health, their damage, their abilities, all of it scales up exponentially to the point you kind of have to already know what final build you're going for before you even start.

To make a comparison, if you've played roguelikes with 'ascension' ranks or similar to optionally increase the difficulty every time you win, this feels sort of like playing on one of the much higher ascensions... by default. The game also includes alternate game modes, but each of them from what I've seen are even -harder- than the standard game.

For me at least, I suppose it's just disheartening to have a whole sandbox of possible spells and upgrades and synergies to try out and experiment with, yet feeling like I'm being punished for wanting to try them out. Like if 75% of the spell combinations in Noita killed your wizard as soon as you plugged them into the wand. You wouldn't be encouraged to experiment, you'd be encouraged to just...look up what spell combinations already work to save you time.

I don't even mean outlandish combinations either, but even ones that seem sensible. "Oh, I can learn fireball, then a flaming eye, then upgrade that flaming eye so it -casts- my fireb-" Nope, even that much veered too far from a reliable build and now I'm surrounded and killed. I've managed to win a select few runs, but only by either using someone else's specific build, or just throwing an army of summons at the screen and then just hitting 'pass turn' until they beat the game for me, and that's not counting the dozens and -dozens- of runs where I'd die on the second/third floor.

It's a shame, I really do want to like this game, but it's just too frustrating an experience to play. If you're not put off by that kind of high difficulty though, then you can consider this a positive review for you.

Edit (2025-02-02):

Just to add, as inspired by others and wanting to add more detail, a suggestion for how to fix the difficulty issue. If there were a hypothetical new game mode added to smooth the difficulty curve, these are some considerations I'd have for it:

- All positive enemy resistances have a flat -25% applied. This way, new players are encouraged to pay attention to resistances and plan around them, without one of the game's many, many fully immune enemies instantly ending their run.
- +1 SP per level. Currently, the amount of SP gain is balanced for if you already know exactly what build you're going for. If you don't, or if you're experimenting...you die in the first floors. Having more SP to go around, thus, encourages experimenting with potential synergies.
- Overall reduction on enemy stats. This could involve reducing HP/damage/range/shield, but it could also involve removing some enemy abilities outright. Not only will this make it less punishing as new modifiers are introduced, but it gives players something new to look forward to when they hear that higher difficulties (current base game) fundamentally change enemies. Imagine a player reading 'In the next difficulty, enemies can spawn as a 'lich' variant, and become immortal'! Incentive for them to push and make their discovered builds work better
- Rare items spawning earlier in the game. This way, players more easily discover what kind of rare tools the game will provide to them and how they affect their builds, so when they become less rare in harder difficulties, they already know what to keep an eye out for.
- +1 items spawned per floor. Instead of just picking between +health or a chest, maybe one floor has two health, while another has wands and a scroll, while another has health and trinkets. Powerful? Sure, but this ties into the last note about teaching players synergies, and giving them the health to live through beginner mistakes.

A game mode, or even general game difficulty options, with settings that can be changed like that, would make the game far, far more approachable to new players.

What a unique little game this turned out to be. The switch between relaxing car drives to hectic chases through some kind of horrible eldritch storms, scrounging for supplies, having to get out of the car and do spot-maintenance as needed...

It turned out to be a surprisingly relaxing game to play. The tunes were great, and they did a great job of putting you into the atmosphere of being a lone driver out there trying to keep your car together through some truly crazy stuff.

For an early access game, this is all very well thought out. What it lacks in terms of graphics and polish, it makes up for in mechanics and a gameplay flow that works well to convenience the player. Many times through my playthrough, I found myself thinking 'It'd be really nice if...' only to find out that the next tier seemed to address exactly that.

In particular, the warehouse system really opened up giving me a reason to automate many things, and the drone building tool from the very beginning is so very user friendly I'm shocked other similar games haven't thought of it. Seriously, being able to get a bird's-eye view of my surroundings helps immensely with planning out and constructing larger regions.

My only real complaints/constructive criticisms so far would be:
- Trying to connect pipes to the right output of a pipe junction is very frustrating.
- It's very easy to have conveyor belts clip into one another. Making it easier to 'stack' belts on top of one another would go far to reduce bad-looking spaghetti bases.
- I spent a good hour trying to search for an area with both graphite -and- sulphurous rock, eventually having to look it up, since neither material shows up on the scanner. I hear trains are on the roadmap, so perhaps that will help alleviate that pain point.
- 'Hunger' feels fairly pointless. You solve it within the first ten minutes and from there it just becomes tedious to eat and keep the bar filled. It stands out in a bad way when everything else feels planned out. It'd be nice of food could be handled automatically by the warehouse system as well, and perhaps better food could be harder to craft, but actually confer a benefit like sprinting speed or similar boons. It'd be a step to make food actually feel meaningful if there's gonna be a whole bar dedicate to it.
- Water always harms you, even if it's 100% pure, which feels....strange.
- Spaceship flying physics/controls could use a little work, I at least found myself fighting with them often.
- I rarely if ever used foundation blocks over just, the ground, placing multiple blocks it would take forever for the game to recognise that I wanted to make a line/square of foundation.
- Deconstruction tends to place items in the player inventory first, even with warehouses. It'd be nice to not have one's inventory flooded when deconstructing something just built.

As for what I hope to see in the future:
- Given most players will want to 'fully terraform' the planet, it'd be nice if every device that works to do so, had its effective radius increased based on the total amount of already cleared space. That way, you have a reason to venture out and put down more plant-growers/water purifiers/temperature controllers, without being able to game the system by just slapping down 10 of them right next to each other. You placed a water purifier in a new body of water? Once it's cleared enough water, it and each existing purifier now has X% larger radius. Something to give you the feeling like you really are slowly changing the planet without having to personally influence every square inch directly.
- More stages of growth added before trees begin to grow in a region. They're nice to see, but you can create a forest with shockingly little effort. More stages would spread that out, make it more impactful when they start to show up.
- If trains are planned, docks/ships would be great as well. Even if the ships are just going back and forth like decoration with either dock acting as a slow teleport for items, it'd still be great to see. Perhaps docks could be a factory-only 'warehouse', items being pulled from with conveyors at the docks instead of by player build/craft actions.
- A start to the game without a functioning spaceship. I ended up never building the land rover the whole game, because I had a fast flying spaceship since the beginning. I'm not even sure if the land rover keeps your oxygen filled like the spaceship. It'd give players a reason to think out their base plans too, instead of being able to just fly to a new location if they need more of something from early on.
- Having an 'undo' button would be great to make accidental constructions more smooth.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable game, and I look forward to seeing what kind of updates happen in the future!

What's not to like? The graphics are gorgeous to look at, the enemies and bosses are interesting, the various builds you can make with all the different weapons and synergies is absolutely wild, and they keep on adding new updates over time. Easy recommend from me.

The game has been out for almost, 3 years now? Even has DLC they just released. I waited for more time and updates before making this review.
...The foundations and the structures on top of them still don't line up.

To picture what I mean:
Imagine a foundation is a 1x1 square.
The habitat place above it, is a 1x1 square.
The game snaps every building in increments. You'd think this would snap the habitat at say, the 0/0.25/0.5/0.75 points. Maybe to the 0/0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8 points.
No, instead, it'll snap to, say, 0.5 on one side, but 0.47 on the other. This compounds the more structures you build side by side, so the bigger structures you make get a little more 'wrong' the bigger you make them. Your choice is to either never use foundations and just deal with randomly floating structures, or try to ignore how things refuse to line up.

Is it a minor thing? Obviously, but it's worth pointing out for people who...can't overlook something like that. If not for that I'd recommend the game.

While the time to go from beginning to end was shorter than I expected initially, the journey to get there was great. The gameplay loop feels good, the upgrades all feel impactful, the music is catchy, and there's enough variance in what you find each run to make the runs feel decently different.

As a side note, the sprite work in the main shop upgrade area is -breathtaking-. I seriously can't get over it, I love watching everything move in such an animated way. A small point maybe, but one that stuck with me a lot.

Ultimately this gets a recommend from me, I can see a lot of work went into polishing this game. A simple premise with a clear and well thought out implementation.

A fantastic incremental that doesn't overstay its welcome. Makes me think of a mix between Idle Wizard and Kittens Game, plenty of new resources to mess with in various ways, and no resources ever feels useless. Playing around with spells to find powerful combos is plenty of fun as well, and on the math side of things the mechanic of 'Every upgrade is slightly, exponentially more powerful than the last', means that I never feel like I'm wasting resources upgrading 'older' passive unlocks, they all keep relevant to other resources throughout the game. Well worth the money and there's a ton of polish, looking forward to future updates!

One slight change I'd make is to lower the overall volume, I had my game near minimum and it was still too loud compared to other applications. Good music either way though.