Recent reviews by Conpuzius

This is a fun game, where the challenge lies in creating and exploring the unique crafting tree. This is made more complex with the limited resources and the specific requests of some customers.

I really like the crafting mechanic, and the game is fun and challenging.

It's a fine small game. It does feel early in the development, but I have enjoyed my time playing it.
It is also rather interesting to play in my own neighborhood.

If you dislike the numerous early radio calls, then start a new game and disable the tutorial radio events.

It has a good story, and when playing on IronMan (Alpha Editor), it definitely gets sweaty at times.

If you're an Xcom expert, then I strongly advise trying Alpha Editor. You will likely need to use every advantage you can find, but I rather liked that experience and challenge.

It's a nice chill game.
You explore, build and grind.
There is combat on the ground and in space, which is difficult at first.

If you do permadeath mode or the current event which has a rougelike permadeath mode, then there is some urgency and risk.
There are missions to be had at a SpaceStation, and you will be guided through more and more quests and be given blueprints.

Naturally the planets and missions will seem very similar eventually, because they're procedurally generated, but then you can do some multiplayer instead. You can encounter other people randomly, and you can always find people at the meeting point.

Basically, if you want a chill game which can take as long as you want, then this is a good game for you.

This game feels fine once you accept that it does not have proper orbital mechanics. If you come from Kerbal, then you're going to hate this game. It has highly simplified and arcade-style navigation.
Orbital paths seem to have drag (in space?) and manual orbiting of planets is impossible. You have to use the "auto pilot" in close proximity to the planets.
When navigating to other planets, just aim straight for it without attempting any slingshot. I don't try to raise my apoapsis to reach an encounter either, because that seems both very hard to do due to the poor guide-line, and it also seems inefficient in this game. Just head straight for the other planets, then burn retrograde to get to a close enough orbit to be able to engage the auto pilot to trigger an orbit.

When you get into asteroid / ship encounters, the navigation uses fluid dynamics with a lot of drag on ship movement... so if you release the throttle, your ship will come to a halt.

That said, I've just started this game, but now that I know to expect unrealistic navigation, I suspect the game is fine. It feels like a more 3D version of FTL, but with asteroids and planetary landings.

This is just so much fun, and a really good workout too!

If you watch a video of it, you know what to expect.
If you want a rythm game with light sabres which can make you sweat a lot, then this is the game for you.

Currently, it's one of my all-time favorite VR games.

TL;DR
Before playing, I thought "pff, looks boring, but it's on sale, and a nice initiative, so fine."
After playing, I realized that I absolutely love the building of rockets, (trying) to fly them, and basically play NASA.

Disclaimer: I'm mostly interested in "The challenge" of games, and I love really hard and challenging games, but I also like to build stuff.


This game really feels like a sandbox, because you get the option to take missions, but you could also just go do meta things if you can afford it.
My process so far, has been:
- How do I get into space?
- How do I get this "plane" to actually fly? (the early items aren't aerodynamically strong)
- How do I get into orbit?

...at that point, things got a little technical, and I had to use one or two of the tutorials to figure out how to do fine maneuvers in space. I even looked up some terms on the internet, to better understand the basic scientific terminology.

This is where it starts to get more meta. When you decide to expand your reach by going to the moon (in-game called Mun), you will start to get mission options, where you have to go there.
When you get to the nearest planet, you will start to get missions to go there, and so on.

You could try to send unmanned probes into deep space, or you can try to get astronauts to the various planets and moons, or you can just stay near "Earth" (Kerbal).

At the moment, I've only reached the nearest two moons, and the nearest planet and its moons. I suspect there may be some end-game content of asteroid capture/deflection and some "unknown" items... because there are those two fields in the "map" overview... but they may also be reserved for mods?

I've also reached a point, where I have to take a mission to fund the big spacecraft I want to launch, so I can actually afford to do so in one go.
Most recently, I took a tourist mission (ferry 4 tourists to the Mun, land there, and bring them back), in order to be able to launch a big, heavy refuelling station, which I was planning to drop on a nearby moon.

Either way; if you like a challenging game which has a lot of trial-and-error of building, launching, piloting and landing spacecraft, then I say you should _definitely_ get this game.

It's a small but decent rogue-like.

Tl;dr
It's a fine small indie game (5-7h core gameplay length), but I'd only recommend getting it if it's 30% off or less.


You start with one hero, and as you progress through the rather small maps, you will get the option to hire one extra hero at the start of each new map.
You gain XP, advance the heroes' stats, equip them with gear and mod the gear with crystals.

I failed a handful of times, before I managed to beat the game (too slowly for the achievement); This took me roughly 5 hours.
I then did it again a couple of times before I managed to beat it well within the time for the achievement.

The game gets progressively easier each time you restart, which both works and feels fine, but it's still annoying to think that your first time is the hardest possible scenario.
On my first couple of attempts, I could only hire 3/5 heroes.
When I beat the game the first time, I had 4 heroes.
After the next retry, I was given the option to fill all 5 available hero slots... and the mods I found were also getting progressively more powerful with each new game I started...

I think what annoys me the most, is that the game is build like a rogue-like, but it gets easier each time you play it. It's as if they made the game as a single-playthrough experience which lowers the difficulty automatically each time you fail (which would be a fine small game IMO), but then they added the replayability unlocks to it...



There are unlockable heroes, which are limited to unlock only one new hero per playthrough, as well as hero-variations if you have used each hero well enough (i.e. kill 30 enemies with Hero A1 to get A2. Get Hero A to 10 strength to unlock Hero A3)

If you "just" want to complete the game fast enough to get the achievement, this took me 7 hours.
If you want to try all the different heroes as well as each of the 3 variations of the heroes, then I'm guessing it might take 20-30 hours.

I suspect it will start to get rather repetitive if you're trying to unlock all the heroes though, but I was not bored during this first win.

Conclusion:
I'd say this game has 5-7 hours of effective gameplay, followed by an optional grind of roughly 10 hours to unlock everything (maybe less).
I bought the game on sale, so I'm quite happy with the amount of entertainment I got for it.
I'm not sure if I would want to pay 15 EUR for it (normal price for my country), so I recommend getting it on sale (30% off or less).

Basically, it's a mix between a simplified Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic.

You place one city per region, exploit and develop the region while expanding into neighbouring regions via the methods you know from Civ while building one or more heroes (skills and gear).

The good thing here, is that each of the "races" have very distinct units and capabilities as well as quest lines which feel much more complete than Civ's quests.
For example; one of the races doesn't consume food, but instead only purchase their citizens using dust (gold). Another race (insects) don't use any dimplomacy or diplomatic tech, but instead gain food for all units which die during combat.

I also like the fact that you can upgrade your units with the same gear you would give your heroes.
...I didn't care to play the tutorial, so I didn't notice this until at the end of my first game on classic difficulty(!)... which reminds me. If you're a Civ expert, then your second game in Endless Legend should be on one of the hardest difficulty settings, otherwise you'll probably never break a sweat.

I am only barely going to recommend this game.

The game plays like a simplified Knights Of The Old Republic. I haven't played the Mass Effect 2 or 3, but I believe it's like those also.
You won't have any influence on the base, captured tech, aliens or anything else. You just go kill aliens with two soldiers, who can be micro-managed during combat.

If you set it to the highest difficulty level, you probably have to think tactically a few times. If you should make a mistake and lose a soldier, you just have to reload to the latest checkpoint, which in all cases was just before the combat started.
There are a few dialogue options which feel as if they might have a tiny influence on the narrative, but aside from that, it's basically just a one-track game.

The game is also obviously a console game, because the controls are somewhat clumsy on PC. There have been several times where my character doesn't go where I want him to when close to walls.

Basically, if you want an easy (on the hardest difficulty setting) and simple 3rd person shooter set in the XCOM universe, then go ahead and get this game (on sale if possible).
If you like to immerse yourself in a narrative which you don't have any real influence over, then this feels like a fine game.
If you want to micro-manage the base, troops, hunting of UFOs, scavenging, etc. then this this game will massively disappoint you.