Recent reviews by Kynaro

The gameplay loop is quite good. Multiplayer works. Plenty of potential here.

Pros:
* Easy to pick up & put down.
* Very low stress.
* Nice enough to look at / good visuals.
* Game mechanics are fairly intuitive, such as how to utilize logic blocks.
* Very close to being a "stop and smell the [space flowers]" kind of game.
* Plenty of build options.
* Tech tree is nice and long.
* Plays on Linux. (minor audio static)

Cons:
* I don't like quartz for hydrotonics, carbon for iron rod. Makes them both feel expensive. High tech is egregiously expensive.
* Overall, I think consuming a resource for tech could be spiced up a bit. (Recycle spent resources? Trash pile? Make dirt with it?)
* The bots and people walk. Why do they walk? We're in space.
* Not much to encourage building. (Air, hazards, weather, etc.)
* Nothing to encourage beautification. (Farmed trees are small shrubs, lol)
* Don't need the rover. Take it out, please, I'm begging you.

Garbage game. Worse optimization than 2. 'Freelancer' isn't worth, and the rest of the game is basically the same as 2. I'm really disappointed. This game isn't even worth the sale price.

I guess most games peak at #4. I definitely enjoyed this game, but no, I don't recommend it.

I want innovation when prompted to buy an entirely new game. Is the x-ray improved? Not really. Are ledges and ladders better? Nope. Are the weapons worth a season pass? Kind of - except when you have to download 100gb every update. The levels are full of invisiwalls. The weapons are a real let-down actually. SE4 had a good list, why not offer that, plus more? The non-lethal options for a sniper game is... questionable, at best. Just like many other design choices for #5.

It's worth it. I bought the game, enjoyed what's there, and look forward to more. I’ve always wanted a city-building game that was able to focus down into each of the jobs that needed doing. The developers have some great ideas and are putting them into action.

Pros:
Verge of greatness job system. Lovely aesthetics. Nice music. Simple resources. Modular building system. Assignable building parts. Paint residential areas that auto-build. Reforesting. Can't really deplete resources. Villager work/need fulfillment/pathing is decent! Can see where building access is. Can see workplace, home, and location of villager. Immigration for more villagers. Functional villager/workplace/soldier/trade lists. Increasing max treasury by expanding manor is awesome. Blueprints to find monuments - meh; blueprints to find other versions of buildings - yes please! Monuments for game progress, achievements, and large building projects. Desperately needs economies of scale; this is why I'm excited for new content.

Cons:
Building maintenance is awful. Expanding is expensive. Market income is too important. Builders will walk across the map instead of being assigned to nearby projects. Can't have multiple builders on a single building. Military expeditions are way overpowered. Trade is weak; can't buy some things, can't sell others. Not enough building window options, which would be a good use for glass. Roofs would pool rain so bad. Doors end up underground or do not meet terrain in a visually appealing way. Can't use different building materials for same building (would be nice to have wood, stone, marble as building tiers). No way to level/change terrain. Shouldn't have to paint resource extraction. Lots of building parts have no use. Way too difficult to find/get to minerals. Can't promote villagers from their selection window. The ranks don't matter. No option to auto-assign villagers to open jobs. No easy way to phase out a workplace. Reassigning storage destroys inventory. UI does not show max storage amounts. No unrest. Only emergency is bad weather. (Where is fire risk?)

Some other ideas are:
Seasons, husbandry, hand-carts, paths vs. roads, firewood/warmth, an interconnected world map, multiplayer, warfare, raids, and/or skirmishes.

Overall, mid- and late-game have a lot of room to expand on an already strong core. The game is moddable, and there are some that would be good official additions to the game.

The successor to Theme Hospital, properly done.

Modern Day.

Two Point County, a sleepy, minimally drawn bay of towns.

Simulate hospital staff and patients, treat wacky illnesses, and keep everyone paid, fed, and happy.

Attempt to manage many people, cure them with ever expensive treatments, and accepting that many will likely die (but only after they've walked back into the hallway).

Huge post-release development effort based on community feedback, hundreds of hours of dynamic and unique gameplay, and a dedication to the predecessor.

Somewhat tedious room decoration, for marginal effect. Logical design flaws, such as patients returning to GP for re-evaluation after each diagnosis. A disconnect between each individual hospital, the research being game-wide, and milestones - could be better if there were more regional connects, such as a shared budget, talent pool, or milestones being more important. Too many DLC.

A faithful recreation of an old classic. Two Point Hospital serves as a strong example of how to take a concept, improve the graphics, and use modern techniques to produce valuable art and entertainment. I'm really not a fan of all the DLC.

Rating: 6/10

The omnipotent builder.

City building within an expandable tiled area (Up to 100 sq. km. with a mod, 36 sq. km. without).

Abridged present.

Pre-crafted river, inland, or coastal environments with highways and railways as the anchors of civilization.

SimCity 2013 was a failure.

A large building area combined with water to waste-water, trash and pollution, a well-made traffic system, and a diverse set of buildings makes this game great for those with a design itch.

Population numbers are fairly proportional to spacial allowances. The large construction area can make for quite rewarding scenes and screenshots. Just enough challenge to keep your attention. Actual volumetric water flow mechanics. Mods allow players to have road types that aren't included, such as three-lane one-ways, and much much more.

Resource economy is only for show. People do not require food to survive. Nature feels like a low priority. Mass transit only reduces traffic, and can't be used independently of roads.

Rating:
9/10

Who:
You, the survivor.

What:
First-person survival horror game with gathering, crafting, and base-building.

When:
Post-apocalyptic or after third world war.

Where:
Navezgane, Arizona, or randomly generated biome open world.

Why:
Minecraft with zombies, guns, and better graphics.

Significance:
A full character inventory and crafting, including clothing, tools, weapons, and more, combined with food, water, temperature, and medicinal needs makes for a challenging survival experience. The unique physics takes material strengths into account for both durability and construction potential. Exploring the map and the intricacy of the crafting system feels both rewarding and detrimental, which drives the player to find other people to play with.

Pros:
• Earns the right to be considered a horror game.
• Scavenging and crafting can be extremely rewarding.
• Multiplayer provides much needed alleviation to most of the challenging mechanics.
• Better balancing on gather rate from previous versions.
• Combined mechanics of base-building and exploration allow players to show off their achievements through ability in the game.
• Skill/attribute system makes player more resilient as a reward for staying alive and completing tasks.
• Crafting system is relatively intuitive.
• Guns feel rightly powerful. Also, many other creative ways to dispatch zombies.

Cons:
• Extremely time consuming: scavenging, crafting, cooking, and even construction are put on arbitrary timers.
• Some essential items are extremely difficult to obtain; luck plays too big of a role in player survival.
• Water and food consumption do not alleviate enough of the food and water requirements.
• Overheating (overexertion?) is imbalanced.
• Melee combat relies too much on backpedaling and using the weapons reach to try prevent becoming stunned. Per the game’s design and mechanics, backpedaling should result in the player tripping, falling, and potentially getting killed.
• Crafting hierarchy and organization still needs improvement.
• Bleeding results in a swift death – takes too long to apply bandage.
• Farming feels clunky.
• Some walking/landing sounds need replacement.

Rating:
8/10

Factorio

You, the crash-landed engineer. Top-down 2D.

Resource management and factory simulation.

Distant enough future to travel to alient planets.

Alien planet surface.

Simulate mining, manufacturing, and logistics from the ground up.

Focus on game mechanics over graphics allows for complex resource management possibilities and infinitely large maps.

Intuitive design. Multiplayer co-op - pvp as well, potentially. Addictive gameplay through optimization of factory designs. Combat against alien bugs that attack because of high pollution or proximity. A DEMO!!!

Not enough options for the environmentally friendly. End-game will get better hopefully. Lack of extra 12 hours per day to play game.

You the special operations soldier. First-person.

Tactical player-versus-player and player-versus-bots combat.

1990s

Various middle-eastern looking cities. Maps are limited by restricted zones and invisible walls, but otherwise large maps provide for interesting bottle-necks and long-range encounters.

Battlefield 4 is expensive, and doesn't have bots. Relieve your stress involving terrorism.

Only a few games in the first-person shooter category allow for cooperative combat against a common AI enemy that provides challenging and enticing gameplay.

Fantastically challenging A.I., intricate maps, and nice visuals. A good use of weapon sounds. One shot kills. Overall an immersive and rewarding game.

An appalling lack of weapon choices. Game design around respawn time, loadout limits, and map boundaries are disappointing. Slightly demanding on the graphics side.

You the Astronaut, First Person or Third Person.

Block building system in meters for small and large ships, and stations. Four tools allow you to construct, deconstruct, mine for resources, and shoot stuff.

Distant enough future to have gravity generators and warp drives.

A small asteroid cluster, generated field of asteroids, or planets.

Minecraft in Space.

Creative and Survival modes that give the player of hours of creative and destructive power in the zero-gravity of space, and now within planet atmospheres.

Ability to mod plus an already extensive list of blocks makes for a flexible sandbox in space. Multiplayer.

Velocity capped at a little over 100 m/s and other bad physics design choices. Large ships, many ships, large bases, and now planets create performance problems. No in-game economy (trade ships are planned, but generally you mine resources simply to waste time in survival mode).

You'll spend most of your time making ships, and then wanting to show them off or fly them around. That by itself is enough reason to buy this game. Add in multiplayer and then mods and it only gets more interesting. If you think you have a high-end computer this game will test that notion.

I can't in good conscience recommend this game any longer. Before there was the possibility of playing and enjoying a space sandbox, and now I'm just let down by the overwhelming time-sink that is the survival game mode. Even with mods, even with everything made easy, the game becomes a frustrating commitment to time-wasting failure. If you want to play just to create and experiment, then maybe. If you've got days to spare, then maybe. If you've got a bunch of friends who can help and delegate the many tasks, then maybe. In any case, I don't recommend this game because of the way it has been purposefully designed to diminish the more enjoyable elements.