Recent reviews by Pajgla

The best example of a 10/10 game! Other studios should take notes.

Don't be fooled by my 5 hours play time. I played a "borrowed" copy of the game because of all the new titles that are just disappointing, you cannot trust any game studio these days. But this is not one of them. After amazing 20+ hours of gameplay, I just had to buy a copy and support the developers. They really deserve it!

Pros:
- An amazing gameplay. Both you and the second player will enjoy absolutelly every second of the game - from beginning to the end.
- Amazing story
- Beautiful worlds and beautiful graphics. Also, some effects used in the game are groundbreaking and I never saw something similar. Wait until the end of the game for this.
- Smooth character animations
- Levels aren't too hard but aren't easy too - they are perfectly balanced. Some levels require multiple attempts, but just enough to find a good tactic.

Cons:
- I do have one thing to mention: Character spells/powers are not equally fun. Most of the time, left player gets better and more fun powers than the right player. Not a groundbreaking problem, I had tons of fun anyways but it's something I would like to note since there was a similar problem in It Takes Two. There are couple of examples I can use from the game, but I want to avoid the spoilers, so you will have to see it for yourself.

Overall: A unique and refreshing 10/10 game. Deserves every penny, no need to wait for the discount.

Not sure how others are pleased with the mechanics of the game, but I will try to sumarise my 0.3h playthrough:

- You create a character and watch unskippable dialogue between 2 NPCs and you
- You get tool items that you have to scroll through
- You scroll to select an axe to clear the door
- You walk to a structure to put a saddle on an animal (?)
- You get a new "small world" you have to restore. !!! Now pay attention:
- You walk to a plot, scroll to select the seed, plant the seed, wait for an animation
- Then scroll to select the watering can, hold a button to water the plant
- Repeat 20 times
- Scroll to select an scythe, cut some grass 10 times
- Scroll to select an axe, break some stone, repeat 10 times

After some time, you get to sing to flowers! So you come close to a flower, press a button, wait for the animation and repeat that 10 times! Cool!

It got unbelievably boring in the first 10 minutes of gameplay and I pushed myself so hard to continue to get to the fun part, but I couldn't.

There is not hotbar for items, the work is repetitive and boring. The most important thing - you are pushed to do the repetitve work. They could give us couple of chores to do as a tutorial and let us plant 200 seeds if we want.

Maybe the game gets better later, but I couldn't play it.

I gave a thumbs up, but in reality it's 6/10 game. The game is unique and has its moments, so I cannot give it thumbs down.

Pros:
- The game is really beautiful, both in the sense of graphics and design.
- The story itself is awesome, but the game really loses some points here, more in the cons section.
- Voice acting is okay. It's not bad, but it's not great either.
- Good dialogue system (with some problems). Instead of just playing the voices in the background, you can choose what to answer. I never found an option that said what I didn't wanted (like in other games, when you choose an option and the character says something totally different)
- Slow story buildup is wonderfuly executed

Cons:
- Lots of bugs, some groundbreaking some are minor. Some bugs are really frustrating and they forced me to reload to the last checkpoint and do the same things (travel, walking etc) over and over again.
- I think that story splitting (different endings) in this game is a total miss. Instead of focusing on the story (which is really great) I have to focus on what ending do I want and I was frustrated not to choose a wrong choice. Some stories are made for different endings, this is not one of them. I was also frustrated by the game a lot, so I never wanted to play different endings in the end. I saw them online, and they are just 'meh'. The one I got, which is 'the good ending' is also meh. Nothing happens, that's it.
- The game forces you to explore as much as possible, but when I try that, it doesn't work that great. You will see invisible walls at some areas. If they didn't intended for an area to be 'explored', you will have to walk all the way back to the main path, and at one point, when I saw a potential hidden area, I refused to go because I was scared that nothing will be there and I will have to walk all the way back for no reason. Also, I had to restart to last checkpoint couple of times and do all of this over and over again.
- Dialogue breaks from time to time. There is a really good system in the game - if someone is talking, and you start another conversation, the game will wait for the first conversation to finish. But it doesn't work always, and you are left without any dialogue (unless you restart to the last checkpoint of course)
- As stated above, endings are 'meh'

Overall rating: 6/10

Every visual aspect about the game is just absolutelly astonishing! I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of the puzzle design, I am not yet sure why exactly, but it seems like it doesn't quite belong here. But, it's probably just me.
Totally recommending the game!

A unique game that slowly drags you in. It has some unique mechanics and it's really fun to play.

The game is really fun even in its early state, despite some kinda gamebreaking bugs. There are a lot of things missing from the game, but I am super excited to see what future updates will bring.

👌👌

I was thinking if this game is worth recommending or not for some time, but it kept me until the end so I guess thumbs up.

Cons:
- Some scene cuts are weird and unrelated. For example, in one scene a character is smiling and in the next one is crying for help
- Controls are clunky
- Graphical issues even on highest settings
- Weird animations from time to time
- Some consequences are just plain stupid. It seems like they forgot to work on them and just made something up to fill the gaps
- Secrets unrelated to the story

Pros:
- Good story with unexpected twists that will keep you interested
- Enjoyable graphics (if we ignore bugs)
- Not too short, not too long
- Interesting characters (at the end I didn't care who whill die since I got mad over stupid consequences that do not make sense at all)

6/10

Even if we put the bad performance aside (and lots and lots of graphical glitches), the game has really big flaws in its core. Simulation is purely faked, so showcases from youtube are all lie (or just executed poorly).

- Citizens are there just for the cosmetics. They will drive or walk around the city with no real destination. Most of them won't go to work and kids will never go to school. I guess the whole simulation is done in the background instead.

- Driving AI is bad and full of bugs - they will drive through the buildings, make U turn in the middle of the road and make big jams, make a right turn from the middle lane on the highway while there is a ramp on the far right lane and again, they will make jams in the middle of the highway

- Traffic overlay is a lie. At first, I was thinking I do not understand it since most of my roads were red, even at 03:00 in the morgning, but it seems like it counts all the vehicles that passed for that day, and even then, it is wrong. I was looking at my intersection for a whole in-game day and there were never jams, high trafic or many pedestrians, but still, it is glowing red the whole time. On the positive note, there is a "traffic flow" option that shows more relevant data.

- Economy is also a joke and not balanced at all. The game will unlock hospitals and police stations early, but all of the services are too expensive for a small town and you will always have negative income, no matter how many people you have. Unless you sell a lot of eletricity and water, then you can become a billionare in no time.

- There is always high demand for low density residential zones. Always. I though it is a bug, I read an article from Paradox and they stated it is because citizens have no real reason to live in cheaper apartments and because they are mostly adults and families and to make them want high density zones, you have to build an University, so students will move into the city and ask for cheaper options. First of all, why would only rich citizens move into a brand new city, that doesn't make sense at all. Secondly, it is not true. I had poor citizens living in a house. After some time, richer families will say that their rent is too high, but there still isn't any demand for high density. Low rent apartments will be abandoned after 2 minutes. So I build an university to attract students, still very low demand for high density. Started the second city, I had a great demand for high and medium density without university, and I have no idea why, everything was the same and I even had more services in the first city.

- You will always have commercial buildings ranting how they don't have enough customers. Even if they are in the center of hot area for shopping (or whatever you want to call that). Add more citizens - they still have no enough customers

- Citizens will always say how hospitals are bad. The hospital that is so expensive for a small city but yet they can't meet demand or make your citizens more healthy somehow

- Music was so much better in CS1 (miss you Gold FM). Music here is just some background elevator music mostly

- Radio broadcasts are a joke also. They are not relevant and accurate. You will listen to a couple of pre-recorded broadcasts over and over and over again.

There is much more to write here but these are just ones that I could think of right now. This review is comming from someone who had almost 700 hours in CS1.

Overall, the game is mid and shouldn't be released. Imagine paying $50 for unfinished game and writing a positive review stating "performance is not that terrbile" or "performance is not important". It is. If you cannot make the game run smoothly, do not implement ♥♥♥♥♥♥ features that will eat our resources for no reason (and also that do not work at all). Besides that, the game is just not where it should be and how they showcased it.

4/10

Buy when on sale and hope they will fix this in a year at least.

Kiss.

The game is unique in its own way. I really didn't expect much from it and I got more fun then I expected. Of course, it has its flaws but they are mostly avoidable or they don't have much of an impact to the gameplay.
Overall rating: 6/10

Pros:
- Base building here is awesome. You can literally do floor planning here.

- Small amount of types of resources keeps the gameplay simple enough

- This game has no tutorial and help menu is vague but it's still easy to catch up. I had no problems understanding the mechanics on my own

- Simple and understandable UI

- AI is good enough (in most cases)

Please note that there are more cons, but again, they are not all that much problematic. Most of them are just my opinion how the game could be improved.

Cons:
- Lack of attention to details in the game. This one is not a problem by itself, but it's something worth improving imo. For example, in the winter, apple trees are still green and full of leaves, snow on the ground just pops up once the winter starts etc

- Random AI decisions can be frustrating - they can sometimes insult other colonists for no reason. Even if my colonist is happy and its mood is full, they will start swearing at people and have their relationships destroyed

- Some wishes are just plain stupid - why would a colonist want to become an enemy with another colonist. Makes no sense at all. Also, this can be hard to do sometimes

- Game difficulty could be improved - When enemy leaders ask you for resources, at the beginning, you almost always have to obey, but after some time, you will be able to defend yourself. If they catch you at the moment you are lacking some of the resources, boy, you are done. 2h gameplay ruined by 7-8 enemies

- More colonists would make the game better - after some time, colonists will come rarely and kids grow up slowly. It could be better if we could get 20-30 colonists and start building a large city