Recent reviews by Techhead7890

While this is a factory game, it also has incredibly confusing UX. Tiny UI buttons hidden halfway in the corner of the screen doesn't make it easy to pick up this game. And as others say, it can be extremely overwhelming to learn, especially the new RTS mode (why would you put an RTS lite in this minimalist format?). I would recommend starting with the "old" mode even if it's less "polished".

The screenshots are not super indicative of the UI/UX and zoomed in quite a lot, but they are in-game footage. As for the gameplay, it just felt too clunky and overly detailed for the sake of it, rather than to be fun. It has too many complexities to really be smooth - one example was that when filtering colonists for the dome transfer tutorial, I tried banning scientists and immediately... the first two colonists were scientists. I'm sure it has its niche for detailed spreadsheet planners, and it might be more relatable to Grand Strategy players or nostalgic to older titles for some, but I didn't personally enjoy it very much.

Of course as a Supcom fan I wanted to love this, but it's like the devs never playtested this at all. There were several UI bugs in the tutorial like weird repeated sound cues, or scrolling on the tutorial box moving the zoom. The tutorial throws 5 kinds of factories at you without explaining why any of them matter. Moving between planets and space view camera is atrocious and should probably just be done top down. Planetary polar camera should work but somehow just doesn't.

RTSes live or die by their fundamentals like their UI. I'd probably just suggest BAR or Zero-K instead.

It's extremely clunky to control. I could forgive simplified eco, but it just doesn't feel good to play.

Unfortunately it doesn't continue directly from the demo. However, the first levels are retouched to add some things and has awesome sound design anyway (which is such a distinguishing factor) so it was fine to do it again quickly. The other levels aren't quite as detailed unfortunately, but they're still fine. Worth it for the price, I think.

Tutorial is terrible and doesn't even tell you how to harvest food or use crafting stations. Awfully unintuitive. Just seems like a worse Terraria starting out.

It's pretty janky to control; the lore of the tutorial was pretty thin; and as others have said, really in-your-face with the MTX upsells (zone announcement spam when someone opens a crate, buttons to buy more bag space, tailor presets don't explain they cost money to equip until you go to save it). It does set up a nice world and it's cool to see the characters so it is worth trying and hey, it is free -- but I really don't think I'd be playing this for the long haul, especially with the recent layoffs at Cryptic in 2023 :(

PS: Don't press the f12 button or you'll bring up the HUD adjustment pane and have to wave it away with esc!

Just like Factorio I stayed up all night to play this for the first time and figure out the tech tree. There are even railways!

Had this on my wishlist for ages, picked it up on sale and very impressed. Very well made, relaxing, doesn't make you feel pressured at all.

I wanted to like it, and it has some fun ideas. But the whole user experience feels very indistinct and vague. Half of the resources look the same on the map or with slight recolours, and feel like random mcguffins required for the plot rather than purposeful and different; the need to the put the trade post first isn't intuitive (maybe the first planet should start with one?) and the sense of base building or progression from extraction to research isn't there; and research buildings don't indicate the need for adjacency or build limits. There are just things and mechanics that exist in the game without being explained, and it doesn't make a lot of sense nor make for gameplay I found enjoyable.

It all made for a rather confusing experience, and even after watching the campaign playthrough I didn't find it as fun as I expected from the description.