A compelling and thought-provoking game where you make decisions and experience alternative versions of your life through copies of yourself. The game does a great job at keeping you on your toes, on your first playthrough you'll struggle to meet goals in time and try to cater to the needs and desires of your Alters. Depending on which of the Alters you bring along with you and how you do on your exploration outside of the base, it can have a massive impact on the gameplay along with which of the endings you'll get.

There are some NPC characters you converse with throughout your journey and by the end of the game the stakes are high and you'll have to make some tough decisions. Each Act brings with it a new landscape and new challenges, you'll have to start doing research to get past obstacles and with the sun moving every closer, you have to work hard to ensure you aren't left in the dust.

There are lots of neat little touches like the Beer Pong minigame, cinema activities and dialogue you can initiate with your Alters. Your Alters will sometimes argue amongst themselves and set you a challenge, where you'll get some kind of bonus if you're able to meet the goals of the Alters. You have to manage your food recourses along with precious minerals, metals and the elusive rapidium.

You start the game with a maximum of 4 Alters (Two are story-essential) and you can get up to 6 Alters in one playthrough, with some extras available on other playthroughs and some secrets along the way.

There are ups and downs but you really get a lot out of it. The landscapes are beautifully crafted and since base exploration happens differently each time, you can try out new strategies and see what works in the long term.

The music is moody and atmospheric, the songs themselves are wonderful especially the What If song near the end of Act 1 where you can actually have some input on the lyrics. There are some tragic moments and you get deep into the backstory of your Alters. Each one has some past trauma that needs resolving for them to fully get over their demons and give you their words of wisdom. Fantastic sounds as well, especially the radiation noises, the noises of the planets and wonderful voice work (in particular the voice actor for Jan Dolski who covers all the Alters voices). This is a wonderful game and well worth experiencing if you're heavily into sci-fi, base building and exploration.

This is a phenomenal game collection for many reasons. I love the unified art style and the choice to lean heavily into pixel art as it really allows the artists to express themselves. You're getting tremendous value for what you purchase, each of the games are fantastic in their own right and no matter what genre you like the most, there will no doubt be quite a few that you will enjoy and some which you will treasure. The presentation is outstanding, even just with the game collection which shows off the games really puts you in the right mindset and gives you ways to sort games along with marking games as 'favourites'. The sound is spot on and really captures that retro vibe. The game looks fantastic and especially suits portable devices too such as the Steam Deck. Whether you're on a smaller-screened device or a massive monitor you will love the visuals.

For me the two games that had me hooked for a while were Avianos and Party House. Going into more depth, Avianos is turn-based strategy at it's finest with some impressive real-time battles featuring your armies. The different units play into each other really well with shield units absorbing arrows, flying units being able to bombard swordsmen and each troop has their own best and worst matchups respectively. While numbers do help a lot with the armies, the composition of the army is very important as a massive shield wall could easily take down an unprepared foe. Mechanics like surprise attacks, teleporting and magic spells can easily transform the battlefield and your opposing armies. Having to choose the best deity that will not only generate resources effectively but also build up your army strength really does get you planning your moves effectively and reacting to the AI or another human player really does give this a massive amount of depth, even if there are only 20 board tiles on the map. The limited number of moves you can make in a turn really does emphasis making every single turn count.

Party House starts fairly simple but becomes more complicated as the game goes on. Your objective is to build up your popularity and money in order to add VIPs to your rolladeck and expand the house to allow more guests. The constant balance of keeping troublemakers away while also trying to bring in the resources you need is a constant battle. Playing to certain guest's strengths is so crucial and often winning or losing can weigh heavy on which guests you added to your deck and which order, along with the random order of the way they enter the house. It starts simple but really ramps up and makes this challenging but manageable.

Briefly touching on other games I enjoyed the most, Waldorf's Journey has a Jump King vibe as you send your walrus hurtling through the sky, frantically flapping to try and stay on a nearby platform. Buying items with collected shells gives you bonuses as well which can help, but watch out for flying obstacles and immovable walls! Onion Delivery puts you in a retro Grand Theft Auto style world where you follow the blips on your minimap, try not to hit objects or get lost and try to make it back home in one piece. Combatants is a real-time strategy life sim where you try and get your ant colony thriving and conquer against the evil red army, each mission gets slightly harder forcing you to adapt your strategy and outlast your opponent.

I could easily go into more detail here but there really is a wide breath of games to sink your teeth into. There's many other games in the package including a betting simulator, platformers, shooters, sports games, metroidvanias, adventures, puzzle games and arcade-style games. Most offer a singleplayer experience while a few are playable with another player and some also support co-op gameplay too. I highly recommend this game, especially if you are a huge fan of retro gaming and high-quality pixel art.