Recent reviews by Speninator

Seems like an awesome concept at first, especially as a historical strategy game. I was super excited to play it, so I gave it a shot. Here are a couple things I liked about the game:

1. The price. Can't beat that, I got it for $2.50. However, if I had known what I was getting I wouldn't have paid over a dollar for it. But for the people who like this kind of game, I'm sure it's well worth the price.

2. The simulation is incredibly in-depth. Lots and lots of things to handle and experiment with, but I didn't play for long enough, mostly because I couldn't figure out what to do. But I'm sure it makes a very interesting alternate-history kind of thing after you play for long enough. But this is both a blessing and a curse, because understanding this game is not easy.

3. The globe map. That was pretty cool, even if navigating it is a pain in the butt.

But despite these, I'm not going to be playing this again. The game's cool mechanics are inaccessible behind a disaster of an interface, with no helpful guidance given. I was very disappointed, for a variety of reasons:

1. The tutorial didn't help me at all. It's a series of walls of text, followed by a screenshot of the screen the text was referring to. Difficult to follow but even more difficult to remember, and none of the information I read stuck. Not to mention a lot of the text in the game has typos or is written in broken English anyways. I do appreciate the translation, but it wasn't perfect, but that's being picky. I understood everything I read. Although at times, the text used throughout the whole game can be hard to read. And the Russian all over the place is kinda cool, but totally unneccessary and adds more to the already clunky interface.
Furthermore, there were things I found in the interface that the tutorial didn't touch on. A bit of prior knowledge would be very helpful, but what would be even better is an engaging, in-depth tutorial that covers everything you need to know to play the game.

2. Speaking of which, I really dislike the interface. The main screen of the game is based at a desk, with a couple items you can click, like a globe, map, calculator, etc. The globe was interesting and fun to look at, but none of the information I found on it seemed relevant and I had no idea what the actions for each country would do. I'm sure given time it would be very interesting to play around with the other countries, but that requires an understanding of the game's mechanics. The globe was also very difficult to navigate. There are arrow buttons you press to move the map around, as opposed to moving the mouse, or maybe even pressing an arrow key. The zoom was clunky, and if you were zoomed all the way out the interface blocked off most of the western hemisphere. Regardless, I thought the globe was pretty cool.
Next up was the map, which shows a bunch of statistics. It would help if the statistics didn't look like they were buttons, but thankfully most of the buttons in-game are pretty apparent. Again, I'm sure the information is helpful, but I don't know what to do with it.
Then we had the telephone. It makes no sense to me. Save and load buttons, as well as menu, but... what are all these other buttons? Two-letter abbreviations? They take you to other screens, which I think were explained in the tutorial, but that information didn't stick and I had no idea what I was looking at, much less what all these nonsensical abbreviations stood for.
Then the calculator. The tutorial kept mentioning the budget, and that the calculator is where you handle all that... but what? I didn't understand a thing I was looking at. I don't ever know how much money I have or how to spend it on certain things.
Lastly there was a history book sorta thing in the middle, which was cool. Probably the only interface I really understood, hit a check-mark, click the next button, see the result of your decision.

3. The design of the interface is awful. It feels like the different screens just have buttons plopped wherever it's convenient, especially the phone and calculator screens, which makes it very confusing. I also had no clue what 90% of buttons did, but this awful button placement made each screen feel very different. It would be better if the buttons were maybe on pop-up menus, and we had a central information section, or if the main screen was the map akin to Civ, but it isn't. It's an ugly communist desk, which is nice for immersion's sake, but not for gameplay. Also, if the buttons had tooltips (with information that would help and make sense) that would help immensely. Just the way that every screen had a different layout was distracting.

4. The game feels aimless. This might be because I had no idea what I was doing, but still. Is my goal to preserve the USSR or take over the world, or what? The steam description had so much more, but none of that is anywhere in the game. It's so open ended, that without knowing how things work, I felt like there was nothing to do, even though I know that's not the case.

5. I'm nitpicking, but also the lack of sound and the basic bare-bones menus. I prefer it to a fancy flourish, but still it was jarring and made me less interested in trying to invest the time to learn the game.

6. Because of the nature of the interface (being based at a desk) I had problems visualizing what was going on. Maybe that's why I love the map so much, because it gives me something to look at that has a meaning, rather than just words. I don't know exactly how a visualization could be given to every menu, but maybe that's not necessary. But why even have separate screens for everything? All the screens could seriously be fit into one, and then you avoid the hassle that is the telephone.

I'm sure if I took the time to learn it, I would have a great time. It's such a cool concept and I love this kind of thing! But my first 10 minutes were so overwhelming, confusing, and unpleasant that I decided not to take the time. The tutorial was awful and didn't help, and the already confusing game mechanics are made worse by not being explained anywhere, and then made even worse by the awful layout, disgusting menu navigation, and the ugly font. I really wish the concept was executed in a smoother and more graceful way. It could be so cool, but it isn't. I think the developers are newer to this kind of strategy game, and they did a great job with what they got. But it could be so, so much better.

If the menus made sense, information wasn't so difficult to take in, there were tooltips, the font was prettier, the English was more understandable, the game had some kind of goal, and there was a decent tutorial that introduced you to the mechanics slowly but in a memorable fashion, then I'd probably enjoy it. But as it is, the menu layouts are terrible, nothing I read stuck with me, I had no idea what a lot of buttons did, the whole game was ugly, and on top of that, I had no clue what was going on. I wouldn't reccomend this game, unless you know a lot about the USSR already and are willing to have the patience to learn this terrible interface.

Big fat waste of money... I can't even get into any game without the game crashing. A lot of people have had the same problem as me, as well as plenty of other problems and crashes. VERY frustrating.

I mean, the game SOUNDS very fun. I bet its a blast... if you can play it.

It was a waste of my money and time. Don't buy this broken game.