Recent reviews by Debris Field

Alrrrrrright, Reassembly. I seriously think this is my favorite video game of all time.

What is so great about it?

- The concept of the engineering design process is the core idea of the game.
You build and control a ship, you quickly find out it's bad, and you improve it until it is both unbeatable and unbearable, and it is the greatest feeling in the world.

- Then you realize that tournaments exist, and you are introduced to a whole new way of designing ships. Your ships are so powerful now that (vanilla) campaign mode is simply too easy. However, you will find out that your ships are far from up to par in the tournament scene, and you must improve to be competitive. And, of course, you do. You improve a lot. you can no longer design ships that you can play well; you must now design ships the questionable Reassembly AI can play well. You participate in tournaments to find out who is the best at coming up with interesting new strategies, who is the best at actually executing those strategies, who is, well, the best. And you have loads of fun along the way. i mean, you could also find a way to make your ship glitch out of the tournament arena, making everyone die inside, but that's a topic for a future discussion.

- Or you go along a different path (or both, idk), delving deep into the (larger) modding community, filled with absolutely breathtakingly beautiful ships and fantastically interesting factions with weapons significantly more impressive and wonderful than anything in the vanilla game. You can make simple mods with relatively little hassle, or you can work hard and come out with an absolute masterpiece of a faction. There's more than just new factions, however. There is much more that I am not qualified to explain. This significantly increases the limited replayability of the vanilla campaign.

- oh and also: it looks pretty cool, I guess, but vanilla the look of the game is (imo) easily improved with graphics mod.


Bad things (clearly biased; I did say this is my favorite video game of all time):

- possibly not executed perfectly?

- Campaign easy and simple once you learn competitive ship design

- little vanilla faction balance, but that's easy to fix with Reassembly Remastered

- mods are rarely balanced, but then again, mods are optional and are made by players who generally have different balancing reference points.


One more thing:

Reassembly has introduced me to the concept of engineering (without me even knowing it) with this incredibly simple but incredibly nuanced video game. The game was one of the factors that drew me into designing and making actual physical things. I became deeply involved in my FIRST Robotics Competition team and learned various CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAM (Computer Aided Machining) programs like Solidworks, Fusion 360, and Camworks because this little spaceship building game introduced me to the wonders and infinite satisfaction that are endemic to engineering and making things. In Reassembly, I asked the question: where do I put my thrusters so my ship will behave correctly? Now, in FRC, I ask: Where do put my collector so the driver can place more game pieces? It is truly incredible how much this fun little game has taught me about the extreme funness (Idk, the word does has a meaning) that comes with making things, and for that, I am infinitely grateful.