Recent reviews by Boss Sauce

Excellent basketball manager sim in the vein of NBA 2k MyLeague, OOTP, or Football Manager. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as polished, deep, or accessible as the above titles. Despite this, it's the best basketball sim on the market, and well worth the money. The addition of mods such as Real NBA and NBA Facepack is essential, but once you got those rolling it's a superb NBA sim. Or, roll with entirely randomly generated fictional rosters.

DO Buy if you:
- Have been looking for a basketball GM sim game that has real depth, an excellent trade engine, and in-depth stats that'll make you dream in percentage points

DO NOT Buy if you:
- Are looking for Football Manager's level of match engine, world-wide scouting, and in-depth player interactions

Execellent game, and updated very often. Usually teams aim for monthly or bi-monthly updates, but this team of 2 has released 3 updates (that have content as well) in the last week. Plus updates never break saves as a rule for them, so its totally worth jumping in now; Its really quite good as a game as well! cRPG meets 2D Eve. Very systems oriented (which I love) so you can jump in and start playing easily enough (although lack of a tutorial is felt) but as you go on it just gets deeper and deeper.

TL:DR - If you like resource management games, survival on a colonial scale, and supply chains then you'll enjoy Surviving Mars. It isn't perfect, but its a darn good game and its flaws will undoubtably be fixed in time. Worth it now? Yes.

FIrst of all, a lot of the negative comments are valid. This is not a perfect game, and could use improving in some areas, but since the other reviews do a better job I won't detail those. Instead I'll tell you why you should buy this game: If you love management games (like me) the early game will be your jam. Setting up supply chains? Careful management of resources? Building redundant systems? I love all those things, and the early game is fun for me. If you dislike those things you will not like Surviving Mars.

It is not Cities Skylines, it is what Anno 2250 should have been. Because of that, many see the early game as tedious micromanagement, and that's a fair assessment. I just happen to like tedious micromanagement when the result, aka finally getting colonists on Mars and not having them die, is worth the effort. If this game didn't have that feeling of success then I wouldn't recommend it, but it does and it feels great to see your hard work rewarded with Martian babies being born.

I haven't played into the late game enough, but given what a lot of reviews have said that the late game is where it is most fun, and that mysteries can change the game, I'd say I'm going to continue to enjoy the game for a while.

tl;dr - Most of the problems are in MyCareer, and they aren't that bad. If you are like me and just love playing a well-made game about basketball in Play Now or MyLeague, this is a gem.

Ok, I see the hate, and most of it is legit. Yes, 2k is greedy, put microtransactions in everything in MyCareer, and there are some bugs. HOWEVER (and this is why I recommend it), the gameplay is tight (aside from bugs which I'm sure will be fixed), and the other modes such as MyLeague (which is what I mainly play) and MyGM are enhanced with new features, the movement is good, you don't have the canned dribble-pick up animations, which means when you mess up on a dribble-drive you straight up lose the ball or you make zero progress, as it should be. Also, 2k has finally made players make mistakes. Passes go out of bounds, trying to save your possesion after a failed play is properly hectic, and players who suck at making layups rarely make layups. It seriously matters whether you are using an 90 overall vs a 70, and you have to be smarter when using bad players. I don't much like the new shot meter, but I will probably turn it off anyways. Its more satisfying to learn your teams shooting style and focus on the animation rather than a meter. Also, if you turn off your wifi for a sec and create an offline MyCareer, you can play with them in games and upgrade using skill points from games instead of VC. You can't do animations or customization in offline MC mode, but if you hate the microtransactions that much you have another option. If you're looking for a good basketball game to get your fix before the season starts in 29(!) days this is the game for you

Love these kinds of games. ITC takes inspiration from Railroad Tycoon and other classic managment sims which I think is a great thing. Secondly, the devs are hyper responsive and are working hard with plenty of communication. Now clearly this is an Early Access game, and there are plenty of things I want to see added to the game, and bugs to squash, but its in a solid foundation already, and I highly reccomend you pick this up if you love managment games.

After many patches (19!!) and hard, hard work from the developers, I can finally reccomend this game. It isn't to far removed from CMS 15, but theres been enough changes to warrent the new game. There aren't as many new features as I would have liked to see, but honestly its a great game nonetheless, and the devs have worked very hard to patch it up to make it playable. I can now recommend this game and encourage you to give it a try.

Overall a lovely game. Mixes Banished, Heathstone, and Cities Skylines in design, but has its own art style that complements it well. There are still some bugs (nothing major yet) but the developers have already said they are working on an update, and for $10? Dang, this game is a steal. Good job devs! Thank you for creating a great game

TL:DR Great game hindered by graphical quality, difficulty to newcomers, and light diplomacy. For those who put in the effort, they will be rewarded however with a fantastically deep strategic 4X game that is unmatched in scale (1000 star galaxies that actually feel huge)

Don't let the immense depth and off-putting graphics fool you: This is one of the best 4X games out there. It is light on diplomacy, but apart from that and the previously mentioned bars to newcomers, this game has incredible depth and size. If you do decide to jump in and spend the $60 (yeah its a bunch, but its the full game plus several expansions) there are several guides, tutorials, and excellent mods (which you should definately play with once you are comfortable with the game) that make the game so much better. Especially look up Das Chrome UI mod right away because it makes the UI understandable. If you don't believe me, look at the hours I have. I only have 161 hours, and I'm still playing.
Note that the game is definately oriented towards military so diplomacy is mostly just prolonging war for as long as possible. It is possible to never start a war and play peaceful, but you will need to keep up with military power to avoid being chow for stronger military empires. Or you could just play as the Teekans whom everyone loves and they make tons upon tons of money. Annnnyways great game and stuff.

P.S. Also, Star Trek mods exist and you should play with them

I should note that I bought this game off the original website around two years ago.

This game is awesome, a ton of fun to play, has been in active development since I bought it with constant updates and integrating feedback, and the modding community is thriving. I highly reccomend this game for these reasons. Its got flaws, and I think there is plenty of room for growth. But as it is right now, it is a fantastic game with lots of replayablility.

In conclusion...its aight

So I deeply want to rant about the greatness of this game. I haven't played a single game straight over several days in a while, and this game made me do just that. Here's the thing though; I want users to know what they are buying. So I've included a list of things I love, think are 'meh', and hate. All personal opinion, but you as a buyer should be aware of these things as you too will likely encounter these.

TL;DR
Overall, as an early-access game, it is fun, engrossing, and at times infuriating. However, no other game I have played lets me have the freedom to enjoy space. The limits the game imposes through UI, bugs, etc are frustrating, but push past them and you'll see the magic behind it all.

Things I love;
-Building things is a lot of fun
-Plenty of options for specializing ships/experimenting with ideas
-Sandbox play allows you to set goals and challenges. Want to land on a planet safely? Better do some science to figure out how. Want to land on a planet unsafely? Better do some science.
-Modding community has done some great things, and there is a wealth of useful and cool mods if you look deep enough in the archives
-Flying ships feels great. I really feel like I'm piloting a giant hunk of metal hurtling through empty space. Elite Dangerous got it wrong by making it arcady. This game gets it right.
-Freedom to get it wrong. Lots of games hold your hand when you die. This game kinda shrugs and says, "Yeah I'll mark your dead body for you, but you're on you own dude. You hurtled yourself into an asteroid at 240 meters per second so not my problem."
-Seriously, building things is great. Block by block creating your own space ships and piloting them into the void has all the satisfaction of bubble wrap with none of the There's-no-more-bubble-wrap.

Things that are 'Meh';
-Bugs. Not spiders, cause those are in the game, but game-breaking bugs. Expect crashes and such. Turn autosave on and save yourself lots of heartbreak
-Tutorial was long, boring, and lackluster. Barely explained concepts you need to know, and when it did it explained them poorly. Take the time to watch YouTube videos; it'll make it a lot easier to get started
-Time investment to really grasp movement. The jetpack is awesome once you learn how to use it, but it takes awhile to get the hang of
-Rotating blocks can be infuriating and is barely explained in the tutorial
-Having tiers of resources would provide better sense of progression in survival instead of just "acquire all the ores...k you're done".
-AI really doesn't put up a fight. Combat with NPCs is fun, but seems more of a distraction than an actual part of the gameplay. PvP however is a different story...

Things I Hate;
-Many systems in the game are hard to grasp and are not explained. There are 7 pages of controls with 0 explanation of them.
-Lots of systems, for instance pistons and rotors, are fiddly at best, and broken at worst
-The UI is simply awful. Yes I know, when you want to have the depth of details you need walls of text and 300 tabs in the details menu, but I personally would appreciate having basic info more presentable with details and sliders able to be minimized until needed.
-I was mining an asteroid and suddenly loud dramatic music started. I felt like a champion, but I was just digging rocks so
-Seriously, rotating objects is so annoying. I get it, its space and you need to be able to rotate blocks in 6 directions, but I've played for 33 hours and it still takes me several tries to get it to do what I want
-Trying to see/comprehend basic stats for thrusters and reactors BEFORE building them, to my knowledge, is impossible. I literally have no idea how many thrusters can be powered by one reactor. I feel like I shouldn't have to google that.
-The weekly updates are good, but it seems they either change too little and nothing seems to be affected, or they change too much and break everything. Also makes mods quickly go obsolete if the modders aren't paying attention

So overall, as an early-access game, it is fun, engrossing, and at times infuriating. However, no other game I have played lets me have the freedom to enjoy space. The limits the game imposes through UI, bugs, etc are frustrating, but push past them and you'll see the magic behind it all.