Recent reviews by Staines

This is basically a blend of Mad Max and Rust. Imagine a sand ocean full of walking viking ships and angry people, with Mount and Blade combat.

Not for solo's or carebears - group up asap.

This game is so legendarily bad it singlehandedly forced Steam to implement the refund policy we have today.

This game is an achievement for mankind.
It's equal measures silly, serious and accessible.

The Arma series has been part of my free time for over a decade.

If you want (in my opinion) the full experience and more teamwork orientated gameplay, you should try and join an Arma 3 "unit" early on via the steam forums or r/findaunit. These "units" operate as private clubs and are commonly similar to a Dungeons and Dragons group for 20 people, and are tailored to provide various different experiences.

Universim is a marketing campaign with an extraordinarily bland game attached. If you just watched the trailers that was the best bit - it's all downhill from here. The worst part is the game is so slow it takes longer than 2 hours to figure out there's no substance to it.

This is the best little space indie you'll find on Steam.
Extremely playable even in early access.

XO is a great blend of broad sci-fi inspirations combined into something unique and compelling. The game mechanics are easy to learn, and they create a great framework for the tactics and drama of the game. The game can be played through several times, because the smaller random encounters will change your fleet and it's story, politics, and tactics in different ways each time you play.

The wider story advances towards an inevitable end, ready or not.
It's a great Space Opera.

Kenshi is an interesting world - a living, thriving wasteland that is mostly indifferent to the player, which stands in stark contrast to games like Fallout where generations of people sleep next to a bathtub with a skeleton in it until the player comes along to shake up their world.

Brutal and unforgiving of mistakes, Kenshi is still a world that rewards those who abhor save scumming, and the only way to become strong is to get the dustcakes kicked out of you until you're tough enough to fight back, without dying in the process.

This is a great game for the people who still play Mount&Blade Warband, or love early Fallout. The first 30 minutes will probably confuse you with the bad UI, graphical ugliness and lack of direction, but give it a chance and you'll totally get into it - scavenge, recruit, get your ass beat until you're strong enough to thrive.

Shallow mechanics,
I found myself thinking I'd mastered the basics only to realise I'd mastered everything the game had to offer.
Gridless cities gimmick is interesting, but the game often proceeds so slowly it might as well by a desktop background.

Good game, it's come a long way.

This game has had over half a decade of early access development, but unfortunately in that time it hasn't gone very far. Content is lacking, and this is essentially a very dry sandbox that will take a lot of time, effort, creativity and friends to make an engaging game out of. It's certainly possible to enjoy this game, but it isn't really a simple pick and and play experience.

The developers constantly work on it and release updates. -- After many years, a basic set of campaigns and scenarios are now available, and the visual design for most objects were overhauled. To the dev teams credit, extensive technical updates have slowly made the games multiplayer functional (on expensive, high end servers), despite their apparent struggle and lack of prior expertise.

Keen Software is now releasing DLC for this game. Unfortunately, to me, this seems like a bad move considering the lack of content available for this game at release. It's possible that like say, Paradox games, the amount of DLC will eventually result in a fully functional game available to buy when it all goes on sale after a few years.