Recent reviews by Sir Murtak [108th]

One of the few games I can wholeheartedly recommend if you're a fan of the coop shooter genre.
It comes with a great visual (and audio) style as well as a surprising amount of content that will keep you occupied for a good amount of time.
All the gameplay related content is freely available to all players. Nothing is locked behind DLC's and the Dev Studio seems to operate in a very open and player oriented way.
The game can be enjoyed alone but I'd highly recommend to bring a few friends.

Especially at sale price this is a definite recommendation.

Rock & Stone!

Edit after 1.0 Update:
Be aware that you're still buying what is basically an early access title. 1.0 caused more chaos than to actually improve gameplay. In fact I'd say that the actual gameplay was better pre 1.0 patch. The new Mission system is greatly random and lacks substance and complexity while cutting accessability to those who don't want to code to setup there own missions.
Buy only if you just wanna build stuff but not if you want to play a game. Or just wait for now.


After around 1200 Hours it's probably time to give this game a small little Review. Due to the Game currently being in early access, things mentioned in the review might've changed by now. Written at game Version 0.9.20 (early 2020).

Starting off I'd say that this Game was worth the money I spent on it. If you're into vehicle sandbox games like Kerbal Space Programm, Besiege, Simple Planes and Space Engineers in a semi realistic environment then you should definetly give this game a try as well.

Gameplay and Building:
Building Mechanics are very simple, you can build your vehicles from basic blocks (a bit similar to minecraft but with 25cm blocks), shapes, mechanical parts etc. - This can either be used to create simple vehicles or complex master pieces full of moving parts to create more complex or smooth shapes. The games complex logic system allows to create a ton of useful features from full scale autopilots to working radar screens. It mainly consists out of simple Logic Blocks (that can also be arranged in a programmable micro processor) that are connected via a simple drag and drop system. (similar to scratch or programming learning tools). There's also lua scripting which allows for even more complex Logic.
The current actual gameplay is a bit lackluster at the moment and mainly consists out of "ferry" missions (fly this there, deliver his to there, recover this ... etc). The main fun comes from actually playing around with your vehicles. There's a career mode which requires you to research components, manage your fuel etc., I personally play only creative due to the career missions getting boring quite quickly.

The World:
The World is a (somewhat) randomly arranged combination of pre-made Islands. It offers a pretty high variety of terrains (mostly water tho) and plenty of space to explore. Sadly the world feels very empty and lacks story telling.

Graphics:
The overall quality is very pleasing in my opinion, this is mainly achieved through the low poly look that works very consistently through the game. Reflections and Lighting are very beautiful and don't require to much hardware power.

Performance:
The Performance is quite okay. As long as you as you keep your Vehicles reasonable sized (and detailed) the performance stays very stable. When spawning a lot of vehicles or very complex vehicles the game speed will drop quite harshly tho. As long as you have a decent Computer you should be fine Performance wise.
[Played on: i5-7500, nvidia 1050ti, 24gb RAM and on i7-9750h, nvidia 1650, 16gb RAM both averaging at around 60FPS with nothing to demanding being spawned]

Multiplayer
Stormworks currently features Multiplayer via Steam Friends. There's no dedicated Servers and Multiplayer performance can be quite bad, especially when playing with someone who has a bad Internet connection or a bad pc .

Early Access
In my opinion this game currently is what early access is supposed to be. There's regular updates, the devs listen to the community (not always but quite often) and there's quite a lot of stuff which get's broken regularly. Don't expect a final Product, expect a work in progress.

Realism
It's a game. Not a Simulator. Hydro / Aerodynamics are very cruedly implemented / simplified. There's only basic and generic components that wont allow for everything that you may want to build. - You usually have to adapt to the game mechanics when building real life things. The Water simulation is good and probably one of the best I've seen in the Indie / smaller game. Although it lacks in the actual Buoyancy simulation. There's no proper wakes or water displacement and vehicles will only float when they're air tight.

Conclusion
I would definetly recommend this if you like vehicle sandbox games. It lacks a bit of content in the actual gameplay department but the overall building mechanics are really good. The current Physics are working somewhat well but have a lot of room for improving.

If you have any questions or remarks feel free to leave a comment.