Recent reviews by SospacedouT

been having fun playing again and wanted to buy the green cities equivalent but the entire game is off the store. that feels kinda slimy for paradox to do this. i know that the relaunched one is twenty dollars but i don't want all the other additions to the game. you figure they would have at least left up the dlc for purchase knowing how they salivate at the dlc-based model. i'm actually done giving paradox any more hard earned money. sorry tlatoani, i wanted you but your master drove us away...

much like s@x at age 50, i didn't last long. honestly a couple minutes. was able to put over 3000 hours into that first one but i was a younger man then. it feels bad like you're trying to force yourself to like it because you had a lot of fun with that first one and created a lot of memories together. this one just needed to be that one, maybe gussied up a bit for a trip to glamour shots at the mall. it is not. it tries too hard and ends up broken and confused. much like...

I'm having fun. A lot of it doesn't make sense, like tying season change to story progression and character heart levels which do nothing as far as I can tell. The foraging for items seems pointless. Sitting here thinking about it, the whole thing is pointless. The townfolk don't add anything, the job board severely underpays you for your items and money doesn't matter anyway. Why even buy decorations for your house? You're never in there except to sleep. I bought one dresser for my room that said "holds a lot of stuff" get it home and it doesn't hold anything. Can't even interact with it.
Everything seems pointless. And it is. But...
I'm having fun playing the game my way. I don't set up crazy belts across town, I just hand deliver everything. I don't set up production chains until needed and I don't do any jobs for people.
The whole game is pointless really. Time doesn't stop when talking to npc's, the dog is stupid, the mines aren't necessary except for 50 pcs. of quartz needed for a quest and the townies might as well not exist at all.
Everything sounds bad, and it is. But...I'm having fun somehow.
Especially once I resigned to the fact that outside of the production chains, the rest of the game doesn't matter one bit. That's probably hard to hear if you worked on the game but it's true. There is no point to the rest of the game and it only ends up getting in the way. I wanted this to be a great mix of two genre's I love. It's not. The town is not important whatsoever and just ends up getting in the way of a great unlock\progression arc. Setting everything up is really fun and I wish this game was just that. The bright colors and cheerful mood are pleasing, it runs great for me, the tooltips are lacking. the music makes sound and works great on kb/m and controller.
I will recommend it to people if you're just doing the production chains. Anyone looking for any sort of town sim mechanics will be severely disappointed by the skeletal facade implemented here.

The parts I enjoy are fun, so I play.
6.8\10

early access? feels like a complete game to me. very excited for any future content. great job devs!

I've had a really great time so far. You're given a world with three cities that need ever increasing resources, both in complexity and abundance. Planning logistic routes around the different resources and production areas to the cities is sometimes challenge enough but soon enough, the ice will melt...
What once was a thriving steel bar or concrete factory that supplied numerous industries is now underwater. You gotta get it from somewhere else. Good luck. And yeah, your train tracks and roads are underwater too.
I'm not sure that I have any complaints. From a quality of life perspective, I would appreciate maybe a visual diagram of the first basic production chains. You can set things up how you want according to how buildings behave but i really struggled in the beginning to find reasonable ways to set up the basics. Of course I've gotten way better over the hours and restarts at setting things up, though it would still be nice to have a visual example of a setup that could work.
The first few attempts I tried to simultaneously supply all the cities which got to be overwhelming for me, so this current playthrough, I've been concentrating on just one city's growth. Not sure what this will lead to but I'm having fun and that's all that matters to me.

Great game for me. 9.2\10

i think it's really neat! seems to be that you will be rewarded for taking your time and clicking on everything. food has been an issue, though it's definitely my fault for playing too quick. can't wait to start over and hopefully learn from my mistakes. definitely would recommend for anyone interested in simulation and city building games in general.

*EDIT*

After thirty hours, I think I'm done. Clearly the creators have a great love for their game and a willingness to be communicative and adapt their product. For me, It's just way too much micromanaging. Way too much. Your people need to more often than not, have two or even three workplaces. Now imagine juggling that with twenty people. Not so bad, right? No, it's not. It really becomes a chore for me, personally to want to do that as the population gets exponentially bigger, let alone having to set up four or five different colonies just to have the materials needed to please everyone everywhere. Fifty people in was becoming an absolute chore. The individual buildings need upgrades too which if you want remember which ones have what and when you want them to not have those upgrades anymore, well, good luck friend. When I think about that, there is no way I want try and get all that going. I'm thirty hours in and barely know how the marketplace works. It's so confusing. It's not a marketplace in a normal sense. You have to either have trade agreements with other factions or have another colony(ies) that you are building in. Then there are four sliders for each item, two for your own settlements and two for any factions you might have trade agreements with. it's just so convoluted, for me, to enjoy any further. I actually think that one building ruined the whole game for me. A shame too because there are some things to really marvel at, especially as far as how the actions\reactions of the systems at play intertwine.
You can edit your own scenario map or whatever but it still makes you follow the same guidelines of the tutorial. Move camera, click on map, build sawmill. etc. As far as I could gather, you cant make a map without goals, I tried, believe me, I tried.
This game is in desperate need of a main menu sandbox mode. Forcing the players to create that themselves is something. that should be remedied.
Thirty hours in and I don't regret my time. The developer was very responsive to everyone in the discussions and I took some cool screenshots. There's just no way I can do it anymore. I wish the team the best and they clearly care for this game, which is great. I thought in the beginning as I played that it would get better but it just got more and more tedious for me truthfully. The systems started to wear thin, especially all the tedious job micromanagement and watching as every animal just casually stroll into all of your buildings, all of them, eating your food, even while you sleep. If you could hire some citizen night watch to deter the animal theft
it might help but I'll never know. Just can't do it any more.
I still do recommend the game based on the developer's level of commitment to the product and attentiveness to the gamer. There surely is fun to be had if you enjoy ultra-micromanagement style simulation games.

treat it like anno with no combat and you'll have a better time. especially since you have to pass meaningless goals to "win" a map to proceed to the next biome. only around 10% of all people have done this, so that seems like a bad design decision to me. for instance...i don't want to build twenty factories or fifty wind turbines or whatever. was really hoping for a more organic experience. and you are locked to one of three win condition paths once you pass the first condition of one of those. i don't personally care for this aspect of the game and it really ends up bringing the experience down a bit for me.
i got on deep sale and definitely don't regret the purchase. since there's no real reason to play other than solving puzzles, i don't think i'll play anymore but i did enjoy my time. 6.5\10

i broke the game, bobby - hank hill

where'd my chocolate milk go?
i like chocolate milk.

pretty cool so far. really wish you could rotate buildings with R like normal, or Z/X like Anno but it's tied to Shift. the districts aspect is convenient and lets you specialize the different areas on the map. obviously more decoration options would be nice and a true sandbox mode would be appreciated