Recent reviews by Dharma

Have played a bunch on my phone app as well, a well-rounded card game with multiple interesting factions. It's a bit P2W to get all the cards etc, with some absurd prices (20€ per faction "battle pass" - and there are 10 of them!). But I am enjoying it without paying a cent. I recommend it for fellow card/board game enthusiasts.

Addictive and overly complex. Proceed with caution.

Addictive gameplay with a nice progression system. Feels better than Vampire Survivors, although it looks/sounds like it was made in 1999.

The board game is very good, the implementation one of the best (although it has room for improvement).

I discourage anyone from buying it though, it has a frequent game-breaking bug that occurs when you play online with friends, that prevents you from reconnecting when the game bugs out during draft and you can't do anything but reconnect. It's a shame how a so easily reproducible bug is still in the game after years.

A challenging village simulator that resets after you get to the end, and you start over. At first I thought it would be terribly repetitive and devoid of any sense of accomplishment, however the scaling difficulty levels and the citadel upgrades, along with all the random elements (blueprints, cornerstones, modifiers etc) lead to a fresh challenge every time, even though you essentially start the same game from scratch every time. This cycling nature provides the player with happy-feelings rushes and I would say it's worth your time as a casual but challenging game without too much headache.

Also, a huge plus is the developer team. They are very communicative, release new content every 15 days and the game feels actually fresh and better after every update. Kudos to them!

Very immersive. It's a living, breathing world. What most HP fans wanted for years out of a game.

Review after ~3hours:
Weirdly comforting.

Update after ~20+ hours of gameplay:

The game is good. But it has serious flaws that hold it back and prevent a smoother experience.

• Variety of tasks around the station. Although some are borderline obnoxious (more on that later), it's very nice to have a lot of things to do and actually choosing what to do.
  
• Aesthetic. Although this could have been released a decade ago, I love the desert highway aesthetic, the weather changing during the day and the faraway hills getting blurred by the heat.
  
• Gameplay loop is rewarding, you get money to invest in products/new services to get more money to buy more etc. It feels good to make money. Like in real life. Then you waste 10k for a vacuum cleaner that doesn't even clean the dust/sand from the floor. Ugh. Like in real life.

• Crashes. Oh my god, this game crashes 2 out the 3 times you open it after a while. At least the auto save feature and the reward loop makes it bearable, you don't lose progress as, say, in an rpg. The game is also not scripted, so if you crash you will get different clients etc than you did last time. But I find it unacceptable that a game that receives regular updates hasn't fixed this problem yet. It really turned me off early, when the progress was more tangible.
  
• Bugs, bugs, bugs. The game is so buggy with its AI routing system that it actually has a button to reset all clients etc, cause it's that buggy. There is a regular parking spot in my station that the driver is always stuck. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of bugs are still in the game, like employee AI, money not getting credited (I once played for ~2 hours and didn't get any money from the garage repair service, that I was constantly losing money from and couldn't figure out why), the car wash system (more on that soon), held objects clipping through surfaces and more.
  
• Car wash. Oh.Lord. I am sure a lot of people stop playing after unlocking this. Although in the "late" game it's one of the best services possible, since it's automated and nets you 150$/wash for just pressing a button once a day, early on it's horrible. At first it seems like the cars are getting more sand than you can clean. It's so damn obnoxious, borderline toxic. I closed it after a while cause I was getting frustrated. You don't even have a visual cue of when the car is ready to go. Sometimes there is a lot of sand left, sometimes it's all squeaky clean, sometimes there is sand on the inside, honestly have no idea how they make it work. Probably a % of sand removed, but some of it is hidden behind other card parts.
  
• Mouse sensitivity: It's terrible and you can't change it. You get used to it after a while, but I expect more from a 2022 game.

• Lock-picking. It's kinda fun, easy to do but overall not rewarding at all. You get to pick people's cars while they wait on you to fuel said cars, or pick police cars right in front of the officer entering or exiting them. It's okay. But nothing more. Borderline uninteresting. I would like a more rewarding version, but more dangerous. Like if a policeman sees you, you get to pay a fine or something along those lines. Untapped potential.
  
• Graffiti kid. So there is this kid, Dennis, that comes every once in a while and draws graffiti on your station's walls. Which you can paint over again in a jiffy. While it's kinda thematic and fun, it's overall uninteresting as well. Like, what is the purpose? Do you lose popularity when clients see the graffiti? I don't think so (cause they don't comment on it, unlike when, say, your trash can is full) and even if they do, it's usually on the sides of the building where clients don't see anyway. Also it's annoyingly clunky when you try to throw objects at him to get him to leave.
  
• The uncle story line. Tl;dr: when you buy the gas station, 1 minute into the game, you get tutorial tips from your "uncle" and he gifts you some money to get it running. Then he says you owe him and you have to repay 5k$ in one day, which is obviously not doable. One of his lackeys then beats you up and you get to repay him at a later date. Overall nice as a tutorial, but as a story line it's kinda stupid and I find it annoying that he disappears after you don't unlock anything new. Would like more interaction with him and his teddy-bear holding lackey.
  
• Your employees have to rest but you don't. Dunno why it bugs me, but I would like to feel more "real" as well.
  
  Final thoughts: I hope I didn't forget anything, since I accidentally closed the window and lost all my review when I first wrote it... Anyway. The game has a lot of untapped potential. The game play loop is rewarding and fun, but crashes, bugs and uninteresting interactions hold it back. I guess, thematically, you have to do boring things when you run a gas station, but I am pretty sure they can do better with this. Absolutely recommended on sale and/or when they fix the various problems with it. The two DLC's are also very nice.

Annoyingly difficult and anxiety-inducing. If that is your jam, go for it

If you want a good horror experience, go to the Asylum. Very fun with friends.

This app is great to play (almost) every board game there is. Very good way to test products before buying them.