Recent reviews by Lute

Post-PSN no longer going to be required:
I played a good amount of the first HD and I loved it. This game takes it up to 11. Do you love democracy? Freedom? Do you want to squash bugs and bots? Do you want to play 40k...I mean, a 3rd person game that is its own thing? Then this game is for you

The game needs some gameplay changes, MOSTLY gathering taking FOREVER. As people have said, sometimes you're just waiting for resources wondering why some NPC isn't bringing them to the shop. You can have a TON of people just for gathering and still nothing, which makes progress insanely slow.
I really like the game, I do. The endgame takes SO long that I had the game on triple speed just going "oh my gosh get to the end already" since I could handle anything the game threw at me.
There's some other things like perhaps a building to have just gatherers for a certain area or world map turning on / off filters since sometimes it was hard to see which areas were for looting and which were 'gather 1 every 12 hours". Felt like an idle game.
Again, I enjoyed it and finished it, but the last...*sigh* 6 hours maybe was just on high speed looking for why the engineer posts weren't producing, then doing that, then waiting again. A LOT of waiting. Game was at its best in the early-mid game. Also being able to turn off notifications for "a colonist died" would be nice. With 400 colonists, SO many just died from old age and the constant sound BOOM was annoying to say the least. That mixed with "colonist infected". Also, I still never figured out why so many colonists got mutated. All I can think of is they ignored my toilets and saunas, but there was no pollution other than underground mixers and I had maitenance all over those, so don't know why I'd randomly get 20-50 infected (other than 'a toxic cloud appeared').

If you get this game, and seriously, this IS a fun experience. There's choices at the beginning for difficulty. I'd suggest make the setting for gathering as fast as possible and then give more bandit / catastrophes attacks to balance it out.

As many have said, it's similar to "This War of Mine" in a 'if you like that game, you'll like this game' kind of way. It's not so similar that you're playing the same game though. I actually enjoyed this more than TWOM. While I do agree with these other reviews that TWOM made you care about the characters MUCH more than this game does, I really like the resource management of this game more. The story isn't as strong and you don't 'feel bad' about doing certain things like you do in TWOM, but in this game you manage the war effort while also prioritizing getting enough food for your own workers. I like the balance of that. There's things to do always and while TWOM I played 1 time and felt like I saw enough, this game I played both scenarios (which are quite different really, also 2nd scenario assumes you beat the first and know how to play) and I want more scenarios.
So it's almost like TWOM did a better job of being 1 story while SS:GV does a better job of being a video game. If that makes sense at all.

Like Slacklands, this is a lovely little game that you'll have very little info to start with and gradually you'll figure out what you're doing / the goal of the game. It took me 8 hours start to finish (including redos) to beat the game, but there's also achievements after and like slacklands, I could see myself playing again. I love civ builders / survival games and so this was right up my alley.
I almost don't want to give any advice, but this is pretty minor and will help after you go 'huh, I'm losing after 15 days'. Always have more people doing food than you think you need and walls, walls, walls. Also, your own guys sometimes can go through walls, so if you suddenly wonder how a dude died way out there and you were sure you had the gate closed, he may have ghosted through the wall.

You can't talk about this game without comparing it to Civilization games. If you like those, you'll like this. However, it's different enough to warrant owning both. It's impressive the game can be so similar and yet so different. This one feels more like the 'world map' is actually a collection of large islands. Battles takes place over several rounds for 1 game turn and movement during that time is important. I pay more attention to terrain area in this game than I ever do in Civ. You can also queue up what a city does and you can't build just anything, you have to kinda pick and choose. The Outpost (think small city that can't do much being connected to a bigger city so you CAN build navy by connecting these two outposts) system is pretty interesting.
I'm still learning the system, but so far I'm pretty hooked.

I've only played this 3 and 4 player and can say that if you get 3 friends together, about the same level of gaming ability or perhaps even lower than your own, all on discord, you're gonna have a fun time. Will you have a successful time? No promises, instead I can only offer various points of laughter, yelling, and more laughter. This can be almost like overcooked in chaos at times, but it always feels like your own fault for not doing better, in a good way. I'm enjoying this game far more than I thought I would.

Just got done with mission 3 and I'm literally laughing with delight and only stopping because I need to go to bed. I'm an extrovert and my friend is an introvert and this game just fits with us so well. This game is bringing pure joy in some places and making you feel awesome. It's very much like an escape room.

Atmosphere, this game has it in spades. You never have enough workers, engineers, resources, room for buildings, etc, oh and it's getting colder.
Frostpunk is a resource management 'mini-city' builder during the most harsh winter that could end humanity. There's several scenarios that offer different challenges.
Expect to feel bad about your decisions, expect to reload or restart the scenario numerous times. It's a great game, but it holds no punches. I finally beat the game on regular difficulty (try a few times, if it's giving you too much trouble, play on easy and then try other scenarios on normal and go back to main story). You'll get better at managing your city and it feel real good.

This is just a plain fun game. There's a few issues I have with it, but it's a fun game, especially the mid-game where you're upgrading your plane, using abilities at the right time, and other tactical ideas.
Issues, I wish there was a Mk 6 engines, you never can put everything you want on your plane. Sometimes you just can't click on the right crew member / medkit / heal and your guy is standing in front of their dying crewmember and letting them die. There's a couple hotkeys, but man, this game would benefit GREATLY from a "grab medkit" button and "heal nearest crewmember" or "return to station".
Again, this game is fun and although the missions get really samey by the end, it's a good time.
NOTE: Get yourself those 20mm guns and you'll kill enemy aces in no time.

I really like the hectic nature of trying to get the units in the right area to respond quickly to places. The quicker you resolve them, the better your reputation.
Career mode is play a specific city and try to get reputation of 100 and then unlocks the next city
Single City run is actually pretty awesome. I chose my own city and it was pretty standard, but then would randomly get big events. I did this before career and so I got more funds to get more units and better equipment.
The cheap DLC is very well worth it, but like others have said, it seems like it should have been in the real game.

2 criticisms: 1. when you move a unit, they all have blue as their "I'm going over here", it would be SO helpful to have red for Fire and white for ambulances. They do have color coded events, so it seems it would be obvious to make their pathing in color too. Why is this such a big deal? Read below
2. Quite often you try to click on a unit and click the wrong one, even when zoomed in. This is a bit of a annoyance here and there, but sometimes you are trying to click on a unit to go to an event and instead are clicking on a police and they can't move due to arresting, but you're trying to click on fire truck and just can't click on them. Also sometimes you try to click on an event and instead click right next to it, blocking the event. So you try to zoom in and click on them and then on the event, but you can't quite get the hitbox to do it. You'll have an ambulance RIGHT next to where someone is dying and you can't click on it. The pathing of the game is great, but I wish there was a bit of "oh, am I right next to an injury? Go ahead and go there". Only if it's basically within the same area that an event is.
All that said, this is a great game. Only other minor thing is I wish there were even more voice calls.

Warning: Some of the voice calls are legit stressful and get your heart pumping. Realize you may get there after something bad happened or even on the call something bad happens. Just be aware.