Recent reviews by SimVU

Unforgiving hardcore survival. I'd recommend researching the game mechanics before starting. Many things are not intuitive at the start. Personally, I think this would be a lot more fun multi-player. Whether to recommend it or not is a difficult question. Depends on how you are with games with very unforgiving mechanics and your willingness to dig around for information on the game.

RimWorld in space

A linear game that tries to disguise itself as a sandbox game. The lack of loot variation and just bad RNG feel makes it tedious. Your character customization is really just the car and that isn't different cars, but the same one with different paint options and a linear progression of parts that matter little. I tried to enjoy it as an exploration game, but with the lack of variation it falls flat after a few sessions of play. Why explore if all you're doing is scavenging an inventory load of generic crafting materials that pop up RNG in chests? The only reason to proceed further in the maps is to follow a linear storyline that consists of 3 people bickering over comms traffic. Conceptually it's interesting, but the implementation is tedious.

Just an aside that effects nothing in the gameplay but is totally obnoxious is that 70% of your customization options are alphabet mafia gender flags. When customizing you're stuck scrolling through pages and pages of that nonsense. Super tedious and 200% unnecessary. There is zero need to inject identity politics into the game and it's just shooting itself in the foot because it can.

Super unstable game. Will lock up and throw the computer into a hard reboot every 5 minutes. Very good looking game, when you can play it.

An awkward offshoot PC Building Simulator game mechanics for 3D printers. Tool use in this game is super chunky. Interacting with things in this game is super chunky. If you can get past that. It's an infinite loop of emails wanting you to print useless things. The actual printing part of the game is all automated, so you'll learn nothing real about 3D printing. No story line or goals that I can tell so far. At least with PC Building Simulator there was humor. This is just mindless repetition. Conceptually, it's interesting, but how it's implemented isn't interesting at all.

As someone who has driven most of the roads in this map IRL in the last few months and I lived in this state for 50 years, there are definitely some odd decisions on what they focused on and what they ignored in making Kansas. I think me blindly driving highways I drove last week as though I'd know what I should expect was a bit optimistic on my part. They get many of the on and off-ramps about 60% like they are and many are just made up. For example, what I assume to be Newton where 135 and 50 meet is definitely made up with how they connect those two. The way they connected many of the cities makes no sense to what I drove this week IRL. For example, I've driven IRL Wichita to Dodge City this week IRL. You can't drive it all on 400 for some weird reason. Wichita to Salina, Wichita to Independence and Wichita to Emporia I drove IRL last week. There are some places they get the spirit of right, and some are just odd. Some of the missing connection highways also have me scratching my head in curiosity. What I found important for landmarks in a state I've lived in all my life they omit but for some reason focus on details on landmarks that are somewhat a fever dream of how they really are. I appreciate they made a Kansas map, but as someone who just wanted to pleasure cruise around to many of the key landmarks -- they're simply not there or the lack the subtile details of someone who has actually visited them. Those things I see as the soul of how I known Kansas for 50 years are oddly interpreted. I'm driving roads and seeing street names I know the names of but buildings on them are made up, the tree density is all wrong and the highway elevation offset is also all odd. I understand what they were trying to accomplish, but as someone who knows these places, it's a bit off putting.

Some of the things I think they did right - the western edge of Emporia IRL as Emporia is a pretty good rendition as is Bazar cattle pens. Old Boeing Wichita, now Spirit Aerosystems they also did reasonably well. Downtown Wichita is a miss though. The riverfront is a bad interpretation and I can't see the Keeper of the Plains, Century II or the baseball stadium anywhere in the distance. Salina is also a reasonable interpretation near the airport. Some of the omitted areas of Wichita I think are a mistake. They should of completed K-96 around the north-east side of the city and should of connected 254 between El Dorado and Wichita.

A city builder game that doesn't have any depth to it. The only goal looks to be to learn how to min-max the building placement. Learn the math and leech all the fun out of it. There really isn't any creative variation to this game. I want to like the game, but just can't. This is definitely no Rimworld.

A fun casual puzzle game that can be completed in 2 or 3 sittings.

I'm not understanding the attraction to this game. It looks like a loot box item mall money grab.

A dumbed down PC Building Simulator clone for building mining rigs. Needs to be fleshed out with more depth, but it's an ok start.