Recent reviews by usnheckler

9.3/10

Will try to keep the below as spoiler-free as possible.

Pros:
- Very satisfying exploration / production gameplay loop. The environments are all interesting, and the risk of death / danger is always there, but not in an intrusive way. The fundamental themes of my experience were awe and curiosity.
- Well-constructed Solo campaign leads you through a good experience feeling out all of the games features and ideas in a way where it always feels like there are many things to do and learn and see. It's also not overly long to the point where it feels grindy or infinite; there is always a goal and it's always within reach, right up until everything is done.
- The types of automation you can accomplish (while very limited, see below) do feel very cool to do.
- The research bytes mechanic is a neat way to incentivize and reward exploration.

Cons:
- The controls are clunky, unintuitive, and awkward; even after dozens of hours. I find myself still mixing up Q, E, and F even now after 90+ hours played. In hindsight, I think they are as good as they could be, so it's not a bad implementation -- it's just difficult to get used to. There is a lot of functionality smashed into basically 3-4 buttons which you use for everything. This ends up being a nice thing at times too, so I don't disagree with the design choice; but I do see this could be a barrier to enjoyment for some players.
- There are hints of automation throughout the game, but they never end up feeling like a "closed form solution" to me. I went into it with an expectation that while I, the player character, will have to do a lot of the "work" necessary with my own two hands, eventually some of the more common tasks I would be able to automate away. This ends up being only partially true, but almost always in the form of making the manual process easier, and not making manual processes unnecessary (which is what I was hoping for).
- Quite a few of the element behaviors are really unintuitive (repeaters, the crane, sensors, anything with a Reaction Pin); once you understand them they do all make good sense, but trying to discover them without any external guidance sometimes felt frustrating and unrewarding.
- Some of the gameplay elements are just sandbox fun gimmicks more than functional tools; while I don't have an issue with this in general, I do wish I could clearly tell which things were meant just for fun, and which were meant to serve a purpose. Sometimes you see something in the tech tree and you form all sorts of ideas about what it could be or what you might do with it, then you finally build one and it's basically a paperweight.

Very fun game, mind-bendy.

Amazing game, amazing devs, amazing community. The amount of mods and continuing updates and feedback makes the value feel endless.