Recent reviews by Marquis Wulfrun VI

So I've just finished the game...

And I really enjoyed it.

The gameplay is smooth, the visuals are gorgeous, the music is brilliant and the atmosphere is compelling. There are times when you do something so smoothly or so cleanly, you can only smile and grin like a fool.
There are times, which are much more common, when you die thirty times in a row because of something dumb... (Looking at you T.O.M).

Overall, if you like games like Hotline Miami, where you are as squishy as your opponents, you'll love this game.

P.S The VR mission with the non-Euclidian architecture nearly made me motion sick (and I never get motion sick). So... Look out for that one.

I've played just shy of 50 hrs of this game at time of writing. tl:dr: This is a great game with beautiful atmosphere and a great show of how music can create such well designed melancholy.

First impressions:
- I hated this game when I first got it. The tutorial isn't the best and all my people kept dying. I didn't get the resource management and struggled to plan long term as I found the mechanics clunky and unclear. I even got the game refunded quite a few times before it finally clicked.
- The game runs well, although I think my computer struggles when it has to balance the game trying to keep track of far too many things as I've had a few to-desktop crashes.
- The soundtrack. OHHHH The soundtrack. It's so good. This game is almost worth it alone for the soundtrack. It's Victorian-Era British depression given music form and its amazing. Memes aside, it's really well composed and helps bring this game to life.
- The morality decisons. As you start, you have to decide if you want to be fully pragmatic or hold onto the values of society. This can lead to some heart-breaking decisions. But mostly these come down to if you want the moral high-ground or not. As it is entirely possible to do a 'golden' run where you don't become a theocratic or autocratic dictator... But is it as fun?

Later impressions:
- The scenarios are varied and tackle different problems of the game's mechanics very well.
- The 'A new home' scenario is probably the one you play the most because it's the most malleable to try out new strategies and understand the basics of the game.
- "The Arks" is more difficult and poses a very big moral question. I won't spoil it as I encourage you to play it yourself.
- "The Refugees" is a very good show of class-divide and the ramifications of it in Victorian Britain. This is the one that challenges you the most thanks to the overwhelming amount of people you need to feed and care for.
- The 'main story' if you can call it that, is told across 'The Last Autumn, The Fall of Winterhome, A New Home' and 'On the Edge'. And portray and interesting and well fleshed out world, even if we have yet to see it as players. The little tidbits of lore sprinkled in with throwaway comments, investigations by scouts and so on make for a very intruiging world. What caused the Great Frost? What was going on before the Frost? Will it end? The ending of 'On the Edge' is especially interesting... No spoilers.

I have sunk days worth of time into this game, drawn in by the aesthetic, the music, the gameplay and the atmosphere. I cannot recommend this game highly enough and look forward to seeing what this studio does for the next game.... Gimme.

So, I got this game while it was on free weekend a while back.

First impressions were good! The only real 4x game I'd really played prior to this was Civ 5, but for all intents and purposes, I was a complete newb coming into the game.
The tutorial was pretty good, playing as the generic human space-sovereignty that allowed for multiple paths to approach. I especially like the story-telling elements that stop the game from just becomming a grind like some strategy games can be.
However it didn't quite go into enough detail about ship construction/management and the like, so the Human Empire I ended up making was mainly science and industry. Ended up stopping playing so that I could go and have a look at some other races to get a feel for them.

I played as the 'Awoken' I believe they were called and they weren't bad. I loved their asthetic and their culture. Just a shame that they didn't really play to my style because they're basically pacifists and I was surrounded on all sides by pirates that I couldn't shift from their bases, since I had no real ground-troops to clear them off the planets.

I would recommend this game though. It's very pretty and the paths you can take your species down are very varied. Certainly try it if you can get it on a free weekend, but be aware it might not be your cup of tea if it isn't on sale.

LOVES.

I bought this game pretty much as soon as it came out. And so far, I have enjoyed it immensly. The art style is beautiful and the soundtrack is very menacing. The game has forced me to change my style of gameplay in order to conserve materials and food, leading to some hard decisions concerning the game world. I have a few ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥... One, I would prefer there to be a more randomised selection of starting peeps, because I am not a big fan of the three that you can end up starting with. Two, some kind of bar that will let you see how tired/sick/wounded they are so you can see how long they will need to spend resting, it would be really useful. Overall, I thoroughly enjoy this game and I am eagerly looking forward to seeing any expansion or new characters that might emerge from this very hard, but very rewarding game. Keep up the good work guys! I am impressed!

This is probably the finest indie game I have ever played, it's very clever in that you somewhat get connected to your crew of pixels. I was sceptical at first, but found the crew development and ship-building extremely fun. It meant I got really distraught when I lost my engi fixer, but it was worth it for those 60 bits of scrap. But moving back, I found this to be really enjoyable, the story (if vague) is good and the aliens and their concepts are just fantastic. If you haven't got this game, why not? It's normally dirt cheap and the random world-building makes it a game that can be played over and over without getting boring. This has been Wulfrun II, son of Wulfrun I, and (this is my favourite game on the citadel) I heartedly reccommend this game! 5 stars and a second game pls.