Recent reviews by LeD

Bad ever since Paradox got ahold of it. Used to be good before that.

This game sacrifices all the fun for balance and realism. Competitive formula applied to a coop game ends in a subpar experience. Play Deep Rock Galactic instead.

This game is flawed and full of rookie mistakes, and yet I'm enjoying it a lot. This is a prime example of what happens when you put fun above realism or strive for perfection. I also like how it's not trying to be political unlike most games these days.

Bought this game because I wanted a factory game not a turret defense like factorio.
Now this game came down the same path. The developers are calling their audience "casuals" if they don't want combat.
As if there was anything casual about the sort of logistics torture people willingly sign up themselves for by playing games like this.

Being called a casual aside, disabling enemies isnt a viable option anyway because they are now a core mechanic the game is balanced around meaning it's imbalanced and poorly designed if we remove an element like that. Bringing factorio back as an example, it's boring as hell without its enemies because too much gameplay depends on them. This is why I originally picked this game over factorio.

Screw this game for changing its target audience and thanks for nothing.

This 2017 game feels like made in 2007. Just because something has educational value doesn't mean it must be poorly made. And to give credit to 2007, there were some great games made that year. This game isn't good. It just feels like a failed project from that time period. This game was very clearly made by someone with zero experience in game design. On top of that it's the antithesis to "Show don't tell." And I assume the developers know what an antithesis is considering the pseudo-intellectual vibe you get from the first seconds you start this game. Straight up bad experience I'm not willing to try giving more than the 20 minutes I already did.

Refunding because the camera being capped at very low fps (I guess 30 or lower?) makes for a horrible experience.
For context - The game IS higher FPS but camera/movement updates so rarely you can see the choppy movement. It's very uncomfortable.

Winning doesn't feel rewarding, losing doesn't feel fair. It's TOO random for its own good.

Petting the cat after every puzzle is the ultimate prize

This description box isn't big enough to explain just bad this game actually is.

WARNING If you have ADHD you will struggle.
I love this game to bits but it's the most visually messy experience I've ever had.
And I'd like to start with the bad before I get down to the good about this game.

Unlike other "factory games" this one neither has a neat grid nor any type of foundation to snap to.
Best you can do is place a bunch of tables next to each other in a gridlike pattern, but even then what you end up seeing is various sized and shaped tables with all sorts of mess on top.

The backpack is small, and there are no chests. There are only tables, which add to the mess when you try to store unique or rare items, and silo containers which can store a lot of a single resource but that still means you need to have at least one if not many for each item you have. Essentially I'd describe the capacity of a single silo storage container as what you'd get in a single stack in a single inventory slot in any other game.
(A little exercise: Imagine your typical inventory laid out in front of you as a large tower of resources for each inventory slot you have. Messy, isn't it?)

Late game is especially hard to me for that reason, whenever I think up what I need to pick up I end up forgetting halfway through my way down the factory. It's pretty discouraging to me and the best way I can deal with it is to play coop and have people do some things or bring me stuff before I forget.
(I would assume this game might be a pain to people with OCD too but I wouldnt know about that)

Also, even the list of minerals and resources looks like pamphlet art rather than just a list of available stuff. Terrible.

Aside from that complaint the game is a lot of fun. It creates its own challenges and limitations for you to go around.

The automation kicks in pretty late in the game so you usually end up automating the simple things through the early and mid game, unlike Satisfactory or Factorio where it's the core gameplay. Main focus is on manual harvest of resources. Actually a little problem I have with the game, once you can finally automate mining the resources tend to dry up a little too fast to make it worth all the setup. Then again, that could be on account of everything taking a little too long for me since this game is excellent at jamming up the executive functions.

This game is more aimless than other factory games but it tries to give you options via the constantly updated quest system and interactive objects found throughout the planets. There's no clear end goal or milestones, you just do stuff, always being one step further than the moment before, until eventually you get an idea of what might have to be done. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you are.