Recent reviews by Calruin

Do you like to mine?
Do you like to drink?
Do you like game progression, where your character levels up unlocking better equipment and upgrades?
Do you like beards?!?
Do you like smashing bugs, and eating bacon? (sorry, bacon has nothing to do with the game, I do like it though)
Do you like playing with your friends or making new friends?
Do you like playing solo?
Do you like a challenge?
Do you like an easy/relaxing run?

Well, if you said yes to more than one of the above, then you should get this game!! I've put in just shy of 150hrs (when posting this) so far, and can honestly say it's been a lot of fun. I can easily see myself putting in triple that amount or more in the future (which says a lot considering at the time of posting this game, I own hundreds of games, but have only put over a hundred hours into a handful of them). It gives a lot of options for the new player, so you can play alone to get the feel of the game or jump into a match with others to get help while playing (plenty of matches out there welcoming new players).

This game gives a lot towards customization while you level up, both with the account, and the individual characters classes. I personally find it adds a nice depth to the game, while giving you goals to reach as you play. So if you're one of those players who likes to level up and unlock options/upgrades/cosmetics, then you'll find this game a lot of fun, with all the added customization that is available as you level up. If you're someone who needs goals to reach while playing, then this game should satisfy that itch for you as well. Plus for added depth, each mission you run is done on a random gen map, that you can have bonuses/hazards on as well. Things like extra damage to the bugs, while having to deal with no oxygen which forces you to not stray too far from "molly" the minecart on legs, or getting gold to drop from the bugs, while dealing with a creature that is invincible that chases you the across the entire map (moves slowly so easy to avoid if you pay attention). That just names a few of the combinations that is available while running the different missions. Of course, most of the time, you're allowed to choose which mission you want to run and if you want to deal with a hazard, or just have a bonus or nothing at all. There is an exception to this, and that is Deep Dives, were you won't know what you're getting into until after it launches.

I honestly could go on and on about the perks of the game, but to avoid the dreaded wall of text growing any further, I'll just leave it with this.

Get the game, it's worth way more than they are charging, and is a lot of fun!!

I have found this game to be a fun little game. I think of it as a soft Ark version, and have let my seven year old play it. She has a blast (single player only).

It is early access, so there are bugs and balance issues, but the game is fully playable and there is a ton of content already in the game to use. If this game follows the same path as Ark, the cost will jump once it leaves EA, so get it while it's cheap is my advise. If you can get it on sale, snatch it up if you like softcore survival. Plus if you play solo, there is a ton of settings so you can increase or decrease how hard the game is to play. Same can be said if you want to run your own server, you have a great selection of settings to make the game as hard or easy as you want.

Now just keep at least one thing in mind if you do get the game. It is like Ark... but it is not Ark, the taming is different for a lot of animals, there is magic and the selection of mobs feels more deverse, "feels" to me at least. The game is more forgiving than Ark in pve.

I haven't put much time into the game as of yet. But my over all time I have spent has been fun.

I like how they have the time management/repair/refit set up. Makes it so you have to give some thought about wanting to refit that Mech or take the mission and run with it. All so you can get the cash you need to buy the weapons/Mech parts while maintaining the general upkeep of your current mechs and pilots. Of course later in the game such a choice might not be as hard to make when you have more mech's to choose from. But if you have a few Mechs that you like to use, it can still be a choice to make.

The map for the most part is opened up pretty early in the game giving us the option to range across it. Of course, that is if you can afford to have zero income for weeks/months at a time. Which means the map is as open as your wallet is deep. I personally like that.

Now to the battle. Early game, Light Mech's in your lance are useful and can even do thier own damage vs what you face. Late Early game, they lose their ability to deal much damage (though i have an idea I'm going to test out sometime, wanna see how i can refit a few of them for sniper/spotter work). However, they're still useful for spotting for your LRM/indirect fire mechs. With their longer range of sight and early initiative they can honestly get in, spot and get out. Put a pilot in a light mech with sensor lock and they're even more safe. They become the real eyes on the map if used right. Because one wrong move with a light mech can lead to it being disabled if not totally wrecked in one turn.

That is just the Light Mech, there are three other classes that can be used. Each with their own strength and weaknesses. The fact that you don't have to use Light Mech's as the game goes on, is a personal choice (though for some it's the only choice depending on strategic ability). Fielding a lance of Heavy/Med Mechs or mixing in Assault is a fun idea as well. Though I would avoid doing a full lance of Light Mechs, the choice is up to the player.

Now load outs as mentioned above is also a thing to consider. Updating your weapons with named weapons at the very least is a good idea. But you don't have to just do that (or do it at all). You can totally rework what the mech takes into battle (with the limit being tonnage and hardpoints, so no EPIC DEATH MECHs sorry). Wanna make a laser boat Mech? You can do it, but keep in mind that it won't be able to do too many Alpha strikes depending on location, as your heat will go through the roof. Want a missile mech, you can do it (but again, keep an eye on that heat). The bottom line is, you can do some good customization of your mech's weapons. Also, in the same place you can add or take away Armor. Need that extra tonnage? Shave some Armor off, but when you do it, make sure to remember that you're making your mech eaiser to kill. Of course you can also take some weapons off to add more armor too if you want, it goes both ways.

Now, random missions vs story missions. Story missions are set to be hard and not so forgiving as random missions. Though random missions can get almost as hard depending on your play style and if you make any mistakes. First two skull mission i had, had me fighting a full lance of Med Mechs and a few support vehicles one of which had an LRM 20. I have a bad habit of saving the vehicles for last. I learned a lession during that mission lol.

Now on to crashes and other such issues like hangups and such. I am happy to report zero. But I also have a beast of a computer so that could be one of the main reasons. I have read others can have some issues.

So, now we have the actual story to consider. So far, it's rather easy to figure out what is going to happen next. Which byself isn't bad, but I have a hard time caring about the story. It just doesn't keep me wrapped in and wanting to know what happens next. It's not an over all, bad story. Just not one that I find too interesting. I will update this part if I feel the story gets better.

One thing (or maybe two), that I would like to see.
We're given choices to create the background of our character as we start the game. I'd sure like to see this impact our starting mech, if not some way to impact our starting lance. I think that would go a long way in replayability.
Adding in support vehicles for the player would be a fun little touch. Though considering how easy they are to kill, it would require a change in play style for some of us if we wanted to use them. So if they were added, I'd hope it would be optional and not required.

Over all, I love the game and can't wait to play more! I've always been a fan of Battletech, used to play the tabletop back in the day. This game is worth buying, and if you can get it on sale, do it!

This is a well worth game to play. Great community, Very helpful mods and fun set up for game wide buffs. Well worth taking a look at.

Well, at the time of posting this i've put in 32 hours of game play.

The game can be very slow at times, so don't get this game if you're looking for a super action type of game. This isn't it.

If you're looking for a game that requires thought, that your actions will cause either good or bad things to happen down the road. That it might take generations to reach the goal you've set yourself and hours of time of real time to get there. Then this is the game for you.

It's actually a ton of fun, and challenging at the same time. Well worth the money and then some!!!

Found a steak, put steak in oven to cook with a pan. Turned the oven on.

Left to go loot more food. Came back to my house on fire and zombies sitting around watching the fire.

Offered to sing camp fire songs with the zombies... they decided they wanted to BBQ and i was the main dish.

9/10 would cook steak again!

Real review.

I would recommend this game. The developers are active and keep the community in the loop on what they're doing, even if there isn't much to loop us in on. Development is a bit slow, but they've made great strides for each update they've put out. Plus it supports workshop so you can add/change the game even more by adding in some fun mods. It's fun solo, add some friends and you'll have a blast.

Just keep in mind the game isn't very forgiving. You mess up, you will die if you're playing surivival. There is a bit of a learning curve in that regard, so I would recommend using sandbox first so you can ease into how the game works before jumping into survival.

Here are a few pros and cons to consider before buying the game.

Pro:
The developers are clearly active.
Development can be viewed as slow, but is still going and we're kept updated on how it is going.
The game is fully playable with few bugs.
MP is available to play.
There is a depth to the game that makes you think about long term choices when the season starts to change.
Workshop is available to add additional content to the game.
Challenging game play - have to work to stay alive as time goes by.

Con:
Game has been in EA state for over three years.
In solo game, the "world" is a bit empty with no interactive NPCs that are not zombies trying to eat your head.

Over all, as i stated above, I firmly believe the game is worth investing in. It has tons of replayability and gives a really good open world experience, where your choices you made early in the game turn around to haunt you later as the game evolves with seasons, and aging.

What are you waiting for??? Hurry up and buy it!!!

I had forgotten about this game for some time. I am rather disappointed in how this game has taken a TSL route and ditched it's community and game.

This game is not finished, nor will it ever be. Do yourself a favor and stay far away from this game or anything that the Dev might be making or attached to in the future. This is sadly the only way we can hold scum like him accountable. That is to do our best to make sure he never has a job making games again. Let him work at McDonalds where he is likely a better fit anyway!

STAY AWAY!! DO NOT BUY!!!

IT's a very fun game. No issues here. I've been reading lots of threads about issues, but honestly haven't had a single issue myself.

This is an awesome game and worth the money!!

This game is actually a lot of fun. The ability to either help or harm the person you're watching play is a blast.

Want to be nice? Send in equipment that'll make the dungeon easy, like spells to summon skeletons, fairys to heal, food that heals, swords/axes/hammers/pets that help tank/kill things, and even hats/helmets.

Wanna just mess with the player? Send in random potions that no one knows what will happen and watch to see if it helps/hurts or leaves the player running around uncontrolable for a few minutes and laugh. Nothing is worse than sending a potion that causes the player to sleep.. during a huge fight. But it is also pretty dang funny, since you really don't know what the potion will do as they are only color coded and do something different each game. Then there is the ability to name the monsters you send in.. so that fairy that heals... you can name an equally small monster that flys that is called a "biter" as a "fairy".

Want to be mean? Chuckle as you spawn in monsters like beholders/demon's/liches/robots and many more. Spawn them in at the right time and you can kill the player. Also, spawning in a huge mass of them can also kill the player.

Want to just troll? Well with the combo of potions and the ability to send in monsters you can do that pretty easy. Only game i know of where trolling isn't actually that bad considering that it is an aspect of the game. Feel free to spawn one of those epic bosses on level one. Of course there is always a chance the player can/will find a way past it. But it is still an option.

Also.. just love the ability to name the things you can put in. You can make a message to the streamer, or a joke.

It is an early access game so there will be bugs, and the game is not finsihed yet. But even with bugs, it is still fun and the dev's are very interactive making the game that much better!!

I would recommend getting this game in the current state it is in.

tl:dr skip to bottom

I bought this game the very day it hit Steam through Early Access. The game was little better then a tech demo. At that time, there was a lot of talk about what this game would have put into it.

At the time when it first hit Steam the Dev was very interactive with the community. The Dev was quick to release patches for the game to fix things (like the villager of doom). There were even people from the community that offered to help out with the creation of the game. Things were looking good.

Then time passed. The Dev slowed down on communicating with the community, and patches became few and far in between. At that time, after months of not hearing from the Dev, the community was starting to get upset. The Dev's response was that he didn't want to post anything because the community was soooo toxic. I remember thinking that was pretty funny considering at the time, there were two people (maybe one?) who started to badmouth the Dev (which would have stopped if he had just posted something as they were not trolling, they were upset over his lack of communication). Everyone else was hoping/wishing for some sort of response from the Dev to let us know he was still working on the game. I was impressed by the fact that most of the community that posted on these forums were actually handling it like adults.

The period of silence from the Dev ended, and the community became hopeful again. During this period, the Dev decided to distance his company from the game by saying it was more so a publisher for the "group" who was working on the game. When I found out about that, I honestly had a bad feeling. To me, all I could think of is that he was doing this so that if the game didn't finish/flopped/died, his company wouldn't get hit as hard by the backlash. I was honestly worried, but hoped that I was just over thinking it.

The time the Dev was active ended again. This became a common theme, where he would drop all communication for months at a time, then come back. During the times he would be active, he once pretended to be someone other then himself (claimed he was a mod, but kept posting under the dev account), and had someone else actually posting that was posting on their kickstarter with updates. This person was pretty on top of posting for a few months, but just like normal, she ended up dropping out. However, she at least posted saying she was leaving (if i remember right?).

Speaking of Kickstarter, one of the periods where the Dev himself was active was before/during a kickstarter he started. He got something like $30,000 USD out of the community (ironic since he called said community toxic before and was one of the reasons he refused to post for a while). Once the kickstarter was over, he made this big post about his plans, and how he would be sending out a survey to get feedback from the community, and then dropped off the face of the earth again for the longest period of time yet.

That's a lot about the Dev, but what about the actual game? Well, there isn't much to say about it. The game went from a tech demo, to early alpha in terms of what was finished. For all the work the Dev pretended to put in, not much was done. The game was almost unplayable for most of the community, and remains so as of today. Even for those of us who can play it, there isn't much to do besides fly around and burn stuff or eat gibs, which was in the tech demo when the game first came out. The map was changed into an instanced model from being more open world no loading times. The dragon model was changed from looking like a dragon to looking something like a dragon. Beyond that, there isn't much else sadly.

The game could have become something awesome, but that won't happen under the current Dev.

tl:dr

All things said, I would not recommend this game, even if it was the only form of entertainment available. Please do not buy this game as the money goes to someone who doesn't deserve it, for a game that doesn't work nor will it ever become a finished product. Hopefully Steam takes this trash off of the market so as to avoid anyone else from losing money!