I Really Really want to recommend this game. It is fun, it is quirky and it is a somewhat novel / unique approach to the crating genre. The developers have done an amazing job at balancing the environment visuals & UI to be visually pleasing and easy to interact with.

The crafting mechanics while not unique, do offer some interesting twists to the norm that add spice to design dynamics..
Before long you will be running around and engaging with the quirky sparks to bring life back to the enchanted biomes.


Why should you not buy this game..ungodly grind.
There are a series of fetch quests before each automation phase that increase into every staggering heights.

Before you purchases game i recommend you read through some of the discussions. There are great break downs on how many thousands ofreagent has to be gathered by hand just to complete certain fetch quests.

I was excited and thought this game was for me until 2 hours in i wanted to get away from the grind a little bit. Came to the discussions to learn i wasnt even glimpsing the tip of the iceberg.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1817800/discussions/0/4363502064162171297/

This conversation is where there developer has stated that this grind was a design choice and that those who do not enjoy it should go play factorio instead. This seems to be sound advice from the developer themselves. I suggest anyone who wants a true automation experience, seek your gameplay elsewhere.

First and foremost, contains wokeness, trans character and litteral strongest most masculine looking character in entire game is a "she"... and some lesbian looking sisters and a flamboyant black merchant.. and probably more on the way too since this is EA. So if that's not for you.. and there is a lot of you.. then turn around..

Yes seethe and cry wokes.. seethe and cry.. squirm writhe and clench your fists, I really really don't like you and you don't have to like me either

Onto the game proper.. for those of us who don't really care if the game is woke if gameplay is good (anything woke pretty much never is) this is quite surprising.. it's very good! The controls and UI can take a minute to get used to while initially finding your way around but eventually and quickly it clicks. You'll spend most of your playtime it seems trying to appease the people in town to upgrade your tech tree, so you aren't thrown in the deep end.. everything unravels and is learned as you advance the tech tree.

The fundamentals of automation are here combined with the fundamentals of Pikmin and it just gels so hard that I love it! I love automation and watching a ton of conveyers and machines criss crossing all over and this game scratches that itch in my brain so good!

The graphics are very good! The buildings can be a bit samey and lack any sort of customization though. The character customizer is truly awful.. I feel like we also need tons of flourishes to add and different aesthetics to make each automation your own... Like fences, different path types.. building colors and other decorations or pieces that make your automation more detailed..

Everything has a sort of of overly happy Saturday morning 5 year old kids cartoon feel.. but like Jurassic world where 2 of the women will profess love and kiss and you have to turn off the TV and make your 5 year old super upset... Happy and fruity. I can live with it because it is automation.. if it was an RPG and looked like this I would never buy it. The art style is more than passable especially with everything that concerns the little sparks.. its a wonder to watch dozens and dozens of them marching all over dutifully carrying out their tasks

There is a decent amount of variety already but I feel like there should be 4 times as many sparks.. farming and food sparks... Water sparks that act as aqueducts.. battle sparks.. power generation sparks (HELLO "sparks"!!).. sparks should build the buildings not have the buildings materialize out of thin air... It always upsets me when a game has buildings poof into existence out of thin air in an instant instead of having minions wander over to it and bang their hammers on thin air while the building magically assembles.. call me picky but I need minions constructing stuff.. more buildings are needed too, more variety.. the variety isn't there despite having a lot of pieces already.. it's like 30 building pieces you are given it's no where near enough.. I'm sure all this will come later but the game feels incomplete despite offering a lot of cool stuff! It should look more like Palworld on steroids.. especially with farming.. it should have much more combat too..

Speaking of the barely existent combat the AI is totally passive.. you are in no danger.. you need to slay many many animals to progress though.. in fact you need to end many lives just to create sparks in the first place.. its also the one process that so far seems like you can't automate.. which is frustrating.. some of the enemies are really OP too and you don't really have upgrades to deal with them.. just throw a million sparks at them.. or cheese the combat by placing your sparks back in your bag Everytime they are gassed or knocked out like I've learned to do.

Music is terrible.. I think there is 1 song.. I can't really tell it just feels like 1 very repetitive song. It's more like a handful of distinct songs but none of it is good.. its not miserable but it's definitely not good

The region you explore isn't very diverse either.. it's generated by a random seed.. so it's not visually distinct and crafted.. but still fairly nice looking.. but I would like to see snow and desert and volcano and jungle biomes.. maybe with more and more sparks for each biome! The game does inform you of the lack of biomes the second you boot it up though so they obviously have more in the works.

If I were to compare the game world to something a lot of people have played its sorta like Diablo.. you got a town level where you get your missions and do a lot of your upgrading.. and then the big dungeon, or this case it's a "open world" field with trees scattered about.. currently surrounded by these sort of volcanic coral looking zones.. it takes probably less than 5 minutes to walk from one end of the map to the other.. still plenty of space for a dozen factories

You spend most of the time wandering across the map to your various factories, tweaking them, expanding them, demolishing them, dropping off supplies and collecting supplies that you need to run over to one of your other factories.. then return to town when you have collected or made enough resources for the "quests".. which are little more than glorified fetch quests.. so the "adventure" suffix in the title should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Oh yeah! Multiplayer! It exists.. I don't know why..

Anyways it's fantastic so far. You cant go wrong with automation, and this is a breath of fresh air and unique take on a genre that's already a breath of fresh air since Factorio started the revolution! It feels incomplete and lacking content.. and functions more like a demo than a finished game.. but that's to be expected in EA and what's here is very very promising.. and at 20$ it's priced perfectly where waiting for a discount is just sort of.. sleazy and cheap.. I'd recommend for any factory lover

Cj00l, has pr0blems
n99b devs
go back to back go