I love me some party games, so it kinda pains me to leave a negative review on this one. Its got pretty good production value and a intriguing concept, but it's just not that exciting; or, at least it's not exciting enough for a party game. I was honestly bored after the first round and couldn't wait to be done.

Every player represents a part of humanity with the goal of surviving an Earth generated crisis. You see, Earth is playing against humanity to undue the damage we've caused these many thousands of years. As a segment of humanity (media, world leaders, scientists) it's your job to work cooperatively (or not) with your fellow humans to defend against major catastrophes before the human population reaches zero.

This sounds good, but the game gets bogged down in overly complicated decisions that have no real clear direction. Do you cooperate with scientists in reporting good news or criticize their slow progress? Do you impose strict laws to keep the population in lockdown or side with industry and risk disease spread for the sake of keeping businesses open? Do you really want to answer these questions with friends or family in a party setting? If you do, you'll definitely see a lot of bored faces.

The difference between this and Jackbox is that Jackbox is designed for parties. Jackbox games are delivered in bite sized amounts, just enough to get the point across and have fun. This game gives you a mouthful and you're expected digest a little too much.

While I get the idea behind the game, there is really not much incentive for most players to be infighting, as the 'winner' is just the one who crippled the team the most and made it the most likely the team would lose. I think it would make more sense if the winner was the one who had the most impact in terms of preventing earth from winning.

The whole time I'm kind of just questioning why I would _want_ to do anything but cooperate, when the incentives for the game mean that as a non-earth player, all you have to do to win against earth is just not fight amongst yourselves. Overall it just really doesn't flow to me or make complete sense why you're doing things, what your options are or why those are your options. It might make some sense as a board game, at a party.

I think the way that earth is a player looks great on paper, and helps to market the game because it sounds cool, but in reality it really muddies the water of the win condition, who won and why. imo earth should've been an automated AI, and this game should've been about preventing a collapse, or preparing yourself for a disaster and winning the game because you are the most powerful at the end.

This game is great and I enjoyed it. However the fact that to gain access to 3 of the 6 doomsday scenarios, that IN the trailer video shows as released, is to go onto their discord and stream/advertise the game for them is hilariously scummy. If that's the case that you want to lock content from normal people, then DON'T include the stuff in your trailer.

It's lacking the party game aspect of this. If you're a bunch of nerds then you're gonna align on a lot of actions which means the players win, but out of the winner of players it doesn't matter. If somebody tries to for that win then the match suffers dramatically allowing the planet player to easily win. Animations are quite slow. The amount of actions a player does over the course of a game is slim, I kinda expected a bit more involvement between players. It's just a bit boring waiting while somebody thinks through kinda the same options of "best option for the team, help somebody+bit for myself, or help myself + harming somebody."

Perhaps I had the wrong expectations for this game. I was hoping players would be doing a ton of actions concurrently making the screen be an information game while you're looking at the phone making an action.

Either way I don't recommend it.

At this moment, there are only 3 active scenarios, even though it looked like there were 6 in the demo.
Although the free pandemic version is a fun party game, with 6 different roles... 3 scenarios are not worth 20 dollars, in my opinion. Especially when you very quickly start seeing repeat content (especially from Earth). And each run of a given scenario is always the exact same events, with maybe upwards of 4 options (which affect no further options) each.

Also, none of the scenarios that are currently available (pandemic, hurricane, and locusts) well and truly make sense as total annihilation tools. Hurricane especially. Just cut the min/max population number appropriately, and just have the numbers reflect that it's an entirely American scenario.
It just kind of hints at a lack of polish and care.

While 6 scenarios is almost definitely worth it, due to having a much wider breadth of content, I do not believe in buying something based on a future promise.

There's unfortunately not enough play time to justify steep 20€ (or 25€ post-sale) price. The game play is predictable and with a bunch of smart friends you're able to deduce how to beat "Earth" every time no matter what they do. As long as you don't care about the influence it's 5:1, if you do then it's basically 2:2:1 as Earth makes a dent in your population.

I'd definitely appreciate more options or on the contrary limiting options to humankind. The point system for Earth is fun and the added economy of it makes the game play as Earth way more fun than robotic clicks as humankind.

If this were a 5€ game I'd have no problems recommending it, but this lacks thought and is released incomplete as it misses most of the disasters (not playable at time of writing the review).

I hope the developers don't find the review insulting, it has a fun aspect and potential to be a cute combination of "Drawful" and "Plague Inc.". If they keep the pace and improve the game and introduce new mechanics I'll likely reconsider the recommendation. :)

No for me, could be fun as a once off party game. If you have people reasonably quick readers/thinkers and willing to play into it, could be interesting.

It is quite dense on reading, and each "faction" plays a bit different. I can see people getting lost very quickly with the pacing.

The events are well thought out and somewhat novel. The influence system and help/hinder actions fall flat; (i forget a specific example, but similar to)have a catastrophic asteroid event, then the scientists "help" by convincing children to drink more milk... Ok as long as they have strong bones.... The people vs the world thing is fun, but the "vote" system to avoid escalation doesn't fit.

The multiplayer setup is pretty straight forward, although we did have some issues with browser closing getting back into game). Its pricing isn't too bad, but expect it to have limited replay value.

The game's good, yet still a negative review and this isn't something that I usually do whenever a game is good

HOWEVER... I felt mislead through the way the game is catagorized: Online PvP - Online Co-op etc...
In my opinion... If you buy a game and you need to FORCE your friends to play with you because THEY cannot implement a match making system / lobby system inside of the game. Then you shouldn't promote it as ONLINE PvP
ADDITIONALLY If you can't play it ONLINE PvP... It should be good enough to play against AI's Which it is not.

Sorry not sorry, love the idea, played 1 game as Earth, was way to easy and I'm not going to spend hours searching for groups that might play this game.... No just look at other online board games on steam like Terraforming Mars or Armello to give a few examples considering what I just wrote about Lobby systems and/or Matchmaking system.

I like the idea of the game. But as is, it is boring. Your choices do tell a nice story but in the end they are interchangeable and each action feels drawn out to not end a session within minutes. Also each faction can only be taken by a single player and we were initially hoping to be Earth together.

You play this game on your phone and watch things unfold on the computer. It was kind of cool but also kind of annoying. There's no need to interface to my phone to play this game.