Pros:
- Extremely fun to experiment with different designs.
- Literally unlimited possibilities.
- Drones can be programmed (with sensors and logic gates).
- You can make drones that make other drones!

Cons:
- Missions feel repetitive.
- Music also felt boring after a few hours.
- Very limited guidance on what you should be doing.

You will definetely enjoy it if you are into building or programming in games.

If you are looking for a programming/engineering game in the vein of the Zachatronics series or Kerbal Space Program, this is not it.

I wanted to like this game, but as a programmer I'm disappointed. My expectations for a "space drone constructor" are to be able to leverage clever program logic and engineering to prevail. Except... you can't. Competitive designs in this game revolve primarily around exploiting the glitches in Unity's wonky physics with a minimal amount of logic for navigation.

To break down why this is so:

- Drone components can only be attached to one other component. This makes it difficult to create stable structures intuitively since the stresses are always placed on the parent element, rather than distributed through multiple supports. This is incredibly frustrating from an engineering standpoint, as it is near impossible to build trusses.

- The Unity physics engine isn't deterministic. While an element of randomness in play is fine, in a bleeding edge design this often results in advanced designs either exploding or performing amazingly, depending on your luck. There's even variance in different modes; sometimes a design that works fine in Test will explode in Tournament, and vice-versa.

- Structural components aren't necessary in designs. Competitive tournament designs often consist of just engine and fuel pods lashed together in whichever configuration keeps them from sheering apart... most of the time.

- Logic parts are mostly rudimentary gate logic, count against your ship's mass/part total, are vulnerable to being destroyed, and have a propagation delay that is too long to be relevant in competition designs. I'd love to see a simple scripting language implementation that you often see in games like this, but it's not here.

Other issues:

- The editor doesn't have an option to "Exit without Saving". Fixed in 1.1.1.

- Survival Mode's threat levels punish experimentation with drones by increasing the "threat" level every time you deploy and charging you resources. This discourages tweaking designs, outside of Programmer mode, as you're penalized for pulling out of a mission early. This mode also penalizes you by charging you more resources for larger drones, discouraging more complicated, more fun designs.

The game isn't terrible, as it's entertaining to test racing drone designs while working in another window, but I'd vastly prefer a game that encouraged learning engineering concepts and programming techniques than exploiting glitches. If the game's more glaring exploits were resolved, and survival mode re-balanced to be more friendly, the game would be good.

That said, I uploaded a number of overpowered, glitch exploiting designs to the competitive pool to help encourage the problems to be fixed. :)

It's a shame that this game isn't better. It is SO CLOSE to being a classic that I would put hundreds or thousands of hours into. Unfortunately, the solid core gameplay is betrayed by the boring and repetitive quests, the small scale of the world design, and the lack of any difficult longterm goals. It's doubly damning considering the core gameplay was more or less lifted straight from Captain Forever, but then put into a smaller world, taking away the joy of discovery and exploration that was a key part of Captain Forever.

This should have been an open world game. Period. Planets should have been just one environment in a vast universe awaiting you if you fire your thrusters long enough. Instead, they tried to put Captain Forever into a really weak, watered down version of FTL, and the game really suffers for it.

If you're really into building, the sandbox mode may make this game worth it for you, but don't expect to play the main game for very long.

Great engineering game, however I do feel mislead by the trailer since you won't get to build any large ships during the campaign. I beat the campaign (~10 hrs) using ships with 3-10 weapons, nothing like the trailers show, those are all made in creative mode I guess.

Very fun but I'm sad there isn't a need for big ships.

Step 1: Build a drone.
Step 2: Test it and watch it fail horribly.
Step 3: Spend ten minutes tweaking it to make it work better.
Step 4: Try to use it to complete the mission and fail horribly.
Repeat steps 2-4 until it works right.
For some reason, this happens to be super fun.
I strongly recommend this game. It's short, but fun and worth the price.

Every update it gets more "Challenging" What was once a lighthearted and fun drone builder is now an endurance test as you dodge bullets for up to 10 min a mission. It pairs you against stupendous odds expecting you to be a perfect dodge. I was 2 missions in and I was tasked with destroying a large armed ship and >20 drones with 2 mini guns. Not fun, not fair, not enjoyable. Don’t fall for your addiction of ‘build your own spaceship games’ this time and get Cosmoteer or something else free.

Developers: This game has great positional; but, just because the player is faster and has longer range, doesn’t mean we want to fly in circles around swarms whittling them away for 10+ minutes, or trying to manually hover in place just out of range of turrets trying to hit them with the inaccurate basic gun. I tried some creative mode with enemy health at 25 – 50% and 2 long lasers, and it was awesome. My advice to you is to giving the player more parts up front, (Long laser, and big batteries). Also, the whole “Deploy Threat” thing needs some work; you should be able to swap out drones mid mission. Swapping out your combat ship for a drilling ship should be faster than shooting a hole to the planet core. Remember how people made “Mother drones” than simply sit at spawn and produce many different drones (combat, miner, temperature control, and scouts). Make that part of the base game. Imagine, after the planet is safe, you can drive back to the ship, get a refund for ship launch cost, and then swap to your mining ship. This will be so much more fun than having to shoot through terrain. In the end, you have all the ingredients; you just need the right challenge.

You can listen to/watch my review here.

I've got a lot of mixed feelings about this game in its current state. A lot of it good, a lot of it bad.

• The ability to program automated functions with sensors and logic gates is a thing of beauty. I've never felt happier than the time I built a hovering platform that mass-produced fighter craft that followed my cursor and stopped to fire, or the time I figured out how to program a turret to scan and lock onto enemies with a handful of operations.
  
• The construction system is robust, and it's very easy to create a drone that fits what you want to do with minimal fuss. Even then, you'll spend a ton of time tweaking and perfecting a design, seeing what you can get away with and discovering new possibilities through experimentation and inspiration from the Workshop.
  
• I can see the "sumo" mode or other game modes that take away direct control getting a lot of mileage, even if I'm terrible at building them.
  
• Weapon variety is excellent from the jump, though any weapon besides rockets needs some research to get up to par.

• The camera is zoomed way too far in, especially for the minimum size of drone the developers seem to want you to make. To have a jack-of-all-trades drone that can at least attempt any mission type, you'll need a battery, a fuel tank, three resource tanks, a resource harvester, a weapon, thrusters for going forward and backward, thrusters for turning, and a magnet. Most of those parts are static 2x2 boxes, which means your drone will be eating up a lot of real estate on the screen. Add to that the fact that enemies can aggro and attack you from off screen, and certain missions become a matter of memorizing which enemies are where and blindly firing in their general direction.
  
• There are only three mission types I've encountered so far. One where you have to track down and destroy an enemy transmitter, one where you have to destroy eggs around the planet while avoiding a giant snake, and one where you have to use a magnet to pick up and transport barrels to your resource deposit station. The barrel missions are the worst by far, as enemies can blow the barrels up with only a shot or two, and often do since the barrels usually spawn right on top of them. I can't understand why metal barrels are so fragile, yet do so much damage when destroyed. If you're carrying a barrel and it takes a stray shot from an enemy turret, it can absolutely total your ship. Add to that the fact that enemies have a bit too much health and the best weapon (the rocket launcher) is hilariously inaccurate, and barrel missions end up taking way too long to complete. At one point I couldn't get to 2/3rds of the star chart because every single route was gated behind a barrel mission I had given up on and was trying to find a way around.
  
• The tech tree is an interesting idea hampered by some questionable design choices. Most of the upgrades require blue minerals to research, which I haven't seen any of in the 9 hours I've been playing. This means you're limited to boring stuff like damage upgrades, energy cost reduction, and digging power.

• Why are there so few mission types?
  
• Why does every planet have to have a mission? Why can't I just go onto a planet for the sole purpose of mining resources?
  
• Why are barrels, resource crates, and mineable resource terrain destructible?
  
• Why do we only have a single shield part, and why is the shield it creates so fragile for its energy cost?
  
• The 3d printer part is amazing, but is it wise to give it, of all things, no energy cost?
  
• Why is air resistance so heavy on every single planet?
  
• Why does rubbing against a tiny outcropping of rock all but immobilize my drone?
  
• Why are downgrades in the tech tree at all? And why do I have to research them to unlock certain branches of the tree?
  
• What's the point of plasma and cryo weapons when killing an enemy is easier and faster with kinetic weapons? If there are special interactions I don't know about, can they be signposted better?
  
• Why would I ever use bio weapons?

• Let us zoom out the camera.
  
• Either take the blue resource cost out of some of the tech tree, or spawn it on earlier planets.
  
• Add more mission types -- hell, give us a mining expedition a la Deep Rock Galactic where the whole point is gathering things.
  
• Seriously, zoom out the camera. I can't see a damn thing.

In conclusion, Nimbatus feels like a bare bones game tacked onto an excellent base of logic-based drone construction. If you like the idea of pushing a construction system to see what's possible within it, I'd say give it a shot. If you want to spend more time outside of the drone editor than in it, maybe wait on it.

Good idea but incompletely implemented and now abandoned. Some more work and polish of the gameplay could have saved this game.

Not so much a "No" from me as it is a "Meh". Not quite worth the full price.

No matter what I build or how much time I put into the creations I never get the satisfaction I get on other, similar games.

This idea is great. Right up my alley. Engineer/build things to achieve some goal(s). I really love this genre... but Nimbatus just can't pull it off for me. I want to like this game, but can't.

In the early stages of a creation I'm hopeful and excited with a thousand ideas spinning in my head... but after hours of work I always have to reduce it back so far that is underwhelms me. Kind of like a DM that doesn't let his/her players push the boundaries with creativity.

Ultimately, the part selection combined with the much-to-be-desired physics engine fall flat. Far too limiting.

The autonomous competition aspect of the game is really the only draw for me. The single player is quite boring.

I'm sure I'll re-review after release. Fingers-crossed

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👍 Pros: 👍
Tons of customization
Pleasant Graphics
Excellent drone building suite
Extensive logic components allow for almost autonomous drones
Weapon lab that allows for lots of control of weaponry

👎 Cons: 👎
Could use more parts, especially weapons to experiment with
Needs more specialized game modes like sumo to increase drone build style diversity

In “Nimbatus”, it is the player’s job to create a drone. This drone will then be used to complete the objective that is on various planets. The only limit to drones is the player’s own skills. Gigantic drones with deployable sentry turrets are just one possibility allowed in the in-depth drone creation suite. Once the player has a drone base, they can add weapons. Weapons can be customized extensively and only further the amount of customization in the game. The graphics are pleasant and the weaponry is the colorful highlight to an otherwise gray world. The sound design isn’t exceptional, but it isn’t terrible either.


🎮 Gameplay: 🎮

Drone Construction
Drones are the player’s main vehicle. Every drone is made up of a drone core that pieces are built around. If this core is destroyed, then the drone ceases all function. To protect one’s drone, there are various parts that can be attached to it. The first part style is the armor block. These are heavy metal plates that have a lot of health and can take a lot of punishment. To move a player’s drone, they must have thrusters. Thrusters come in a few varieties such as jump thrusters and normal thrusters. Jump thrusters give the player a quick boost of speed while normal thrusters provide constant acceleration. To defend oneself, the player must use weapons. Weapons appear in two main variants: lasers and bullets. Laser are sustained damage but they drain a lot of energy. Bullets also drain energy, but not as much as laser do. To fuel thrusters and weaponry, the player must equip their drone with battery banks and fuel tanks. These supplies can be either large or small, and besides one variant, they recharge if the player doesn’t use them for a while. Two categories cover making a drone semi-autonomous and adding special parts. An example of a special part is the hinge. The hinge is an important piece because it is integral in making mini drones or sentry guns. The parts that make a drone semi-autonomous are sensors and logic parts. Sensors are customizable pieces that will detect various stimuli such as enemies. Logic gates help the player make a drone that can do specialized autonomous functions. Finally, missions will have mineable resources and there is a category with resource tanks and a resource collector. Weapon parts are the most customizable of any parts.

Weapon Lab
The weapon lab is a feature found in the built in editor. Once selected, the player can create presets. Lasers and bullets can be created with one of four damage types: kinetic, heat, cold, and bio. Kinetic is the most basic type and doesn’t do anything special. Heat will warm up objects and enemies hit by the weapon and will cause them to overheat. Cold will also cease functions of enemies if an enemy doesn’t have a defense against it. Bio is the best damage type to mine planets. Once the player has created a preset, resources collected can be spent on improving the weapon. Increased damage, less energy consumption, and increased attack speed are just a few of the upgrades that can be used. Better weapons are important too, because the main mission type in the game has the player destroying enemies. Part placement is also important.

Part Connection
Parts can’t all be connected to the drone core as it will cause the player’s drone to become unbalanced and difficult to control. Instead, parts must be connected to one another so that balance is maintained and the connection limit isn’t hit. This can be a tricky undertaking that is almost puzzle like in nature as a player tries to maintain the perfect balance. This is also one of the places that could use some quality of life tweaking the most. If parts are connected to a single part and I want to replace that single part, then I have to delete the entire section. This can become frustrating as large chains appear with complex drones.

Missions
Mission appear in two main varieties: Destruction and Sumo. Destruction missions require the player to build a drone that can survive enemies’ attacks and that can destroy these attacking enemies. It is also helpful if the player includes some resource collection utility on their drone as every planet has resources that can be used in the weapon lab. It is quite fun to build drones for these mission types as they require drones with two vastly different requirements. Sumo mission have the player creating a drone that the player can’t pilot. The drone must be made completely autonomous with sensor input. The drone must then push their opponent outside of an ever shrinking ring.

⚙ Overall:⚙
If someone enjoys building crazy vehicles with lots of customization options, then this is the game for them. It has one of the deepest editors for this kind of game, and since the game is in early access it can only get better from here.


📚 Story: 📚
There isn’t much story in the game. The plot summary appears to be that the player is a drone operator who does odd jobs from the safety of their private space ship.

🎧 Sound:🎧
The sound design is average. The music is mainly made up synthesizer beats with a slow tempo. These do add a bit to the overall atmosphere, but I didn’t feel like any moment were made better thanks to the influence of the music. The sound effects for the weapons and thrusters are well recorded.

📺 Graphics: 📺
The graphics in the game have a sleek artstyle that delves a bit into the abstract. The game does use a muted color palette which can make it displeasing to look at sometimes. The game becomes fully vibrant once the player begins shooting weaponry. Weapon colors contrast heavily with the backgrounds and drones. Where a planet might be a deep purple or a forest green, lasers are unapologetically neon red. A laser light show occurs that may only be rivaled by tittles like “Beat Hazard”. This makes every battle a spectacle to behold as weaponry from the player and their enemies help to brighten up the bleakness of space.


This product was reviewed with a key provided by the developer for free.