The game starts off very manual but after the early game you can start automating processes and it becomes more fun

but in lategame it becomes enormously click grindy and you spend 90% of your time clicking resources

this is not fun gameplay

what is the point of automation in your game if you're going to make all lategame resources require tons of manual clicking to get?

why make us spend a lot of time unlocking the automation buildings in midgame just to make those buildings immediately useless in lategame?

the point of grindy clicking in automation games is that it's very satisfying to create automation to escape the grind. To then force you back into the grind but way worse in lategame is a real downer.

I recommend this game to people who like holding down lmb and don't recommend it to anyone else.

6/10, but I wouldn't recommend it.

The automation part of the game is badly thought out, and the overall design of tasks has an identity crisis : It's a bit too grindy to be played manually, and not really worth it to automate either.
The automation :
- Is unlocked a bit too late overall, the useful buildings like fuel automation are unlocked around 60% of the game.
- you can't automate some tasks
- not enough QoL to unlink, change setups etc.
- you have additional pylons (like the crafting output one) that serve no purpose but to increase the number of things to unlock. Would be much clearer to merge some into the base pylon.

This is one of those games that I would rate "Neutral" if it was available. I am really torn between whether I recommend it or not, but I am ending up at not recommending it. It is just OK, a fine second-screen game to tinker with for some time at a time, while in no way being a multi-hour per session timesink. Maybe that is what the devs were aiming for, maybe it is a miss, idk, but it has not managed to interest me for more than about 10-20 minutes at a time.

It looks like I'm not alone, as the steam achievement tracker for the game states that unlocking the second gate is something only 40% of the playerbase has done, meaning about 60% hasn't progressed past 30% of the game.

It is a semi-idle incremental builder/crafter with automation features, but it does not do automation well, and the automation is so expensive and fiddly that the manual labor feels doubly intrusive.

The game has two major flaws:
First, it has no details. It doesn't inform of generation rates, transfer rates, production rates, or any similar statistic necessary for optimization and inactivity/overflow prevention. You end up needing to overflow your production inputs, in order for production to not stagnate, which brings the necessity of specific automation buildings to prevent infesting your automation with multiple products in each automation chain, due to crafting buildings baseline dumping their products on the ground.
Secondly, automation has little to no quality of life, primarily due to being very expensive, while requiring materials that are produced from resources that you cannot automate the production of (slime killing, bush trimming, water).

I will continue playing here and there, and will revisit my review later, in case more tools are given later into the game. As I said, I am torn between recommending this or not, but mulling it over for a bit leaves me leaning more towards No than Yes.


Update: 3 hours later
Day off and bad weather allowed me to lock in for three hour-ish sessions and I've unlocked all automation and progressed into unlocking the final gate.

The games' flaws are still the same, and ever-present. Certain resources are not able to be automated, requiring manual acquisition. A resource as basic and necessary as Water is not able to be automated, and instead requires your attention every now and then, or else two crafters stagnate, and thus three more crafters stagnate, and thus four more crafters stagnate. The only workaround is to sit there for a few minutes and build up a massive stockpile, which delays the replenishing sessions, but makes them far far longer.
Automation is improved via an infinite-range teleporter, and a fuel-inserter, thank goodness. The statistics are still missing however.


Update 2: another 3 hours later
Completed the game. Initial issues persist throughout the game, and even more non-automateable resources are introduced every so often, maintaining some amount of manual labour throughout your playthrough.

As mentioned, automation is improved when a pylon with infinite range is unlocked, and the unlocking of a pylon that refills fuel directly into crafters. Optimization is not possible, you are not given the information or tools necessary. Get beyond that, and the game is a fine, 6-12 hours playthrough with sweet NPCs, nice music, pretty colours and sound effects, with repetative but neuron-firing and dopamine dripping tasks.

I am keeping my No recommendation, in lack of a Neutral recommendation. All in all I consider the game to be undercooked, and, having completed it, I do not believe I will bother to return to fill out the reasearch for 100%.

Final comments:
I believe all of my issues with this game would be fixed if all resources could be obtained through automation; Make the Water well eventually spew water automatically, like the stone. Make something akin to a Monster Hunter Lodge, allowing you to make magical or mercenary monster killers for slime, shroom and wisps. A Gardeners Lodge, to make any pasture and flower automateable. Full automation would both give the dopamin of acquiring and turning a manual labour into automation, and would therefore remove the feeling of buildings being expensive, as no resource would entail anything other than time, not necessetating manual labour.