This review is split into two sections. The first section addresses an incident in the community, the second addresses the game itself.

Section 1_________________

There was a bit of a rash of negative reviews on this game from a faction that got banned from the dev server for hounding and ganking new arrivals with endgame gear. I'm posting this review to clear the air on that;

They were behaving toxic and adversarial and were removed as such. The developers have maintained a firm grasp of the basics and are focusing on a very fleshed out PvE base before expanding out into the wild world of PvP. This group of players were upset by the temporary removal of PvP on the official dev server and they responded by using known exploits to achieve their PvP goals, harassing and pursuing players who simply wanted nothing to do with them or PvP gameplay.

When they were banned for repeated exploit abuse and harassing of other players, they then harassed the developers to the point of upset and used the logs of the post-harassment ire to create a false reality to fit their victim narrative and started bombing with negative reviews, openly harassing anybody who posted a positive review, even so far as when I, myself posted the original version of this review and received harassment across multiple platforms.

They behaved like petulant children and bullies, yelling and swinging their tiny fists when they didn't get their way. The developers would not be swayed by such behavior, and they did what few in this industry brave to; told the screaming manbabies to take a hike.

Section 2_________________

On to the game itself.

The game is, as of April 28, 2018, somewhat unfinished, but it is already very playable and very enjoyable. Optimization and graphics options are slightly lacking and my 1050 card can sometimes struggle, but such is expected in early access.

The game has an interesting and unique take on basebuilding and features RTS elements as well as an already solid vehicle combat system where upgrading your gear is key to victory.

The world is sprawling in depth and vibrant in variety, with each biome feeling truly unique and an exploration rewards system to encourage pushing your horizons outward. Resources are there for the taking, but you'll have to work to get the rarer ones and the richer deposits, whether by frontal assault, overwhelming base defenses, attrition, starving their powergrid until the guns and sensors shut down, or stealth, sneaking in and stealing supplies right out from under their noses. All three of these tactics apply to players and NPC's alike.

The game also features a very dynamic ecology system which sees regular attention from the devs. Pollution is something to keep an eye on, everything from the sensors on your research stations to the lenses on your solar farms will suffer if you let a layer of smog surround your base. This is to say nothing of what happens when your toxic cloud upsets the locals.

In all, this is a game worth keeping an eye on, it's already fun for somebody who enjoys PvE, and holds promise of not only bringing in vibrant PvP, but expanding greatly into new fields and venues for the warrior and miner alike.

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EDITED (30 hours played)

Ok editing the review now since i have put more hours into it (30 hours currently)
The start of the game can be confusing and slow, but the community is really helpful in the /world chat channel if you have some questions. Once you get a ball rolling and getting into the groove with the stuff, its really amazing game. Theres so many little details like CO2 emissions if you are using fossil fuels for your generators. There are Metals, Liquids, Gases to collect. Gas tanks have be pressurized or cooled down etc. You can set up multiple outposts that gather you resources and use traderoutes to get the materials into your main Outpost. Every time you finish a new research there's plenty more new options coming in.This game can be huge timesink, but if you get your materials going in a more automated way you can spend more time on building your base defenses and exploring more of the world.

Still haven't reached to the endgame, far from it it seems. Definitely worth the pricetag if you are ready to tinker with managing the energy and resources, build defenses and plan your expansion outposts.

About Performance. There are some performance issues with the Linux client atm. At the night time they become apparent when multiple lights are on top of eachother. Framerates drop from 60FPS thats constantly during the day to 25-35 FPS during the night with multiple lights active. (Hardware: Ryzen 1700X@3.9ghz, GTX1070, 32GB DDR4 2800CL14). Im sure that will be improved with upcoming patches though, doesn't really make the game unenjoyable for me.

About the issues this game has. Radar map is a bit problematic, when you have many markers and outposts it starts to be impossible to set the right target where to go as everything becomes so tiny. Theres also Big map, but this doesnt allow you to target your markers, so its hard to get which direction you have to go.
There are also small bugs like snaping your foundations/platforms togheter, sometimes don't want to work correctly.


Overall, im quite happy. the minor issues it has can be improved over time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t82Ep-YeXCM

8/10 if you into sandboxing and tinkering with stuff like this :)

First I want to say this is not a quick startup game, so any review with less than an hour and maybe even two almost certainly hasn't really gotten into the meat of it with rare resource exploration, trade routes and transport logistics.

The game does what it does well. You explore for stuff, you mine it, you set up bases on it and you bring it all back to your headquarters to either do science or build things. On some servers, you shoot people as well. Everything feels pretty good, even if it isn't constant action and the skill is more in your logistical planning than twitch gameplay. The devs fix stuff frequently, and any major issues are generally fixed in a matter of hours or often minutes.

If there's something you don't know, join the global chat and ask questions there. Generally people will answer your questions and help you through things. Even if you're in your own single player game you can chat with anyone on any server (or in their own private game) with this feature.

There are some UI issues, like the science lab status screen displays resource rates that things would take if they were operating at the capacity you set them at rather than what they're currently taking though this does have its advantages for planning chemistry recipes even if it's initially unintuitive. But once you know the quirks it's not too much of an issue.

I played this a lot in early builds around early 2017 I think it was...

Aren (the main dev) is a lovely guy and was almost always online working on it back then chatting to players and fixing bugs.

The issue for me is that the game really hasn't come on much in the 2+ years (ish) or so since then. I think he embarked on a tough rebuild of the terrain generation to optimise something or other (but tbh terrain worked fine back then too IMHO) and got sidetracked with technical stuff and tailoring stuff for a very small group of vocal fans/players from his previous game.

What the game needed was more things to actually do and mechanics to enable players to help create content via PVP or at least more AI / automated "empires" expanding and giving you targets etc to fight with over territory etc. What we got instead was a instanced tower defense kind of game where you can spawn in a wave of attackers to test your base/guns against - rather pointless.

IMHO He spent far too much time catering to the small band of very loyal players from his previous game Windward - (which was similar grinding waves of PVE content yo get better gear etc) to the detriment of actually having a bigger vision and sticking to it.

I remember a planned PVP update - ♥♥♥♥-canned apparently, along with any real player driven possibilities - a small group of "griefers" were hounded off the main online/test server. I was hoping for Eve style player wars over territory but I guess this is just too much for a solo dev to pull off... as talented as he is at coding.
There was even possibly going to be spaceship at one point but unlikely now, it needed at least more meaningful, better AI raids/mechanics and more content making it worthwhile building all your infrastructure but that sadly did not materialise.

The potential was great, but sadly hasn't been reached in my opinion.

It remains a quite pretty but is more like a technical demo or walking simulator than having much real gameplay.

Once you've built a few bases, done the research trees (including some head-scratching about reacting) and seen all the artefacts you'll be left with a unity base builder which is pretty, but totally pointless other than to screenshot a few pics and use for wallpaper.

I wanted that early development to continue at that early rate of progress but sadly he seems to have got bogged down with bugs/ real life etc or side-tracked. I got my money's worth back then so am disappointed rather than upset by this final release as I hoped for much more.

I wish him well in future making games but I'd not recommend this one personally, and I won't be spending money on any more early access from Tasharen as it has been years with very little tangible progress. The final "release" comes with a whimper and no mention of why its now finished other than "time for a new project".

If I could give a middle thumb review I would - its still quite pretty to look at and charmingly relaxing in some ways - but just for the lack of progress it has to be a thumbs down from me - sorry!

I understand why this moved to be no-cost as it feels very much like an Early Access game that left EA when the developer was ready to move on, and not when the game was ready. Had I paid for it, I would be pretty annoyed. In short, there is enough to enjoy in this free game that it is worth trying out - and thank you Tasharen Entertainment for making that an option. The graphics are beautiful, and I have passively explored a world for hours. First, though, turn on creative mode and figure out the basics - that is the only way I could find a way to make this game slightly enjoyable.

It is incredibly cumbersome to move around on the ground. The terrain is too rugged and the weather is bothersome. Most due to that, it is difficult to move in a set cardinal direction. The interface could be more intuitive and the tutorial was clearly an afterthought by going over basic movement and that is about it.

By describing a randomized world, it also summarizes the game quite well. It is too big, resources are too sparse, and there are large areas of nothing. The map is also completely revealed making it particularly difficult to know where you have already explored. Additionally, the map is nearly featureless, vague and imprecise resulting in markers wildly off from where you want them.

There is no in-game tech-tree so if you want to figure out what you need to research to proceed, good luck in your out-of-game research.

Creative mode is a decent sandbox but it does not really stand out in any particular way while still being annoying to build. Especially considering there is not a way to level the rugged landscape.

Recommended mostly as a free tech demo.

TLDR: For an early access game its amazing, already thoroughly enjoyable, looks great, sounds great and shows a ton of potential, especially as this will be the deveopers second game, so no history of abandoining work. Not to mention this is the only game I have ever played where I've pointed out a bug in the game's discord, and had the devs say "just a sec, I'll fix it and release the update", 15 mins later, the game has an update that fixes the bug. Mind blown.

Edit:
125 hours.
All research completed. Looking forward to building up my bases, getting supply lines sorted so I dont have to go do any tedious mining again, ever, really, never. Also got to get my reaction chambers set up right so I dont drain all my resources and still have a sensible flow of their products. And right now, as the game's name suggests, I am just exploring, good tech is good for getting around and seeing the game. Scoping out the bases of my, :cough: neighbours, make sure none of them have anything too valuble to leave in their posesion ;-)
Also knowing where they are makes it easier to find them should they try anything.
Yeah, quite pleased, clearly an early access game, but with a good pedigree a very solid foundation, and heaps of potential. Can't wait to see how far it's come in another year, even now updates keep adding features that make me go "ooh". Waiting on the scary stuff: Hostile NPC's! Even if they are just passive in bases, its gonna be great to have to spend some ammo!



Edit:
40 hours.
At this point I am happy to give my final verdic, I have a decent base, walls, defences, refineries, access to a selection of vehicles from the starter buggy, through quick fliers to giant air-haulers. Building bases in the correct locations seems key, setting up the trade routes vastly improves quality of life allowing a central base to perform all your tasks without a great deal of extra work.

The frustrations: There are two. Firstly the game starts too slowly, without guidance even getting to the point of doing research is slow, and then getting the techs that make a difference (as most of the mk 1 stuff is found laying about anyhow) takes too long.
Secondly, mining. Omfg, there has got to be a less frustrating way to mine personally: zap for 30 seconds, sleep 30 seconds, repeat. There NEED to be techs that improve this and very early on, consider splitting the tech tree and defining it a little better, Combat vs Resource Gathering for example.

That said this is in early access, and I know a turtorial is on the todo list, along side hostile npcs, which may spice things up, or just make mining utterly intolerable... We'll see. Buy it, its worth it, and its guarenteed to get better from here.


Edit:
22 hours.
Got my first upgrade vehicle!
Base building is really cool, setting out bases over several levels, buildings, generators and storages, reminds me of command and conquer, only 3rd person. So far enjoyed it alot, however it does feel like a very long time spent for not very much progress. Although I'm getting plans and my own goals now. Things looking up, but the slow start wont help with picking up players, its worth the wait.


Edit:
16 Hours.
Mining seems an exercise in forum reading: Get to mine spot, use battery, read forums, move nearby, resume from step 2 for an hour. I was hoping tech would improve this, but the early techs take too long to research to make any real impact, or perhaps I have no patience. Anyhow, excuse me I have to go back and mine for 30 seconds.


Edit:
Experienced impressions: 12 hours
Still enjoying the game a lot, visuals are just as strong, especially as you start exploring more biomes. If anything I think the sheer size of a world works against this here, as you have to really travel far to find the much different biomes. That said I love the size, wouldnt change it, just suggest that the scale of the game hides a lot of its treasures.

Which brings me to the "tech tree", a little more transparency so you can plan what items you want to research would be nice. Also a few other things that would help:
Personal notes on the map placable by coordinates, clicking in teh right place is pretty tough. Also not sure how this works with others in my faction, I can sometime see their waypoints and sometimes not? :scratches head:
Factions: Some explanation of ranks and things would be good, found a few lines about it on steam along with a list of commands, but again, a text box when you found a faction would be nice.
I'm told you can eventually design and craft a container for car parts...however it would be nice to start with one, having to meet up to share car parts when you're all in starter vehicles is clumsy.

Exractors are a little odd, ore extractor is easy, but the liquid and gas extractors, they are states of matter which can change, and temperature is notably in the game. Perhaps a way to tell teh player which they need? I mean sure, I can look up the state of amonium at 19C, for example, but there should be an easier way.

Handling of the starter vehicle is much better with T1 components, but I do find the weight limit constraining, mind you that might just be all the spare car parts I'm having to carry around...

Mostly: Lack of notes, faction instructions and the tech tree bother me atm. The generator makes mining pretty tiresome, but I guess thats fixed with better generators...I hope it is.

A breakdown of the vehicle's power consumption would be handy also.

Back with more edits later I should think. Still a thumbs up recommendation from me, loved it, even if there are some frustrating moments as no info is available.

Also the mini scout drone thing? Needs a higher altitude cap, it clips through trees, and more importantly, it gives me sea sickness flying over hills, it either :can: or :can't: get to the higher altitude, it shouldnt follow the terrain.








First impressions: (3 hours)
First off, I really like this game, beautiful sandbox with heaps of potential. If that sounds good, buy it.

Secondly, some feedback.
-Spent hours finding a spot with an abundance of the resources I wanted. Built a base, all the resource markers vanished and now I cant find the resources I want to mine them.

-Containers. Must have spent nearly as long as I did finding the base just driving close enough to containers to store things in them. If I could lean out the window and lob a rock at them, I expect to be able to drop my cargo in them. Unless you want to include a hitching up and unloading animation like the harvesters from C&C?

Early game could really do with a little work, and I dont seem alone in that reading a review or two. Tree slowdown is ok, I get it, but the starter vehicle seems to hate small inclines, even under the weight limit. (Which is so well hidden I doubt most people even know that weight effects your vehicle). I'd probably go look at some youtube vids of regular earth-bound offroad vehicles, then assume that your starter vehicle is as least as good as one of those whilst loaded. Outside of hills its quite nippy and fun to drive, although no break means using reverse to manuver can be a lesson in momentum,
Mostly tho the early game needs some guidance: Join/found a faction, how resources and storage work(centralised or localised?), where to create your base, and why you'd want to. Which can all be done with text popups in the interim.
Or community resources, which may come with time but right now could do with some encouragement as information seems only available on steam chat threads.


That out of the way the visuals and audio are lovely, the UFO's prompt questions enough to keep me interested and there is enough complexity to keep me badgering away at optimising trade and resources for a while. An excellent foundation!

It's pretty. Although the vids and pictures don't really do the slog it takes to get to that end-game content any real justice. Especially for single-player minded peoples. If you're going to try playing this, find or have a group to play with. Even then, I started with a group but outlasted them all, most of them refunded for the same reason I eventually stopped playing.

I enjoyed the concept and general progression of the game. It was challenging without being too difficult and the general progression of vehicles was paced fairly well. My main complaint would be with the driving mechanics or specifically how vehicles react to the terrain. That and I found the component and vehicle upgrades to always be a bit disappointing compared with the amount of time and resources involved in the crafting. Finding and collecting the resources to set up outposts and trade routes for automation was fun, but the travel in between I found to be extremley frustrating... like occasional rage quit frustrating, and there is a lot of traveling. Lots and lots of traveling. I mean... Lots.

If the driving were fun, I would give this game a thunbs up and would still be playing... but it isn't and getting around is more than 70% of the game play.

This game is an excellent tech demo, a very, VERY large sandbox and overall extremely solid foundations for what could become a classic on the long run.
Sadly this will never come to pass, to my greatest sadness and to the anger of a few screaming about the game being unfinished.

Why ? well let me share Aren's words on it as he answered if adding a story would somehow make the game more enticing :

Originally posted by Aren Mook:

The game is what it is. It has grossed $178k from 15k copies sold. It cost ~$750k to develop. Unfortunately no amount of story is going to fix that. It just fails to grab most people. It isn't story-related.

For comparison, Windward grossed $2.1 million from 421k copies, and it cost ~$70k to develop.

This is why my focus is on Windward 2. While I sympathize with the fans such as yourself that believe in the game -- I did too -- I simply can't argue with reality. Quite frankly, I should have cut my losses back at the 1.5 year development mark when it became clear that it won't work financially, but I kept at it for 2 more years just to finish it. Although I was really getting depressed and had next to no motivation towards the end.

Keep in mind, I have no investors or anyone financing the development of anything I'm working on. I am paying for everything out of my own pocket. And I do have a family. The successes of NGUI and Windward are the reason why I can still stay as an independent game developer. Definitely not Sightseer.

That said, there will be other builds pushed into the Sightseer branch for you to play later on. But they will be preview builds of Windward 2 for when I will be doing the preview weekends. It's just my way of thanking players such as yourself for your support.

A game with huge potential, crushed by its status as an independent game worked on by one dev and a lack of exposure all around.
The game used to be 20€, which explain some of the disappointment, but for 8€-ish ? i'd say it's more than worth it and if you're having cold feet about it, you could always wait for a sale as it seem to dip in -75% territories.

TO NOTE :
-While it sound like the game is entirely abandoned, you can still find Aren answering the occasional question about sightseer on the Tasharen community discord
-Most of the tech developed for sightseer is confirmed to be reused for windward 2
-As of right now, windward 2's development is on pause :

Definitely hype, however would it be fair to call it (from the responses here) "on hold until further notice"?
It is one thing to be waiting for an ETA to be announced and another to know that "there is a chance that at some point the development will be continued".

Originally posted by Aren Mook:

It's not a chance, it's a certainty. I want to be in the right mindset, and inspired creatively before I jump back in. I won't be pushing myself when my mind is on something else, it never works out and I get burned out trying. I'd then end up releasing it half finished just because I'm tired of working on it... I don't want that for Windward 2.

The game needs work. The developer released it in August and one update in September. Nothing since, it's February now. The developer is working on Windward 2. So unfortunately there are a ton of issues that probably will not get fixed for the foreseeable future.

Problems I found:

1. First loading the game and I'm already at 35FPS. It doesn't get better. I've got a 1080TI and i7-7700k with 32gb of ram. It doesn't get much worse, thankfully, but it is not optimized.
2. There is not much variety in the ground vehicles. Except for the first two upgrades, they require extensive grinding that are still not achievable after 30 hours. Meanwhile there has been several flying upgrades...
3. Once you get flying vehicles, all ground vehicles are basically pointless. Which is a shame, because this game really encourages infrastructure especially to set up trade routes. With flying vehicles, just fly in a straight line...
4. The game is structured as an MMO. Getting a +5 upgrade for your weapon might just give you -2.5% threat reduction which is like, what? who cares!
5. The default settings are also designed like an MMO with automated miners on a huge resource node generating maybe 1.5 ore per second. You need 12,000 or more for most science research. Editing the settings to have 10 times more resources made this at least bearable, but that was after playing for 10 hours and tediously making trips back and forth to grind it out manually.
6. The enemies are very rare, but when they come for the first time they will completely destroy you. That's okay because after they kill you and capture your base, you can just take it back uncontested. What? Ok
7. The progression is not very well thought out. We are basically finished with the game and still haven't researched upgraded miners yet.
8. The simulated battles are the most exciting part but it doesn't mention you can play these co-op. Once you start, you can use the tab menu to invite people.
9. The road system and environment is very cool, it's a shame you so quickly get flight and then ignore it all. No need to build roads or anything, although it is fun.
10. The upgrade system looks like something from Diablo, but no, they are just small increases to generic stats. You do not get any epic upgrades to gear.
11. Upgrading to Tier 2 weapons requires getting a Tier 1 weapon to rank 5, which requires an epic upgrade. Once you upgrade the weapon to Tier 5, you replace the weapon with the tier 2 version. So that epic +5 is completely bypassed until you get a second one. Really?!
12. If you do increase resource generation so that the game is not EVE-online type of slow, you also increase manual mining rates. That's unfortunate because it further encourages you to mine manually. I'm talking mining for 1 second generating 1,800 Silicon versus a miner you built fueled by coal generators mining 2 per second. Yes, that extreme.
13. The ground vehicle physics are awful. If it starts to rain and you fall into a valley, you're basically stuck there until it stops raining. You can get better wheels and get several upgrades to a whopping +25% traction, but you won't notice any difference at all. Also weight affects your movement. Meanwhile you can just get a flying vehicle and none of that applies (come on, why is flying so powerful? it's nothing special to get)

All the components for a great game are here. But there is just a constant stream of poor design choices. I would not recommend until all of the above are fixed.

It's just a grind with a lot of unrewarding "upgrades". After almost 30 hours I feel like I should have just upped the resource generation to 5000% from the beginning. Waiting for resources is trickle in is not enjoyable game time.

TLDR: It's a mixture of terra tech, command & conquer and rust.


I love the concept of this game and I'm positively blown away by its complexity.
Over 24h in and I still have only seen a small part of the possibilities – despite having joined a relatively big corp to speed things up.

The graphics may be a bit dated but they still look really nice and work well for the game.

Multiplayer performance is remarkable! So far I've seen as many as 90 players on the official server and haven't noticed any network issues at all (even though the server is half way across the world)


It is also pretty well polished for an early access game.