Recent reviews by Prism Lizard

While this is still early access (v0.3 at time of writing), I can't recommend this yet. It has the potential to be fantastic. It borrows factory mechanics from Satisfactory and underground exploration/terraforming mechanics similar to Deep Rock Galactic.

My experience in the first two hours was one mostly of being lost in the un-fun way. It's one thing to encourage exploration; it's another to require it and not to give the player any sense of where they should go. At one point the game told me to check out an office building before leaving but none of the doors worked. Only one door was available for repairs and, even then, I would have needed to provide several hundred of an item I hadn't unlocked yet. While Satisfactory's drop pods can also require advanced resources to unlock the hard drive, the hard drives are optional. In this game, it feels like they're mandatory.

I can confirm the performance complaints in other reviews as well. Exploring larger rooms already had noticeable frame drops. While the frame rate degraded smoothly, it isn't promising that looking out into a large cavern caused it to drop perceptibly. In contrast, Deep Rock Galactic's frame rate drops from 100+ to about 70, which I can't easily notice. The loss of frame rate in Techtronica wasn't just noticeable; it was an unpleasant distraction from the environment.

It isn't all bad, though. The need for inserters to add/remove items from a conveyor belt is an interesting change that allows you connect numerous production buildings without a ton of splitters and mergers. Hopefully tutorials become better as the game progresses through early access, since the current tutorials are mostly things to just try puzzle out on your own.

The puzzle mechanics are deeper than the bunburrows themselves. A cutesy puzzle game that gets diabolical in a hurry.

This is a weak recommendation, but given how early in early access this is right now, the game seems on the right track.

The basic gameplay loop focusing on simpler inputs and some occasional timing is a much more chill experience than the frenetic pace of the previous Cook, Serve, Delicious games. The levels are quite short but, given that you'll be playing them several times to make progress, that's probably okay. It's the kind of game you can easily pick up for a short session, play a couple of stages, and then get on with your day. The difficulty is flexible and mostly dictated by your choices each day, so the levels can feel too easy until you've earned your way to a more interesting difficulty for that location.

My biggest complaint is that the levels are *TOO* short and there's too much repetition required. There also need to be better accessibility options around key rebinding and making inputs more visible. Hopefully these are ironed out before the v1.0 release, since it's frustrating to lose a combo because you didn't see a light grey oval on a white background or you misread a Y input on a yellow background.

Still, if you want something that's a more relaxed experience for short bursts, I'll give it a thumbs up. Just go into this with the understanding that it's inspired by the CSD series and reuses some of the assets rather than another entry in it.

Requires an Epic Games login to access any multiplayer features, including local multiplayer. This used to work without issues.

There are so many little things in this game that are good. Brought together, they're fantastic. While there are some patterns that are especially powerful, there are many reasonable paths to victory. The game is at its best when you're playing on a slightly higher difficulty than you think you can handle and you're just barely keeping ahead of the forest's rising hostility and the queen's diminishing patience, always doing whatever it takes to give yourself one more season to try make something happen.

The game has finally become everything is was promised to be and then some. It's easy to lose hours at a time just exploring.

Game crashes the Steam Deck. I can only assume a recent update broke the game on Deck.

This is very much a "Yes, but..." recommendation. In short, if the game looks good to you, you'll probably enjoy it, but it may be worth waiting for a sale or a few more patches.

First, the good stuff.
* This is an officially licensed game and they've done well with implementing the stuff you'd expect in an F1 game.
* All the current drivers are present, complete with voice lines from both the drivers and their engineers. While the voice lines can get repetitive, the fact they're present at all is nice.
* The tracks are all present and as they appear in real life in 2022, which is something even the F1 racing game doesn't accomplish.
* The graphics are good enough for a management type game. They're not amazing, but they are good enough.
* The game runs well enough on a Steam Deck, especially if you reduce the frame rate to 30 for consistency's sake.
* Time management in the game is crucial. There are never enough days on the calendar or research slots in your design center to do everything you want. You'll have to make compromises.
* Race strategies are presented to you by default, but are fully configurable. While stuff can happen that forces you off your plan, it's very useful to have a plan in place.
* DRS is just as strong in the game as in real life. This isn't necessarily great for the spectacle, but it does allow you to strategize around using it.

Now, the bad stuff.
* There are no mid-session saves. At all. Once you start a race session, you're committed to doing the entire 305 kilometers in one sitting. On the Steam Deck, the game hibernates and resumes smoothly, but if you're on a desktop or laptop your options are far more limited. While Motorsport Manager shared the same limitation, that game is several years old and we need better in 2022.
* Race management is shamelessly copied from Motorsport Manager. The settings and their effects are almost identical. It's astounding the developer got away with copying it like this.
* Damage is handled poorly. Sometimes a car will go directly into a wall at full speed and suffer nothing but minor front wing damage. Sometimes that same incident will force the car to retire and need several parts replaced. Cars will sometimes stay out with ludicrous damage, such as continuing to lap with a destroyed rear wing when 5+ seconds off the pace. It's quite frustrating to have your car retire from practice for an incident that another car loses just a few seconds for in the race.
* Incidents are also handled poorly. The game will call a virtual safety car (VSC) in practice for incidents, when in real life there would *always* be a red flag instead. The safety car is rarely deployed in race sessions unless a car's blocking the racing line. Sometimes a major crash results in just a local yellow that stays out for the rest of the race. It's baffling how wrong the game gets this. For a game about strategy and management, the proper strategy options need to be on the table.
* Driver behavior on track is erratic. Sometimes a lock up will result in negligible time loss; sometimes it'll result in the driver stopping for ten seconds. Sometimes a car will go for a risky overtake, then stop impossibly quickly when the gap closes, resulting in disproportionate time loss. Sometimes in qualifying, a driver set to conserve tires and fuel will still go on full attack and pass other cars, rather than staying in the gap you deployed them into.
* Driver development is glacially slow. Even young drivers with experience multipliers may only get a single development point every three or so races. There's zero reason to pick a driver with an average rating even two points below anyone currently on your team.
* Money is basically a formality. It's difficult to even spend all the money you make each week unless you get hopelessly carried away on facility upgrades or have some truly cursed luck with needing to replace components. Just leave $1M set aside for the occasional random event and you'll never have issues.

Overall, the game is definitely more accessible than Motorsport Manager. There's slightly less to think about as a team principal than in MM. If you're a fan of F1, you'll probably already know enough of the rules and strategy to get right into the flow of the game. But there are enough frustrating and awkward bits that I can't give it a full recommendation, and I'd probably wait for it to go on sale for 25% off unless you're truly passionate about the sport or the management genre.

It's nice to just get to drive around. Very chill.

Try resist the temptation to look up the wiki until after your first playthrough.