Recent reviews by r4m0n

More than 3 years after exiting EA with an unfinished game, the game continues unfinished, the campaign stops in the middle and the company decides it's time to release paid DLC...

Wait until they finish the game before buying.

One of the "losing is fun" games. RNG can get you in a few runs, but it's very manageable once you get enough experience.

Very solid spell customization system, and allows for quite a bit of flexibility in how you play the game.

The best Touhouvania around.

Pretty good start, if a bit boring. Implement the basic logic gates from NANDs, then use those to implement slightly more advanced stuff, all using a simple HDL.

But then comes the time to start implementing Flip-Flops and other clock dependent circuits and... there is no clock signal.

Sorry, I understand that cyclic circuits are complicated to simulate, but in real HDLs signal propagation is very important and you can't just take the cycles out and add a magic signal delay component this late in the game.

As you threw realism in the circuit design out of the window, I'll have to judge the game on what's left, and what's left is an anachronistic DOS editor with smart autocompletion in it, and very boring tasks.

In this kind of game, you need either to stick to realism completely, and let people play in it like a sandbox, or add heavy artificial constraints so people have to think hard on what they are doing (like most Zachtronics games). Just making people type in boring half-adder designs won't do you any good.

Edit: After a few bugfixes and a full rebalance, now I can fully recommend this game :-)

Very strong Uplink vibe coming out of this one (if you don't know Uplink, you might want to go take a look at it too), so I'll have to compare with it. Main differences:

• Simpler interface, simpler proxy bouncing system, and generally a lot faster to clean up after a job;
  
• Puzzles to solve to break passwords, not just using password breakers and other specialized tools;

The balance is pretty good now. It should take about 4~5h for a full playthrough (up to level 8, and completing all story missions) if you know what you're doing, expect some 8h+ on the first run through the game, if you don't get caught first.

Overall, the game is fun to play. There's tension as you hack a new server, and you need to move fast if you get caught, and there's a lot of humor in all the text around the game. The story missions are optional, but most come with some good rewards. You may not want to do them all, but which ones to skip you'll learn after you do them :-)

THIS GAME ISN'T FOR EVERYBODY, and it really could have used a few weeks on Early Access to round off the edges.

First and foremost: I'm mostly liking the game so far, and I'll probably change this to a recommendation in the future, but as of the writing of this, the game has only 15 positive reviews and no negative ones, so I'll put an warning here before people think this is something it's not and we get a flood of bad reviews.

Some general points:
Graphics - Rendering realistic space battles isn't an excuse to not at least try to make it pretty. Sorry, but this game really needs a bit love from a 3D artist. I see your normal maps stored in JPG, and if any 3D artist see this they'll try to hang you. This game screams programmer graphics everywhere, and while I'm a programmer myself, this isn't excusable on a $25 title.
Interface - Generally quite well done and useable, but could use some more work on the finer points of orbital maneuvers, like being able to move the execution point of the maneuver to change the timing, and splitting fleets of drones/missiles after launch.
Sound - Pretty good sound effects and music in general, bit repetitive theme on the menu, but it works overall.
Setting - The story and science of the game is the reason you should be getting it, it's pretty well done and a lot of research went into making this game, and it shows.

So far I've played up to the 5th campaign mission, and enjoyed the first 4 quite a bit... On the 5th though, you are introduced to missiles, and they just aren't ready for release yet. The main problem is that the terminal guidance (and really, the guidance in general) can't get the job done and even if the target has had its rocket disabled, the missiles can't get a solid hit on the target ship, and much less anywhere near any priority target you set, which makes you being able to finish the mission totally random.

Overall, if you like Rocketry, has a general sense of how orbital mechanics works and like realistic simulations, this game is for you, but you might want to wait a bit and see if the rough edges are polished down first. If you can't get a rocket built and on orbit in KSP, you're probably better off passing this one.

Great puzzles, and very beautiful.