Recent reviews by BlueOrange

It's more of a factory automation game than a city builder. With an overworld that is very hands-off. The main task is to efficiently process souls through the hell you've designed, but there are some fun twists on the formula as you progress. As a factory automation veteran, I found normal difficulty moderately challenging. The key thing to recognize is that you are not a mighty wizard smiting everything with your magic: you are a caretaker for an ecosystem who needs a strong system that can (at least mostly) fend for itself.

Very satisfying and engaging puzzle game, with a very unusual perspective on what's fun about train track design. Trains spawn automatically and set their destination to 'nearest city that can give me what I'm looking for'. As such, the game is about choosing where to build, and creating clear sections of track by placing stoplights. (The title really is fitting, stoplights are critical to successful play.) Another very unusual thing is that there are no words in this game. Everything is communicated with objects in the game, symbols, and little tutorial videos. The developer has been really helpful at explaining things in the discussion area, so it's clear that 'no words' is a deliberate design choice, and I think it works. Getting everything rolling smoothly is extra satisfying when you know that you really have figured everything out for yourself.

10 hours in, I've played the toughest level, and I'm satisfied with my positioning on the leaderboards for today. (This includes a lot of restarts on the final level.) I suspect I'll come back to this, because the randomization in the levels is significant enough to make each attempt meaningfully different, and this is a good game to chill out to.

Long Live the Queen is a hard act to follow. There's some interesting new stuff here - the business of moving the castle around and choosing who to visit is cool, and the explicit time pressure is good. The fundamental gameplay remains the same, you're learning to navigate a maze-like narrative, and it has multiple endings, various types of goodness. Definitely one of the better games in the genre, but this didn't feel like a revelation, the way that LLTQ did. Then again, I am significantly older now than I was then. This is good, well worth the time and the money. But I don't find myself as curious about how to get to the various endings as I was last time around.

My PC is a lot stronger than the minimum specs, and the stuttering is unbelievable. 2 or 3 frames per second in combat will get you killed, every time. Sometimes, it feels like it's a full second between frame.

It's very pretty. It's very innovative. It works well and didn't crash, or have any bugs that I noticed (other than the hostile insects). I felt myself getting better as I played. A round takes half an hour, or maybe an hour?

Imagine if there was a really good sequel to They Are Billions. That's what this is.

Very pretty. But the gameplay is tedious.

Fantastic to chill out to. It's just tricky enough to avoid being boring, while (at least on easy) the numbers go up nice and reliably.

Relies very heavily on the notion that "A cheap animation of two cats having sex is hilarious." Other than that, it's... a moderately interesting grind where you can gradually work your way towards the things we've all gradually worked our way towards a thousand times already.

In a game where everything depends on your ability to know what's in demand on one planet, and what's being exported on another planet, it would sure be nice to be able to have two planets open at once.

Had a surplus of basic rations, so decided to sell some. Worked out that 175 per ration was a fair price.

Created a local market ad, put 100 in the quantity box, 175 in the 'total price' box. Failed to notice that I was therefore selling at 1.75 per unit. A local trader accepts the contract, pays me what I had asked for, then sends me a separate contract, buying 1 ration at a price of 17500. He spotted my mistake and decided not to profit from it.

Best community ever.
(I've switched to playing exclusively using the web client. My hours are severely understated.)