Recent reviews by chess123mate

You spend most of your time running around the map trying to find the few plants that appear each day (this takes a long time with little payoff, but it's the only thing you can do early-game to get ingredients). If you're lucky to find a few seeds, you can plant them, but they take many days to grow (and you can't even buy many seeds -- just a few per in-game week!) When you brew a potion, it's an extremely easy minigame with no variation in what I saw so far for the different potions/ingredients. When you open your shop, customers will come in fairly promptly, but only one at a time! This wouldn't be a nuisance, except that you have to wait for them to walk to the pre-placed and unmoveable display table, spend seconds thinking, and then buy & leave OR request an item that you almost surely don't have [until later on in the game], after which you have to interact with them and select "Dismiss" so that they'll stop waiting for your response. After shaking their head discontentedly for a couple seconds, they'll finally start to leave. Only after the customer disappears out the door and a couple more seconds have passed will another customer come in and repeat the process.

The tutorial is inadequate (I had to look up where to use the pickaxe as I'd missed the cave entrance). Further things mentioned in the description that are either wrong or else the tutorial and UI failed to explain:
-"Sometimes your customers will want to haggle over the price!" - they regularly will pay less than the sell price you're initially shown, but this is automatic (though there is an achievement that references negotiating the price...). Maybe it's referencing a somewhat rare random event?
-One of the screenshots in the description shows a "Mastery" label by the potions, but I didn't see that listed anywhere in the actual game. Was mastery was removed?

Features mentioned externally that I think were removed:
-Ability to break down minerals to use in potions
-Ability to upgrade or improve skills
-Concept that the order of ingredients matters

As others have said, the game is shallow. Each feature (exploration, gardening, brewing, placing down furniture in your shop, your limited daily energy) seems to have little to no depth.

Customers regularly (50% of the time?) make random buying decisions. But they only ever buy one thing (even if it's 1 crystal, which is useless on its own - you need 10 just to craft a single decorative light). Half the stuff in the game is just decoration, and it isn't clear whether this makes your shop more impressive or affects sell prices at all. You cannot set the sell price, advertise, or upgrade your shop in any way (other than placing furniture).

Experimentation using ingredients wasn't fun:
-you don't have many ingredients in the first place
-the variety of ingredients you get is also very low in the beginning (so there's not much you can try)
-it's pure guesswork what combinations will work out. If it doesn't work, the ingredients are simply gone.
-as a result, there's no creativity. I thought it'd be cool to have an "aromatic" + "healing" potion, but this doesn't exist
-there's no system in place to remind you of combinations that you've already tried
-things are so expensive and your house/shop deteriorate (which I think impact the price you sell things at if you don't repair them), adding some pressure to not waste ingredients.

The pressure to make money fast is worse in the early-game not only because you don't have any valuable potion recipes but also because you have 2 choices:
-Buy tools as they wear out (this is very expensive)
-Save up a few days of profits to buy a workbench so you can craft the tools yourself (this is not explained).
Even the best tools don't have much durability, meaning you have to spend a lot of time collecting resources just to replace the tools so that you can keep collecting resources.

The above wouldn't be so bad, but since the whole game takes so long to play through each day (and each activity you do is boring), it makes the whole game unfun to play.

Overall, it takes days to make any progress at all; the whole experience is just a slow grind.

I thought this would help with organization, but it's too unpolished and lacking features to be useful for that. That said, if you look at the screenshots and think "That's exactly what I'm looking for", it is easier than trying to recreate those features in a spreadsheet (specifically the ability to hide short bits of information or to move things around the screen freely), but beware these limitations and bugs:
- In the first screenshot you see arrows in the lower right corner. These are always visible and switch between "desktops" or "screens" - of which you get 3 (no way to add more or see which one you're on).
- (Bug) Dice are visible on all desktops
- (Bug) "Organize/Add Mode" starts out as "Off" ("On" means you can move things around, "Off" means you can modify textbox descriptions and roll dice), but you can add things at any time, and they act as if the mode was On until you toggle the mode On and Off again. Worse, sometimes toggling will do nothing and it's stuck on "Move" mode.
- You can't modify the size of any of the textboxes
- You can't modify the size of any of the GUI windows (like the save dialog)
- You can only import 1 image per "desktop" (the "background image") - this is the board game image you see in the screenshots. You cannot resize the import (or the controls) and if it's too high it'll go beneath the other GUI controls
- No exit to main menu or ability to create a new "document" or load an existing one

An extremely short story (that takes a very long time to show) that gives tiny glimpses into the life of a boy growing up - and nothing special or interesting happens.
The tree doesn't do anything interesting either.

(Played during free weekend)
-I found the sailing to be very slow paced; it felt like it was wasting my time.
-The stories did not interest me. Stuff happened, but there was no emotional investment, no significant conflict, nor any excitement or tension.
-Events/choices were arbitrary; you either need to try everything and memorize the results, pick at random and treat it like an adventure story (with you in the back seat), or look up the results to see which one is actually useful to you.
-Money making system seems poor (it's difficult to get enough money to keep going in the beginning). The main mission early on is gathering data from other docks - these missions do not pay for themselves unless you manage to gather multiple at a time (hard if you're low on money/fuel/supplies, like you are at the beginning).
-Starter ship seems to be one of the best ships. "Upgrading" costs a fortune and requires more fuel/supplies for the same distance (as the "upgraded" ships tend to be heavier and require more crew to function).
-Combat is extremely simplistic (just aim and fire; follow from behind if possible to minimize incoming damage). Killing enemy ships usually doesn't give you many resources (usually not worth the fuel, supplies, and damage you've spent/taken). Strangely, I once fought a ship that was apparently not hostile (there was no obvious difference between that ship and any other - I only found out I was pirating a friendly ship when it was mentioned by one of the crew in the follow-up "story"), and this ship had plenty of fuel and supplies. Why didn't any other ship have fuel/supplies?
-(Minor) I ended up dying by trying to sail off the edge of the map (doing so led to an okay outcome on a different edge), which forced me into an event where I had a 98% chance of dying and losing almost everything. With no warning that that's what was going to happen, it felt unfair.

I saw someone suggest that it was more fun to cheat in the supplies you need (you can modify the autosave to give yourself plenty of money). After a few hours of playing normally, I tried this to see what other content was in the game. When I found that the best ship in the entire game was barely any better than what I had started with (and consumed around 2x as many resources and - even with the best engines - still didn't move faster than the starter ship), it was quite a disappointment. Sure I could engage harder enemies (which occur further out from the starting area), but this only changed the scale of the numbers involved.

As I hinted above, I think this game is best enjoyed by pretending that the main character is in control (since the choices are pretty much down to "which one sounds the most interesting/valuable" unless you look them up). Even so, the resulting plot is not likely to be very interesting.

If you thoroughly enjoy Fallen London's story telling and resource gathering system (it's a free online game by the same company, so check it out), then you'll probably enjoy this game too - it's essentially more of the same (but without any restrictions on how much you can play). Otherwise, I do not recommend this game.

I've played more enjoyable free online programming/logic/puzzle games.
On the other hand, there is more depth to this game, and it has its moments.

Positives:
-Fun experience of making a bot with low-level circuits ("and", "or", "not" gates and a few others) and sensors.
-It is a challenge to strive for the objectives given efficiently. I found myself thinking about the puzzles even after exiting the game.

Negatives (roughly in order of importance):
-No interface tools to aid with accurate placement of parts (I assume this is why my bots always swerved to one side), nor any sort of "snap to grid" system. This entire game is 3D, but I feel that 2D would have been more fun.
-You don't get much room to build circuits, so you have to keep your ideas simple
-Very low variety of parts available in each level (they don't let you use everything on each level, and it isn't a "progression"/unlock style)
-The "puzzles" offered are not very interesting. There is little variety available in solving them. I'm not sure if this is just because of the levels (there's only so many ways you can follow a line or perform a simple task) and/or because of the low part variety
-Can rotate parts, but usually the rotation is worthless. Two examples: one part is a beam/"extension", but if you try and put it on the front of your bot, you cannot point it forward, only up/down (or rotate it to go left/right), offering no practical extension. (Now looking at the screenshots, it seems they wanted you to first build up, then forward? Why not offer multiple rotation angles?) Also, they have various sensors, but instead of the rotation doing something useful, it just rotates it in place (ex if the sensor is looking forward, after some rotation it will still be looking forward, just the sensor is maybe upside down or sideways).
-The tutorials are slow and inefficient (in terms of your time). They could be made better in places (even the 4th one, which is just a YouTube video, takes 9 minutes to explain what could be done in just a few). This is most unfortunate, as I skipped the last 2 tutorials, which were essential in understanding how the physics engine works (which is essential in knowing how to design the bots).
-Mediocre camera controls and no customization of input. It takes forever to look at the other side of your bot! (ex if you're looking at it from the left and want to look at it from the right so you can try and put the parts in the perfect spot)
-There is a fast-forward button, but even with just a few moving parts, it can barely speed things up (as little as 2x speed).
-Simulation is mildly inconsistent (run the same thing multiple times and the results may vary) [edit: tutorial #4 explains that this is intentional; the motors continually exert varying forces, causing your robot to swerve slightly in random directions at different times. I'd say this feature makes things challenging, but also more frustrating (a non-robust design might win at objectives if you just try it enough times).]
-Objectives seem poorly designed, being very hard to accomplish or sometimes impossible (though maybe they just require "tricks"). In particular, perhaps because I couldn't get my bot to go straight ahead despite re-adjusting the wheel positions several times, I could never accomplish the time-related objectives, except when I got lucky with the physics simulation (which I didn't understand initially due to not looking at tutorial #4). In the 3rd level, I got it 1st time, but when I "improved" the wheel positioning, it performed worse.
-The screenshots include levels not in the demo. The demo includes *only* 3 levels and the tutorials.

The game has potential, and if you *really* love building basic robots or inventing simple circuits you might enjoy the game. However, I don't recommend it overall due to the variety of problems listed above.

I highly recommend trying the demo. I thoroughly enjoyed the demo and have not regretted the purchase (though the physics in the demo are slightly different than the full game, and the maps from the demo have been enlarged). Compared to the demo, the full game has more AI difficulties (though 'Easy' is plenty hard for many people), more maps, and a bunch more neat modes. Further, you can even make your own modes (by adjusting preprogrammed variables, such as the number of balls that spawn at the beginning of the game. I highly recommend adjusting this number to the maximum, 24, use the "Fast Respawn" modifier, and play on a medium or small map - this way you spend much less time looking for a ball and much more time aiming/throwing it.)

There is a great variety of modes - from doing trick shots, racing around the map, elimination modes, shooting the "super ball" through one or more hoops (kind of like basketball), and a variety of combinations of these.

Though I have encountered several minor bugs since I purchased the game, the developer has consistently responded to my reports and fixed the bugs.

The multiplayer isn't massively popular, but along with the AIs, it can be fun even when there's no one else on (and depending on when you go online, there may be 10s of people on). It's a drop in/out style; you needn't stay for a whole game or anything. You can even use custom game modes that you've designed if you "host"/create the game, or else become the host (because the previous host left). The multiplayer is generally smooth (though those with higher pings might jump around a bit, which can make aiming at them harder). If you can forgive it a bit of temporary inconsistency, it can be pretty fun. (ex if two people move close to a ball, they both might see themselves picking it up. The server will then have to decide who picked it up first, and the other guy will see his ball disappear. On the plus side, this doesn't happen often, and I am sure that this implementation is why the multiplayer is as smooth as it is.)

Overall, the game does have room for improvement, but it's still great fun and I highly recommend trying it out.

With no context, the options are quite arbitrary. (ex: what did "we" do at the party? You'll have to tell me, 'cause the game certainly didn't)
The requirement of typing gibberish is a nuisance.
The options are often pointless, non-descriptive (so I end up wondering what the connotation of the option is), and have practically no impact on how the game proceeds (though I read that there is a "horrible" ending where, if you treat Emily especially bad, she simply stops talking to you in the last chapter, instead of your character saying - eventually - good-bye). Other than a single line of dialogue (how Emily responds) after each choice, the rest is identical.

In terms of the story, the flow is illogical. The characters call things "weird" without explaining what they mean. They refuse to go after what they want. It is quite frustrating.

The game frequently tells you that "Emily will remember that" - that feels stolen from Telltale. In any case, it doesn't add anything. Since all dialogue is essentially the same, it's also meaningless.

By the end of it, I was quite happy to say "good-bye".

Poorly made game (inconsistent collisions, can fall off the map, not clear how you're supposed to get past the cars in the 2nd scene)

Few players online and it crashed in both matches I tried. I didn't see an option to choose whether I played vs bots or humans - it looks like it just automatically gives you bots if there aren't enough human players after a minute or so. Limited resolution options, poor graphics performance (not that my computer's very powerful), and I found it difficult to handle the puck due to low fps.

I also disliked the graphics style (especially the host character), though that's hardly a major factor.

Fun & free