Recent reviews by keatingfamily2001

Fun game. Plays more like Rimworld than Surviving Mars. End game needs a lot of work but you can always just start a new playthrough rather than wait 20 hours of real time for a bunch of ships to come willing to rescue one survivor at a time.

1 million bonus points for how easy they made it to upgrade floors/walls/roofs.

Does this game fill a niche? Absolutely. Could it be great? Perhaps. Did it remind me how much I miss NCAA on Playstation? You bet. Is it a good game? Not yet.

Right now there are just too many things that make the game not quite fun enough to recommend. It's basically a text based recruiting game and recruiting doesn't work well. For example, it tells you whether you have slots that need to be filled next year but completely ignores quality. So if I have six RBs that are all skill 50, potential F+, it tells me I don't need to recruit there. So many mouse clicks to get anything done. No way to prioritize your people and have the autorecruiting handle your exact preferences.

Speaking of autorecruiting, it's terrible. I let it handle my recruiting for a season. It's spending recruiting actions on loads of players where we're literally 5000+ points behind and ignoring players that would be upgrades we could actually get. Maybe we could give even more NIL money to that 56 D potential running back we don't actually want? It's very bad.

In game, I wish things were more linked to something we could see. It's not clear what practices do or don't do - the game seems to say different things about it. Overall, it's a game that needs a lot more work and some basic documentation around how things are designed to limit frustration.

Even so, if you like the genre, it could be worth a flyer for $8-$10 so the dev can keep working on it.

I'm barely recommending this game. I give it a 5.5/10.

It's not a lot of play. I'm not that good and finished it in 13 hours. A lot of that time was pointless WASD walking around. At least there's an option to turn off pointless WASD driving.

Interesting story for the most part. A couple of the missions were pretty challenging, but overall it's just another version of a game that's been done 100 times.

I'm only 4 hours in at this point and I realize this is early access but the game is only so-so. Lugging around three different tools for gathering, clogging up your limited inventory sort of kills the crafting aspect. Combat is what you'd expect it to be. I just don't feel like it adds anything to the genre.

On a personal note, it really sucks that almost all the food I'm finding needs a can opener and there doesn't seem to be a way to open cans without one even though in real life if I had an ax and a pick and a sledgehammer I would just destroy the can and eat what I could.

I really wanted to like this game and the concept.

Sadly it is boring, decisions do not really matter that much, and forces you into story lines that don't make any sense and are clearly inserted to advance a particular worldview.

Maybe one day people will just develop videogames that are fun but that day is not today.

If you've played Two Point Hospital, this is the college version. It's really that simple.

Fun and quirky. Not a serious game but a wonderful way to get laughs alongside some strategic challenges.

Another game I want to love but can't recommend because 10 years later there are still too many bugs on basic functionality like laundry rooms and prisoner intake.

Sort of what you'd expect from an indie game. Not really that polished but lots of community help. It's one of those games that you can never "win" so that's sort of a drag for a type A person like me. Overall, it's well worth the small investment for a quality survival game.

I have played this game a lot, but nothing compared to many. Probably half of my hours are the game running to finish research or production while I walked away and did something else.I would have chucked it after 5 hours had I not stumbled onto Katherine of Sky's youtube channel. I give it a lot of credit for originality but it is not without its drawbacks. The hard core analytical will enjoy the game but here are my thoughts for the rest of us. Overall, 7/10

1) Much of the game feels like a job. This is my overarching problem with it. The level of effort to understand the internal workings and how to configure end game things is just over the top for many casual players. Even some of the other game elements seem a lot like work.
2) I feel like the game is unplayable without some mods. I would never play another minute if the nanobot mod was suddenly unavailable. The notion of physically placing hundreds of belt pieces from a blueprint sounds a lot like the video game equivalent of a root canal. Other mods that add a quick start inventory or quality of life improvements are must haves.
3) At some point it felt like I was just playing the same game the same way every time I started a new work. Hand craft, plop down Nilhous' base jumpstart while I get enough stuff to build the first KOS mall, lay down KOS smelting array, find a good place for a bunch of green chips, fill out your main bus, endure long enough to get oil processing and blue science, etc. Sure the map changes but the flow is identical every time I play. Tweaking enemy behavior is more of a twist than a different feel altogether.
4) I've heard that there is some additional play value from some of the wold changing mods so I tried one. Did I really want to re-learn a whole resource chain after taking a couple hundred hours to figure out the efficiencies on the old one?
5) I have not tried multiplayer and perhaps that would be worth doing. I don't even know how to start that or who I'd play with.

This is NOT a base builder like most base builders with a simple tech tree and a game that you could feel good about after a couple hours. Even using the cheats at WeMod, to launch a spaceship is 12 hours or more of game time. Many of the die hards say the game is just beginning at that point. This plays more like a grand strategy game than Surviving Mars. It can be enjoyable, but just know what you're getting into.

After playing for 17 hours and watching five hours of tutorials I still have no idea how to be successful at the game.

I got it for $8 so I'm not upset but before you buy be absolutely certain that you know what you're getting with a Paradox "grand strategy" game. It's more like a job than a game. You have to love detail.