Recent reviews by Enginerd

A touch of old school diablo but with a bit more of a casual burst play style. I mostly play this via steam deck while traveling because of its very easy pick up and go but still easy to pause for interruptions UIUX

Couch Co-op up to 4 players.
Steam Deck compatible.

Easy recommend for a semi-casual to try-hard option in this genre.
I do wish the game had slightly better in-game explanations for things like the tarot looking cards, or how unlocks / combos work for progression but i suppose much of that is intended for you to 'discover' but i feel like most people will only scratch the surface of a lot of that.

Steam achievements plz?
-- ill update and flush out this as an actual review later but uh, with all the mechanisms etc. this game is begging for steam achievements (which i like mostly for comparing where im at progress per hour vs other players). Lots of internal achievements and progress triggers, seems like a straight forward implementation??

Currently my only gripes are;
-some things are tedious and required for progress (boss fights & arcade), other things are tedious but feel more in-line with what most of the game is: IDLE but we make you do it the hard way first..
---why cant i make a worker auto-buy stuff from factory like they can buy gems?
---why cant i set limits on workers in factory (ie craft dust UP TO X, and leave certain amount of each... OR craft all dust but leave at least a pile of "xxx"... there should be a "lock box" on inventory to set a limit on an item that cant be touched by workers or crafter etc.
---why cant you tell worker to auto crush only CERTAIN ORES or again a limit?

--some boss things required for progression or the arcade stuff is a bit annoying for me

Overall decent puzzle game, but only really lets you play for short bursts in a challenging mode.
Recommend as a puzzle game.
Do not recommend as a solid sim / civ / logic game - probably why i'm a bit critical below.


First off - why no highway merging / highway interchange (roundabout) or even intersections on bridges even if you have multiple bridges? Bridges cannot intersect or even pass over/under each other.. could be cool to also have land bridges instead of just water bridges.

I Wish there were a few more modes of difficulty (ideas below the CONS) simply because i find some of the default "mechanics" intentionally harsh, others are unintuitive/unrealistic. So perhaps a to not break the game as designed.. keep the current mode as NORMAL but then make a few other difficulty brackets for how some mechanics work? (see the end)


CONS - the three mechanics i have a slight gripe with;
1. ebb & flow of destination demand/difficulty - harsh at times = some times the ramp in difficulty just seems to be a magical POP of high demand to one area or one location and suddenly that timer hits when just moments before it had little to none. So, paired with the below issues, trying to adjust and accommodate is painful or intentionally harsh or near impossible seemingly to force the difficulty to ramp and end the game faster.

Reflection: Perhaps it just takes much more gameplay to understand or get used to the intended mechanics or otherwise, but i did run a few rounds after failure in the endless mode.. and sometimes what caused me to fail was almost immediately a non-issue with just a moment longer for my adjustments to make an impact. Furthermore, in endless mode, it still felt like the destination demand/hit for what would be a timer (you dont get timers in endless) still happened; id have an incredibly direct route for one color almost entirely clustered together for houses to take a highway right to their destination and the demand tick for the destination seems unimpacted and then with no change at all and just letting it run... now theres a fair ebb and flow. Are houses leveling up similarly to buildings? suddenly that 2 car house is a 4-6 house with no visual indication of a heavier OUTPUT area? OR is the ramp of difficulty simply just make this place have insatiable demand even if theirs only like 4-6 houses that can possibly feed into it (same color)?


2. Pathing - unintuitive & delayed =
UNINTUITIVE - i wish the tutorial would explain the rationale of one route vs another. You can have an almost designated road for one color to get to a major destination (call it a back road) and yet sometimes the vehicles will decide to route through another area/neighborhood with like 8x more intersections/ color clashes/ turns/ etc.. so is the best route just always SHORTEST ROUTE BY # BOXES period? no consideration for intersections or route to a roundabout or lights instead of a 4way or 10 turns instead of a straight path thats only slightly longer route? there has to be some sort of weighting here because of highways but it seems limited and not obvious.
DELAYED - paired to the ebb & flow issues (above) && the intersection issue (below), you can have a sudden demand, make a route adjustment or otherwise and yet cars will sit at their clogged intersections or whatever instead of taking a brand new road right next to them.. they will not adjust LIVE to path options.


3. intersection / roundabout use or impact - unrealistic & unituitive = I wish i could post screenshots from my game into the review but i watched in endless mode to try and understand how stacked intersections, lights, paired lights, and roundabouts work or what the vehicles are doing to clog up on certain routes.
ISSUE = they are unrealistic in their MERGE into an intersection or roundabout based on something else blocking them.. these cars do not know how to ZIPPER MERGE, they treat everything as a full on stop sign with no anticipation of an opening and if another car fills up what was their opening they jitter (move a hair, stop, move a hair, stop..) and never enter a roundabout because another car entered the 'window' which is HUGE.
Roundabouts are supposed to be a yield.. and cars should not be stopping IN A ROUNDABOUT because they have a similar "exit" to a "blocked path/window" even though you could fit multiple cars there.
This delayed response to merging actually makes them create their own problems even in a solo-color area.. they clog themselves entering and exiting the single entry/exit locations because they cant commit and get out of each others way.
I saw this delay / merge hesitance / come to a complete stop pathing issue is seen all over the place if you go into endless mode and take the time to watch something actually play out.. its comically bad because it is a self-generated issue.. "OH NO I CANT GET TO THE DESTINATION ... OH NO I CANT ENTER THE INTERSECTION AND DRIVE INTO MY DESTINATION" yeesh.


RECOMMENDED ADJUSTMENTS / GAME MODES :
A. consider the above issues for those that like SIMULATION games - i understand that these tweaks could make a major class from the current / intended game play so i propose some alternative game modes or user-adjusted settings?

1. Make current game play as NORMAL
Make alternative modes to include/adjust or even let the player choose how some of the above mechanics work or are considered? ie; chill mode could be cars almost ignore each other on collision/merge. easy mode can be cars actually know how to use intersections and can merge properly, make an endless mode but still make traffic/demand have an impact ie the timer issue becomes a more obvious penalty to your "reward ticker"

2. highway entrance should be rotatable == an entrance placed on the WEST should be turnable to face east if thats where my major intersections are.. otherwise you make spaghetti roads/waste roads to make it make sense.

3. Bridge / Highway intersections - highways should be able to have an interchange? similarly to bridges cant even go over/under each other let alone have an intersection.

4. Land bridge extra tile piece?
5. regular roads with different speed limits to encourage a car to path a "back road" thats more direct and faster because a lack of intersections vice a technically shorter but absolutely dumb route through traffic??

5. Endless mode never seems to zoom the map out, only adds buildings here and there.. perhaps the maps i played it on were already at max but that makes the leader board highscores seem completely fake or hacked/modded.. theres no way the default mechanics or even car count would hit 200k in any reasonable time.

6. change opacity of the highways - they are very hard to see traffic issues or even new buildings /houses pop up underneath at times.

Effectively 'beat'** the game probably in ~60-80hrs (80% of achievements) of mostly idle play.
Overall - decent idle game that still has a way of sucking in your attention (which can be both good and bad)... "early" and "mid" game feel like there's a lot to do.. end game is mostly obscure achievement hunting and time sinks.

only major gripe i have was whenever i got a cookie storm i'd get tons of visual glitches all over the game screen and the only thing that fixed it was closing the game and restarting.

A few Cons:
1. Some mechanics are very tedious and painful but not required - (stock market very much so, garden as well but that felt slightly more enjoyable trying to figure out combos and such..)
2. Other things didnt really make sense as to what the point was other than just having a very long 'time sink' achievement tied to it. IE sugar lumps, the only few upgrades actually needed IMO for progress are the temple (lvl1) for passive benefits and wizard tower (lvl1) if you want a few more active play options. The farm(garden via lvl1) is also a little fun but tedious in maintenance and i never got far enough to reap the benefits of anything you can get out of it.. my raw CPS via other mechanics/methodology/ascension was more than enough to get through a majority of the game anyways so its definitely not needed.
3. A fair amount of achievements are simply major time sinks, or very very specific you-have-to-look-this-up mechanics or conditions so thats kinda meh but it gives some people some super long term goals i guess.. the downside is that at that point you've already blown through everything else so you're no longer "achieving in parallel" its very much just isolated achievement hunting at that point which is kinda boring for me. IE you're legacy/prestige level is going to blow wayyyy out of proportion that its beyond useful for anything because theres not much CPS based while you're going after the rest of the crazy achievements. like 700 each/all buildings is fairly easy in comparison to something that'd take literally weeks/months of just idle time to get sugar lumps to do what.. give me more CPS that i dont need? but there's an achievement yay.


Suggested improvements to the devs:
A. AVG $/ share in stocks --- the fact that the stock market does not keep track of your avg purchase price (like you would for real stocks) and only showing your last purchase price with no quantity is absolutely dumb. Minor tweak (because the game seems to know when youre profitable anyways?) would make much more sense for people to AVG up or down as you do with real stocks over time instead of just "camping" waiting for lows and highs. Without heavily modding or having to look up someone elses data/charts etc i find the stockmarket very tedious and boring. ALSO it doesnt tell you at all what the benefits of 'upgrade office buildings' are so why bother? Also there's no incremental profits or other achievements tide to it.. simply first few things, first profit and then just "now go make $36M..." nah this is way too much tediousness for me on an idle game.

B. steam community / profile unlocks - some icons, cards, badges, stickers, etc. via achievements could be cool

1. More usefulness to sugar lumps beyond just 1%CPS --- i wish there was more use of the sugar lumps or further upgrades to benefit the time sink.. other than the farm plot increasing your plot size each level absolutely nothing else seems to benefit other than a measly 1% to CPS from the associated building.. so its really just an achievement via time sink. Why not (wizard) more spells to unlock, better magic regen, or %usage gets better etc.. or (temple) different passive buffs unlock or similar to wiz suggestion better regen timer or % benefits get better. or literally anything for ALL the other buildings?

2. more combo achievements / upgrades - ie; got everything from all seasons.. i was sure there'd be something there.

3. import the QOL improvements from the top mods - would likely make stability better and be a bit more polished.

4. directly link / import a lot of tool tips and info from the wiki sites - having to navigate off for so much obscure stuff was kind of annoying. ie garden info in game wasnt obvious to me, i had to refer externally a bunch.

5. DLC = more endgame / different mode - essentially another reason to care about CPS and other stuff long term beyond a few obscure achievements - I already spitballed an idea to the idea to the devs about a MULTIVERSE idea that'd have give you more end game legacy / prestige / CPS sinks. but that'll probably get ignored by everyone anyway.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1454400/discussions/0/5560306947037214658/

**DISCLAIMER - I played with MODS: use of autoclicker (ive got hand issues and its single player so imo not cheating, bite me). Mods to see better stats/metrics so i can stop doing math etc.

~! WARNING !~ NOT STEAM DECK PLAYABLE

Well i had a big useful review typed up and then something refreshed and dumped what i had, yay.. ill try to remember my major points below.

Deck compatibility:
1. no steam cloud sync at all even without the deck but this is PAINFULLY WORSE because the devs want you to sign in and load to their own "cloud" specifically to make sure you have an account with them etc etc.. DUMB. In a nutshell, instead of just picking up your deck and letting it sync automatically you have to actually sign into the game and then wait a horrendous amount of time.. if you ever want to play portable, ya know like the deck is intended, this game will not be fun to maintain manually. God forbid you travel or go somewhere without wifi/internet..
2. huge hang time / loading times when trying to sign in or get past the second load screen.
3. the windows/scrolling and navigation is horrible with default controls.

general game play:
1. resource burn if you don't have storage available - devs refuse to make a minor QOL tweak because this is "intended function" according to the multiple bug reports found online and devs just not responding or just saying "intended".. Essentially if you go to craft something you get no warning that you wont have room in your inventory to store the new item if the spent resources don't free up slots. So you could make a bunch of stuff, ya know ~IDLY~, and find everything got spent and you have nothing to show for it. A simple warning OR just not letting you craft would be much more intuitive.. and YES THAT FUNCTION ALREADY EXISTS with purchasing stuff so obviously its already capable of noticing you have full inventory. I'm curious if there's also an unmentioned item stack limit, i only played for a little bit so i could get my money back but i figured the UI doesn't tell you but im sure the game will surprise you with wasted time and effort at some point after its too late.

2. required accounts is pointless and a data / info grab the way its implemented.. not at all necessary being implemented when you can just use steam cloud which is automatic and easy. it was also slow as hell every time and not very intuitive for syncing.

I had more points to go on about but the above is the general high points i wanted to make that i can remember from my previous write-up.

66mins and a solid 20 of that was loading screens because of the atrocious account system. got through the tutorial and just know that this isn't for me, sad because i have runescape nostalgia and wanted a bit more of an idle option to scratch that itch.

Now with more playtime update:
STEAMDECK - runs WAYY better and stable on my deck in all modes vs. 2022 gen gaming PC where i get a fair amount of random crashes.

Massive improvement from initial release, would definitely pay for DLC to continue supporting the great updates the devs pop out.
2023 ~FREE UPDATES~ were super cool! (personally didnt have time to play but watched over S/O's shoulder while i was doing other stuff.)

Only major gripe i have - Multiplayer feels hollow or halfway;
Yes it exists in some ways but you cant interact or do all that much together..
like build a base together? nope.
Can you visit each others bases? kinda.. it seems to not hold on to a list of places you've visited but there isnt a great way to save favorites because good luck remembering names. Even when you visit, its kinda meh as you can only interact so much.. its not like you can build a big farm together or even have bases all that close to each other.

Beyond Base type things, its also kinda hard to sync up together to do missions together or get someone up to speed; feels like people meet up for one or two things and then everyone's missions kinda send them separate ways.. missions should be SYNC-able or if someone is starting a new basic/non-story mission you should be able to join and split profits or otherwise.. have a difficulty ramp or whatever. Space fights are kinda basic and, at least when i was playing, seemed to be just never ending-nuisance with no reward or challenge..

There are also some major mission glitches that happen from even being in 'online mode'.. like im going on a never ending LY jump train for way too long and the mission reset stuff never works.. seems to be tied to multiplayer things.

-----
Firstly, probably my favorite thing about this game is for the most part you can tweak all the "difficulty" settings on the fly.. don't feel like fighting a bunch of XYZ right now? turn down that setting for now.

overall good game - some refer to it as almost space minecraft in a sense. Sometimes you question UI/design choices because some things can be very tedious especially with a controller. Some mechanics are frustrating at times ie when fighting off space pirates attacking a freighter, if just one hint of damage is done to that freighter's storage (something the pirates fly around and past constantly - ya know theyre trying to steal it) then YOU get flagged as a bad guy by the local enforcement.. who werent even around to fight off the pirates anyways lol. I certainly prefer the way some other games do space things; the local planet has no map and are often quite barren (would be nice to have a dash of bigger civilizations), the local planetary system map is basic, and especially the galaxy map is pretty terrible and youd have NO way of knowing where you've been, where you could go (its limited "view" distance), etc. You can only easily go back to other distant places youve been by teleporting between space stations or bases, you cannot just see flags on the galaxy map far away they have to be pretty close.

Definitely not perfect, there are some glitches for sure and known issues that need to be sorted. multiplayer realllllly screws up a lot of missions and playing with friends doesn't really add much so i wish they'd focus more on fixing the hiccups there and providing team-specific tasks/quests etc. in some upcoming DLC. Oh and the only way to find friends is by going to a specific game space-station, landing, and then leaving for it to prompt if you want to go to their system.. you have no indication of where people are on galaxy map.

Oh and unlocking the alien languages is an absolute CHORE, not required but yikes..

Suggestions:
- Fix up multiplayer integrations more - like base building etc.
- More base fun stuff like farming and elaborate builds not just walls and cosmetics
- Why so much planet mining but basically no space mining / space trucking (deliveries and trades or escort missions) - yes it exists a tiny bit but i want to go mine asteroids and capture space junk, resources, debris, and random alien tech..
- etc. to what i touched on above.

DOESNT RUN ON STEAM DECK (nor remote play from PC to other devices) - thanks EA for some hot garbage incompatibility.

Would be a great couch co-op but i can only run it on my PC instead of steam deck or linking / remote play downstairs like basically any other game will.. thanks EA!

Playing this from PC chairs side-by-side in our office, wife and i liked the game play, visuals are good, etc.
wholly heck do regular people (couples or not) absolutely hate how forced and annoying the character bickering and fighting is.. yeah yeah they're divorcing but stfu its annoying and it really doesnt add to the story

This game crashes constantly for me when playing multiplayer.. absolutely unacceptable rate of failure and i send constant crash reports yet nothing seems to fix whatever bs issue is happening

12th gen intel and 3090... cant be that obscure of a setup that the team cant be bothered to fix compatibility issues

great throw back to childhood but the lack of save states make this incredibly painful especially on the more tedious levels.. there will be many times where you already know what youre doing, basically done and yet your keyboard input did one step too many and you wedged a dirt block into a space you cant move it from.. just to start the level over is absolutely infuriating. Elitists will say thats how the game was built and intended but uhhh i dont care to count my individual key presses and take 15-30min on a single "puzzle" (because lets be honest, tedious for tediousness sake does not make something a puzzle) because the inputs are a bit wonky at times..

most people playing this are playing for nostalgia and dont have the time they did as a child to play this.

Recommend only for the throwback but be prepared to be frustrated by some very old school game "difficulty" tricks