A lesson how not to design a game
On a surface it seems like fun, small little game. However, in reality it is hard as nails, overtuned grind. It is a game built on memorisation and luck.
What is wrong with it
Extremely frustrating to play
- This game is not enjoyable to play. Your life is constantly ticking down with electricity going down. You feel like a hamster in a wheel who can’t stop. Constantly being on a verge of death and any small hiccup along the way can screw your run. When I had played this game, there was nothing more than looking at your humans and constantly moving them through different chambers while all the time being stressed about ever increasing survival needs.
RNG - Game is entirely dependent on getting positive events. Even one negative effect is completely crippling in this game, because there is almost no room for error. If you do not play as developer intended, you are going to lose. In such an environment any downside becomes massive and these random effects are massive. 30% less endurance to your humans in a game where everyone is constantly overworked as it is? Completely game ending.
Random events - They are extremely harsh and unforgiving. A wrong choice can cripple your run. However, these events never change. In order to beat this game, you need to memorise them. This is a cheap way to make game difficult.
Pulse based resource system - This game is annoying, because resources are spent in one big pulse which is very frustrating. This means that you cannot get the feel of how much people you need producing a certain resource. It also can lead to easy screw ups. One failure to deliver enough energy means sudden game end. It is like playing a game on ironman with one life, extremely punitive. Even minor resources like food can lead to complete decimation of your population. I had missed one round of food by some margin and third of my humans just died. This meant that I lost, because for a brief moment I did not considered if I had enough food for that half a minute.
Upgrades - If there is an award for bad game design, this must be it. Upgrades cost power. Power is also resource which you need to survive. This means that you can’t upgrade your power generation, because you need it to survive. Amount of power needed to survive always increases. This means that you often get soft-locked way in advance from any upgrades and are forced into prolonged death spiral. This death spiral is a very frustrating element of this game. You know that you are losing, but you can’t do anything. You will lose quite early on if you do not play exactly as developers intended and then other 10 minutes or half an hour of a run can be your slow, antagonising march towards your death.
Conclusion
I do not know why at the time of writing game has 83% overall positive reviews and 68% mixed reviews. Gameplay feels really horrible. It leans into everything it should not do and it doesn’t even present an enjoyable gameplay loop. You will be staring at one screen all the time and the only thing you will be doing is moving exhausted humans from work to rest and vice versa while memorising correct choices to a random event and hoping that luck is on your side.