I gave this a shot a year ago, in EA. Last week it hit 1.0, which brought mostly mid-/end-game activities to the table. Pretty obvious I’ve played my fair share of simulation / logistics games and this one still fits that general bill.

Right, to the point here. The start of the game is poorly paced. The tutorial does a good job of explaining the basics, but then you get into the meat and potatoes of it, which is as slow as molasses. Early on, you’re given a quest to prepare your base for the arrival of stranded space folk. To to this, you need to complete about 20 steps and have the ability to pump out an absurd number of materials to construct it all. To use my previous buffet analogy, you are shown all the options, but can only order soup. And you better like that soup, cause it’s all you’re gonna get for 4 hours.

This is an unfortunate design choice as I can’t see too many people sticking around that long watching 1 tile at a time be constructed. Once you get to the actual factory building part (multi-regolith processing), the game actually becomes an interesting balance between production and advancement. You have, generally, meaningful decisions to make and prioritize to have the game move forward. This is what a good game should focus upon.

It’s a better game than it was a year ago and brings some interesting items to the table. It just happens to have one of the worst extended tutorials I have ever played. A tutorial that would easily be remedied by providing you the construction material to build the quest requisites. Then you’d get the right amount of taste for the systems and make a better choice. Hopefully this 1.0 launch gives them that feedback.

It’s on sale now, I’d give it a go.