Okay. So this review is coming after 1 hour of playing normal expedition mode and nine hours of playing survival, after seeing that were basically the same mode but survival mode was more punishing and changed the mechanics just a tad. I understand I do not have a lot of time, but I think that I have some solid suggestions, complaints, and positive feedback. With that being said lets begin....
The game in its current state from everything I have experienced so far would get a 5 out of 10 from me. This game is in a genre that I really enjoy, and is very chill, otherwise it may have even gotten less than a 5 from me. It's worth playing but could be so much better with quite a few tweaks. I want to love it but just kinda like it for now. I am looking forward to playing some more and getting more insight into ways I think it could be better, but for now I will report on what I can for now.
The gameplay loops is solid and the visuals, albeit a bit different, are really nice. My only complaint visually is that it is a bit unnecessarily difficult to determine if it is day or night in the game. No matter what time of day it was, I seemed to always have the snow icon in the lower left of my screen that the tutorial indicated it was colder than normal. If there is a way to be not colder than normal, besides being inside or actively next to a fire I do not know it. It would be nice that just like we got the debuff icon for being cold, we could get a buff icon after standing next to a fire/heater outdoors for a while, so that we knew when the icon went away that that warmth buff was over, and could gauge how long the warmth buff lasts. Also, we can kinda of see a vague gauge in our shelter that tells us what day and time of day it is... I think it would be really convenient if that same gauge was somehow on our PDA thing that shows our resources etc. Same thing with drinking coffee and moving faster... I could barely tell if i was moving faster immediately after drinking coffee from the coffee maker I spent resources on. A buff icon that would visually be there and disappear, so I knew when the effects of my coffee wore off would be extremely nice. Another thing in the visual department, is that it is kinda unnecessarily difficult to tell if some water patch things are actually water or ice. This could be on purpose, since there is a detrimental risk if/when getting your dogs wet in water, and even that feels kinda like a cheat code, if abused, cuz its almost like a fast travel.
Moving on from visuals, but segueing from fast travel, fast travel does not seem to effect your calories, which also feels like a cheat code. It would be more realistic and immersive, and rewarding especially in survival mode to need to account for used calories, when fast traveling. Another thing kinda of related as that when your dogs go into water it fast travels you back home, and I believe the dogs lose some calories. But if you get low and calories, and get the detriment of losing all those valuable resources, the game tells you that you pass out and wake up home, but you don't, you stay in the same place with new found mysterious caloric intake having occurred, and your dogs fast travel back home. This could be a bug, but it worth mentioning even if it is.
Okay since I mentioned realistic.... the selling of fish and seeds seems extremely unrealistic. The selling of data, I can understand because data doesn't require delivery perse. If I am selling fish for cash, who is buying it and how are they getting it?... Not sure what balance changes could be done to address this but alas it breaks the immersion for me and I wanted to mention it.
Next up is crop silos. What is the point of them, besides making me have one to be able to physically collect crops with my hands? And if its supposed to be a storage thing, why can I make a heating facility miles away from my base, include a crop silo, and plants, then always have access to infinite resources, on my person, back at main base where I cook said crops. I am sure you devs can come up with a clever way to make this realistic and more gamey in a good way, so that it gives us more to think about, as far as logistically solving the problem of food in the game.
Another thing that I found quite annoying is that I had to constantly jump off my sled to check the map, or check the status of the nearest minables, whether it be ore or crystals, or the science bits to research at the lab. It was also extremely annoying that while you have your pda thing our looking at resources or checking the map that you can't press escape to close that window, and had to press Q again. Please make it to where either or both, will exit that menu/map, cuz it does not feel intuitive and feels quite abnormal as is.
I rarely leave a review, but because I want to love this game, I figured it might be worth a shot in case the devs see some of this and can get their creative juices flowing to make this game a 8/10 at least. Which i think is very possible.
