This is one of the best games I can't recommend out there.
I love the look. The world has a grid system for item placement, but they conceal the lines of it juuuust well enough that everything looks vibrant and pleasant to look at, while keeping it obvious how much space there is between things when you're placing a building.
The sound design is also great. The bomb and bullet hose sound powerful, the enemies make a threatening, characteristic chittering as they approach, the way the music changes is... Well, actually, there's this thing where it starts a guitar loop when an enemy wave appears, then starts a different invasion song when the enemies are close enough. That works really well when the enemies are close enough to your base, but it gets kinda silly when they're far away, because that build-up loop just keeps going. I also wish they had more songs. Maybe something like... whole new tracks that change with the different biomes?
The problem is that there are serious balance issues, and they just spoil the whole game because it means you can be screwed by the RNG.
Basically: the Gunsmith is, by far, the most powerful building in the game. Almost everything else needs a buff of some kind. In harder levels, you need to get a Gunsmith early enough just to have a chance. Getting two is much better. Also, houses take a lot of Settlers to fill, but they do barely anything for the buildings that produce special weapons, and are ridiculously powerful on other buildings, like the Repair Bay. Speaking of the Repair Bay! Sometimes I just don't get a Repair Bay or Glue Vat to fix broken buildings, or only get one when I have the option to build something even more crucial, like my first Gunsmith, so I have to risk it and wait for another one to show up, which it DOESN'T. On the other side of the coin, the Boost Battery is completely useless. It lets your tank go longer before needing a recharge, but not much longer, and the seeds from the Sower let you recharge in enemy territory by planting the grass you need, anyway.
On top of that, the Tetris-shaped buildings mean that you can have a plan, with all your buildings laid out for it, but fail to get a house in the shape you need to fill things out. In theory, you can fix this by being flexible, but in practice, you get very little space to work with, especially at the start. That free building you get in the beginning? Yeah, you need to wait for the HQ to spread grass around. This is slow and random, which means you're delaying the ability of the Town Council to give you your second list of buildings if you're trying to follow an optimal plan that makes the best possible use of your limited space. Why not just give the HQ the ability to spread grass up to four tiles away, really, really fast, at the start of each level?
The balance of the crew members isn't much better either. One just gives you a slight enhancement to your boost battery, which, again, is mooted by the Sower. Another one gives you extra Settler slots in your HQ, which is actually kind of a mixed blessing because it means you need more Settlers from the start. This guy would be MUCH better if you got the extra Settlers to fill those slots.
It's frustrating, because the game gets some little details right. If you destroy the only Noise tower that's sending a wave, it will restart the timer rather than just switching to a different tower! If you mine out all the resources of a certain type, the game tells you! If your next building is waiting on resources of a certain type, your collectors prioritize that resource! So great!... So, how'd they mess up the BIG stuff?
