Tedious and time consuming honestly or at the very least initially, my review may sound a bit harsh but hear me out.
The game seems chill and kind of the type I was looking for. I'd have give it a mixed review based on my playtime so far, but theres no such option so I'll go with a negative score for now.
I'll add some starter tips or a early game walkthrough below for those that want to still try the game or feel lost playing.
Anyway first things first, my main issues with the game.
The game seems to do 4 things wrong which just ruins a bit of the experience for me, these things are:
1. When you die or visit a new location, you restart from your checkpoint. You don't know how much preparation is needed, or u miss a random tool/it breaks, hence dying happens. So if you traveled 1000m, gotta do that again. That travel distance btw doesn't account for the back and forth travel (which is kinda 2000m in total) so it becomes like 4000 travel distance at least if you die. A lot of time wasted, ITS TEDIOUS.
Additionally, when you fly to a new location, you unlock some passives(?) which can come in handy but also help you progress a bit, and you get some extra random lore. When you die however, that progress/unlock is gone unless you saved. Meaning you have to redo that part again, similar to point 1. This means that you gotta make small trips over and over again around the base just to collect enough resources so u can survive each long trip meaning more tedious work plus constant saving. The only way to keep them permanently is to get back home after a long trip and save. This gets better later with upgrades, but as the introduction/starting mission of the game it's not fun.
2. The Acceleration thruster upgrade feels weak, could use a 2x speed buff or a 2x faster recharge. I'd rather it consumed twice as much oxygen when used and in return gave you twice as fast travel speed or whatever than what it currently does. It would fix a lot of the slow traveling time. As mentioned earlier, traveling to locations becomes a bore after a while, especially if you had a rough start. It's alright the first few times but kind of sucks after the 3rd time or so. You run out of gas too quickly and it takes too long to recharge, to get to places.
3. Durablity on items and a lack of separate backpack/equipslot for tools. Most items break, a lot actually, and then you have to gather the resources and craft them again. It's quite annoying since they break quite quickly or in middle of resource gathering, which means you have to take multiple trips or have backups. Also there not being a dedicated space for tools (only equipment) means that they take up a lot of space in your inventory. I think at the very least some small tools such as "handy scrapper (smash tool)", "grabber", "drill" and "scanner" should've been either permanent unlocks or ALL items should've have durability increased by 50% or 100%. It also wouldn't have hurt to have dedicated equip slots and bindings for tools.
4. No pause in the "TAB" menu (inventory/tasks/etc.). I think this is kinda silly since you spend a lot of time reading up, checking recipes and what not. Same goes for crafting menu, but I can somewhat understand that one not pausing. Pressing ESC pauses the game, but not when pressing TAB, which you do to check inventory, tasks, encyclopedia or anything else. This means your hunger and thirst meter goes down as you check check info or do basic stuff. I'd rather devs increased the speed of which you get hungry/thirsty by a bit outside of the menu than not allow a pause. It also kind of feels like it's going against it's own game design or philosophy. You take things slow in the game, craft and read info, but for some reason you get slightly punished for it which feels wrong.
These are all my gripes I have with the game for now. Or well... perhaps a slightly better tutorial with a tiny bit better handholding (at least for the starting mission) would've been nice. Also remove that useless first item you craft and have us learn by crafting an actual useful item that we use, wasting resources and time on an item with no use just straight up sucks. I understand it's there for the humor but it's not worth it, at the expense of our time wasted.
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Here's some starting tips or a quick walkthrough (ordered, kind of):
0. To start off with do change some keybindings and check stuff in the "tab" encyclopedia section once in a while. I recommend rebinding the "left alt" key (stabilization) to a better button as it helps you "stop/brake" mid-air when flying to collect things.
The in-game encyclopedia gives you info on where to find or how to craft items, also the game should autosave everytime you return to your shuttle, but you can manually save at anytime too and then load either of the two saves when you die.
1. Grab all items you see in your shuttle, they kind of act as random "lore" info items and "recipes" for new items, you can dump them all in a corner afterwards to free up space (dont put them in the storage unit above the bed, save that for actual resources).
2. Collect a lot of resources (most around your base to start with) and make some food/water bottles.
3. Use the "storage" above the bed area to store actual needed items/resources there and to organize. Rest at the bed for when you need to heal if you've taken damage.
You can also "pee" by holding F (default key) in a toilet to fill the arrow-meter and get random item drops once you fill it fully, there's a video cassette ingame that kind of explains this better BUT for now this feature seems too slow and useless so I'd just ignore this honestly (either that or im doing it wrong).
4. Craft the "handy scrapper" early, break a bunch of boxes and other stuff around your starting area to get "rubber" etc.
5. Create EVERY tool, and at least 2 copies of the smashing tool (Handy scrapper), it quickly runs out of durability. You can drop or use the back scratcher if you haven't already (it's a lesser version of the Grabber tool)
6. Get a lot of "oxygen tanks" for now (you can use them as emergency +40 breath).
7. Craft the 3 bottom suit upgrades for now (unlocks the speed boost button, default key is "left shift", and grants you 100 breath total).
8. Keep some "alchohol" on you for emergency heating so you don't freeze to death, you'll need some when there's no heat source nearby.
9. Craft the "oxygen station", at least two, it's gonna be needed for the last point below (it's a portable station you place which has 500 breath/oxygen stored in it, needed for exploring areas for a longer time and surviving).
10. Craft all the remaining suit upgrades, finishing the "suit" first and then "helmet" by going to collect Lead/Paint then Glass. They are located nearby 600 and 800-ish meter from the shuttle (paint area and fire area).
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Good luck and have fun suffering.
EDIT: Cleaned up the review a bit since i noticed some mistakes. Also added some extra info and points.
Anyway. I might the game a few more tries soon and change my review based on that, but for now those points mentioned still kind of brings down the experience.
