Code: Terraform

I really just did not like the amount of ai in this game. I like the concept, and I would definitely repurchase it if the ai was removed in future updates, but I just cannot stand the ai music, art, and voice acting.

The text is so loaded with LLM-isms it makes me want to tear out my eyes. I really don't care if there's 500+ pages of docs or whatever, if the dev can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it. Note there's no mention of AI usage for any text (which happens to be a pretty large part of a puzzle coding game) in the "AI Generated Content Disclosure" section on the steam page either

AI slop. It is infinitely valuable to just spend a few hundred bucks on an artist to design a few things for your game.

As is, leans towards wouldn't recommend. That being said, it's early access and I can see this opinion going either way in the future. The UI is gorgeous and the puzzles easy to grasp, but the AI slop is undeniably present and has gotten worse since the demo. I don't mean the graphics. It's a programming game, AI sprites to illustrate is fine by me. But the functions and documentations have obviously been written by an AI, and this *hurts* because they all come with 3 lines of useful description followed by a litany of exceptions or edge cases that will probably never happen and will never need to be handled (with a half-smart design). After the first few hours of going through components handwritten, a very enjoyable ride, it becomes reminiscent of pre-internet era and dredging through C++ tomes to understand how the hell things are supposed to be used. Then there's the pacing. I just don't like it. It doesn't lean strongly enough on the simulation side to be immersive so it's just a massive wasting-my-time feeling. -- Rovers moving slowly, means every slight test or modification demands 30s of waiting around for the slightest change .Which might be fine ("get it right the first time") except it's mostly about testing your understanding of the documentation. -- Unlocks being time-gated is just silly. I can see an argument for puzzle unlocking harder ones, but time-gating? I want to play the game on my own time, if I finish a puzzle I expect the next one to present itself, if not have them all available from the get-go. I'm not letting the game idle for the sake of playing it later.

Linux users should avoid. It seemed like a solid game and I was extremely excited to play, but from what I can tell, the developer has removed the ability to play without a compatibility layer a couple days after launch. It also also designed in a way that does not let you easily use more modern versions of Proton. (Uses runtime 4.0) Audio does not work when using Linux even with the devs experimental builds that were put out to fix that. It seems there are also performance issues later on with Linux specifically. Seems like a solid game built with under an extremely poor(for this use case) Windows specific framework. It does also have all the AI issues you can read about in other negative reviews and is likely the cause for using the terrible use case framework I mentioned.

Shameful AI music is on by default - replace it with human made, then I'll be happy to play it.

Documentation screams of AI generated content and a lack of human review. Very disappointing as the concept is pretty fun and interesting. E.g. Opened the scanner python code for the first time and I see a warning about the scanner vs the rover with the sonar module that ends with "two different tools. two different scopes." This is hardly the only example of the kinda wording that screams AI. There is a few spots I noticed where the docs have complete disconnects and tell me things I don't need to know right now - writing code for the first oxygen generator, reading the info section, there is a whole section about how items move: but you don't move items in the code to make v1 of the oxygen generator work. And even below the little "how items move" graphic is a subtitle that mentions that fluids move differently with "the FluidAPI described above" - but there is no fluid API described above!!! The games AI disclosures on the steam page list voice acting, music, graphics and game capsules/main menu art as being AI generated - its bad enough to dodge paying artists for their work across those parts of this game, but lying by omission that the docs are AI generated really sucks. Uncool.

I know the AI use disclaimer has everybody's hackles up, and for good reason in a world innundated by slop, so let me break down how the AI has been used here and to what effect. This is the only example I know of in the gaming industry where AI content is used appropriately: to fill small and otherwise inconsequential details. The most notable AI contributions here is the voice acting, the music, and the menu layouts of the UI, all of which are accounted for in the disclaimer. Voice acting is rare in the game, functioning to fill in some of the lore aspects that are going on in the background on good ol' planet Earth. Again, pretty inconsequential to the gameplay on a whole. The menu layout definately is a pretty cut and dry default template. You won't find any glitzy UI here, but that's pretty typical for a game in the programming genre, where the spartan visuals contribute to the industrial software vibes. Using an AI to help organize and clean up an already minimalist style menu doesn't take away human content, since there was little there to begin with. A possible remedy for those who are particularly complainitive might be to add an unlockable feature where the user has the opportunity to code to customize the menu layouts (ex. coloiur schemes, font, maybe moving modules to custom categories). One of the most popular uses of coding today is to tailor UI to make it both functional and visually appealing, no? As for the music, it's definately a generic generated house mix. I'm not going to give points for the sound track here. Listen to it or not, it's your decision. The mute button can be found in the lower right corner, in case you're having trouble locating it. Now for the meat of the game: the coding aspects. No AI contribution here as far as I can see. The helpful manual in the DOCS too darn thorough and comprehensive to be written by an LLM. The optional coding puzzles are likewise too coherent to be designed by an AI slop generator. That takes a considerable amount of human effort, which ought to be recognized appropriately. In short, I recommend this game because of good quality content where it matters. TLDR; The heart of the game is all the coding and instruction aspects, which are human made and well made too. All AI generated content can be found in menu organization or else aeesthetic elements that are off to the side and do not affect gameplay. This game is the only example I know of that uses gen AI without using slop. Worth a buy.