Colony 37

Not bad but very time-consuming and iffy mechanics. I suppose it all makes sense though. You're basically a space peasant taking up a crappy job mining on a decrepit colony base. The game does an absolute piss-poor job explaining anything. The "guides" on Steam are totally useless, in it's just like "oh watch out for fall damage" "btw, did I mention fall damage" "if you run out of oxygen you die" basically, very obvious stuff. What you need to know instead, what is NOT explained at all but are critical are below, the ANSWERS in parenthesis, and helps give you insight into the GAMEPLAY here: How does your inventory work? (Any resources you loot go into bags, any items go into your "Locker" aka game will call: "Loadout". Why they don't just call it Locker makes no sense to me. Even stuff you find digging, magically goes in to your Locker, where you have to equip it.) Why is it when you buy items from the shopkeeper it's not in your inventory? (For some reason, game was designed to teleport items to your "Loadout" aka "Locker", in the Lockeroom, to go get it and equip it or not - you can't simply carry it around if you're not using it.) Why is there no equipment screen? (It's in the Inventory screen, the horizontal bar at the bottom. This is for bags, boots, armor, lights, etc. Resources go into your bags. Pickaxe and tools go into the middle area. Yeah it's all confusing, I know, because it's a non-traditional system.) Why when you step outside your oxygen quickly runs out at like 45-60sec and you die? (You're wearing a mask, the outside isn't breathable. Go inside base and it start to refill quickly. You have the cheapest oxygen equipment. You can buy items to expand its capacity or slow down consumption at the shopkeeper. You'll have to chop a few blocks, look for ones with ores in them, RTB, sell for a few coin, wash, rinse, repeat. It's very tiring.) Why can't I sell this stuff in my bags from mining at the shopkeeper? What the heck?! (I know right! The design requires you deposit that into the "Extractor" machine which magically rewards you with coins. The shopkeeper is only for equipment.") WHERE DO I GO TO MINE? (I know right? Most doors are labeled but this is not explained. You have to find the door that takes you outside. You go past a line and there is a small field, like a courtyard. THAT's where you mine. Get digging! The door to outside should be labeled though. It's the door to the right of the extractor, in the middle of a corridor where the shopkeeper and medbay are at the other end.) I'm hurt, how do I heal? (You probably jumped down beyond 1 block to land 2 blocks down and broke your legs or something. HAHAHAH! This isn't Minecraft dude! Can't do that. To heal, go to the Medbay and the nurse will sell you bandages and other stuff.) How they heckin' you supposed to play the game if all you can do is break a few blocks before having to run back to base to "refill oxygen"? (It takes time, dig deep, you'll find more ores and stuff worth money and then eventually buy lighting and oxygen expansion tanks, so you can stay out longer and see where you're going lol!) Why do things cost energy but you have no energy bar or meter? (You need to buy a battery or energy generating device. To recharge it, you can talk to the nurse who sells recharging device. Yes, the nurse, not the shopkeeper. I know, it doesn't make any sense, but there's your answer.) What is left-slot and right-slot vs. my tool items? (Pickaxe, shovels, are your tools to mine. The "Slots" are like a toolbelt-style item, for healing and recharging items.) How do I toggle between items? (Many are used to games where you have all sorts of tools and use 1,2,3... to toggle. Here, you have only 3 slots for tools, and use the mouse-wheel to cycle between them. It doesn't tell you what you've equipped though, so you just have to memorize what you have in what order or whatever. Since there's only 3 possible items, it shouldn't be hard.) Why can't I sprint? (You have to buy special powered boots first, that will let you do that.) Did I mention you're basically a space peasant? You don't have anything starting. Talk to the first NPC and he "gives you a wooden axe. Get to work! lol There's also a few optional quests you can do for some money but it's not easy when you start with nothing. Good luck with that. Graphics look good. Seems to lack music, so not much going on in the way of atmosphere in that sense. While some might characterize the game as a relaxing digger-type game, it's hardly anything of the sort. Even with expanded oxygen you'll find yourself digging deep and getting lost and can't place anything down really to help, it all costs way too much and is a huge grind, made 100x worse by the extreme oxygen consumption that at best can only be slightly mitigated. You'll constantly be racing to get back before you die. OH, did I forget to mention? As soon as you run out of oxygen, you DIE. There's no "HP starts going down" mechanic. Nope. You're insta-killed and lose all your loot. Fortunately, you get "cloned" and go back out, find your body, to recover your stuff. Good luck with that effort! Overall, I don't mind the setup, it's fun and rewarding to work towards making your character stronger, with better tools and equipement. But it does feel like a fricken' job and a grindy one at that, to get anywhere. It's like someone unknitting a cable-net sweater that you just keep on knitting...heheh!...and knitting...hahah!...and knitting...heghhegh!...and knitting... Let's RECAP: Stable, no crashes. Solid. Unconventional. Creative design, Original setup/getup. Grindy as heck, not relaxing, repetitive, gimmicky, brutal, "2nd-job" vibes. I'd say it's GOOD, but it's definitely an acquired taste. I haven't acquired the taste yet.

I found this game via Splattercatgaming's YouTube channel :) I [i]really[/i] enjoy this game, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I mean I play a variety of games where the action never stops and the fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but sometimes all you wanna do is mine for lumps of coal and exotic rocks, you know? This game is deceptively simple. The premise is interesting--you're a prisoner, and instead of opting for the cage, you choose to be a miner. The company (or the state, can't remember) sends teams into failed colonies to mine for valuable minerals, or just valuable stuff left behind. I'm still in the relative early staged (just 4 hours in), so I can't comment on the entirety of the lore, but I can say that the base part and the lore bits are interesting and mysterious, as well as having a sense of humour about the whole thing--the game doesn't take itself too seriously, but seriously enough to draw you in. There are missions you do for the NPCs, such as looking for a lost USB drive and turning the main power generator on) and of course the mining itself. The mining gameplay is really, really [i]satisfying[/i]. It's cube-terrain like minecraft, and there are all sorts of gadgets and upgrades you can get, as well as terrain traversal tools, and it's grindy enough to be a challenge without being a second job. You can over-mine and collapse certain stacked mineable terrain; I don't know what happens if you weaken an entire bigger amount of terrain, but I imagine it can collapse and kill you--but it hasn't happened to me yet. I like that the planet doesn't have a breathable atmosphere, so you have to keep an eye on your oxygen supply. Building etc. is also based on energy, so you need to keep an eye on that as well, though there are items you can mine/buy to provide boosts. The graphics are excellent; I love the simple but dark/grim artstyle, and I can see what the developer is going for (I bought Lethal Company at the same time and played it for the first time today, and it's comparable). Really good use of level design as well. The soundscape for the game is also really good; mining is satisfying, as are footsteps and so on. The sound really helps with the quick-dopamine nature of cashing in what you've collected. You can also find regenerating loot within the main base as well; if I have one suggestion for the dev, it's to reign in that regen so you can't make quite as much profit within the base so early on in the game. That said, it does help when you're a small amount away from something you want to purchase. It's in Early Access, of course, but I haven't really found any bugs. I did start to get stutters after playing for a couple of hours, but for the most part the gameplay was smooth and slick. I would recommend this game [i]right now[/i] in EA, it's got a healthy amount of content. I'm really looking forward to what the dev will accomplish with it when he completes it! And for the small cost, it's a really great and surprisingly cozy mining game, with enough intrigue to keep you at it :) 8/10 in it's current state, worth snapping up now. EDIT: Just read in the description that the Dev wants opinions on where it should go. I'm not a game developer so I have very little knowledge of how long development takes, how far you can push engines, how complicated it all is etc. so if you're reading this, Dev, [i]take it with a large pinch of salt[/i]: - Please keep the cozy nature of the game! :) I think you will, though--it seems you're heading in the right direction. The world's in a frightful state right now, so we need our cozy games we can sink a couple of hours here and there and forget about... well, [i]everything[/i]. - I'm not yet deep into the lore, but don't be afraid to implement readable notes and more/longer log entries (and you may have done this already!). Love that stuff, and I want to know so much more world building! For a game I've played such a short time--you kinda have me hooked. - Don't get talked into doing away with the death system! I think you have a story-mode option, unless I'm mistaking it with another game entirely (I play a few at once). That's a good system to have. I've died a couple of times, but it hasn't been discouraging at all, which I love in this type of game. And far into the future... perhaps [i]more than one world[/i]? Or would that mess up the vision? Anyway, well done for what you've built so far--excellent work, maestro. Looking forward to what you'll put into the updates!

We are stealing this game off of them for this price. Is it going to blow you away with graphics? No! However this has been a fun game to play, if your into mining/digging. Solid game, good mechanics and game play loop. Really more than worth the buy. Splattercat Shout out and thank you for showing off this game.

I am already addicted just lack time :/

Game done for us Minecraft miners.

Enjoying the game. It needs a money sink though. I have over 500k and nothing I really want to buy. Also if the top 5 players have over 1 billion bucks you might want to nerf some of the money making features.

For $1.99 it's a bargain. Early Access and it needs a lot of work but it's fun, simple and I can spend hours mining, selling, upgrading... The ambient music is a bit murky and dark but the Trader's radio has some decent rock music spilling out of it. So it has potential! Plenty of room for improvement and it's a good concept for a sim.

game is awesome. some bioms mightnot be to your liking, i didnt like the second one at all but i highly reccomend at least the Prototype A and some energy regen when going to the Red F...... lots of fellas to shoot. and dont go back into the mask room unless you want to walk through the entire area again -__-

Really fun, lots of cool and broken builds

A really good game. The way the inventory does not save items mined when full is kind of iffy. It does make you pay attention and be more concerned, but it is also a bit more annoying if you are not paying regular attention to it. Oxygen initially does not seem like a big deal until you get to caves and find more difficulty in navigating the area. It is not difficult to upgrade or get to the first two locations, but I would like to see stuff changed in regards to potentially expand say the generator area into a mini mining spot where you can put a bed or refill oxygen or something and basically have a thing where as time progresses, you can have more npcs fill out some of the areas you find. Something annoying is that when you find items, you don't have the choice to equip when you have free spots. It seems like it will be a lot more difficult than people think namely in the way of pathfinding. Yeah you can build stuff, but it is not exactly something you want to do a lot of initially. Also, a choice between individual blocks or multiblock breaks would be good to have for the shovel. Having a permanent multiblock can be helpful until you get to points where precision is key.