DIVE or DIE - Children of Rain

야숨 : 가면 재밌을 같은데 한번 가보자 - 뭔가 있음 본작 : 가면 ㅈ될거 같은데 한번 가보자 - 뭔가 있음

If I could I would leave a mixed review, the artwork is great, the sound design is very good and the gameplay loop is simple but compelling, and my first attempt was genuinely thrilling. As you can see from my hours I have given this game several attempts but it is just too painful to continue. The biggest issue this game suffers from is one of the most obnoxious development choices known to mankind, the forced autosave, with no option to manual save! This makes the arrogant assumption that your game is perfect and has no bugs, which can waste huge amounts of game time, when it turns out it does and so I have to downvote. In a single player game, who cares if someone wants to save scum, I play 'honour man', where I only save scum if I come across a bug/glitch/terrible game design choice, but I don't care what other people do. Spoilers alert. One run I lost my best diver when I first encountered the black boon fish, after killing it, it leaves a portal that says it will take you to the surface, so I go exploring further and return at 0% oxygen and successfully use the portal, only to drown next to the west shallows exit because it doesn't actually take you to the surface, it takes you 10m from it where you can drown at arms reach... either have a region in which you can't drown in near the exit, or have that fish take you to the surface like it says! And there was autosave ready to kick in and ruin my run. Poor game design. I learned from that and did another run, this time I was in the west stalker well, came across another black boon fish, killed it, portal opened, so I carried on exploring, when I returned there was no portal. I had saved 2% oxygen, it was at the entrance of one of the side tunnels and so only exit is back through it. so couldn't have missed it. Once again my best diver drowns and autosave steals another one. Bug. Another time I was going around the Eastern farmlands, returned to entrance except the 'return to surface' text/button interaction wasn't there, so another diver drowned within arms reach and run ruined by autosave. Bug. I since learned from internet that if you are quick enough you can exit from menu/alt-f4 before your diver drowns you can restart the dive (great, but shouldn't have to do that, should be able to just load save like any other game). Poor game design. However not even this will save you if you make a simple mis-click during the on land management phase between dives. If you select someone to man a station, but accidently mis-click or choose the wrong person but change your mind before the next dive, well too bad, accept your mis-click or they are now 'fatigued' rendering them useless despite the fact they have done nothing, and once again because of autosave, not even alt-f4 saves you from this. Poor game design. There is a feature where you can 'host' survivors, which temporarily saves them till next day if you don't have room to recruit them. This usually works but on one run the next day comes and they are gone. Unavoidable autosave again. Bug. The '% chance' for an expedition to succeed is tedious game design. Usually it is high enough on a run that you don't have to think about it, and you successfully bring back survivors to becomes divers or man stations. Or if you are unlucky like me you get your first 3 expeditions end in failure, which is the equivalent of loosing 6 survivors, 3 rounds of experience gain from the expedition, lack of sacrifices and manning stations for growth, which massively impedes the early game, which is mind numbingly tedious if you have already restarted a couple of times due to other bugs etc. Again unavoidable autosave. Poor game design. As previous reviews have said, the fishing hut and 'food & morale' system is OP, which in turn renders the infirmary nearly useless. High food allows your people to heal up to 30% health a day and morale heals sanity. This pretty much negates the need for the infirmary and is too easily managed with the fishing hut. I have only played on normal difficulty so this might be more of an issue in higher difficulties. But at least for normal this is poor game design. The list of available skills as your people level up feels really weird, like an illusion of choice but badly implemented. After first level up your characters choose between improving your base stats (health, sanity etc), reducing your character costs (food and morale) or... being a good netter giving you a boost to fishing rarer items if you specifically man the fishing hut, what about the other 8 stations? do they get bonuses? nope, at least for a couple of them not till level 5 and 10. Ultimately you do have choice, but depending on what role the character has, it really isn't a choice. I won't be trying to refund as I did genuinely enjoy my first attempt, and believe the game is made in good faith with developers who care, but I couldn't recommend this game at this stage. I hope one day I will return to see some updates and most necessarily a manual save/load option. Time is valuable, I have thousands of hours in rimworld and barely ever 'won' but loved it, I have hundreds of hours in darkest dungeon and loved it, which also has the forced autosave in it, but admittedly I never came across a bug in it and it also doesn't have a clock/time limit, which means trial and error can be tedious but doesn't ruin your run. There is a timeless mode but it removes achievements, again poor game design. Maybe normal mode shouldn't have time limit and harder modes do? Anyway I hope to return one day, experience a better game and get to update this review.