ExoColony: Planet Survival

Recommended, more complex than it looks like with lot of depth. You have to accept indie look and feel but it is actually quite pleasant.

I'm really happy this game made it to early access! As an alpha tester, I got the game key for free in return for testing the game in the early stages of development. The dev team made a huge progress on this game. They polished the mechanics, improved the graphics and added a lot of new content since beta. It certainly isn't a casual game that's easy to play, but I really like this aspect of Exocolony. It's a complex survival game with lots of environment conditions and colony stats to watch out for, which gets you truly immersed into the life or death situation on an unknown planet. You have to learn and adapt. Although it can be hard in the beginning, the beautiful underground colony you can build, take care of and expand is really worth it. The awesome graphic style is an icing on the cake of the game and makes you want to discover more buildings to add to your colony. Overall, great job, dev team! Keep up the good work, I am looking forwards on the updates on this game.

Review updated after full release: I grabbed ExoColony when Early Access started. In the beginning it was rough; balancing was sometimes off, colonists got stuck, the tutorial was minimal and a lot of things weren’t explained, and some features were missing. But development really accelerated in the last few months—after patch 0.85 most of the problems were solved. Education, morale and research seems to have reasonable pace. Overall, it’s a good colony sim now - for sure complex and challenging, looking forward to terraforming the newly added planets.

Really good Game

I recently had the pleasure of playing this game, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. While it is still quite rough around the edges and missing some polish—such as having only two voices for all characters and a user interface that could use more work (understanding what buildings do, where you can choose to prioritize your workers' efforts, etc.)—what is here is genuinely fun. However, it can be quite difficult to get into the flow of it. The game provides a helpful goal system that serves as a sort of tutorial, giving you an idea of the order in which you should build and unlock things. An issue I had with this system is that it can sometimes be misleading. You might see an icon in the goals that isn't on your screen and then get a tip telling you that the icon can unlock something for you, but you still won't see the icon. This leaves you quite frustrated because it feels like you've missed something. After some more playing, the icon unlocks naturally, making the experience unnecessarily frustrating. A simple message like "You will unlock this feature later" would have helped immensely. When you get to the meat of the game and no longer rely on help, the gameplay becomes very addictive and satisfying. There are many resources to manage, and figuring out the balance between them is quite a satisfying puzzle. To give a specific example, I encountered a situation where I completely ran out of water and food. I thought that my colony was dead, but then I figured out how to save them. (Well, all of my current colonists died, but I unfroze some more, and after a few dead canaries, the colony was up and running again.) It turned out that the three mosses I had placed around the map were consuming water faster than it was generated. After resolving this, I found that I needed more food, which again cost water. Solving that, I found I was running out of some gas; fixing that, I was running out of oxygen, then pressure, then water again. Learning what balances what is very fun, though I really wish things were explained better. Perhaps having a catalog of images that give you hints would help. Another issue I had—and this one I did not find an answer for on my own—is whether or not the buildings operate on their own using power, and whether humans can operate them instead of power being consumed, or not. Or perhaps they work on their own in a limited capacity? Again, some in-game clarification from the developers would help a lot. One aspect of the game that I found myself really drawn to is the civilization simulator aspect. Being able to enact reproduction laws or make my colonists work under grueling conditions was very engaging. Sacrificing a generation so that future ones may live added joy to my gameplay experience. However, I have a few suggestions for improvement: 1. **Voice Diversity**: I understand that adding more voice actors would be tough, but it would greatly enhance the experience if each colonist had a randomly modified voice. Perhaps you could randomly pitch-shift them? Something like that would really help. 2. **Colonist Individuality**: If the colonists were more unique, their deaths might affect me, the player, a bit more. Perhaps adding some random descriptions of their deaths? Or give each one a personality that has advantages and disadvantages? Maybe add some likes/dislikes or a summary of their major life events? Anything to help me connect with my little space minions at least a little bit. 3. **Achieving Equilibrium**: Perhaps make it possible for a colony to reach an equilibrium. For example, implementing a new rule that allows the number of births to equal the number of elderly colonists. I feel like this would be a nice quality-of-life update. As for other things I would like to see: 1. **Better Research Descriptions** 2. **Clearer Explanation of Game Mechanics**: Keep them a little vague—it's fun to figure stuff out on your own—but starting the game today is far too obtuse to understand. 3. **Hints for Resource Imbalances**: Some hints on how different mechanics interact. If I am running low on water, I should be able to more easily identify the cause of the imbalance. 4. **Expanded Overworld Mechanics**: Greater expansion of overworld mechanics or perhaps a way to generate more land underground. It would also be quite cool to see some enemies, perhaps guarding some rarer resources. This could be a cool endgame goal once your colony is self-sufficient without player interactions. I would also like to highlight the cute art style the game has. It adds loads of personality, and the charm does help compensate for the other issues I have discussed. I am very excited to see how the development team further develops the game and really hope that they listen to player feedback to make it something special. For anyone still reading this review, please give it a shot. It is currently a bit of a mess, but a fun one I will definitely be coming back to—once you get over the pains of starting it, that is.

I only played for like an hour and a half so far, but I’m really enjoying it. I am a big fan of games with a lot of planets... so the gameplay feels kinda fun to me. Still figuring some stuff out as it is quite challenging at the beginning but regarding the timespent it obvious i guess. Overall i would say it’s really fun when you get used to mechanics, strategies etc.... Definitely recomend:)

This game isn't done. Even basics like UI and sound effects. I keep checking for updates and am surprised it is out of early access. No updates for a long time. I think this is abandoned.

Perfect for fans of colony sims or anyone who enjoys a good strategy game. Recommended. Visuals remind me Oxygen Not Included, but the gameplay not - you manage more from colony level instead of focusing on invididual colonists