IMPACT

Definitiv empfehlenswert

The first thing to keep in mind about this game is the purpose. Here's a (brutally) edited summary from the project proposal: * The most prominent landing hazards on the Moon are craters * Automatically detecting craters is therefore a key technology * AI seems to be a very promising candidate to solve this challenge * This requires a large data set of fully labelled craters which does not exist * Crowd science can generate the AI training dataset * Crowd science projects often fizzle due to the tedious nature of the tasks * Let's design a good game and add science With that out of the way, it's a decent game. No major innovations and a reasonably fun game play loop. Sure there are places to improve (I'd like a couple of management consoles as things get more complicated) but I've played a lot worse. The science part is coming along as well. The interface to mark craters is good and the reward is definitely in-game useful. There are some things to clean up in the scoring to get that reward but overall I like it. -------------------------------------- It's an early access crowd science project. It does good science. It's most certainly worth my time. If you think Luna is a place we should explore then perhaps it's worth yours too.

Viel Spielspaß und wissenschaftliche Unterstützung vereint.

[quote][b]Warning: Third Party Account[/b] This game requires you to create a third party "Hochschule Darmstadt - Scientific Data Collection" account... there's no valid reason for this in a PC game when SteamWorks is available. This is often done to harvest private data and profile you, with potential sale and transmission of your private data to third parties. The developers will probably argue that you can trust them, but if they were trustworthy they wouldn't demand you create a third party account. This represents a considerable risk to gamers due to the privacy and security implications of developers that wish to bypass Steam and harvest user data. Remember, sometimes if the product is free, YOU are the product.[/quote] [quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop][b]Warning: AI Slop[/b][/url] This game is partially or completely made with talentless, soulless AI generated content.[/quote] This is yet another student project, one of literally thousands self-published on Steam Direct. It's from Hochschule Darmstadt in Germany. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" games, we must still question what value they have for gamers. This isn't a fully fleshed out game. It's the result of an academic exercise and has much more limited value than a professionally developed game. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments. It helps their marketing and makes students feel good, but it puts the business before the needs of gamers. The students were deliberately taught by Hochschule Darmstadt that it's okay to use AI slop in game development... utterly unacceptable. AI slop is trained without permission on copyrighted material. When developer use AI slop in a published product they are contributing to intellectual property theft and copyright infringement. That sheer, galling lack of ethics from a no-longer reputable educational institution aside, this is just a dumb tech demo from students who made a mobile app tier "city builder" where you tap on your iPhone screen to build a "moon base". Honestly if I could go live on the moon to get away from all this low quality student homework worsening Steam, I would. This hasn't been updated since 5 months. While it may not be abandoned yet, it's rotting in development hell and it's probably never going to be finished. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it even more difficult for gamers to find actual, finished games. I couldn't find this on the app stores, but for all intents and purposes this could have been a mobile app. We're here for best of breed PC gaming experiences, and this is about as far from that as you can get. That's enough by itself to disqualify this. We don't spend thousands building gaming rigs so that we can pretend they're iPhones and play iPhone games and mobile apps. As mentioned, this features really godawful, "wrong" looking AI slop instead of genuinely and sincerely created game assets. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating real game assets or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks bad because of that decision. AI slop sticks out like a sore thumb... and it comes across as insulting. There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too, and that's glaringly obvious here. In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D graphics which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. Next is pricing and what value this has for gamers. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers? It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff. In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone. In terms of player counts and popular reception, this couldn't even crack 100 players at its absolute peak. For a free game on a platform with 130 million players, that is a spectacular failure, mostly due to the reasons I've supplied here. This student project/tech demo/glorified homework assignment provides no Steam profile benefits, no +1 to your game count, and little value to gamers (because it's just a small, unpolished student project), so I can't recommend this over the thousands of full, professionally made games on Steam. The use of AI slop is a direct insult to gamers and real, ethical content creators and artists everywhere. AI models are trained on copyrighted intellectual property without permission from the owners.

Give it a try.

Absolutely recommend! Also love the fact that you can contribute to real-life science!