Mechanic Miner

[h1]Overview[/h1] [b]Mechanic Miner[/b] is a side-scrolling adventure sandbox set on Mars. Impersonating an engineer named John, players will need to survive in an hostile environment after crash-landing in the wilderness. With most equipment and projects lost, it will be up to you to take it all back, building increasingly advanced machines and facing enemies in the process, with the final objective of either surviving or escaping, depending on the game mode. 🟩 [b]Pros[/b] [list] [*]Complex but relatively easy to use building system, featuring many different parts, weapons and machinery. [*]Engaging formula that combines overcoming environmental dangers with combat, scavenging and powerful bosses. [*]Two additional game modes apart from Story: Survival, a free roam mode without story quests, and Creative. [*]Complete freedom of approach to all obstacles, with player creativity put at the center of gameplay. [*]Surprisingly low amount of bugs, considering the freedom and complexity the building system allows. [/list] 🟥 [b]Cons[/b] [list] [*]Tutorials are lackluster: several game mechanics, functions and tools are poorly explained, or not mentioned at all. [*]Exploration is too linear, with most environments being corridor-like instead of more complex areas. [*]The low level of interaction with the environment, complete inability to dig terrain or destroy anything can be disappointing. [/list] [h3]Rating: Good[/h3] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548409603]Click here for the complete Rating Chart[/url] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2013987202 Let's start with the good points. First of all, Mechanic Miner's parts variety used in building your own custom machines is very good: servo-motors, pressure tanks, machineguns, bombs, tesla coils... you name it and probably at some point you'll find it or think a way to jury-rig it. Improvising and making the most of what tech you have at the moment is a crucial part of gameplay, that combined with scavenging material deposits, fighting enemies and bosses, creates enough variety to prevent the game getting stale. After completing the story, the presence of two additional game modes, namely Survival which is similar to Story but without quests, optional resource loss on death and a new dungeon for advanced players - and Creative, which is a sandbox with unlimited resources to build anything you want - boosts content amount. The fact you can approach any challenge as you want is great as the game will never force you to use a specific way to solve problems. On the bad side, the most evident issue is that tutorials are insufficient, and while they explain some mechanics and basics decently, they also leave players blind to many others that are not at all intuitive to figure out: for example I never realized how to use material for module research, because it was never explained properly. The exploration is linear and mostly performed in tunnels or corridors, without much side areas to discover, and this is a letdown. [b]Overall Mechanic Miner is a good sandbox adventure game that delivers a fresh take on this genre with a good degree of polish and content, but not without some flaws. It took me 14 hours to complete the main campaign, with optionally also Survival and Creative to get into after that. For 16,70€ and with overall good quality, I can recommend this game for full price.[/b] [quote]Liked this review, and want to see more of the same quality? Check out [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39323490]Tamaster's Review Archive[/url] to see all my Reviews in a single, convenient location.[/quote] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2014714830 [h1]In-Depth Breakdown[/h1] 🎮 [b]Gameplay Analysis[/b] The gameplay of Mechanic Miner is divided into Exploration, Building, Quests and Combat. [b]Exploration[/b] Can be performed on foot, but most of the time will be done while driving your own machine. The environments are not open but instead very linear most of the time, with few optional areas, so exploring thoroughly won't even be a problem since everything is put before you. While roaming, collecting all the various material deposits is fundamental to prevent shortages, as it is with plants and even enemy corpses, giving out many different resources. Fast travel at every "gate" allows you to quickly reach any previous depth level, in case you need more resources that respawn with time - or deposit materials if you built a stationary base. Checkpoints allow you to save your vehicle and progress in case of defeat or destruction, but also traditional manual saves and autosaves are present. The world map is useful to get a direction. [b]Building[/b] Is the prime activity in the game, and is done very organically because you'll need to connect pipes, belts, tubes and circuits in a realistic manner to make everything work, respecting the laws of physics. At first it can seem very complex and obscure but in fact it is quite handy and well done after getting a hand of it. Creating flying machines, armored vehicles or mobile bases are all very possible things, and building many different vehicles you can save as blueprints, will be key to pass the diverse obstacles. As you kill new enemies or harvest new resources blueprints are unlocked to make new technology, but in the end how you approach things and what you build is always up to you. Too bad for the lacking tutorials and the control system, as jamming in a 2D plane multiple layers of circuits and pipes is inevitably clunky, as is clunky driving vehicles with many functions or machines, having to swap many control levers constantly. With some effort though, all can be done. [b]Quests[/b] Can be primary, story related ones, or secondary typically involving research for optional modules. On the second type, I had no idea how to do so and still don't have any now - since the game never explains it. Often quests involve defeating a boss or recovering a story-related piece of tech. [b]Combat[/b] Will be done mostly with the aid of your machines or fortifications, as John cannot fight on his own apart from a very weak laser beam used to get resources. On the other hand machines you build can have spikes to wound enemies, ballistas, machineguns and other deadly weapons to destroy your enemies. Every weapon can be damaged, destroyed and needs ammo and circuits to be controlled though, so building your machine with this in mind is recommended. Bosses are several and each has powerful attacks and phases, most will also summon additional enemies to the fight. In case of defeat, you'll restart from the last checkpoint with everything as new in Story, and also Survival unless you select the optional resource loss modifier. Generally enemies are dangerous but if approached with care and at safe distance they become manageable. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2014824575 🔩 [b]Technical[/b] [u]PC Specs: RTX2080Ti, Ryzen 3900X, 32GB RAM DDR4[/u] There are no major problems or bugs to report. A mild stuttering happens sometimes while traversing areas, and a large dip in frame rate when loading after death or returning to checkpoints - but for the majority the game runs smoothly with good stability. Given the simple graphics, the game should run well even on older or low-spec machines. [h1]Final Thoughts[/h1] Mechanic Miner is an unusual take on the sandbox adventure genre that manages to deliver a fresh gameplay and solid content amount for a good price, but also with some issues. Overall a good title that building / sandbox fans will enjoy. [i]This game was reviewed using a free key[/i]

TLDR: cant recommend this at $18 USD in its current state. wait for sale or updates There is more wrong than right, right now. the gameplay is fun but lacking in content and the fun gets quickly ruined by bugs or other aspects. i understand lacking content for early access but for the price point, it should have more and better polish cuz at the moment it feels like I wasted money a little. When I first saw this game I was excited. after playing, Im well... less excited. its the type of game that i loved but itll end up sitting in my library for a while. as other reviews state, there are a lot of bugs and crashes, some that help you, some that make you decide to go out side and see the sun for once. ive fallen through the floor, launched into space, had my inventory filled with stacks of 800 after hitting "craft 20" once, and ive had my inventory and creation wiped. i havnt seen a game with this much potential in a while. but there is a grotesque amount of work that needs to be done. everything outside of operating your creation is less fun, and mostly frustrating. building ui, i cant really say what needs to be done, theres a lot of mechanics and the devs did a good job getting them all to work but A LOT of the time you will wire something wrong because the game tries to merge a circuit. most of the problems comes from the game trying to figure out what you want to do with your multitool. "do you want to grab or excavate? beats me, im ganna grab." perhaps add some toggle modes, give the player some control of what they want to do cuz the game has no idea. i would make how it is now its own default mode, then have subdivided modes for each thing you can do. crafting is alright. its annoying when you have to remove a part and it gives you the raw resources back and so you have to re craft it just to place it somewhere else. i know theres a dislodge and merge feature but it doesnt seem very intuitive and i never figured out how to get it to work, i could be dumb though. UI windows can be frustrating the fact that they dont auto close when i try to do something else. some one who hasnt played may think thats not a big deal, but its annoying fumbling around with the ui while trying to build. when trying to craft make it so you have to click the item to select what you want to build rather than hovering over. its frustrating when you want to make circuits but you make belts instead cuz you accidentally hovered over one pixel of the icon on your way to hit "craft 20" there needs to be some area you can build safely or be able to build an area you can do things safely. "im ganna stop here and work on my car... fek off scorpions!" there is no peace, every time you think you have a second to build, you have to chase something away that comes back a second later. if you dont want to add a safe zone, if you chase something away, have it run further away and not to the edge of its detection radius so when its no longer scared it just comes right back. resource gathering, is just too slow for the amount of resources your spending. getting hit by a ninja demon just results in reloading the save because you just dont have enough resources to recover, one hit takes out half your vehicle and is pretty much a death sentence. so its either reload or start from scratch. ninja demons, they come out of nowhere in the worst times. theyre supposed to come out during "aether storms" but every now and again (like every 30 min or so) there is no warning and one rushes in from the side of the screen while you have you pants down building or gathering and ruin you. friendly fire needs to be toned down. no matter how you place your weapons, you will inevitably shoot your own creation trying to shoot something flying above you (which is nearly all the time). the most basic ranged weapon, the ballista, can cause catastrophic damage if something else is in its way. it sorta detects if line of sight is clear but it will most likely still fire and break the wall keeping all the bats from flooding inside. sometimes the shot can even phase through a block thats close and hit whats behind it, like your engine making a nice crater where your engine used to be.**EDIT** This was changed in the next patch following this review and is no longer an issue. closed doors dont stop many mobs. they just phase through it like it wasn't there. eventually i realized i never had to leave my car so i just boxed my self in and got rid of doors all together. mobs and ai. everythings a basic zombie type outside the demons. they have a detection radius and once your in it they come strait for you until they are out of "their area" at which point they turn around. the demons just come strait at you. need some more variety in ai and maybe some passive mobs? cuz everything just tries to kill you. the world and level design is a bit lacking, caves have all the same architecture and few biomes. but its early access so that will more than likely get additions. I still generally enjoyed my experience, but im ganna let this ferment in my library and come back to it in like a year and see where its gone. im still excited, just... less lol

I received this for free during the closed beta. I had fun playing it. Then I had my key revoked 2 days before launch. Still bought it because I wanted to try going further in this game. This game has 3 modes. Survival mode, where you gather resources and travel. Story mode, where you learn the backstory and how to play. Creative mode, where you can build whatever without the limitations of resources. There are a few things you need to know. You gain experience from collecting resources and killing creatures. You gain the ability to make what you need to survive as you collect resources, but then you will need to research by spending experience, to unlock additional equipment. Each item will say how many experience levels you need to unlock it. There's also modifications to the items you unlock that you have to spend experience on to use. There are some creatures you can stay sheltered from, but others will have to be killed in order to survive. There are dark purple enemies that will wreck your build pretty fast if you don't kill them quick. Every few nights, around the 3rd, will be flying creatures that will attack you. This is a warning that the next night will be a full on nightmare. Everything goes into a shade of purple, the fog gets really thick and a purple lightning effect covers the screen. If you're not prepared for this you'll die pretty fast. Even if it's not finished there's plenty of things to do in the game.

While the game is interesting. It's just not fun. Tedium and grind were a big problem with the prerelease version of the game. And the release version fails to alleviate the problem. The new harder enemies still don't pose much of a risk to destroying your vehicle and killing you. However, they are almost guaranteed to damage the vehicle no matter how careful you are. Leading to a mind numbing amount of repairing your constructions. The tech unlocks are handled differently as well. In the release version, tech boxes are dropped at random. Killing bats? Well, now you unlock iron wheels! The system doesn't let you pick what you want to focus on. The previous system of spending levels to unlock thing was extremely grindy, but it at least made sense. Changing the cost of things or the exp rates could have fixed the problem. Instead, random drops now. If you have quite a bit of patience and like building there is a lot to enjoy. You'll note I have quite a bit of time logged in the game. That's not sign I hate it out right. I just find myself not really being able to recommend it.

Game was good at the start but the devs have abandoned it. Has little content and stuff to do after the tutorial.

This is a great game with a nice concept, but the devs have dropped it. I like the way the storyline unfolds (mostly through chasing a cat!) and through it all discovering new materials and parts, which which to delve deeper into the new land. It would be better if the developers picked it back up and actually finished what they were wanting to do.

abaddon by the dev, last update is 2020

dont but this game it has been abandoned its basicly just a glorified alpha (the free version on itch.io) its poopy that devs are alowed to do this but oh well }:( please don't buy no updates the game is not finished and it was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 50$ go buy holy potatos games when they are 3$ each

Great chance for a good game, but it was abandoned almost immediately after launch by the development team, leaving it to be about a 4-8 hour story line, depending on how much you wanted to play with it. Littered with some pretty devastating bugs, but not the worst I've ever seen. It's a shame cause it could have been great, but I tire of devs that jump ship as soon as they launch. There's some replayability with survival mode, but it quickly becomes a grind. *shrug*

Well that was an absolute waste of time and money. There is next to no story. And i beat the game in just 4 hours. You can then keep playing to grind out the unlockables witch is a complete waste of time, and takes forever since you have no idea what you need to grind to progress, and picking up materials takes forever. I then moved on to creative to try some fun builds. but that is limited by a low amount of actual content. I had really hoped for something like scrap mechanic, to dig my teeth into. But this is a far cry from what i wanted. It ends with a "To be continued" message. But we all know that will never happen.