Wow, it is tough to recommend this game in its current state.
It would be wrong not to recognize how far it's come from current builds, but I cannot recommend this game at full price.
Pros:
- Atmosphere
- Creepy audio
- Cool textures
- Gritty HUD
- Brutal, unforgiving survival (not my cup of tea, but it seems fine as it stands)
- Excellent effects for anomalies
Cons:
- No clear direction on what to do other than survive.
- Tutorial only teaches you game mechanics, but nothing about what your goal is.
- After selecting an item to place from the inventory, you cannot close it (with the inventory button) until you click the inventory again.
- The respawn button only works after pressing escape.
- Horrible grammar. The tutorial says "ur" instead of "you're."
- Wants you to place cables for power, but you can't walk through them.
- I think I died to lightning, but I have no idea to be sure as the game doesn't tell you, and I don't know how to avoid that in the future.
Admittedly, I haven't played all that much, but I played the tutorial and a singleplayer world enough times to die and still be confused about what my objective was. As it stands, I cannot recommend this game.
The UI, sounds, and clunky controls cheapen the experience. I don't feel entirely in control of my character. Inventory management and never being able to pick things up is exhausting. Interacting with workstations is incredibly unintuitive, and requires you to manually place the resources and fuel, then turn it on, and wait a long time for the process to complete. Other workstations require power, and if they're placed improperly, you will not be able to walk in front of it due to the cable that must be ran to the input. I did discover that you can run the cable along the wall, so maybe it's not that bad, but the game does not explain that to you very well.
Not a great initial experience, but I'd be more than happy to return as this game gets more love from the developer.
