Project AURA

Take any dictionary, look up the word [h1]disappointment[/h1] and you will be redirected to this game's Steam shop page. [list] [*]Graphics look fine. [*]It does seem to have a decent complexity, once you wrap your head around it, but… [*]… what keeps you from that, however, is the very badly explained tutorial. The challenge should come from mastering the game or from campaign goals – not from trying to learn the basics from incomplete commands in sometimes incorrect English. [*]The UI is even worse: It's tiny without an option to adjust that. The windows just pile on top of each other cluttering the screen when you have to drag and drop stuff between windows and the play area – the devs basically dismissed this problem by gatekeeping "playing it on full HD", which is a di[b][/b]ck move, since a lot of people don't have the option to do that. I get it: They had a vision - but dismissing and shaming your player base is not how you get your product to be appreciated... [*]Last but not least: The unrealistic climate collapse scenario it plays in is just pure cringe. [/list] These glaring issues and some others kept me from enjoying it enough to try it for more than one hour, before I had not sh[b][/b]its to give anymore and left. I got it for -80%, but I've still refunded it, because this game is abandoned and didn't get any updates in a looong time, despite several issues from Early Access present – that, as I already said, seem to be there on purpose and turn this game from an interesting project in a scam.

The game has allot going for it....some ideas I've never seen before....but...and it's a big but.....who in the world makes a city builder that does not allow saving during the campaign. This makes zero sense. I realize that this is an older game...but really. The game feels like it was produced by some talented programmers that aren't actually gamers. I wonder if the Dev's will ever come out with the new game they mention a couple of years ago. EDIT: I've changed my review to recommended. I'm 49 hours in and still enjoying the game (although it is frustrating at times) so I feel the developers deserve a better review. I've definitely gotten my moneys worth. EDIT #2 - i'm 143 hours into this game....please send help.

Mild recommend, with caveats. TLDR: unbalanced and bad UI, but potentially enjoyable at its core. The game is currently $2.99. If you can grab it for that, it's worth a few hours. Don't pay full price because it's not a finished game and you can certainly tell. For 2.99 you'd be getting a semi-competent resource management game with colony mechanics. Not so much a colony or city builder, in the sense that you never see any people-- your workers are just units, just another resource. If you approach it from there, there's actually a quite a lot of things to build and work towards. Unfortunately it's been left in a pretty unbalanced state. There are several bottlenecks in both research and producing the rarest resources. There's a very extensive food/cooking system that's interesting but it's literally impossible to take advantage of high-end recipes, as they rely on farms, which inexplicably consume research points on an ongoing basis-- but then research is also capped (by 'innovation points,' which aren't explained and idk how to get more)... so you can't actually produce enough to keep all the farms going. Therefore you can't have all complex food products on your menu, and thus cannot get the highest morale boost, which you need because morale caps your overall city level, which in turn acts as a hard population cap. A big problem if you lack morale or need more workers. So, very convoluted, as is the UI. Actually the UI is horrendous- example: Instead of clicking a building and plopping it down, you must click it, open a new palette of individual buildings, and then drag a blueprint onto the place you want it built. What? To even find certain buildings took a long time. Just very convoluted. however. I have to admit that I did have some fun, sorta-kinda; I would have gone for the late game stuff if not for how grindy the end goals are. That stuff is so far out of balance that my last couple hours was just fast forwarding waiting for a few key resources. To actually complete everything would have taken hours and hours of this. So I gave up, but really didn't expect to make it as far as I did, so I guess I have to give it thumbs up? but barely. Remember what I said though, only on sale.

This game is graphically interesting, but the play experience was dull and not sufficiently engaging for me to be able to relax and enjoy it.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Project Aura so far. 23 hours I’ve only scratched the surface. There are various deep gameplay mechanics. You need to learn about the UI and what is needed to do to progress but it is that way with most unique, creative, and awesome game experiences. I wouldn’t consider it a barrier to entry. There are small tutorials together you going. Overall a great addition to the Colony Sim, Base and City Building, Resource Management genres, not to be missed. Please continue creating games!

El juego tiene un buen tutorial como dios manda y engancha. Lo malo es que la GUI no es ajustable y queda muy pequeña, pero poniendo una resolución menor se arregla visualmente. La campaña es una anécdota y encima dicen basicamente que si el juego triunfa pondrán una campaña como dios manda la cual no pusieron porque no triunfó o al menos no como ellos quisieran. Cuando juegas una partida en solitario echas un poco en falta una ayuda que te explique algunas cosas pero si investigas un poco se consigue saber qué tienes que hacer. Si recomiendo el juego.

build an apartment complex and watch people go back and forth. absolutely boring ass game

Tendría que haberlo devuelto, pero quería darle una oportunidad, craso error, hay cosas interesantes, pero es denso de jugar, la campaña es básicamente un tuto grande de juego móvil, solo sigues los pasos sin apenas jugar, para colmo, por algún motivo no puedes guardar, con lo que o te gozas la "campaña" de principio a fin o tendrás que empezar de 0 todas las veces, no he probado las partidas rápidas aun, pero si todo va como la campaña y el tuto resultará igual de aburrido una pena, apuntaba a maneras pero si no le dan una vuelta a la progresión de construcción no hay nada que hacer, porque lo que no puede ser es que la construcción de edificios para adquirir agua y comida (los que tendrían que ser basicos) no están ni cerca de las primeras cosas que hacer ni tampoco da facilidades para adquirir más recursos, por ejemplo, puedes recoger 3 materiales reciclables pero solo uno de ellos con una nave y un edificio, si quieres más tienes que construir otro aeródromo porque el juego no contempla el poner más de un elemento por edificio aunque estos ocupen hasta casi el 100% del espacio disponible por ficha. En resumen, tiene potencial, pero ahora mismo es bastante denso y aburrido, una pena.

Es un juego de gestión futurista con muchas características, tantas que tiende a desbordar al jugador. el juego es tan complejo que llegar a aprenderse todo de memoria para poder saber como jugarlo es extenuante y los tutoriales si bien son largos no lo abarcan todo. Gráficamente se ve bien aunque tendrás que ponerlo a resoluciones no muy elevadas si quieres leer los textos porque la interfaz no se redimensiona para adaptarse a resoluciones elevadas. Dicho lo cual el juego no esta mal pero necesitas tener mucha paciencia y tiempo. Si tienes ambas cosas y te gusta la gestión de colonias te puede llegar a gustar. Si no estas seguro aprovecha alguna oferta, yo lo he cogido por menos de 3€ y aunque dudo que lo vuelva a jugar no me arrepiento, me parece que es un juego muy interesante y lo que le falta son mas misiones de tutorial explicando el resto de mecánicas.

dead game, stay away. go play factorio or something.