Seasteader

Edited after first 10 missions done -- Some of the content makes me think of the first version of Tropico. Not a direct comparison but there are some mechanics similarities. It's quite easy to get into the game but the mechanics seem a bit shallow once you've played for a while. If you have a good approach to the early game its pretty easy to build incrementally and create your sprawling sea city. Obviously I've not finished all the scenarios yet and there are still acheivements to get but I'm not sure at the replayability once those are done. Overall there is some good game time here though increasingly I seem to play it with the + key pressed down (5x speed) waiting for the next pay day or imigration trigger. The lack of factions or polotics or something that stops you increasing everything with no downside may be part of the limiting factor. I'm going to stick to my positive review here, overall it is considerably better than a lot of the early access trash that is kicking around on steam right now and I'm keen to encourage an indie developer to pursue if this is their first attempt. $30 is a bit steep for the current state of the game in my humble opinion but there is a great platform her for SeaSteader 2.

I think I've really tried to like this game, and it really does have a lot of good things going for it. I enjoy the systems the players can attempt in designing their seastead, and it doesn't take much imagination to immerse yourself in the world you're creating. This is where the problem comes into play. You get immersed in designing your seastead. You lay it out and you start planning, carefully managing your treasury for future expansions, maybe keep the residential and industrial separate...the usual sort of city-builder sort of thing. Then the game's AI announces an investor is contributing randomly to your design, usually ramming some flophouse into whatever available space happens to be directly adjacent one of your carefully laid buildings. In my last game, my food production area was attacked by these "investors" -- two of their flophouses were buttressed right up against my fishery, side by side. Just like that, my wide open design became another ♥♥♥♥♥♥ sea-shantytown. It can be resolved. It has been complained about. I don't honestly know why the developers are apathetic about this. This is the third consecutive playing session where I've regretted my time, and all because of this disastrous AI. I would 100% keel-haul these investors, so it breaks immersion that they get to turn my seastead into a shantytown, instead. I may play this again after a future update, in hopes this is fixed. I'm happy to see the devs diversifying the trade goods and thus expanding the available strategies (beyond being a game about building villages around oil-rigs) but this AI needs to be fixed. I'd be happy to just have the option of turning the investors off, presumably because my Seastead Mayor would have them shot on sight.