The game is unfortunately not good enough to have longevity. The premise and all of the gameplay elements sound fun and I wanted to like it, even the coop aspect was very alluring. But in the end we aborted our run as a group, I played a run solo and finished on hard, and I probably won't play another one.
The game suffers from many issues, but here's the key ones:
1. coop seems like an afterthought and is more of a hindrance than adding value. you're supposed to split the 4 characters between the players you have and alternate, but the game is only intended around using all 4 together to solve a puzzle. it doesn't really make sense to split them between different people. even the online play UI to spectate while it's other people's turns misses half the details (e.g. can't see what cards they have or play). there's also no controller support, so remote play together is limited to sharing mouse and the entire screen and alternating manually. I'd recommend to play this game solo if at all.
2. the game can't really explain its concepts well. there's no tutorial, no in game explanations. you're thrown into a full game and are supposed to watch some youtube tutorial videos explaining each role like you're in a boardgame rule explanation situation. that's not how video games should work. and even after you did watch all the videos, there's several ingame elements that are never explained. even after you explored and understand the concepts, it's still a matter of "remember everything". e.g. there's a scout ahead mechanic for the planets you will visit later, and it's supposed to tell you what to expect. but all you get is the name of the event. you either remember what it means, or gamble anyway. there's no tooltip, not even an indication whether it's generally good or bad, just a name. and pray that you don't run into something that ends your run by accident
3. the core gameplay loop is 95% maintenance of random bad events and working around artificial limitations of the game. the actual main gameplay is super basic: move around the map, find ingredient somewhere randomly, use ingredient as the cook, move to the predetermined delivery location, repeat, done. the only longevity is through negative events and maintenance work. you basically won't get to do the things you need to do. your characters might not be able to move to where they need to be because a random event blocked the way, and the only way to fix that is a character that is 3 turns down the fixed turn order. or a random event might force you to discard almost your entire hand to avoid taking away all your shields or dealing a lot of damage which you won't be able to repair quickly enough. and tough luck if you prepared and had all the right cards and setup this round but couldn't use them due to random event reasons. you must actually discard all unused cards automatically every round and wait until you cycle through all 4 characters and through that character's deck until you get another chance. and while you cycle you're adding on more random negative events which require extra maintenance work like moving characters in circles, or discarding cards. it feels like most mechanics are just taking away your choices and blocking you from doing the very basic things that need to be done and it gets annoying and repetitive very fast.
4. the game's systems aren't really thought through. each of them seem kind of intuitive at first but have issues when put together or when used too much. examples:
- you have to discard all cards at the end of the round, which means you're always at the mercy of RNG to maybe get the right cards next round. little options to truly prepare anything (except trading)
- you have to buy a new card every round. but you also might not even be able to buy new cards, unless your captain has the right set of cards and nothing else to do each round, to continuously move around the map into the unknown and refresh your stock of available cards. otherwise you must pile on effectively garbage cards that weaken your deck.
- you can destroy cards that you don't like, but you can also destroy cards that are essential to win the game and just block yourself
- traveling around to planets that you visited before gives you no new events and no new card restock. which means the only way to get better cards and keep going is to also accept risk of random planet events nonstop. a single full shop is not enough to last 2 full rounds without garbage, so the captain effectively should travel into the unknown and refresh every round. but you also want some prep in case of bad events because you have to discard a lot of cards for this, and also you can't travel every round
- if the game drags on too long, you might feel like any addition to the deck just lessens your chance / increases the cycle time until you get back the few role specific starter cards that you need to do one specific job right now. it doesn't help me if i have all the good cards that give a lot of power and high shop card quality in a deck of 30 cards, if I don't draw one of the 2 starter cards that actually allow me to do something relevant with this power, or one of the few cards that allow cycling efficiently. the optimal mix of cards that do stuff + cards that empower stuff is basically only possible temporarily, and you must continue growing even if it's not what you want
- you can trade between players, but only 1 card per turn, and can't trade the same card back again immediately after. but maybe you have the same card twice, then one of the two can be traded back and the other can't, and hopefully you remember/guess which one was the traded one and use that one instead of just blocking yourself
- each character has a specific role that only they fulfil, but the game isn't really designed around it enough. the roles need to be fulfilled at certain times, and not necessarily exactly every 4 turns. you might have nothing do, or too much to do on one character and have to cycle through several rounds until you get what you need on that 1 character. and random events can make this a lot worse, adding even more onto the overloaded character or blocking them entirely. each time you have to wait adds more bad events to resolve and pollutes your deck. it's just randomness whether you have the right cards at the right time
- some events are just really unfair. draining all shields or dealing damage every 4 turns / 1 round bypassing shields is just too much IMO. it basically means you have exactly 1 chance to fix this problem, or otherwise you're completely screwed. but they might not have the right cards for this, and there is not enough ways to prep for it.
5. not enough depth or replay value. i already went through basically every available card and every available event within the first half of my first run, and each run is the same. I'm already annoyed by the repetitive nature and the limited choices available even after effectively just one game. if all the maintenance annoyances wouldn't be so annoying anymore, then not much interesting gameplay would be left over. there's really just not enough there for me.
if I could change some things, these would be it:
1. some options to change turn order
2. fewer limits for trading cards
3. being able to at least partially keep unused cards instead of forcing discards
4. either a maximum deck size, or not forcing card buys every round
but even once these would be fixed, something else would need to be added for the game to become interesting again. as it stands, the only interesting part is the initial discovery, but even that part is flawed (reliance on youtube videos and just "needing to already know"), so overall it just doesn't feel worth it.
