T-Minus 30

Ok... this is a game that hooked me in immediately. I'm a player of big mega-long 200+ hour city builders, but this is just totally different, and plays like the perfect lunch-break or coffee break game. I actually did find myself wanting a 60 minute option to see just how much further I could get. It probably has the exact right mix of time pressure, different buildings to place and resources to manage given the time limit. If you enjoy city builders but rarely have the time to devote a bazillion hours to a single game, then its perfect for you. Also plays ok on my fairly low spec microsoft surface laptop, and looks wonderful on it. Sat down to play one game but couldn't stop myself playing 3 in a row.

Updated review: I love builder games. Love em! I've got Frostpunk, Before We Leave, Kingdoms and Castles, Satisfactory, As Far As The Eye, Dyson Sphere Program, Oxygen Not Included, Autonauts, and more. Each one captures my interest in different ways, and I've found myself more often than not staying up late into the night to continue work on whatever plan I am working on. However, all of them share the same problem: they're time and brain intensive. As much as I love playing them, as much as I want to scratch the builder itch, there are some nights after a long day of work and a longer evening of putting kids to bed where I just don't have the capacity to manage an interplanetary logistics system or plan the next phase of my town's expansion. Enter T-Minus 30: a short-form single-level city builder for when I don't have the energy or patience to focus on long-term or multi-stage planning. This is absolutely a positive for me. I'm excited to continue polishing my understanding and mastery of this game. My only original complaint was that there were no hotkeys, but I have learned that there are hotkeys! The positives just keep coming

The idea seems great, at least at first, but thn you understand that it's too simplistic and there's not much to do. Even though every match is restricted to 30 minutes, you quickly run out of new things and just pop new buildings in certain order, dictated by (rather simple) production needs and map layout. The closest thing to this game would be Offworls Trading Company. It has the same frenetic pace, and matches are also short, but instead of running against the clock you compete with fellow capitalists, trying to M&A the living ♥♥♥♥ outof each other. Also, some board games do similar things, but better. It's not a bad game per se, just a boring one. In our age of decline and overabundance of gaming time is the most precious resource, and is better spent somewhere else.

A clever little game. The 30-minute hard deadline means that if I want to decompress I can fire it up, do a run and then get back to work. Unless it pulls me back in... oh no! I would like to be able to scroll the map by moving the mouse to the sides, and it would be nice if the tools (especially roads) automatically selected the top item.

tl;dr: - it's not a hard no, despite the choice - a lightning-round strategy game with a high score option is a neat idea - it could use more strategic decisions, even with an emphasis on speed - the UI does not do a good enough job in giving you a feel for how you're doing this is another one of those situations where i wish there was more than the binary yes/no. i think there's a lot of potential for the game, and i think it's a good formula for short, repeatable game sessions. i like the idea of trying to beat your previous score on a fixed seed, and i think there is the start of a good idea with the different advanced rocket types to take advantage of a wider array of resources and provide a reason to push for something that might seem of limited use at first glance, like arboretums. that being said, even in the tutorial level you pretty much see everything the game has to offer. i get that you don't want a big complex tech tree because these are short contained games, but it feels as if it's missing a bit of depth for those moment-to-moment interactions even. there's no decision to be made about what to build necessarily, the answer is everything. you touch all points of the tree. this may change in later levels, and i appreciate that there's strategy in when and where to build things versus what to build, but it didn't really seem like enough strategy to carry a session. that being said, it could be that the game's focus is more in building *quickly*, rather than *considering* your choices, and thus a lot of the fat was trimmed, so to speak. however, if the focus is in building quickly, it feels as though there should be better feedback in the UI so that you can get a feel for the state of your city at a glance. a lot of times i found myself suddenly unable to build anymore and realizing "oh ♥♥♥♥ my quarries depleted five minutes ago while i was tooling around on the other side of the map." certainly i need to be more on top of things, but it's a bit rough when you get 0 feedback from the game until you suddenly hit a wall - see: food production, for instance. hope you're keeping an eye on whether or not the number is going up or down! ultimately, it's led to some frustrating situations where i've had to check and recheck the build menu to see requirements for buildings, count production and consumption buildings, and still scratch my head as to why i have a shortage somewhere on the map. i believe i've passed the refund window, but at any rate i don't think i would want to refund it. i feel it's missing some important things to really make the experience feel complete, but it isn't necessarily anything that suggests that the concept is broken. i want to hold onto it and see what kinds of updates come down the line for it. some more interesting strategic choices and the ability to know how you're doing without spending time and conscious effort assessing your state in a game that requires quick thinking would go a long way towards putting this into a very solid position.

Wait for a big sale. Calling T-Minus 30 a city builder is misleading; really it's just a score-attack game with controls vaguely similar to a city builder, that tests your APM more than it tests your ability to lay out buildings. What little progression there is can be overcome in the first minute, potentially, if you are fortunate enough to have a water source nearby. After that it's just a matter of constantly placing buildings to clear terrain, acquire resources, and place rockets (which is how you score points). It's a fun little game but you'll see all the content the game has to offer in the tutorial level. After that, the only replay value comes from wanting to improve your score. It really doesn't have enough lasting power for a $10 price tag.

Great concept, fun game, low replay value. I was sorta tired of the game after about 5 hours, finishing the last 4 or 5 levels pushed my playtime to 8 hours. Building an evacuation fleet is a fun theme and it's executed well. There's a nice progression of buildings, challenging the player to improve their approach to evacuate more people. Unfortunately once you've got your strategy nailed down, different maps don't really require different approaches. Recommended if the theme and learning the system sound fun to you, as long as you're ok with a pretty short completionist playtime.

t-minus 30 is perhaps the most stressful game I have ever played in my entire life

Very gimmicky but does it well.

great concept, not a huge learning curve, enjoy it a lot.