The Crust

Do not buy this game. It is riddled with bugs. Just like Surviving Mars, the core of this game is colonist and drones. So imagine that, but now your colonists get stuck and die of starvation. Or drones ignore priorities, leading to resource shortages and cripping your economy. Patch notes keep saying these issues are fixed, but they have never worked. Instead, the devs have been expanding the scope of this already enormous game. They keep adding new features and hyping that up. I don't know when they plan to release, and it's fine to work on core features first, but my fear is that the core gameplay will never be functional. So, avoid unless and until they can show proof that the core gameplay works.

This game is amazing but the bugs are unacceptable for being 2 years old. The same bugs at launch are still here. Colonists will go without pay even thought I have 500k. The power grid will stop working even though I have enough power for 23 days and it was fine the last lunar cycle. Colonists will also stand in front of a fridge full of food and still starve, wont take medicine. These bugs ruin the entire game and honestly I wish I could get a refund since I just lost a 20 hour game to a power bug that wont go away no matter what I do. This is pathetic.

I was at 1h45m with the refund page open. The first two hours are a wall of unexplained systems and I genuinely did not understand what I was supposed to be doing or why my colonists were unhappy. What saved it: I read a guide, went back, and it clicked hard. Now I get it and I love it. That's a problem, though. The game asked me to do homework before it would be fun, and it did that inside the Steam refund window. Fix the onboarding and this thing sells twice as many copies.‍

Review updated on 28th of May 2026 Regardless of my playtime, I can't in good conscience recommend this game. The base structure of how the game mechanics work, and premise regarding why they work that way are very good. The lore itself is also very well made, the whole storyline is well written and your decisions do matter overall. And the soundtrack is outstanding, one of the best I have ever seen. But what is the issue then? The problem is that the game is riddled by game-breaking bugs in late game that force you to restart the game, and this restart happens dozens, sometimes hundreds, of hours into a playthrough. There are two major game-breaking bugs right now, one of them is a drone stops working, it hovers mid-air and can't interact with anything. 'But it's just one drone', well, you'd think that doesn't matter once you are controlling drones in the hundreds, except when contracts fail because a single unit out of 10,000 is not delivered because that drone got assigned to deliver this unit and is bugged and can't move. This has happened to me personally across multiple playthroughs, and the only way to solve it is to start a new game, without guarantee that it won't happen again. The second issue is regarding ore. Sometimes something that I could not pinpoint yet increases ore purity to absurd levels. I'm talking hundreds of millions of %, to the point that at first a single unit of processed regolith yields hundreds of minerals like iron, titanium, silicon and aluminium. But why is that bad? It's because the purity does not stop increasing, it reaches a point where it overflows and the ore starts yielding negative values, so no mineral is produced at all. Yes, your entire mineral processing starts to yield nothing, and this as of today, 9th of March of 2026, has no fix. And these are just some of the bugs I had to deal with across multiple playthroughs. Every time they fix something, another game-breaking bug shows up somewhere else, and I'm just done. I'm tired of having to deal with this again and again and again. I'm uninstalling the game and do not intend to play it again. If I ever change my mind and try it again in a few years, if these bugs are fixed and, for once, they don't add new ones, I may reconsider changing my review. However, so far, the amount of frustration these game-breaking bugs generated leads me to believe that will not happen. It's a shame, because, like I mentioned, the base structure of this game is phenomenal and it has outstanding potential. However, the bugs in late game prevent anyone from enjoying this game fully. Edit: I was told by the developer in the comments for this review that the issue below was fixed. I completely reinstalled the game and started a new game from scratch. The issue is still there, and it is still game-breaking. I wasted almost 40 hours on a new playthrough to have it ruined by a recurring bug that has been happening for multiple months now. You can see it below: https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/17824155448298443802/08376E6DAEA4E72D8478B330C9D678624E6B5660/ Update, 28th of May 2026 They finally fixed the purity issue, however, I am giving up on this game for the same reason I stated in my original review. The current version of the game has massive issues with drones. They stop working entirely, getting stuck, which prevents you from completing contracts, and this issue doesn't affect just a handful of drones. I got to a point in the game where almost 15% of the drones I had were bugged and didn't do anything. On top of that, the game has MASSIVE performance issues late in the game, slugging to a pace that would make any Factorio player laugh out loud hysterically to think a factory that small would drive the game down to FPS in the single digits. Additionally, increasing the game speed makes the conveyor belts deliver FEWER items, causing the factory to stall because circuits that were previously at 100% efficiency drop to less than 60% if you just increase the game speed. And, to finish all that, the game is crashing to desktop repeatedly. I experienced about 10 crashes in the last 2 days. DO. NOT. BUY. THIS. GAME. It's a buggy, unoptimized exercise in frustration not worth our time.

Why you should not play this game. Depending on menu, close might be an X, a back arrow, a minimize button, on the right or left, or a button below If you see a contract and click "I'll think about it", it's gone if you decide to take it. When you tab between levels it always re-centres - you have to scroll back to your position every time There are TWO resource panels showing the same info, and BOTH get covered up by other info panels You need to see a resource panel when buying or selling, but the visible one is sometimes illegibly out of focus, sometimes not. When you click "new save" the cursor does not show in the filename box (and no suggested name) Buildings that can only be built below ground are labelled "Can not install indoors" Depending on mode/screen you might need right click or ESC to exit. At least one (ESC) should work for everything. The "Current contract" icon (centre top of screen) shows sometimes, not always The "PAUSE" when paused, shows sometimes, not always You cant toggle PAUSE in the research menu Sun continues to rise and set when PAUSED Scroll wheel speed can't be adjusted and is VERY slow Some screens can only be scrolled with the scroll wheel (no scroll bar, no mouse drag) Can not assign mouse buttons in keybindings (keyboard buttons only) There are generally 3 items researching concurrently, but only one shows "days, left" If you have a single conveyor full of product leading into a storage you still have to set the storage type Any size structure deletes immediately if you click in DEL mode When selling products there is no "fill to capacity" button, and setting the amount is very clumsy No metrics AT ALL, there is a monthly report that tells you basically nothing. Drones consistently go to the OPPOSITE end of the map to get regolith for the press. If you build the flight control centre, spacecraft will not go back to the launch pad even if you turn it off (and no warning). FOOD is not included in the top status bar (cause not important apparently) If you click on the "Dying" event it takes you to the general area, but does not select the colonist or show any info You can not tell by clicking on a belt what it is carrying Confuses terms like "shipping cost" with "manufacturing cost" Many devices are factors of magnitude more "expensive" than earlier devices that produce the same result Researches often depend on "device x must be built/researched", but there is no link, no search, not even names in the research tree (which is huge, but contains little of value) Contract system is beyond monotonous, Auto sale allows you to sell ONE product!! Some buildings (Small vehicle assembly factory) cant be set to auto-build There is an ore detector at the bottom of the tech tree, long after you have moved scanned the entire start area. But the worst part is the game is not a game. It introduces interesting problems but does not offer the tools to solve them. You are basically just building random things because they exist or because you were told to. If Dyson Sphere was an 11 out of 10, this game is a 3 EDIT: In response to developer comment. Yes I know early access, but early access means something different to other developers. Telling someone "Just hold SHIFT, press TAB etc" after the fact is not a solution. Real games have tooltips, and an intuitive interface. Comparison to other games is the nature of a market economy, and provides a frame of reference. It's reasonable to say, "If you enjoyed D. Sphere, (old) Slylines, Soviet Republic, Surviving Mars, Cliff Empire, Banished, Block Hood, Anno 1800, Northguard, Civilization, Tropico, or AOE you will be dissapointed with this game". Finally, you have not addressed the fact that there is no game here. I have no confidence that this team can make this game playable because the team does not understand gaming. Thus I warn others to prevent them also haveing a bad experience.

While I really like the idea of the game and its great potenial, i see the following major issues (for me): - overall gamespeed is SLOW, even at max acceleration, it feels like normal speed after a while, still becoming slow - upgrades are not balanced. adding 20% of manufacturing speed to SLOW is still SLOW - production recipes are unbalanced, more advanced recipes are extremely expensive, adding all required production time of previous steps, it is cheaper to sell the sub parts and buy the parts at the market - contracts are unbalanced. they require amounts which can only be stored by multiple large storage containers - The campaign is WIP, but giving a warning, that a time limited contract chain is going to start after completing a contract, which itself is time limited... meh I played thousands of hours of Factorio (EA-2.0) and Satisfactory and I honestly recommend "The Crust" for whishlist, but not for buy at the current state. the overall game progression speed is really slow and might not be really enjoyable.

I can't suggest that anyone buys this right now. I want to, I really do. I've been playing this game for quite a while now. I understand it's in development as well as all the things that go with that. This isn't my first rodeo for playing games in development. That said, after 180+ hrs in, I'm done. I can't understand why there are updates that aren't addressing current bugs that make the current version difficult and and somewhat impossible to play. Don't give me new buildings or research items. Please just fix the issues CURRENTLY happening. I've seen them listed on the Discord discussions and bug list for quite some time now. For instance, I've now built 3 different Cargo Docks because the first two I built has stopped working when I reload the game. I can't tear them down because they have so many resources that my trucks would be constantly picking them up and putting them into Large Bulk Storage buildings - it would take, like 30+ to store it all in. Why should we have to keep tearing a building down like the Cargo Dock, Small Vehicle Assembly, or the Railgun and rebuilding them to get a working building?? I might come back to this at some other date. But for now, I would not waste my money until they fix the current issues.

Do not buy until stable release. The game is promising and I love a lot of concepts it introduces. But for now... You can spend 20 hours in your run to then get an update that soft/hard-locks your progress. I hope though the devs will be able to polish the game!