The Next World

Let me start by saying there is a lot to like about this game. I like how challengin it is early on and how careful you have to be in how you manage your colony. And the story is very interesting, unfortunately you have basically no say in how it really unfolds. I didn't think this was the case at first. Many of the descisions you make clearly effect things like morale, the health of your colony, and so on. But for me part of the fun of a game like this is seeing what happens when you go back and make different choices. My first game I lost pretty early on. The second time, I make it to the end and won. So I went back to play a third game, to see what paths the different choices led me down. And this is where the game let me down. As a heads up there are some spoilers for the early game here. One of the early decisions in the game is wether or not to risk getting a reactor, which you need to power your base, but is damaged and leaking radiation. Having won the game once, I wanted to challenge myself, and see how long I could keep the base going without getting the reactor. I was enjoying the challange, until a story event happened. An explosion in the reactor I didn't have. The worse part is the mechanic of the game was clearly going to force me to either go get the reactor, or loose. But having a scripted event happen, that didn't reflect the current state of my base. And suddenly it was no longer fun. All the decision I had made on my first play through no longer felt like they mattered. The game presents you with several moral choices, ask you to decide wether you will turn your security force into a secret police that crushes any dissent, or try and retain a semblance of law and order. And although you often see your choices reflected in the systems of the game, the moral level for instance, if it's not reflected in the actual story you are told, what's the point? The characters are intereseting, and the early game seems to promise the chance to learn more about them. When I won the first time I assumed that I had just missed opportunities to learn more about their past, and to trigger other story lines. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But I can't say I'm interested in going back anymore because now I'm spending lots of time clicking through lots of text I've already read, in hopes of find another story line. It's a wordy game, and that's not a bad thing. But if you're going to ask your player to read that much and offer all these choices, then they need to be able to effect the narative. Otherwise, you should just make a graphic novel, and not bother trying to make it a game.

This game plays like a early access title. Much of the game feels unfinished or needs more balancing. Fear the RNG because it doesn't take much in the first week of the game for a single disaster to force a roll back. Additionally the mechanics of the game such as health or morale are completly hidden, you have no idea how much harm reduced rations will cause or what direction your popularity is going. The popularity is especially important to know if you decided to allow elections, I had good morale but had no idea if this meant that I would be elected over my rival. Overall, don't buy now. There is a lot of potential but the game needs to be finished first.

The base building/management sections of the game are serviceable and the decent story disguises the simplicity of the game mechanics fairly well at first. But after a while you start to notice that how well you do in the management/base building section doesn't really affect the story. Also the story kind of lost momentum in the third act. Was hoping for a game that captured the beauty of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but replaced war/diplomacy with exploration and discovery and an intrigueing narrative. Instead it's a (very good) visual novel with a minigame. Would still recommend as I enjoyed myself though.

Очень интересная смесь визуальной новеллы и стратегии для тех, кто любит научную фантастику. По сути это игра на выживание колонии в трудных условиях планеты, похожей на Марс. Текста достаточно много, как по мне, так на анимешные игры не похоже, скорее на комиксы больше. Кроме текста, также есть карта и интерфейс отдачи приказов вашим машинам, можно искать оборудование, строить новые модули, исследовать планету. Вам нужно следить за запасами ресурсов и материалов, за уровнем морали и здоровья выживших. От вашего управления зависит сколько из колонистов сможет выжить и сможет ли вообще. + атмосфера шикарная, то что нужно для любителя НФ. + сюжет богат на сюрпризы и разные варианты поведения. В игре несколько концовок. + после пролога можно выбрать одного из двух главных героев, за которого вы и будете играть. У каждого из них есть свои плюсы и минусы, которые окажут влияние на игру - [u]нет русского языка[/u], текста много и местами он труден, так что желательно знать немного английский, чтобы не лазить за каждым словом в переводчик. - при переключении из полноэкранного режима, обратно не вернуться, поэтому играл в оконном. Т.к. это глюк движка, то авторам не сообщал. + поддержка реагирует на сообщения (и очень быстро). Нашел некритичный визуальный глюк в игре, ответили через десять минут (в субботу), сказали что в будущем обновлении починят. - не все ошибки исправлены. Я долго общался с поддержкой, они часть ошибок устранили, но не все. Ошибки связаны не с поддержкой Linux, а с самим кодом в игре. Ошибки не очень критины для прохождения, но выбить все достижения я не смог( + игра написана на питоне и вы можете посмотреть код и даже отредактировать его (к примеру, чтобы выбить достижение хакерским методом). Очень рекомендую к покупке дополнение Planetary exploration.А вот дополнение Rocketship только после прохождения игры, если игра вам понравилась. CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4765T RAM: 16G SSD: KINGSTON SUV300S37A120G Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4G (nvidia-current) OS: MagOS Linux 2016.64

I like the concept but the game is filled with bugs, one of which prevents me from finishing the story so can't recommend. Too bad.

Here is a game that throws you into a hostile environment, where your choices alone will dictate whether or not you and your people live to see another day. If you think that sounds unforgiving, you'd be right. The mantle of leadership will quickly wear heavy on your shoulders, as the gravity of your situation becomes clear. Can you make the decisions no one else will? Can you lie to people, telling them everything will be alright, knowing fully well it will not. Can you send dozens of people to their deaths so that many more may have a chance at life? In the end, what is more important to you? Their survival or your humanity? Aside from a thoroughly enjoyable game, this product gets a high recommendation from me because of the dev's outstanding willingness to see their product succeed. Going so far as to contact me and personally assist in resolving a major, in-game issue I experienced.

Interesting premise. Reminds me of King of Dragon Pass, one of my favorite games. However. Lots of bugs. Have hit more than one game-ending glitch and I'm probably done trying to restart the game to play through it to hit another game-ending bug. Some of these bugs are such that they prevent the plot from progressing, and having days passing without plot progress is almost always going to mean your colony will fail - time is the enemy. I've googled a bit and it seems that the game has been abandoned and won't be receiving any further fixes. It's unfortunate. If you're a game developer trying to research ways to do this story-and-strategy genre, pick this up on a sale. Everyone else, skip it and keep a net gain to your blood pressure.

I can describe most of the features of this game with the word 'solid', from the writing, to the gameplay, to the characters and coding. None of these things truly stand out as exceptional, but together they produce a game that I found both addictive and memorable. While it lasted at least, be aware that this game is 'very' short. While that time is lengthened a far bit by the game being pretty hard (in a good way), the story lasts about four hours. Those hours are certainly good ones however, and the art and moral choices both stand out as being a cut above most offerings at this price. Together, this game is very easy to recommend.

Too many bugs. It seems like its still in beta. My experience is i cant even get to the top down base management part of the game. Just crashes and asks me to submit a bug report - which i have. On the plus side the game is looks quite unique and promising...

I'll get the bad things out of the way immediately. You'll probably want to mute this game, or at least reduce the levels in the settings. The "music" might improve later on but at the beginning it was more like listening to two pieces of metal grind together. Instead, I lowered everything and just listened to my own music of other things in the background. You'll just be reading a lot anyway. There's a few weird graphic things, like a child "jumping" into his mother's arms only to find he's missing any legs below the knee because they didn't bother to draw it. But that's fine. Otherwise this is a surprisingly enjoyable game. It took some unexpected turns even after I had everything figured out. It's very much a story driven game that changes based on your decisions. It's sort of got that "one more turn" feel as you become more curious about the plot and colony progression. For the price it's probably worth it if you like this kind of game. I've read some of the negative reviews and they don't seem to realize this is absolutely a "visual novel" game. The story is only minorly in your hands and your job is to keep things level in order to keep it moving forward. If that doesn't sound fun, skip the game or watch someone else play it. I don't expect there's a lot of replayability since the story would remain largely the same, but it could be fun to see if you make it through the challenge of higher difficulties.