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As a sandbox, it’s most likely exactly what you would expect and hope for. So if you know what the sandbox is, and that’s what you’re after, I don’t think anything else needs to be said.

The campaign is allegedly something of an afterthought, but I found it wholly adequate and it’s what I’ve spent the most time with. The missions of collecting things around the level within a minute get some criticism, and with reason, but I think it’s more related to repetition than an intrinsic flaw in the goal itself. There is some variation in the first half of the game, then in the second half there are far more styles of challenge that have you doing something very different to the same routine of smashing holes in the right walls. I kept coming back to it until it was done and even knocked off all the achievements, so it’s hardly a poor use of time in my eye.

The game is, on the whole, exactly what you might expect – a series of abstract logic puzzles around manipulating inputs into outputs, somewhat akin to algorithmic programming. It introduces the core concepts in simple scenarios so you can understand the mechanics of the environment, then builds from those into more sophisticated exercises in applied thinking. The game delivers.

Don’t be put off by mentions of synthesisers if that’s not something you’re familiar with. I’ve never touched one myself but there’s nothing so domain-specific that it could be an impediment to understanding. In fact the introductory for the concept-introducing levels always have clear “I know what these words mean” and “I need some background” options so you shouldn’t feel talked-down to or left in the dark.

The production value is great. You would have seen how the patching looks in levels, and the non-level art is similarly nice. Music is also good; perhaps gets a bit samey when repeating across consecutive levels but never tiring. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be an OST offered anywhere so you’ll have to resort to semi-suspect methods to listen outside the game. In theory, of course…

I rather liked the “wholesome apocalypse” setting. Rather than scavenging and the like, from the outset it’s established that there are already communities of farmers with stable food and shelter. It’s nice.

Unfortunately, the Signal State does veer somewhat on the short side. It took about two or three sessions to get through everything – the tougher optional levels as well as some bonus challenge achievements. There is a sandbox and workshop levels I haven’t looked at, which no doubt offer far more, but wouldn’t have that same sort of progression and focus towards an end.

In summary: doesn’t disappoint, but won’t take too long to get through.

A logic simulator in three dimensions has real potential, but I see serious design flaws that go deeper then “it’s early access.” It really feels, in multiple aspects, as though someone’s only introduction to any kind of digital logic was redstone in Minecraft, so they went and simulated that instead. More on this further below.

But first and foremost, is it even a good logic design and simulation tool? No.


The range of components provided is embarrassingly limited. No clocked flip-flops, no multiplexers, and only one kind of latch. There’s not even the full set of 6 or 7 basic logic gates – OR gates in particular are notably absent. (wat? How?? We’ll get to this.)

Making precise connections with a crosshair in first person is perhaps exactly as fun as it sounds. Unless it sounds alright, in which case no, it’s worse. I reckon something like what happens in Garry’s Mod when you hold C, where the camera locks in position and you can target any point on your screen, could help here. It would be no worse than any existing 2D interface, at least.

You can build reusable components but every instance will be just as bulky as the first. Have fun copying around 8-bit multiplexers everywhere – there’s no sort of nesting like in other logic software.

All connections go in a straight line from output to input. If that’s blocked, you can’t make it. You have to manually place each corner of the planned path, then come back around to each one in sequence to route the actual connection through them.

In part to have more than first impressions, I eventually put together a BCD to 7-segment decoder. Making anything optimised would have been too painful but even the basic sum of products approach was unpleasant. Remember – no OR gates are provided!

But oh in the future maybe there’ll be a broader range of components. Sure, but it doesn’t help anyone now. At the moment it appears to be strongly dependent on semi-official modding, though.


Now here’s why I think the future won’t look any better; why the groundwork and future direction itself is fundamentally flawed. Logic World purports to be “running on the same principles as real world computer chips,” and yet the mechanics of the simulation itself bear a closer resemblance to those of Minecraft. Which, I’m likely obliged to disclaim, is not bad in of itself, but horrible when you want to have relevance to real digital logic. And it’s real digital logic that the game tries to sell itself as.

The game won’t tell you this, but the simulation is heavily based around “ticks,” where each component takes a notable time to update its output from its inputs. Community designs, like in Minecraft, concern themselves greatly with “one tick pulses” and related synchronisation problems, as though gate propagation delays could ever be treated as reliable or consistently uniform. If you happen to already know some principles of digital circuit design, you might be able to set up some synchronous logic with an external clock, but the significant delay of every gate will need the clock speed to be very slow.

Logic World also uses the same semi-tri-state logic consisting of “high” and what is functionally “high impedance” (effectively “disconnected”). It’s considered totally fine to run two outputs onto the same line – if one is switched ““low”” and one is switched high then anything further will just arbitraily read “high.” This is presumably why it’s been deemed alright to not supply any OR gate components – rather than feeding a bunch of signals into one gate it’s clearly better to plonk down a “buffer” for each line separately and run all them all together. The fix for this isn’t even convoluted, it should just refuse to make any connection between two outputs like it will refuse to make a connection that goes through walls.

These aspects of the design do not make it more accessible. They only make it less meaningful. Proper techniques are possible, but the game is built to encourage methods that absolutely do not work in reality.


Rather limited and the interface needs work, but the core design is unsuitable for real logic anyway.

Everything about this feels more like a job than a puzzle. Maybe if you're super into optimising EVERYTHING, you could squeeze some enjoyment out. Otherwise, synthesising each compound just takes more time than it does thought.

It is built on hexagons as god intended, but SpaceChem is still far more worth your time. Go play that instead.

Universe Sandbox squared seems to solve two separate targets: careful construction of your best imaginary system, and the sheer spectacle of massive collisions and flying debris everywhere, all bound by their own gravity. It's excellent for either, or rather, both.

It's really simple. Bought for the achievement and was done after two hours.

The gimmick is that you are forced to move atoms one-by-one, both in reactors and occasionally in pipelines too (when there is a "teleporter" present). Because that's so limiting, it actually makes the puzzles quite simple, and once you've worked out the basic technique for moving a whole molecule atom-by-atom you've basically solved them all.

Unfortunately the "Swap" mechanic isn't very interesting because you have to use it to move atoms from one side to the other. I guess ResearchNet exists if you want to do more with it.

This DLC feels very tacked-on: it doesn't integrate with the existing level selection and story dialogs at all. There's actually incredibly little in the way of story anyway; it doesn't seem as if there was anything actually new to learn from it.

I feel like there's not really much to justify this being a separate purchase, but it is usually very cheap so it's hard to fault.

TL;DR: an arcade game that's too involved to be an arcade game.

I'm perfectly okay with the idea that a game doesn't have to be about winning. The odds can be stacked against you and death be common, that's fine. But it still has to be satisfying. FTL is not satisfying.

As you surely know from reading other reviews, FTL involves a high degree of randomness. Every sector has a random map of beacons, with random allies or enemies at each, shops with different items available and encounters with different outcomes each time you come across it. This is often held as FTL's weak point, but I think it goes deeper.

Most encounters are easy. Your shields are just too strong, you picked up a really good weapon early on, you have so many crew members that nothing can break. But then you'll come across something you're not prepared for. Perhaps you could have been prepared, but then something else would have killed you earlier or later.

Even worse, you can't prepare ahead of time. Maybe you spent most of your savings on a really good weapon because you knew you'd probably never see it again, and now you've been invaded by a trio of mantis boarders and had no idea you needed anti-personnel drones instead. Next playthrough you go for the drone, and then face a ship with powerful shields. What were you meant to do?

It feels like FTL wants to be an arcade game, but gets so carried away with intricacy that the format no longer suits.
You died after an hour of planning and fighting? Here's your score! Want to try again?
You finally beat the end boss? Here's your score! Want to try again? (disclosure: I haven't won)
That's not even an exaggeration. When your ship blows up, or everyone on board dies, you're given a score and options like "new game" and "quit".

But here's what's really bad: there is a plethora of ships available, but not immediately. They (appear to) have better systems pre-installed and more useful crew. So how do you get better ships? By doing difficult things like defeating the end boss or completing ship-specific achievements. A lot of them also rely on random events that you simply cannot guarantee you will be equipped for or even encounter on any specific playthrough. Too bad if you're unable to that stuff with your crappy ships! Enjoy them!

It's not the constant death that makes FTL bad. I enjoyed Hotline Miami, and you die all the time in that game. But you know what happens when do? It goes back to the beginning of the same floor with the same enemies with the same weapons in the same spots. Hotline Miami doesn't habitually throw brand new encounters against you whose outcomes you literally cannot predict.

What would it take to improve it? I don't know. I think the game's entire premise is fundamentally flawed. FTL is an experimental game, and that's not a bad thing: we can't have interesting games if nobody is willing to try new things. But that doesn't make a game good because it is experimental. FTL tried something, and it didn't work. Now we know not to do that.

FTL is alright to play through once or twice. I'm leaving a negative review because it simply fails to keep me engaged for long enough to enjoy.

Relaxing; just as it's supposed to be. And there's no price tag, which makes it hard to not worth your time.

Initially some aspects of the level generation and gameplay concerned me, but then I encountered the customisation menu which resolves all of that: by default it's too tightly packed for my liking, but you can reduce the density and make the levels bigger. Then you can get some nice swinging action.

One problem I still have is that the controls are a bit odd to get used to; the trio of grab/pull/release isn't completely intuitive.

I also feel that it punishes you slightly for hitting things; you slow down significantly, the music dims and the bars shrink. It'd be nice if collisions were more elastic.

As it's a simple game, there's little hassle: the download was done in seconds and it starts up with no delay nor loading screens.

'Tis an excellent game, hands down. Definitely do the tutorials before going for anything crazy. If you take your time, and think about how everything works, you'll be docking in no time.

Personally, I don't care too much for the career mode. I might try the science mode at some point (sort of a halfway point between career and sandbox), but currently sandbox is where I devote my time.

Possibly one of the best games in the Half-life series that lends well to be being played many times, as well as haivng plenty of really great mods available.
The Orange Box is worth it. Even if you already have Portal (like I did) it'll still save you some money.