Recent reviews by ollj

Very good game and execution. gameplay quite similar to the game "concrete jungle", which is basically just one dimension less, and also a deck-builder.

similar building-placement-games usually have a spherical area-of-effect, it is nice to have that simplified here.

This could use a turn-based-VERSUS-MODE due to its 3d-tetris-vibes.

I am not too sure about the fail-state-challenge of ever-increasing rent, simple enough, works for a while, but is an ever growing "eternal cylinder coming for you".
Maybe instead have "exponential-maintenance and decay-over-time"; buildings may damage other buildings and self, buildings may repair other buildings cheaper, buildings may resist decay more. this adds a layer of complexity, that may be worth it, as it "adds a dimension to interactions". it MAY add some randomness, for better or worse, or just be 100% predictable.

exponential-maintenance+decay makes early game easier, and late game harder (the more is build, the more is to maintain).
exponential-maintenance+decay makes failure not-necessarily-fatal, only parts of your structures may crumble, at a cost, but this also lowers exponential-maintenance for a bit, and it just cuts into your savings account temporarily to "clear up the rubble".
note, i mean "maintenance+decay" only increase the more you have build (and maybe the higher you have build", because "skyscrapers are dumb" unless benefits from high density outweight costs.

Simple basic and well done sandbox-y manager.

As with many simple early management-games, they tend to lack a cheaper smaller and slightly less-efficient version of the otherwise too expensive buildings, here this mostly affects all the monster spawners and monsters, costing you 450 just to add ANY monster, that most visitors demand more of early on, and that you start with a high+empty cap of, BUT you just can not afford many initially, in favor of buying other cheaper things instead.
This just constrains choices too much for no goods reason.

You have this "cheaper tier" for "rooms", but here "smaller" just feels like a waste initially, though it certainly is not, small cozy rooms give good rating-boosts.

For monster-spawners, add one that costs half as much, but has a more-than-twice as long spawn-time. Maybe make it upgrade-able to the normal-cost-one.
For monsters, maybe just re-scale them to be cheaper ad weaker, maybe add an early-game-tier.

a type of spawner and monster should be an option at the cost of 200-300, and not start at 450 as lowest-cost.


The above problem (lacking cheaper+smaller/weaker and less efficient alternatives) was a much bigger issue for EARLY versions of '"surviving mars", where there only existed one way-too-large glass-dome tat was less than half empty for way too long, and all buildings existed in 1 way too large (for early game) size, that was doomed to be inefficient due to vacancy. Now "surviving mars" has smaller variants of most structures and is a much better (easier and less constraining and less fail-by-random-chance) game for it.

This very procedurally-generated immersive-sim dares to do the great thing of having a population of a few hundreds of npc-humans with schedules (mostly within 50-ish companies) and rather complex relationships, within a basic-procedural environment for a stealth and detective game.

If you want a perfect and polished game (closer to portal2), this is not it, because it is experimental, and random, and novel.
It works for the most part, permuted-emergent-properties can go through the roof, which also messes up any hopes for a coherent difficulty-curve due to silly-interactions or arbitrarily-brutal-randomness.
This works as a great proof-of-concept for a very difficult game-design-challenge, that asks to be refined around a lot of rough-edges, and it is being updated as of 2024

Core-gameplay-loop can be VERY repetitive:
- this has less than 10 slightly too dumb+blatant archetype-scenarios, to be repeated with lots of procedural parameters, that still remain too predictive, and you can figure out solving-optimization-methods. sadly you can quickly tell the archetype, as in "if a business card is next to the murder victim, a co worker was the killer"., almost all murder cases are THAT predictable, so you can solve them within 5 playtime minutes from metagaming-experience.
- game-difficulty-setting only affects armor, not deduction-challenge.
- pacing is all over the place (more realistic actually) from detailed slow "paperwork deduction" to fast paced-fight and-chase, with occasional "hide in the closet" horror-elements.
- survival-elements and timed-schedules (timing-puzzle-stealth and waiting for events, or hurrying foe a deadline) often do not mix well together.
- Slow dialog boxes do not allow for interrupts but do allow for unintentional waste-of-bribe-money.
- the proc-gen is basic and functional, being basic just makes it more repetitive at first glance, and in core loops.
- visuals work for the theme, but the more often silly than useful screen-space-reflections show how minimal this is, in favor of more hopes for stable frame rates.

detail does as far as using a fingerprint scanner for fingerprints and shoe sizes of footprints, alogside blood-types in locked-away birth-certificates, and getting suspiciously smelly from dumpster-diving for food or evidence.

this savesl+oads a largest-city within 40 seconds on cheaper SSD.
generating a largest-city takes roughly 2 minutes.
This runs fine in terms of good multity-reading, only the game-intro-cinematic lags a bit, likely because it does a silly high FoV for cinematography.

This has a steep learning curve or trials and errors, that can be fast-loaded with roughly 1 hour of 3 youtube videos of basic general tips (really spoiler free).

this is sometimes buggy:
- mostly in terms of basic-npc-ai-stuff, being dumber and more egocentric than a herd of cats, sometimes clipping through walls unfairly, and sometimes escalating "do not touch me bro" accidents into brutal mass murders.
- buggy in how the map generator has semi-impossible/unfeasible geometry with occasional z-buffer-fighting-flicker and 2 opposing doors clipping through each other in a too thing hallway, because "doors are very hard in video games".
- buggy in how irrational, ifnorant or overreacting, nocs can be.
- buggy as in, clipping through the floor, falling endlessly.
this is all still being patched and refined.

planned add-ons, and even planned mod support have all the potential to fix all the issues, and more.

Excellent character-driven narrative.
Mix of visual novel and simple action-puzzles works very well.
The game keeps itself simple and focused, exaggerating clicés for mostly good reasons, usually for the better, and this can easily be extended.

I feel much safer next to Jarod (desperate and agressive, wanted for murder, he may not even have done) than next to Sonya (knowingly lying narciscict fake-news star).
I did not safe Zoe, because she never wanted to go skinny-dipping in the Waterfall or wanted to get intimate with me. sorry, but that was a deal breaker.
Fanny (caring good-cop) is obviously dumber and easier to see-through and manipulate than even Stan&Mitch (amateur closet-gay criminals)
John (jaded John) and Jared (nerd genius) sure will quickly buy ever single company on the planet and own all settlements on moon and mars.

Brettspielwelt.de has this as a great online-only multiplayer java-implementation for free (without AI-NPC-oponent.)
Here, for base game, you pay 4 dollarbucks for a decent (offline) AI, insignificant pretty visuals and repetitive audio.
Worth it, just barely. Hotseat-able.
Here, 11 euros of dlc are likely not worth it. (winter salce 2024 prices)

online multiplayer ports may be blocked by default-wifi-router-settings (may need to be port-forwarded)

good first impression.
want option to always show flight paths, fading out where predicted
want color coded flight paths
want option to have starting planes automatically to to exists on launch

Prologue gives a very good first impression

surprisingly good
brutally unpredictable

not a huge fan of the 2 genres mixed here
a huge fan of any novel way of mixing 2 genres
this one works very well and is well done.

basic excellence