Senaste recensioner av Staticwombat

Got this expecting to be disappointed, but it's actually pretty fun. It's not crushingly hard like many roguelikes and the combat doesn't take too long to get used to. It does feel weird, and often my attacks don't end up where I expect, but overall the system feels neat. It's very satisfying when a good hit does connect. There's even an end to each character, so it's not an eventual slog to certain death. Overall, a neat game, but I'd probably suggest waiting until it's about 20-25% off.

Fantastic, simple, fun game. You need to have good co-ordination with the people you play with. The real shine to this game are the upgrades you get that help automate your kitchen and make the overall serving experience faster. This, plus the limited space you get to place your restaurant items, makes for a really challenging experience that balances preparation with action.

game!

I was a big fan of Mini Metro, but this is a whole other level of complexity. Mini Motorways is, simply put, a great game to fill half an hour at a time.

When I first started playing, I actually felt it was a step down from Mini Metro. Whilst it was indeed satisfying to grow a city with houses and more planning than the straight rail lines either tending to one side of the screen or the other with minimal reason to choose one over the other than aesthetics, it also felt too busy, like there was too much going on, and that it couldn't be made efficient. On the contrary, Mini Motorways actually has a considerable amount more depth and finesse, whilst keeping the basic premise of Mini Metro going.

Houses spawn randomly, each providing two cars of a particular colour. Businesses also spawn randomly, demanding cars of a particular colour. When a business "pings" for a car, a parked car leaves its house to go pick up the ping, then make the journey back home. Throw in the usual array of limited bridges/tunnels and a couple of swanky power-ups and you have your classic experience. You also have a limited amount of road tiles, receiving varying amounts more alongside which power-up you pick at the end of an ingame week.

At first the game feels messy. I found no value in the traffic lights power-up, I found roundabouts to be minimally useful, but motorways were clearly useful. I encountered an issue where my cars hit gridlock, with no possible way to fix them except patiently waiting for them to unblock, which led to a loss. But over time, I've started to learn little tricks. It seems like junctions with more than 3 connections slow down cars. Traffic lights are very effective on crossroads. It's best to leave a couple of tiles gap between junctions to help traffic flow.

Motorways aren't as useful as picking up and moving trains, like in Mini Metro, thought that's probably a good thing as moving trains became the main form of play in that game. You can only move pieces once any car that's "reserved" the route has an alternative way back, or has cleared the route is they're too far along it. This makes rapidly moving motorways or changing roads challenging, so early planning is essential, especially given roundabouts take up a large amount of space so much be placed early.

What separates this from Mini Metro is this extra depth in the way of planning ahead, and making use of the various quirks of how cars travel. Even considerations to what side of the road a car will be on to help ensure traffic flow make a difference. In fact, the only downside I can think of so far is I personally can't see what value the roundabout has, as it often seems slower than a crossroads with lights.

A great game, and as per usual with this developer, we can expect more maps and content to come out in the future.

Worked fine for me, people just haven't looked for the right customisation chests.

For a game about moving fast, you seem to move really slowly. When it does suddenly get to a point of action, clunky controls make your actions feel weak and meaningless. Even when I did pull off something perfectly, it didn't feel impressive, it just felt meh.

So many simple control changes would have made this more fun. If you're aimed at an enemy and click, you should automatically dash towards them. When you crouch on a sliding point, I shouldn't have to hold the button. Putting dash and slow-mo on the same button was an oversight, it should have only been slow-mo with the dash tied to attacking.

Whilst I only got 30m in, I already feel bored. The story is oh so, so dry. And they ease you into a story you don't care about with... Platforming. No enemies and no challenge. The final straw was getting reset to the start of a big platforming section, where you have to be slow and methodical in what is supposed to be a fast game which ALREADY feels too slow, and just thinking "No part of me wants to do that again".

This game can't decide what it wants to be. Long-term Civ-like game? Philosophical? Diplomatic? It doesn't hit any of the targets.

The game is built primarily around the idea that you're promoting the soul. Your nation is a hub for ideas and the formation of culture. However, this actually is entirely lore based and has virtually no bearing on the game.

Instead, everybody playing this, myself included, is a power player. I don't really care what the idea is or the lore behind it, but I do care that it gives me +0.38% fit for service population. You WILL spend half your time in this game scrolling through the hundreds of ideas to find the ones that give the best perks for your nation. And those people who play this every day have figured the exact order of ideas to pick; your first nation will suck, because they know which item in which list in which menu in which section to find the three ideas that will give you colonisation speed boosts... It's needlessly painful.

The military system is overly detailed for what it is. Dozens of different unit types, but no real distinction or reason to use most of them. Should be much simpler.

What I will say is I like the graphics, the slow expansion over the map, and the trade-offs that ideas give. However, the overwhelming time spent looking through ideas, confusing military, poor UI, and the ease of becoming a steamroller makes me suggest you don't bother trying to get into this. Civ VI, EU IV (or similar Paradox game), or Tribal Wars; one of those 3 games will scratch the itch better than this game can.

Go play Men of War: Assault Squad 2. This game is absolutely dire. You men have no idea how to aim, the UI is clunky, it's not fluid. These devs have no excuse either. MoW is a fantastic game.

To really scum it up, the actually decent successor to Men of War has now been made a DLC to this ♥♥♥♥♥. So if you want to play Gates of Hell, which is a genuinely fun game, you're forced to buy whatever this is.

Don't support these practices. They're dooming their own games to failure.

I really want to like this game but the UI really lets it down. It feels barebones. There's no feedback for selecting something, every option takes a moment to load. It's nowhere near fluid.

Also, why am I being penalised for not going into the town screens? No other game would FORCE you to closely observe a town to maximise building efficiency. It's not fun, it's tedious. And why penalise me for clicking "collect all taxes" instead of going to each town and clicking them one by one? It just doesn't make sense. Units are hard to distinguish from one another, tooltips are lacking, units are slow, the overworld is slow (and the maximum game speed is 2x), the UI is slow... It feels like this game is trying to be a little of everything, and failing at all of them as a result.

Was a shallow, uninteresting game. Might be great in multiplayer but very dull in singleplayer.

EDIT: Given the dev response, I feel I should give a bit more detail. For what I played of it, the core gameplay seemed limited. It got repetitive very quickly. Whilst I didn't expect much different (indeed, this is just a game where there is fire, it spreads, you put it out), it wasn't enough to keep my attention. Going into a level, putting out the fire, and then just being greeted with a different layout but the same situation didn't feel rewarding.

It definitely looks like a game where the multiplayer aspect could make all the difference, but I didn't get a chance to explore that.

I remember my exact experience being "Oh, this is really cool! It's really neat how the fire spreads, the way its put out, the general objectives. Cool, I like having a time limit and having what are effectively optional objectives. Oh, okay so the next level is the same thing again, but in a bigger building that's objectively difficult to navigate. Oh, the next is this again."

EDIT2: I now seem to be in a nice chat with the devs, hi guys! :)

Within the short time I played (which was a couple months ago [Edit 3: 8th July]), I didn't explore much except for the trampoline and the ladder; I remember finding the trampoline to be much less useful than the ladder, but I can't remember the specifics. I certainly haven't used the ice gun, which I believe is added in the latest update. The only gamemode I explored was the standard (if it can be called that?) one where you go into buildings and have to rescue everyone before they perish or the building collapses. I don't recall seeing other gamemodes when I played but maybe I didn't get far enough? I definitely don't recall an escape level!

Maybe the game has changed significantly from when I played, in which this could be a very unfair review. I have to admit I can't think of any specifics for what might make it more replayable; I only played for a small amount of time a few months ago.