Recent reviews by insaninater

Even years later, this game still sets the gold standard for what a survival crafting game can and should be.

It's not horrible, but as a follow-up to subnautica it just falls flat. It's small, limited, you move more slowly to try and compensate for the smaller world, which feels very empty, the surface areas are a chore, the story is forgettable and doesn't make much sense... There's just no point playing this game when the original subnautica exists.

It had a lot of potential, and i was really hopeful for updates! But it seems they abandoned it and released it free to play. What a slap in the face to those of us who actually bought it.

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Pretty good game! It's refreshingly intuitive compared to other F2P CCGs on steam like faeria or infinity wars, and it plays more like hearthstone than those games. To be frank, it plays a LOT like hearthstone, but that's OK. It's fun, intuitive, it's well put-together, and it's got a decent little stroyline on top of that. I do have a few criticisms tho.

1) Lack of real turn-around cards. The game doesn't have enough swing. An early advantage and staying on curve will almost always garuntee you the game. I haven't seen any boardwipes so far, and removal is more minimalistic overall than huge swingy effects, so that reduces a lot of the player choice, and it can sometimes feel like the result is going to be inevitable after even very early advantages or disadvantages. There is a system set up to try and mitigate this, the prophecy system, whereby when you reach certain life thresholds, you draw a card, which you can play for free if they have the prophecy keyword, but generally prophecy seems underwhelming, and the cards seem significantly under-curved when played normally, and are very rarely game-changers; however, there are many cards that give you advantage for being ahead in life, and honestly, they seem to me to be a bigger advantage than prophecy.

2) going 2nd is a HUGE advantage. You get an item (ring of magicka) that's essenetially the coin from hearthstone, but can be used 3 times, once per turn. You'd be very hard pressed to find anyone familiar with CCGs at all who could argue that going 2nd isn't a blatant overall advantage. Curve being so vital in this game only compound the problem, as the ring will almost gauruntee you stay on perfect curve for a long series of turns.

Overall though, it's a solid enough game, and for free, it's definately worth trying. It's a nice change of pace from some other steam CCGs, and i could see the game improving with future updates.

This game is great! I come from a more traditional card game background myself, but the card elements and the board-building elements come together really well. There's a huge variety of tactics and strategies that can work, both in decks and board-building. It comes together mechanically very well.

It also has a really nice atmosphere and aestetic. The game is very zen, which works well for a CCG.

This game is great! There's a ton of ways to play, the game is really fun, and it's free, and isn't a ♥♥♥♥ about pressuring you for microtransactions. It's absolutely worth at least a try.

This game's been a really great additon to my debilitating card game addiction. It's got a lot more depth and possibilities to it than hearthstone, but it's still very intuitive, they really did an excellent job balancing depth and ease of use, hitting the sweet spot between hearthstone boredom and mtg confusion. Definately worth a check out!

edit january 2017:

one criticism i have is that primal/shadow decks are so overpowered, they completely dominate the meta, as does control in general. It's a classic CCG pitfall to make control overpowered, and this game certainly looks like it might have fallen into that trap. It's still a great game, but it would be great if that problem was addressed.

This game is great! There's no dumb energy system, the game is fun and challenging to play, and progression is straightforward, with free champion-level decks available on rotation for newer players, and pvp and pve (though the pve is very limited) available whenever, and both give you the non-premium currency, which you can do a lot with.

There's no pressure to pump money in, and you can earn the premium currency through login rewards. Overall, the gameplay is great, with a lot of different stratagies being viable, and a lot of flexibility in how you can build and play your deck. I really like this game!

-----THE GOOD-----

-The game is really good! The story could be argued is potentially better than that of any of the penumbra or amnesia games. There is some really good .

-The atmosphere is absolutely on-point. The breaking-down facilities, the ocean (at least when inside) feels weighty and threatening.

-----THE BAD-----

-The game feels a bit aenemic and unfinished. The game sets up a lot of things in the begining that never really get resolved, such as how much you hook up the the WAU to heal, or how you feel about your transformation. It feels like we got the first half of an amazing game, and that it got cut off short about halfway through and somebody had to wrap it up quickly. The short play-time compared to previous frictional games games doesn't help it in that regard either, i cleared it in about 10 hours.

-The atmosphere is somewhat ruined by a few things,
A) You get your ally lady leading you around, which kills the sense of isolation and despeartion. You're largely running errands, not surviving on your own. Horror and talkative friendly allies who never betray you don't mix. Even when it's not the lady, and it's the voice, it still feels like an errand more than anything.
B) You're rarely ever faced with a serious theat. There's only like one time where there was more than 1 enemy to keep track of, and they're pretty easy to evade. Plus, when you get hit, you just get up later in the same spot, only really having to restart if you get hit to soon after the last time you got hit. There overall aren't even that many monsters in the game either.
C) The looming fear of the ocean is largely lost when you have to boringly walk a long ways in the ocean, not being harmed or in danger at all. It takes away a lot of that weight when you just jump in and out with no consequence.

-----OVERALL-----

Overall, it's a good game, and a good story, but whether you're playing for horror or narrative, by the end it will probably leave you a bit unsatisfied, if only becuase i presents such a hearty premise.