It is fun to die a lot.

I am terrible at platformers, but this one doesn't punish me for falling, it punishes me for not dodging and slow reflexes. Enemy variety is massive, enemies are challenging (though sometimes cheap, as they can hit you through floors - which isn't even really that much of a problem since you're so mobile, my only complaint is sometimes you can't even see them on screen and you're getting attacked).

One of the better roguelikes I've played where I feel like I'm still making progress even though I've died and lost some cells. And because loot is interesting, it's really fun to try new builds each run. Mixing and matching different weapons, grenades and mutations keep things fresh and all of it seems viable.

The art is great and the music is unique and memorable. Character controls / movement feels responsive and snappy, controls are intuitive. A very well designed game that is only marred by the fact that prior to purchasing DLC you will come upon areas you will not have access to which I find kind of distasteful.

If you get it on sale, you will find it fun.

if you buy it full price, I think the game has too many annoying mechanics to make you feel like you got a good deal. It is a cool colony builder, where the excitement and challenge of expanding civilisation on mars quickly gets tedious with annoying game mechanics.

Your people can become unhappy and want to go back to Earth far too quickly. I would have hoped that the candidates Earth is sending me on this mars program would have some more resilience and excitement.

You'd also think, they design better tech to deal with the dust eroding everything so quickly. But the game quickly becomes micromanaging resources and depending on where you decided to land - always imbalanced. People get unhappy because they don't have a Best Buy on mars, so you need to build an electronics store. But you need polymers to build electronics. You might not have polymers until several cycles in after you explore and expand. Even if you have the resources, you might not have the people BECAUSE THEY KEEP WANTING TO LEAVE MARS.

Your power grid will frequently go down, or meteors will kill your water pipes. And then it becomes a cascading domino problem. Your water pipe burst, but your drones are also out of power. You need to build more power sources, but you don't have enough metal. You don't have enough metal because your drones can't collect them.

Etc.

Also you can have everyone properly sorted in the right domes (but they won't work two domes away???) but then someone will die of old age, or something else, and then everything will be out of order again.

Obviously, you have to play it a bunch of times to learn all these mechanics.... but by the time you've figured it all out, it isn't really fun to play anymore.