Recent reviews by bicZoid

Not sure what to think. Looks great and I like the concept.

Lack of any update from dev is not promising. No response to any of the discussions. I get it, hopefully the game is being worked on, but if you put out a demo to get feedback it kinda seems like maybe you'd look at and engage once in a while.

Tasks in the game are clear - except when they aren't. I got stymied by painting the barn. It says "hold RMB to refill paint gun" but that does nothing and there's no indication of what you actually need to do here.

I hope this game continues, but for now I think I'll remove the demo and just wait to see what happens.

I wish there was a "maybe" option for recommending. It could be promising, but at this point it just feels like there are too many unknowns, so if anything, I'd wishlist and follow it and then forget about it for now. For that reason I'm going to select "no" as a recommendation for now.

Recommended.... with reservations.

If you have a previous iteration, I wouldn't rush to buy this version. It needs WORK. And mods. Or wait for a sale. But that's not surprising. I do wish Giants would work more on refining and improving game mechanics and less on "Hey look, a shiny new area!"

It looks nice (except for the random white flicker). Colors still don't "pop" as much as I'd like them to (and I have my monitor set up to be bright) but I think it's a slight improvement over past games. Also, I find the drawing distance/rendering kind of annoying. Kind of ruins immersion when things in the distance aren't fully realized, especially when working larger fields.

It's easy to get into, even if you start from scratch (I lower the starting money to its lowest, $100K, and I get rid of the loan). Do some contracts, buy some land, buy a chainsaw to cut and sell trees and work your way up.

AI is good, but only for certain tasks. I've noticed that with the simpler jobs, such as cultivating or harvesting, the AI is fine... but when it's a job such as baling, the AI is f*****g stupid and can't even figure out how to navigate past an "obstacle" such as a bale of hay. As of right now it's pointless to have AI do baling, wood transport, any tree work - basically anything other than "here's a flat field to plow/seed/fertilize/harvest."

Anyway, it's fun, but it's also frustrating. If you don't have one of these games already, I'd get this one (if you don't mind waiting for mods); otherwise go with the previous one. If, like me, you already have multiple versions, you'll probably get this one too despite the constant drawbacks and hope for the best.

I tend to write basic reviews, usually because I'm in a hurry, and this will probably be no different... :-)

Anyway, this is probably my favorite of all the newer build-and-survive games I've played in quite a while.

It's easy to get into, but there's still depth to it. It's a stellar entry in the genre.

Looks great, runs great. I've had absolutely no issue at all there. It's engaging, and I often have to pull myself away from it because "Just five more minutes; I want to see this thing to completion."

If you have issues or suggestions, the dev really goes above and beyond with responses and information.

I love it, and if you have any interest at all in this type of game, it's a no-brainer, really.

Disclaimer: I'm a bit buzzed, but I just played this for a couple of hours so I wanted to say something. :-)

Man I'm loving this game. Looks great, works great. Haven't encountered any issues.

This isn't a "start from scratch" game - you start off in a situation and have to deal with it and then go from there. It's engaging. I love turn-based combat, and honestly, this is some of the best I've played. You don't have to sit there and scratch your head to figure out how to do things. Combat makes sense and flows nicely. The story is compelling from the start.

Normally when I start a game I take a lot of notes, because I'm not particularly fond of scrolling through a bunch of menus to understand how things work - it's easier to just look at what I wrote. But I didn't do that with this game because I initially planned to just jump in and get a sense of it and then restart with a more "serious" approach - but then I discovered that was totally unnecessary with this game. Which is awesome.

Sure, there's a bit of an info dump at the beginning concerning mechanics and controls, and I could have written everything out for easy access, but as I said, I just wanted to jump in and see what it was like first. And the great thing is, you don't have to pay too much attention to it anyway, lol, because the game is so intuitive and things work so well that you learn by playing. Too many games neglect that and give you too much that you need to know before you even start, but this just flows and makes sense, so whether you pay attention to every little thing or just jump in, you don't feel like you're floundering.

Anyway, this is a blast and probably one of my favorite games in recent memory. I am LOVING IT!! Give it a chance; you won't be disappointed.

I love this game. I take chances on many games like this and I'm glad I jumped on this one. My attention jumps all over the place and some games are really hard to get into, but this one keeps me engrossed.

The amount of improvements since it has come out is impressive and the dev has been very responsive here (I haven't jumped onto the Discord yet). It looks and works much better than when it started. It's more in-depth than some similar games out there, and there are options to change some things to make them more to your liking. The game is less "hand hold-y" than some others in the genre, but I do think it could use some better explanations here and there. I've had a few moments of confusion, not exactly sure what I needed to do, but I've made a few posts and the dev has been responsive and helpful.

Yeah, there are some areas that could still use work, but I have faith. Painting, for example, can be a real pain in the butt unless you set the "motion sickness" option to click-and-hold painting instead of having to move the brush around. The only drawback, to me, is that the option also affects cleaning and I prefer the more interactive cleaning approach - so as of now I either have to keep changing the option, depending upon whether I'm cleaning or painting, or just accept the less interactive cleaning for now so I don't have to keep tweaking the option off and on. I did suggest to the dev that those two tasks should have their own option toggle so you can change one or both depending upon preference, and I hope to see that some day.

Anyway, that's it for now. I need to go play some more before I have to go to work.

Yes, I recommend. I like these types of games but not all of them grab me and make me keep playing. This one does. Why? I don't know, really; it's just "right" somehow.

That's not to say there aren't some issues (see below), but the dev seems hard at work and invested. Bugs get squashed, tweaks are tweaked; I hope there is a lot more in store for this game (no pun intended).

You're likely familiar with the premise: start with a small store, buy stuff, sell stuff, make money, expand and upgrade, get access to new products. Open and close whenever you feel like it, which is nice. Game could use an actual pause, though, that stops everything.

Right now the help you hire is bald. Yeah, all of them. Hopefully that'll change at some point. And it seems that when there's a "dust storm" outside it also permeates the store; would be nice if that were kept outside. And the garage door - once you unload the last box from the truck, the door will shut in a relatively short amount of time, with no way of opening it from the outside (so to get back in you have to go back to the front entrance). The door staying open until manually closed (like with a button inside and outside) would be nice. And delivery trucks could use some work - being able to haul more of a load would be great.

But, all the nitpicking aside, I really dig this. Two thumbs up.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Dev is responsive, which is great.

I think overall the game looks great, although I'd personally like a little more color "pop" like in Tavern Master, and it would be nice to see more character models.

This game is what it says - it's very chill, and that definitely has its place. It does kind of become "set it and forget it," really, but sometimes I want something that like this that can be running while I do other things.

That said, I can't see myself doing any marathon sessions because, in all honesty, it CAN turn into a "just sit and watch things happen while you wait for that next level, or keep yourself occupied with other things at the same time" kinda thing. Sometimes that's good, when I've got a million other things to do, but it really limits the "sit and play" approach, at least for me.

But I do dig it, and I think it holds up well overall compared to games in the same or similar genre that might be a little more hands-on (and some run the risk of being a little TOO hands-on and become tedious). I think a mix between this and those would be the ultimate game.

This has a lot of potential, but it's already a great game that is fun and definitely worth jumping into.

Dev is incredibly responsive and issues are fixed asap.

I'm still early in game. One nice thing is that the game doesn't tell you "do this do that" like other simulator games; you're given free reign and off you go. Some things are locked behind upgrades, of course, but how you get there is up to you.

Starting off already having a loan to pay back was a bit of a shock at first as most games just have it as an option, but then again it's more realistic; you're not going to buy a building and open a bar without having gotten money from somewhere.

You can buy beer from low-end to high, and customers will want it all. Stay well-stocked. And don't avoid tables unless you want to pick up all the bottles and glasses from the floor later ;-)

It would be nice if the "clean" mechanic was a bit more developed; right now you either just press a button once or three times, depending upon what you're cleaning.

This is a solid release so far and an interesting addition to the whole "simulator" market. Definitely recommend.

EDIT: I originally gave this a "No" rating, but after playing for several hours straight tonight I have changed it to "Yes," although my major critiques still stand.

I will soon be up to 100 hours in the original game. With HF2 I could barely get past a few tasks before it grew tiresome. It took a few tries to really get into the flow of things with this one.

A few things that stick out to me:

This second attempt IS more colorful, which is good. The most glaring thing to me in the first game is how the environment is so drab when you're outside.

Why they thought we need a task list AND immersion-breaking floating yellow circles with exclamation points to let us know where there are things to do is beyond me. I feel like I'm cleaning in Mario's World. And I do like the original's task list much more. In this case it kinda seems like they changed it just to change it. Which lead me to the next point:

They changed things that didn't need changing. I think the grid lines that show up when you're moving something are totally unnecessary and take away from the immersion/realism.

EDIT: The painting mechanic. I thought it was perfectly fine in the first game - aim and paint, and upgrade the number of panels you can paint at once. In HF2 you first have to select a "paint outline" and then paint within that area. And the painting feels a bit more tedious in that you no longer just aim at a panel and paint; now you have to move the roller around. Which is the "more tedious" part, to me, anyway. Granted, I don't have any painting upgrades yet but I'm hoping at least one of them will simplify the approach.

I admit that I'm so used to the first game's mechanics that in this version they're a bit annoying. You can't even look at a window and know whether or not it needs to be cleaned (EDIT: some windows are obviously dirty, but some are not and you're really not going to notice that they need cleaning unless you take a really good look). You have to have the "cleaning" option already selected and then try to clean the window. If there's nothing to be cleaned you'll just move the scrubber around to no effect, but if the window needs to be cleaned it'll magically change to the window cleaner tool. It's just weird, to me.

I could do without the interactive phone calls, which could come before, during, or after a job (or all three). Just give me a synopsis and set me loose.

But despite all that, it's still a good game and scratches the multi-tasking itch.

This is fast becoming a favorite.

Disclaimer: I bought it a few months ago, spent a little time in it, went "Ugh" and got a refund. And then at some point I started feeling like "Great, I got defeated by a game I barely gave a chance. That should not stand."

So yeah, I bought it again, and I'm glad I did, faults and all.

It took several restarts before I really started to see how the mechanics worked. I didn't have the game back when the player had more control, but I've read about it. You can't miss something you never had - or can you? I can see how people would think that was the better approach. There is an aspect of "hurry up and wait" in this game - start off, set a few things in motion, and then wait for enough item accumulation in order to be able to unlock the next round of stuff. That's kind of a bummer. I often leave the game running and go off to do other stuff, then come back to see what's what. That said, you could spend your "waiting" time by mining for resources, or building stuff, but until you get a lot of resources and building blocks, you won't get very far. The game does seem kind of "iffy" that way - you need stuff to do stuff, but it seems as if it'll be a long grind to really get things functioning. Fortunately I do enjoy games that can be slow and even torturous (haha).

I haven't even tried the defense part of the game yet. I tend to prefer just building and growing colonies anyway, and I figured the "peaceful" setting would be better for learning the basics).

So, uh, yeah, I dig it. Could definitely use some tweaks and refinements/upgrades though, and maybe some better pathfinding (like, right now at least, my beds are in a line, and behind them is a "hedgerow" of grass blocks - but instead of getting up and going to the entrance/exit, the colonists just walk over the grass blocks. Maybe that'll be "solved" once I build up walls? Dunno yet. Or if I have a mining pit on some land across water, they're happy to walk underwater to get to it instead of on the bridge I put up). I think the tutorial could stand to be expanded and improved upon, because right now the vibe is "I really have no idea how all this works or how to best implement it" and that might scare away potential players (as it did to me the first time I tried it). But don't get me wrong, I know that learning is often a big part of games; I just personally had more than a few "I have no friggin' idea what I'm doing here" moments. But, as I said, I refuse to be beaten by this game and I will enjoy the battle. :-)