Recent reviews by Enterprofilenamehere

I was surprised by this game. When I bought it I was a little worried about how cluttered the gameplay areas looked, and I thought it might be too overly-complicated and tedious to set everything up and complete levels.

In reality however the game is surprisingly intuitive, and it is fun discovering letter recipes. Chances are if a letter recipe makes sense, it will work.

The way the game works is that there are different kinds of factories which do different things, and you connect them so a letter goes through them in a certain order to change it into the letters you want to spell out words:

- the factory that produces the letter "i" (the factori?) from nothing
- benders, which bend the letters (eg. you can bend i into a c)
- rotators, which rotate a letter 90° clockwise or counterclockwise
- mirrors, which mirror a letter either horizonally or vertically
- combiners, which combine 2,3, or 4 letters to make a new letter (unlike other factories these can only produce valid letters or characters, for example you can combine a v and an upside down v to produce an x, but you can't produce an upside down v)

It is quite a fun and straightforward cheap little game. All we are left to wonder about is where all those i's are coming from. Aliens? Glitch in the Matrix? God himself? The repressed tears of the factori workers? Who knows.

8/10

If you liked Thrillville you might like this game. If you didn't like Thrillville you likely won't. I wasn't a fan of Thrillville and this game has a somewhat similar feel to me.

The coaster builder is annoyingly imprecise and it is difficult to create realistic-looking coasters. That isn't a knock on the fantastical elements like cannons and whatnot (which I believe are an interesting addition), but rather that the lack of physics-related restraints on how you can lay out tracks removes any challenge from designing rides. You can build sections of track that would kill people in real life and people will still ride it. They could have had semi-realistic physics with the fantastical elements added on top, which would have been much better in my opinion.

This game also suffers from the same issues and limitations with its path system that Planet Coaster had but slightly worse. I don't like that you can't build large food court type areas or paths with square corners, and forget trying to make anything symmetrical or square. The lack of picnic tables or anywhere for guests to eat other than benches is another limitation.

This game has quite a lot of content except for roller coasters for some reason. There are only a few types (one is literally just called "Standard Coaster"), and they lack basic customization options like train or station length. As for everything else there is a lot of stuff, but the best way I can describe it is that the way the developers made the game makes it difficult to realize its potential.

One thing it has going for it are beautiful graphics.

If you were a fan of Thrillville you might want to give this game a look, but only on sale. I was hesitant to give this game a negative review because I still think certain kinds of players might enjoy it, but the high price tag of both the game and it's DLC is what tipped the scales for me into leaving a negative review.

4/10

Every update I think the game's issues have been fixed enough for it to be fun, only for some other game-breaking issue to arise.

Currently trying a different playthrough. So far so good so I'm hopeful the worst bugs might have been fixed. Will update my review if that turns out to be the case.

Edit Oct 26, 2024: And the crime system is bugged... There is always zero crime.

It continues to find new ways to disappoint me.

A nice puzzle game to play every now-and then.

The store page explains it quite well. You try to place down randomly-generated hexagonal tiles so that their borders match neighbouring tiles. For example a tile might have trees on three sides, houses on one side, and farm fields on two, and you'd want to place it so that the edges with trees are placed against the side of another placed tile that also has trees, while the side with houses is against the side of another tile with houses, etc.

Railways and rivers are a bit different as they have to be connected so that one railway track/river goes into another without ending at the edge of a tile.

You only have a limited number of tiles, but you can get more with "quests". A quest can be generated by a tile when you place it, or by special tiles that appear on the map, with the quest activating when you reach the tile. A quest is visible as a little speech bubble above a tile with a number indicating that you will be rewarded with more tiles if you connect that number of a specific feature to that tile. For example, it might say to connect 20 houses to that tile. Most tiles have multiple houses on them, so you won't need to connect 20 tiles with houses, but the connection needs to be continuous, with no other features like fields or water separating some houses from others, even on single tiles. It is the same with trees, water, etc.

You earn points every time the side of one tile is matched with a side of another with the same feature. You also earn an extra tile every time you get a perfect placement (a tile with all its sides matching the features on neighbouring tiles). Once you run out of tiles it's game over and you get your score.

There are at least a few different modes to play around with:
- classic (normal gameplay)
- quick play (awards fewer tiles so games don't last as long)
- hard mode (tiles have more difficult/varied feature combinations)
- creative mode (unlimited tiles and can place any you want)
- custom mode (allows you to specify some parameters like how often features appear on tiles, add a time limit, etc)
- monthly challenge (everyone is provided with an identical seed and a limited area to place tiles, you can look at leaderboards to see how your results compare to others)


Overall it is a recommend from me. Price is a little steep for a simple puzzle game but not too bad.
6/10

It's a decent expansion.

It allows you to build extractor buildings for the four different resources in the game:
- forest (logs)🪵
- fertile land (crops)🌾
- ore 🪨
- oil 🛢️

These resources can be exported, imported, or sold to the vanilla zoned industry.

You can then build buildings that process each of those resources into one of two more refined resources:
- logs ➡️ planed timber or paper
- crops ➡️ animal products or flour
- ore ➡️ metal or glass
- oil ➡️ petroleum or plastic

These more refined resources can be exported (but not imported), or used in the unique factories included in the expansion to produce luxury goods 💎. For example, the furniture factory needs paper and planed timber to produce furniture. All luxury goods are treated as one resource once they leave the factory; for example, the furniture factory says it produces furniture while the sneaker factory says it produces sneakers, but they are both just treated as the same luxury resource. Luxury resources can be exported or sold to zoned commercial buildings.

There are also warehouses and storage buildings to store resources. It is a good idea to build them near where the resources they store are produced and near where they are used. For example, you could build a warehouse for storing planed timber near sawmills and near a furniture factory to ensure the sawmills can empty their outputs and the factory is always supplied.


This DLC adds a lot of things to do and really changes how your cities look. The new industry roads (which have two nice bridges) are also nice to have. It also adds some at-least somewhat more realistic scale, with larger farms and whatnot.

Some of the things I don't like are the unrealistically huge amount of truck traffic these buildings produce (which could be a problem before with specialized industry as well). There are existing problems in the game with cargo distribution that are made worse with this expansion, like train networks getting clogged with cargo trains that are only 10% full. Ore and oil resources are also extracted too fast; you go away and work on another part of your city and a little while later your oil specialized area extractors have depleted all the oil underneath them and need to be moved.


In summary: I recommend this expansion if you can get it on sale, as the price is a little steep, but you will probably like it if what I said here appeals to you.

7/10

This game is okay, but I wouldn't recommend it at full price. Especially if you already own Tropico 5.

It is what you expect in a Tropico game if you have experience with the series, but it doesn't really expand on previous titles much. It's still a good game, but it is essentially only good as a fresh pack of missions with a few minor improvements and additions.

Just like previous titles, it lacks replayability compared to other city builders. Once you complete the missions there's really no urge to keep playing. The lack of free modding support is a definite negative as well. The demands from factions seem to have gotten kind of lazy as well. Usually they will just demand that you build a random building and make you wonder why the environmentalist faction is demanding that you build a fire house.

As for the good: the graphics are just as great as Tropico 5. Some of the services in the game have been improved a bit too; people are willing to travel a more realistic distance to get to service buildings, and there are more buildings available than in previous titles. The ability to go on raids is nice, and heists to steal world wonders are a nice touch, unrealistic as it is.

Overall it is worth a buy but only on sale. I'd also stay away from the DLC that don't add new missions (I haven't bought any DLC as of right now, but they are clearly over-priced).

6/10

Another great puzzle game from the developers that made Mini Metro. If you've played that game you will have no problem getting used to this one, as they have similar interfaces and graphical styles. They are however completely different games.

1. colour-coded houses spawn on the map, each with two cars
   
2. colour-coded destination buildings spawn on the map
   
3. you will need to build roads to connect houses with destination buildings of the same colour
   
   • the number of road tiles you have is limited, however you can delete roads to get them back in non-expert mode, and you get additional tiles along with other upgrades at the end of each in-game week
     
   • there are also obstacles on the map (water and mountains), that require special upgrades to traverse (bridges and tunnels)
4. over time, tacks will begin spawning above the destination buildings
   
5. for every tack that appears above a destination building, a car from the closest house connected by roads that matches the colour of the destination building will begin travelling to it
   
6. once a car has made it to the destination building, a tack will disappear from above that building, and the car will need to travel back to the house it came from before it can go to a destination again
   
7. if not enough cars can get to a destination building and too many tacks accumulate above it, the tacks will merge into one large tack with a timer, and if this timer fills up, it's game over
   
8. you then get a score which equals the number of times a tack was removed by a car reaching a destination building

Similarly to Mini Metro, at the end of every in-game week you will randomly get any two of these upgrade options (can differ if challenges are enabled):

• 2 traffic lights + 20 road tiles
  
• 1 roundabout + 20 road tiles
  
• 1 motorway + 10 road tiles
  
• 1 bridge + 20 road tiles
  
• 1 tunnel + 20 road tiles
  
• 30 road tiles

Traffic lights and roundabouts help improve traffic flow at intersections. Roundabouts are more effective than traffic lights, but take up more space and you only get one at a time as opposed to two if you choose traffic lights instead.

Motorways can be used to directly connect two points on the map, bypassing everything in between. Cars also travel faster on motorways, and they have no maximum length. Their drawbacks are that cars can only get onto them at either end, and you only get 10 additional normal road tiles with them when you choose them from the upgrade options at the end of the week. They also can't go over mountains.

Bridges allow you to build a road over water to connect different sides of a river.

Tunnels allow you to build a road through mountains.

Overall it's an excellent puzzle game that I've found to be even more enjoyable than Mini Metro. I've yet to encounter any bugs or technical issues either. It is certainly an evolution from Mini Metro, as there are more options to make it more interesting and improve replayability, and in my opinion, the basic concept is more solid as well.

10/10

I can't even begin to get into every little thing this game allows you to do in a review. I barely understand it, but I've enjoyed it so far.

Basically you manage a baseball team as it says on the store page. You can choose how much or little control you have over rosters, lineups and depth charts, etc. You then can play out games, making decisions with each batter how to position your defenders, whether to swing away, take a pitch, steal a base, etc.

The attention to detail in this game is incredible. Players get injured, you can manage the ticket prices of your home stadium, you can make decisions on a pitch-by-pitch basis or just per-batter if you prefer, or you can even just allow the AI to auto-play a game if it gets out of hand or you just don't want to. I even got this during a game: https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2825808828

The biggest downside is that the UI can be confusing because of the sheer volume of information you are presented with. The games can also play out kind of weird sometimes, with wildly different speeds on throws to first base, the ball phasing through a defender without him even attempting to make a play, etc. The games are still quite fun to play out though.

My overall rating: 7/10

It's maybe a little on the pricy side but I guess that makes sense considering that it's an officially MLB licenced game.

Still not really sure what the point of Perfect Team mode is.

The basis of this game is incredibly simple:

• Different-shaped stations slowly spawn randomly and the map slowly zooms out as you play a map.
  
• Different-shaped passengers spawn at these stations and need to be transported to a station that matches their shape (eg. triangle-shaped passengers need to be transported to a triangle station). You accomplish this by drawing lines between the stations.
  
• Maps have bodies of water and you only have a limited number of tunnels or bridges to cross them.
  
• At the end of every in-game week you get a new locomotive and get to choose one of two additional bonuses that can be an additional car for a train, an additional line you can make, a station upgrade that increases its capacity, or additional water crossings.
  
• It's game over when a station gets overcrowded. the number of passengers you transported before this happens is your score.

It's a solid puzzle game overall. Every map starts out easy, with just three stations, but it gets progressively harder as you play, as more stations appear and more passengers spawn, until you eventually lose, and then you get your score. It is much like old school games in this way, you are compelled to retry maps to try to beat your previous high score.

9/10

This game is just too shallow for its price. Perhaps if it was less than $5 I wouldn't have refunded, but CAD$12.39 for the Moonrise - Deluxe bundle is just too much.

Rating:
4/10