Recent reviews by Kaytastrophe

One of my favorite base building/colony genre games.

Cute.

Wow, started off looking great but then once the tutorial was over... Immediate chain reaction of failures and disasters that were non-stop. Multiple fires, multiple thieves, multiple spray paint kids, customers instantly clean entire shelves. There is so much going wrong so rapidly that I cant keep up with any of it and cant hire enough people fast enough to deal with it, the more I expand the more zones are immediately trashed or set on fire or littered.

The game is not playable in it's current state.

Big, Free, Content Update in 2024. Amazing.

I have this game on THREE different OS(s).

This is what good gaming is.

I have no complaints, only praise.

There's so much RNG to the actual gameplay and also just for funny.

You only get stronger as your run count increases which is great.

There is always a sense of accomplishment and progress on each run, no matter how short (maybe unless REALLY short).

I've had Santa Claus and Jason (the murderer with the mask) on my team. Santa was nice, Jason.. well people started disappearing and he was getting huge moral boosts every time that happened... Sus.

It goes on sale frequently for like 4$, def worth it at a low price.

It's Banished with a beaver twist. Instead of winter you get droughts, instead of raiders you get "bad tide".

The only way to make this game enjoyable is to turn of the "Bad Tide" feature in the difficulty settings prior to starting.

It's a terrible 'feature' that makes every water way produce toxic sludge which infects and kills everything it touches, including your beavers.

There is no counter to this at all. The only way to defeat it is to divert water away from your colony from the water source, or build your entire colony VERY far away from any water.

Kinda defeats the entire purpose of the game, to have beavers that play in water.

I don't understand what this is supposed to add to the game other than frustration and an extra colony death timer.

The resources required to combat this infection are unimaginable and unobtainable so early in the game.

You essentially need full control of every water source and epic quantities of material to completely divert the toxic water, or you can try to spam pumps and fill water vats with the sludge before it overflows into your map. You can try to build an irrigation fence, but the resources required in too much and the entire game becomes a race to spam this single building along every coastline or die instantly on cycle 5.

It doesn't just ruin your colony, but the ENTIRE map everywhere it touches becomes destroyed and risks any beaver coming slightly close to it to be infected permanently unless you have the insane amount of resources required to build a singular medical tent, PLUS the medicine required for the tent to function.

I hate it when developers add pointless difficulties like this, while also not providing any effective way to deal with them, while also forcing them on a brand new player without any explanation, while also making the mechanic a full delete your entire save file disaster.

Why don't you just punch brand new players in the face? What a bad idea. At least you can turn it off, but then why even have it in the first place if everyone has to preemptively know to turn it off?

How about expanding on the buildings and industry, or anything else in the entire game?

Massive disappointment in this game's development. All the money came pouring in and suddenly 'no idea is a bad idea' mentality consumed them.

That's why you can't even make ladders part of the base game.

Or an elevator?

Or anything that matches the high level of engineering required to build suspension bridges, advanced gear networks, wind turbines.. (etc).

I can build a centrifuge out of wood, but there is no water filtration or decontamination tech at all.

The only challenge and randomness to this game is how hard the drought/bad tide mechanics effect your colony. Everything else is hard math on an Excel spread sheet.

I have hit max level and have been a lead on a #1 PvP guild, the game is trash.

I dont care how well polished the game is, it's a whale cash cow farm simulator with high end graphics as a sugar coating.

All loot drops are gate kept behind STAMINA currency mechanics which is refilled slightly day to day.

There is NO END GAME, other than PvP.

I hate that everything in the game has stun lock abilities.

Mechanics are entirely dependent on pressing "Q" repeatedly with no margin of error or die instantly.

100% of the game is who can out stun the other.

Here for the PvE? be prepared to do some of the most silly mechanics I have ever seen or die instantly.

Each boss (and some normal enemies) have multiple instant kill mechanics that have to be obeyed.

The problem is that they are back to back and this game turns into a rapid fire session of "Sam Says or DIE!".

PvP is a joke. Dominated by whales that form huge 200+ man alliances and block out everyone from participating.

is it too much to ask for a MMO that isn't dominated by right wing weirdos super imposing their assertions on minorities at every slightest opportunity?

TL:DR; Don't buy it. It's a very pretty copy pasta theme park survival game with little content that simply repeats while 'number go up'. 90% of the content is not intended for multiplayer despite being advertised as it is. Check the reddit and you will see my complaints are not new or unique. I don't think there will be enough of an effort to improve these issues.

Where to start is a difficult question. So much of this game is flooded with concept flaws and design failures that it's every feature becomes nothing but pure frustration without any real point. The game consists of 3 unique realms which you will play on repeat. There will be different assets, colors and it will appear to offer unique experiences across a wide range of realms, at first. But you will quickly realize that each level is identical from the last. They use the same creatures, the same assets, the same textures, everything is copy pasta from the first level to the last. Some of the private quest realms have unique and interesting assets placed within them to make them feel as if they're not another copy pasta swamp/forest/desert realm, but they're just a pregenerated map with these assets poorly littered across the landscape to bring some vibe of immersion. You may find new resources that have different assets for them, but in the long run they're only useful because of the constant demand to keep up with the exploding HP pools of the enemies. There are a few new enemies that begin to show up as tier level increases, but they're not special or quality. It's more in your face non-stop melee assault while being immune to damage sometimes type beat mechanics. You will find yourself saying "Oh he looks mean and cool" but only to realize that equates to simply having to dodge and run more because his only special feature is extremely high HP and AoE damage. It does not change anything but the length of time clearing a mob takes.

Combat is by far the most annoying system in the game. I honestly would have more fun if the combat were fully removed. It is a chore and has zero intelligence behind it. "Number go up" is the theme here. Enemies will get more and more AoE attacks while increasing in HP and damage dramatically every few tier levels. I've played on all difficulties at this point and I find no difference between them other than the level of frustration and amount of time killing a single enemy requires. There is no strategy here, just spam your main attack (you will only ever use one, if you are smart) while dodging constantly ever 0.2 seconds until the enemy is dead or you run out of stamina and need to jog in a circle for a bit. Because all of the enemies rush at you and stay right on top of you without any way to create distance, the combat is reduced to something that looks silly when watched by a third party. Run in circles spam clicking left mouse while bunny hopping and dodging. Enemy AI and pathing is very low effort and all of it combines to make combat as a whole feel low quality, repetitive and just lame. It doesnt feel or look cool/fun.

Weapons are also a massive critical game breaking let down. In my play through, I never used anything other than the dagger and magick. Everything else was either too weak or too frustrating to bother with.

Firearms take forever to reload, aiming them is difficult and requires PERFECT accuracy. Keeping up with ammo is a chore and adds nothing to the weapons other than a maintenance grind. They all have very low clip sizes and very high reload times which cannot be modified at all. No increases to rate of fire. (Yes, all the things we love to put on ranged weapons dont exist here.) Other than the pistol (by far the weakest), you don't get an offhand with them which can add a huge amount of bonus damage to your build.

Melee weapons.... Well, there are not any. Sorry, there just are not any actual melee weapons at all. They have tools you can use in melee combat but they're not weapons and they do not perform like weapons. When you swing them at an enemy it is the same as if you are trying to chop a tree or mine a rock.

Magick is by far the most clunky and broken combat system, but it is the most useful. My main attack is an AoE fish that strikes twice and stuns. There is nothing else in the game that offers this level of value (and it'll probably get nerfed before other things get improved). But the entire system is trash. It's clunky, it's restrictive, it's boring and unimaginative. Most of the spells are completely useless and will never be used. Some of the interesting ones are so broken mechanically that using them isn't worth the effort. I have never used any magic other than Wrath and Bounty, everything else is a waste of time. They're either too weak, too small an AoE or something else that makes them useless. You can only use 1 magick at a time as well, so you can't heal yourself then switch back to fire ball, the healing will immediately stop. Switching between spells is also a broken system that rarely functions at all. It isn't fluid, it's clunky and requires your character to come to a complete stop to open the menu. You can't have more than 1 spell equip at a time, there is no way to change this.

Tools, there are so many... why so many and why are they all so useless. I use a total of 4 tools and wont bother with any of the others (+umbrella and lantern). There just isn't a reason to when everything is so bland a copy pasta across the board. The stats do not have enough variety or an effect in combat to matter. Watering can is annoying, just delete it, it takes too long per plant to water and the NPC doesnt use it at all. (use tempest card on a farming realm and save yourself the calories)

Companions are next to useless. I use mine purely as a second backpack. They have terrible combat AI and are very slow to respond. They don't fight like the enemy, they fight like a much dumber and slower (attack speed slower) enemy unit. They're constantly being absolutely bullied by even the most basic enemy units. I have mine superdupered up and it's laughable to see them in combat. Can they help? Yes, but I honestly never depend or worry with them because they're so poorly made. If I could recruit multiple people to work on my private realm's land then it would be different. I think they should lean more into companions and expand them so that they're more useful for harvesting/farming/building over being useful in combat as combat is already so terrible it'd just be adding a layer of sugar on a crap cake.

Crafting is where this game has a truly great moment, but a short lived one. There's about 9-10 crafting benches which all require special "augments" to boost them and the items you make so that crafting is feasible. At first, you can't craft enough. Its all too simple and hard to get what you want out of it. But it quickly becomes overly complex requiring you to use multiple benches to craft materials so that you can use those materials to craft other materials so that you then can go to another bench and craft the item. Now do this over and over again for every single item in the game.

Questing is another massive failure. The lore and the characters are super interesting and a lot of love was put into this aspect of the game. I really appreciate the story, the letters between characters, Puck and his poems. But unfortunately the quest lines are terrible and frustrating. They're a chore to complete and you are forced to do them. You can't progress quests with friends, only the owner of the quest realm may get progress. The progression skill tree is lock until all the quests are done and the boss of the realm is defeated. This creates massive progress rifts between friends. Honestly, the 'public random realms' are useless because you are forced into private questing realms to make any progress and by the time they're done you have no reason to explore (or too bored or too annoyed with the poor level design).

It just isn't worth $30 at all. They're going to increase the price Oct 13th and it will be a scam at that point.

- The content is EXTREMELY limited. It is the exact same game on your first mission as it is on your 100th mission.
- I never felt as if any upgrade I unlocked made me more powerful.
- It's loaded with toxic dudes
- Base building is a fight with toddlers every single time.
- Can't change equipment mid fight
- Few maps rehashed repeatedly with slight changes in where mission areas spawn
- Missions/maps repetitive
- VERY LOW VARIETY OF WEAPONS AND GEAR (by far the biggest disappointment)
- Grinding levels for unlocks takes too much time for the lack of variety in content. Playing the exact same load out for 12+ of the same maps and not getting anything unlocked that makes major impact on the battlefield is the loop.
- Game is just boring. You stand on a wall and shoot down at bugs.

I really don't have much good to say about the game. It's nostalgia and nothing else.

There is SO MUCH TO DO!!! It's all tediously slow. I can't stand it. I want to run and manage a gas station, not play janitor simulator. You have to paint and clean and restock and pump gas and refill gas and empty trash and sweep repeatedly + more every 15 minutes

The game became so stale so fast. I was worried I had spent more than 2 hours just trying to get the game to start rolling. (It never did, it just sucked the entire time)

Thankfully, I had lost all interest in the game much sooner than I realized.

(Refunded)