The Room 3

The Room 3

There are currently three episodes of The Room. It's a beautiful escape-room style of puzzle game. The plot is interesting but can be ignored if you just want to do puzzles. For the most part, the game is pretty linear. There are a few satisfying opportunities for cleverness, but for the most part you just appreciate the artistic design. 

Normally I prefer deep puzzles, but those are easy to get in other places. The lore and beautiful design make The Room (and sequels) very satisfying to me.

Frostpunk

A city-building survival game.

Frostpunk

If I had known this was the same developers as This War of Mine (review), I would not have played it. Still, it was fun for the 10 hours it took to see the first story.

Overview

Frostpunk is a game that tells a story of survival while building your base and exploring the world. There are a number of resources to manage and varied ways to manage them. The dropping temperature is a unique mechanic that informs how your base will evolve. 

Story

The story aspect of Frostpunk is strong. I tend to ignore story in favor of gameplay, but Frostpunk has numerous choose-your-own-adventure style decisions to make, and those decisions have a large impact on the story and the gameplay. I imagine the game would be fairly dull after one or perhaps two playthroughs.

Base Building

Not bad. The interesting temperature mechanic breathes some life into what would otherwise be a mediocre building game. 

Technology Tree

There are two different tech trees. One is very typical of the types of research we have seen a thousand times. The other is a system to write laws. It is interesting in that the effect happens immediately, with a waiting period before another law can be passed. At first it seemed the laws were neutral in that they provide both a bonus and a penalty. I expected it to be an interesting way to respond to emergencies -- for example you could set guards to patrol, which would reduce crime but require more labor. However in practice, laws have little downside and you generally want to pass new laws as quickly as possible.

Exploration

You can build scouts to explore the surrounding world. This is pretty neat, but really it's just one more option for resource generation. "Should I build another coal mine for coal or a scout that will discover random resources?"

Should You Buy It?

If you liked This War of Mine, then yes. If you want to see an interesting combination of survival, base-building, and storytelling, then yes. If you want to explore difficult moral choices in your strategy game, then yes. Otherwise, no. Frostpunk combines these elements in an interesting way, but doesn't excel at any of them.

Rimworld

Sims, survival, and base building.

Rimworld

Rimworld is a fun game of base-building and survival. Depending on your settings, it can be brutal and unfair. 

Gameplay

Rimworld is largely a sim type game where you give your dupes/pawns/sims do all the work. However Rimworld has a bit more micromanagement than most. Quite a few things have to be ordered directly. Also, there is very little automation in the game. The job priority system is pretty good, but there are many situations that are not covered so be prepared to frequently override orders.

Goals

There is a lot of sandbox in Rimworld. Simply surviving can be challenging and it's easy to make your own goals. The victory condition isn't especially satisfying but there is a lot of fun to be had on the way.

Compared to Other Games

Dwarf Fortress: Rimworld is very much like Dwarf Fortress but more accessible. The graphics are primitive and the interface is decent but not great. It's not especially noob friendly, but compared to dwarf fortress it's a piece of cake. There isn't as much depth as Dwarf Fortress, but there is as much "game".

Sims: If you removed graphics from Sims, it would have a lot of similarities. You build houses and manage pawns needs. You can do a lot of evil things in Sims, but nothing compared to Rimworld where you can harvest organs, get your enemies addicted to narcotics, and sell slaves.

Oxygen Not Included: ONI is nicer to play, a better sandbox, and much prettier. It feels smoother, like Rimworld has disjointed systems cobbled together. ONI also has a great system for automation of machinery and pawn. While I generally think Oxygen Not Included is better, Rimworld has more game to it. For the most part it's easy to survive in Oxygen Not Included but beyond that you have to establish your own goals. It's a whole lot of fun getting to those goals but challenges are self created. It's "fun" figuring out how to clean the carbon dioxide from the base, but it's your fault you got there in the first place. Rimworld throws periodic events at you that have to be dealt with immediately.

Recommendation

Watch someone play for a bit. If the art style is a turn off, skip it. I liked it a lot, but I burned out after 100 hours and that doesn't come close to Oxygen Not Included.

Slime Rancher

Slime Rancher

Kind of a simple silly game but it scratched an itch. I liked the collection, exploration, and base building.

Everspace

Everspace

Not my thing. I've never loved keyboard+mouse for action spaceflight. This game doesn't seem to add much to the genre.

The Escapists

A cute game of prison break.

Brief Review

I gave this less than an hour. It isn't my thing. There is much repetition, and it's easy to lose progress. There is some fun game to it, but not worth the effort. 

Surviving Mars

Simcity on Mars

Overview

The Sim City genre has really exploded since Maxis' masterpiece from the 80s. Surviving Mars is a nice balance of sandbox, game, and story.

Three important aspects of Surviving Mars are managing the economy, planning, and experiencing the story.

Economic Management

A large part of the game is managing resources. There are about a dozen different resources and some short supply chains. For the most part, this is satisfying. There is a lot of automation and it's fun to watch your drones carry things around. The transport drone and the cargo rockets from Earth will cover you if you find yourself scare in a resource. It's fun to set up supply chains, and there isn't much stress about getting it perfect because Earth will save you.

Planning and Technology Research

Early on there are a few important decisions to make. Do you try to mine rare minerals to sell to Earth? Do you research advanced factories, buy the factories from earth, or just buy the finished good from Earth? Can you harvest loose surface metal or do you need to build a metal extractor?

In the two games I played, I didn't feel these decisions were important. I had enough money that I could buy whatever I needed from Earth. Factories are cheap to buy but expensive to research, and having one of each is enough to last for a very long time. 

Research is slow and most of the upgrades don't feel especially meaningful.

Planning location and contents of living domes is very important and interesting.

The Story

There are about a dozen "mysteries" to choose from every time you play. These have only a mild impact on the game, but do provide a nice distraction. Every time I was getting bored, this nice piece of fiction would show up to engage me. All in all, it is minor but nice.

Complaints

Lack of Depth

My biggest complaint is the lack of depth. There aren't that many different things to build. There aren't many different types of resources to exploit. The research path doesn't seem to vary much. I played two games. Neither was very tense, but I suspect that the tension wouldn't be fun. Much of the game isn't precise, but the game is quite forgiving. Being forced to play more precise would likely not be much fun.

Managing Colonists

I read an excellent piece of advice that said to not micromanage the colonists. Dealing with them is often frustrating and the UI for managing them is clunky. Sometimes this is a big deal. Rather than stress about it, it's better to play on an easier difficulty and try to organize your buildings in such a way for them to sort themselves out. Still, given that colonist management is the majority of the late game, this was disappointing.

Recommendation

This is a really tough one. As a Sim City sandbox game on Mars I got 20 hours of fun. The "game" aspect was not strong, but it was fun to see the different events once or twice. If pressed, I would reluctantly give Surviving Mars a thumbs-down.