Aven Colony is a city-building and management sim that tells the story of humanity’s first settlement of an extrasolar world. Land on exotic Aven Prime, where you must construct and maintain the infrastructure and ensure the well-being of your citizens, all while dealing with the often harsh realities of an exotic alien world. On top of this, you’ll face the greatest challenge of all — keeping your people happy. How will you feed your people? Will you be able to provide them with enough jobs, entertainment, retail outlets, and other services while protecting them from the planet’s many dangers? What social policies will you enact to influence your people? The future of the colony rests on your decisions.
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I enjoyed this game more than I thought I would. I was a little unsure if it at the start but the more I played the more I got into it. To the point I didn't realise I had been played it for two hours straight.
There is a sandbox mode for straight up building but the campaign offers quite a few varied scenarios that can freshen up the experience a bit, like one map not being able to grow crops which forces you to find other sources of food. Like importing it or using a mill.
The morale system is a bit tricky to use, the storage fills up quite quickly and the air quality mechanic can be hard to cope with but not game breaking.
Wasn't expecting there to be a story at all but it was surprisingly better than expected given this isn't a story driven game.
There is a sandbox mode for straight up building but the campaign offers quite a few varied scenarios that can freshen up the experience a bit, like one map not being able to grow crops which forces you to find other sources of food. Like importing it or using a mill.
The morale system is a bit tricky to use, the storage fills up quite quickly and the air quality mechanic can be hard to cope with but not game breaking.
Wasn't expecting there to be a story at all but it was surprisingly better than expected given this isn't a story driven game.
A space-themed city builder with interesting missions and environments. It was a fun challenge to 100%. The voice acting and writing was a bit lacking, but that's not really what you're looking for in a game like this. The building was fun and had just enough variety that you could experiment without being overwhelmed. Not the kind of game that I'll endlessly sandbox, in fact I'm retiring the game now. But I still got about 44 hours out of it and am more than satisfied with that.
This was fun enough. I beat it on Normal. There were a few difficult missions. One involving moral comes immediately to mind but overall it was pretty manageable. And while I had fun I don't think it has long legs for me to come back to like a Civilization or something. It felt like once you have the strategy down you'll be fine. I recommend it if you're getting it for one of those $5 sales or something though since it feels worth that at least.
Management game of a colony arriving on a planet where you will have to juggle between managing happiness, food, energy and developing trade. A small game that does the job and offers an interesting experience with several environments that will force you to adapt your gameplay and an adaptable level of difficulty. Effective for fans of management games who do not want to go into the complexity of a 4X
A more slick, simple colony game where resource management is not as severe as Surviving Mars. Definitely worth playing if you are into colony sims!
This is a fairly well-done and very pretty city-builder that is both lacking in content and overstaying its welcome. In the game's campaign, I've shelved it during the seventh of the nine missions, without trying the sandbox or challenge modes.
Aven Colony does what I like with city-builders: constructing and connecting buildings, managing a population's well-being, completing small objectives throughout a mission in a story and expanding out of necessity. It feels like a combination of Anno, Surviving Mars and Tropico. However, it's a relief to manage an economy that actually depends on what you produce, instead of trade or money, with the stand-in being nanites - a resource that makes sense in this world.
I had a great time with the first half. The learning curve is fairly low, and my poor choices in city planning throughout the first couple of missions were easily forgiven. Some mechanics weren't explained to me until I went on to forums to get my questions answered. I may have overlooked something in the tutorial, but I was missing information in the UI.
Every mission, I would start out with developing a small way of producing resources for the colony, mining to develop nanites, and farming or extracting water for the colonists. When I began expanding, I needed to find sources for generating electricity, build places to increase colonist health and morale, place defensive structures, and prepare for the last phase of the mission. The final part of any mission, outside of a specific victory condition, would be to explore outside of my immediate colony, like Frostpunk and invest in the late-game buildings, which typically end up being a combination of perks from other buildings (increases to morale, electricity, population growth and capacity, or storage).
But that's it. I've used every building I need, and typically would make similar-looking suburbs, wrapped around a resource on the map I needed. Each one being a replica of the previous one, except centered around an electrical or farming source. The mechanics of the game are very limited, in which something like Cities: Skylines would have entire industries or panels that could be ignored, every single building in Aven Colony is unfortunately necessary. It's unfortunate, because every map can be played the exact same, except with different resource placements.
It's a well-done game, but it lacks anything new to keep me going - even the story won't retain me. (there's a very weird and gross scene of this toxic space workplace early in the game that really put me off of caring about the characters or story behind this colonialist mission) While a good builder to start with, this game doesn't have enough to make it great and retain my interest in finishing it.
Aven Colony does what I like with city-builders: constructing and connecting buildings, managing a population's well-being, completing small objectives throughout a mission in a story and expanding out of necessity. It feels like a combination of Anno, Surviving Mars and Tropico. However, it's a relief to manage an economy that actually depends on what you produce, instead of trade or money, with the stand-in being nanites - a resource that makes sense in this world.
I had a great time with the first half. The learning curve is fairly low, and my poor choices in city planning throughout the first couple of missions were easily forgiven. Some mechanics weren't explained to me until I went on to forums to get my questions answered. I may have overlooked something in the tutorial, but I was missing information in the UI.
Every mission, I would start out with developing a small way of producing resources for the colony, mining to develop nanites, and farming or extracting water for the colonists. When I began expanding, I needed to find sources for generating electricity, build places to increase colonist health and morale, place defensive structures, and prepare for the last phase of the mission. The final part of any mission, outside of a specific victory condition, would be to explore outside of my immediate colony, like Frostpunk and invest in the late-game buildings, which typically end up being a combination of perks from other buildings (increases to morale, electricity, population growth and capacity, or storage).
But that's it. I've used every building I need, and typically would make similar-looking suburbs, wrapped around a resource on the map I needed. Each one being a replica of the previous one, except centered around an electrical or farming source. The mechanics of the game are very limited, in which something like Cities: Skylines would have entire industries or panels that could be ignored, every single building in Aven Colony is unfortunately necessary. It's unfortunate, because every map can be played the exact same, except with different resource placements.
It's a well-done game, but it lacks anything new to keep me going - even the story won't retain me. (there's a very weird and gross scene of this toxic space workplace early in the game that really put me off of caring about the characters or story behind this colonialist mission) While a good builder to start with, this game doesn't have enough to make it great and retain my interest in finishing it.