About as close to scarfing down roadside farmer's market fudge as you can get; it feels intuitive, homespun, and polished in your hands only to sit like a rock in your gut and leave you thinking about what a weird decision it was to work over for as long as was allowed. I'm a bit unsure of what the market for this game is other than broaching the game time gulf between something like Steamworld Dig and Terraria - it's a much worse resource gathering/exploration game than Dig, with far less rewarding navigation, movement, and reveals than what is found in both entries of that series, and is far less expressive mechanically in breadth and depth than Terraria, which obviously has so much generally to offer in terms of tools that to ape any 2D base building of its type is to start to doom yourself. The 30-90 minute play window per run is nice but really other than being a well optimized piece of software that can be mindlessly chewed on, except for the minor base defence that really is less rewarding in both types than something like Aegis Defenders or, idk, Greed Mode in Isaac, much less Terraria, it's a bit tough to get the overall play point.

Definitely not done with this game seeing as I love it, just need some time in my schedule to clear up before I keep grinding out my runs. I've beaten the small and medium maps on regular and hard difficulty, so I'd like to continue climbing up that ladder. What could bump this up in score is definitely more content. It already does have a good amount for its asking price so I'm not upset with the amount that it has currently, but I think with more updates (which seem to be planned) this game could really become something truly special. In all, it's a super unique and well executed concept that has massive potential on top of its already well-built foundation so I'm excited to see if (and hopefully when), they reach it.

This game is my jam, through and through.

A Tower Defense and Time/Resource Management Game that doesn't fall into all the annoying pitfalls that can happen with either genre. You control the defenses for the Dome, you control how long you want to spend down in the mining area to get resources, you control whether you want to focus on your defenses or yourself to improve things with your resources. There is no, "Did I place the right tower in the right place?" There is a hypothetical, "Did I make the right upgrade?"

But that's the thing -- when you lose, it's 100% on you and you generally know exactly why. There's no replaying the same level over and over and trying a different permutation of weapons or placements to see which ones give you success -- the permutations in this game are decided by you prior to the start of the game and the mining resources are RNG'd down below for the run and you roll with what you get and the order in which building should happen becomes quickly realized (at least with the Engineer, I can't speak on the Assessor yet because I've played all my games as an Engineer so far). You WANT that drill upgrade first while things are easy so you can mine resources faster, you WANT that series of movement upgrades for getting back and forth from the mine to the dome (and potentially with cargo) faster. You WANT gun movement as soon as possible for your laser cannon defenses. And these are things you realize within losing your first game -- or at least, they seemed apparent to me. New worlds didn't feel like places where I needed to lose again in order to win -- it was the same structure with slightly different rules, even when the enemies were different and the relics found were different!

Speaking of, that was a surprise. After my first loss, I went through another run and had the same enemy sets and I thought I knew how all the enemy behaviors worked by the end of Game 2. Then I upscaled to a Medium-sized map and suddenly, I'm 80% of the enemies I'm fighting are completely new ones I haven't seen before.

Upgrades feel distinctly noticeable -- you're very aware of movement increases, damage increases, drilling power increases. All of it feels tangible. I think sound is a major reason that some of these things are noticeable. Resources clink against each other and the ground when you're dragging them around while mining, every laser cannon upgrade sounds angrier instead of just being a wider beam, divebombing enemies screech as they fling themselves down at your shield, and a little buddy that assists you with digging in the mines sometimes can be audibly noticed when actually digging or potentially about to sleep if you're in reasonable proximity to him.

The music is largely relaxing when mining and my brain wasn't really focused on it during combat. Visually, it's nothing remarkable, but I'm here for a Tower Defense-type game, so I'm not exactly begging for quality visuals.

I'd say my only gripes are that (as far as I know) there isn't another character type beyond the Engineer and Assessor, so your permutations are always a bit limited in that regard. I haven't messed around with Prestige Mode yet because I've been unlocking other stuff to play around with in Relic Hunt Mode (the default mode). Also, there's a minor glitch that happens sometimes when you first exit the battle console, where your character will occasionally get stuck in the bottom-right corner of the dome for no particular reason for a second or two. I haven't been able to figure out what elicits that particular behavior, but as soon as you notice it, you just stop trying to move and then start moving again and it's fine.

This review is possibly a bit premature, but given that I'm about to go jump back in for another game right after I finish writing this, I feel confident in what I've experienced so far being a very polished experience. Get it, full price or whenever works for you. Help a dev out, they're still working on updates for the game.

Yo soy el primer sorprendido de haberme enganchado tantísimo otra vez a un rogue like. Esta mezcla de juego de minar, guestión de recursos y "tower defense" ha tenido dos etapas muy claras para mi.
La primera consistió en ganar la partida. Esto es relativamente fácil y seguramente en 10 horas podéis decir que habéis disfrutado de un juego que está bien y seguir con el siguiente que tengáis en vuestra lista.
Pero la segunda ha sido la inesperada, ha sido la de volver al juego para recordar los buenos momentos y he acabado sacándole el 100% (de momento, ya que parece que seguirán incluyendo contenido al juego).
Muy recomendable si os gustan los roguelikes, gestionar 3 cosas a la vez o los juegos en los que se pierde el control del tiempo. Es habitual no poder parar, porque al conseguir llevar los nuevos recursos de la nueva capa minada a la cúpula, podemos desbloquear una nueva habilidad que nos permita defendernos más rápido de los enemigos y podamos seguir minando, para conseguir nuevos recursos que... y así y has perdido toda la tarde.
Una gran sorpresa y os recomiendo darle una oportunidad si alguna de las cosas que he dicho os ha llamado la atención.