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.
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.