AETHUS

AETHUS was an excellent playthrough. Smooth and optimised gameplay, great writing and direction with excellent humour. Plenty of game to explore for the price with highly configurable difficulty and accessibility options. The dev made the game they wanted to make and it shows.

Great story, great mechanisms. Easy to jump in and out when little time available.

I played this game all the way through to the end, so, I really liked it. It has a robust storyline and, like a novel, keeps you interested. Each time you make a new discovery, a new mystery and/or challenge is presented. I found the difficulty progression was matched evenly by the suit and technical upgrades available for the character. I would advise prioritising suit upgrades. I originally bought this game, because I love building bases, and I did do some interior and exterior decorating. In the end though, it was the story itself that kept me moving forward. There is a lot of resource gathering and crafting, so if you don't like that mechanic, this game may not be for you. One of the game's strengths is that it doesn't require too much mechanical (keyboard or joy-stick) expertise to succeed. How good you are at that should not affect the outcome. Have fun on this world. I was sorry when it ended.

I am enjoying this game much more than I expected to. When I first learned about it (before it was released), I admired the art style right away, the "teaser" about the main character ("MC"), a female protagonist (which is a great thing in my opinion) Maeve, communicates with her floating robot Roland assistant/pal, and I am a big fan of both science fiction and colonization (whether the New World or another planet). I was slightly hesitant because, although I own and have played some crafting/"farm sim" type games, they tended to be designed to be overcomplicated. I also thought what I perceived to be underhanded corporate trickery would add interest to the story. After playing for some time, I didn't want to stop. The interaction between Maeve (MC) and Roland (robot) was much better than I had hoped. Roland seems to have a real commitment and concern for Maeve, which, for humanity's future, is hopeful and positive. They joke and share ideas with camaraderie. The survivalism and crafting incrementally builds as you play and learn, and more involved processes are introduced keeping pace with how one plays the game. Likely I "overfarm" water from Dew Collectors, which I direct Maeve to go around and collect each morning. I have only just barely stepped my toe into corporate shenanigans, so look forward to more of that.

This is one of my top 3 survival crafting single player games. The story & voice acting is excellent. The crafting is well done. The progression is timely. The resource gathering & automation of resources is great. The accessibility options are top-tier. The character & base customization is very cool. The music gets a bit repetitive but it's not too bad. ~15 hours in, there was a small annoyance with the gameplay and I was halfway through submitting a bug report until I saw it as an option ticked in the settings. (right click as two separate options to close the menu/inventory/storage, which I knew about, but right click to quick stack your inventory into the storage is what was bugging me.) I played with normal resource settings & beat the game in ~29 hours, which I feel is perfectly average.

A great game. Nice story, fun building. I enjoyed it quite a bit.