Artificer: Science of Magic

My thumb is an expression of the fact that *I* enjoyed playing it. You'll have to read the review to figure out if you'd want to. It's basically Thaumcraft + Don't Starve, except you're not in constant threat of dying to random seasonal bosses or mismanaging your resources. You can still die through carelessness, but if you think about what you should do to not die, you'll mostly not die. The combat doesn't feel great (much like Don't Starve), but it's not awful. Much like Thaumcraft, progress gets exponentially harder to make as inevitably every step forward entails retracing several other steps you've done before to make components for the forward step. However, those faults aside, you get to crash land on a hostile planet and be a spaceman who discovers magic and follow a research tree through diligent exploration and experimentation. If that sounds awesome, this is your game. If it doesn't, it's probably not. I did have a bug where I couldn't continue the main quest due to the geography deleting itself, but I joined the discord, asked what's up, and had instructions to fix it and had actually fixed it in like 5 minutes. It's apparently infamous. Really, it's a game I very, very much wanted, but it's not as deep or long as that game. It does check all the right boxes, but it's like a 10 hour game and I wish it was a 100 hour game. Not because I think every game needs to be 100 hours, mind you, but because nobody else has made this particular game yet and I want to play it for a long, long time. It's a game that scratches an itch you didn't even know you had unless you played Thaumcraft in Minecraft.

I love the visual style but the research system is abysmal.

The options menu (and sound volume) isn't accessible as soon as sound starts. Ow my ears. There's way too much exposition before getting to any gameplay. Why is "Skip Dialog" on the ENTER button?!? it's nowhere near normal hand position, and not rebindable? Why does me character go crazy blurry when moving (especially in the ship)? The animations are over exaggerated, these together making my eyes hurt. The overexaggerated animations take a really long time, and items are large amount, making it feel like I'm wasting time doing nothing. Mouse wheel used, but not to zoom in/out?? Button zoom janky and slow. There's forced exploration at the start, but no map, meaning you can get immediately lost. HOW DO I GET PAPER??? Why do I have to examine every single leaf before being allowed to interact with it? I feel like nobody actually play tested this. The most important part of the game experience is the first 15 minutes. The "hook". This game fails so spectacularly at that, I don't even know what to start saying. It actually trumps Skyrim's forced copy of a modern warfare intro that is totally at odds with how the game plays. Then goes on to provide an awful intro experience. I'm not even moaning that there's an unskippable intro while starting up the game (a pet hate of mine), because the rest of it is just so bad

Интересно,очень интересно, еслиб не фармили то было б интересно, а так очень интересно

This is a heart felt review as there are many nuances involved with enjoying and appreciating what this game is all about. I got this title on a massive sale, like $2.50 CAD, and that's about the same price for a half decent tall can. It is fair to say I got more 'joy mileage' out of this game than I would have gotten out of a tall boy, and I do em. As other reviews have highlighted, the art in this game was a draw for me, and I enjoyed exploring the illustrative world presented by the developers. Some of the mechanics are clever, like the xeno-fauna autopsies. Other mechanics are straight up boring and grindy and I question how much time the devs spent play testing and getting honest feedback from players before deploying this puppy. The thing that makes me like this game, despite its flaws, is the heart that I feel went into this. Making games is hard, and to have put this entire package together as it, well... there is a show of work that is clear, and what can I say... this game is so unique. I almost feel that it deserves a revamp, as the world is quite interesting, and I would enjoy exploring it in further depth if the game play were more enjoyable overall.

Buggy as Hell, can't complete the initial sequence, when the character enters the lauch pad there is no event trigger, you can't leave the room and can only walk around in it, forever

This game is very buggy and there are some things that are not explained well, there is a specific crafting system in this game called enchantment that is absolutely flawed in many ways more then one, if it takes me 2 hours to craft one item despite having every material for it and that item being one of base items of this crafting system there is a large problem