Creeper World 4

It's not quite there, but it might just be that the game just isn't my thing? I was really excited to play the game because it seemed clear from reviews and the development history that this game is both an experimental take on tower defense and management while having a unique gimmick for the enemies. So seeing a fourth itteration with overwhelmingly positive reviews and as much content as possible for what the game is sounds awesome! Unfortunately I think there are a lot of things that are either not touched on to make the game interesting or the game just doesn't have a base formula polished yet, but I'd rather hope it's just the delusions from the former rather than it genuinely being a problem of the latter. Mainly the real issue with the game is that it feels like a slog. I know that the whole point is that you're supposed to be pushing back against this enemy that's composed of literal volumes of liquid, so it's meant to be more alien, oppressive, and equally interesting to look at, but instead it leads to the game feeling kindof boring. Instead of feeling like you're just barely surviving and only barely managing to push back against an overwhelming threat, it instead feels like your strip mining where your slowly just grinding away at the edges of the map to push it back just enough to connect to the objective. I know this sense of satisfaction of slowly inching towards victory might be satisfying for some, but when the tools you use to deal with the threat ends up being just gun turrets and bombs instead of something equally unique for the liquid, I can't help but get a sense that the liquid is just the developer being lazy with what the enemy is to have an easier time making the game instead of any genuinely interesting concepts with an enemy that is made of liquid. While I realize this is completely unfair to blame it all on just visuals, I at least think it's worth a recommendation to swap things like gun turrets and mortars for maybe liquid vacuums, or if they even shot out a freezing element they'd shoot to shatter the now solid enemy, or make them get absorbed by a sand bomb, nothing crazy, just a little flavor text. I also fully believe it's entirely possible that's where the criticism ends. It's not for me with how it's just a slow push with what feels to me to be an unimaginative world. What I really hope though is that I either didn't play enough or these initial problems I faced gave me the sense that... I feel that similar to the unimaginative aspect, there's not really anything special mechanically with the game. It's just placing a bunch of towers to keep up energy and then placing turrets as the enemy will slowly peel away. As far as I could tell, the enemy could be replaced with anything else, so much so that I don't even really feel it's really an enemy. This game could be called "terraformers" or something and be about using plant turrets to slowly make areas of a planet green and vibrant as the poor atmosphere conditions make it worse. It could be hordes of zombies, it could be mist, growing solid blocks or just magic light just as much as it could be a liquid, it doesn't make you think any differently about this enemy than you would a big red spot labeled "evil" While not liking the style or liking the way the game plays out is one thing and entirely just up to my opinion and why I wouldn't recommend it, I would put the last criticism as something for anyone to be wary of with this game. If anyone could let me know if I just haven't played enough or if there are things introduced that would be nice and I'll edit the review. Otherwise I'd just say this game is disappointing, and for my taste just not really fun :/