Idea Fix

looking forward to more content, very yummy

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33401179/]Follow my curator page for more reviews![/url][/quote] I really enjoyed this for the first hour. I had enough downtime between fixing mechanisms to wander around, read manuals, and explore with the scanner (which seems a bit underutilized). I enjoyed typing in terminal commands, and pressing all the buttons and doodads on mechanisms was satisfying (other than how incredibly abysmal it feels to pull levers and especially rotate knobs). But then I unlocked all available mechanisms and it quickly went downhill. It became incredibly frustrating and stressful, you're juggling too many things at once and never have any downtime anymore like you did in the first hour. You're [i]CONSTANTLY[/i] running back and forth turning things back on because they break/turn off after just a few seconds (especially the rotor which is the backbone of having enough energy to keep everything else running). I'm not sure why, but mechanisms that I used to be able to run for minutes at a time were now breaking every 10-20 seconds. I could never even go into the basement to try to learn the two mechanisms down there because everything up top was needing constant babysitting. I have to assume the people that gave this game the "Relaxing" store tag did so before they unlocked all mechanisms. That or they're sadists. On top of this the whole pressure mechanic is bizarrely left unexplained for the most part, which I see is a common complaint even with positive reviews. The game also doesn't really explain how to use some new features on mechanisms after upgrading them, like the lever on the right side of the generator that I assume is for releasing pressure or something to prevent it from exploding all the time? But I have no idea how the lever works at all, nor what the exploding is actually doing. Sadly this completely ruined the game for me and I decided to refund. I really wanted to stick with it because of how much I enjoyed that first hour, but it's not getting any less stressful with upgrades (and yes I have the valve fully upgraded so things are [i]supposedly[/i] breaking less often, yet it still happens every 10-20 seconds). When I mentioned in the forum how this is ruining it for me and asked if there's ever a point where things stop breaking constantly, at the very least the rotor, the developer informed me that no, mechanisms will continue to break throughout the rest of the game. Maybe I'll revisit it down the road if the developer ever decides to add a setting/upgrade that actually does lower break chance by a dramatic amount.

A unique experience, worth the price even if it was too short for my liking.

I really like this game, and I will continue to share it to friends who like the incremental genre. I'm a big fan of the writing, too - especially the things that you see but do not read.

Its a touch on the pricey side for the ammount of time you get out of it but its also a unique take on the incrimental genre that was clearly a passion project. so honestly don't wait for a discount buy at full price and support a dev with unique ideas

Machine is life Truly a masterful game, took me back to the half life era. Hoping dev will make more games, much love <3