IDLE_DIRECTIVE

The idea is great, the first two hours are also great. It slightly scratched and itch I had from Sheltered and other games like that. But the rest of the game quickly becomes a long errand with no purpose. The thing is this type of games relents on having upgrades to strive for. But you get almost everything you need in the first hours. There is no need to reset to advance. Every objective on the map is meaningless: Traders? I can see their locked inventory, for which I need an augment and make tasks. But why would I do it if I have 90% of what they sell already? The remaining 10% I don't even need it. Reactors? They take 15 mins to repair, for nothing to happen when it finishes. 3 extra augment points that I don't even need. Spires? First you encounter reveals a bit of the map. The next ones you probably have already a sensor installed that discovers more map than the Spire itself. Terminal? Submit a symbolic amount of resources and wait 1 hour. Man, I get is supposed to be an idle, but its not, and this timers are crazy (although is not the biggest issue, if I would actually have something to do meanwhile, I would accept them). Maybe I continue for a while, maybe not. I really want to like it, and I honestly think is almost there. The difficult part is done, the dev just needs to completely rebalance the game and make some adjustments to the progress. For example, make each Spire or Reactor unlock something, like a new level cap for items. Make some upgrades unlock once you reach certain goals. Increase the amount of upgrades, decrease the effect, and increase cost. Making reset meaningful somehow, adding locations, new materials, etc. There is a ton that could be made that wouldn't suppose an huge amount of work that would make the game great. I'm sad the dev didn't get there since it's a game I really want to like.

This game ran out of content within a few hours. I stuck it out for longer because there were a lot of initial positive reviews, but I don't think it was worth it. I did a prestige and got a bunch of prestige upgrades and they let me collect resources faster and move faster. But it doesn't really matter, because I've spent the last 5 hours just waiting for a 6 hour timer to count down. There's also a surprising amount of jank for such a small game. There are some fields that you can type into where it seems like the typing doesn't update anything, you have to type and then use the up/down buttons to cause the game to register the new value. Or my auto-explore is stuck because it is trying to go to a certain ruin but it is using the wrong coordinate, and it is now just waiting at that coordinate. Or how it warns you if you try to recycle an in-use component but not if you try to delete it. But the biggest issue is that there's just not much to do. There aren't that many parts or tiers to them, and you pretty quickly have a good enough bot that you can easily collect enough resources to just spend all of your time repairing things aka waiting for timers that can't be sped up. I only have two gameplay-changing prestige perks left: one is a final augment that gives you free augment points (why?), and the other is the replicator which sounds interesting but feels ultimately meaningless since I'm swimming in parts. It's sad because there are good bones to this, but it feels like little content was added and then these timers were added to pad out the game time.

No offline progression by default. The first objective I am expected to sit with the game open for 6 hours.

I wish I could leave a neutral review. But in the end this is a recommendation, and I don't recommend this game. I recommend maybe the first two resets of this game. By that point you have seen all the major mechanics, you understand the flow of a run, and crucially you probably didn't idle very much. Once this game goes from "incremental" to "idler" the quality drops off a cliff. Nothing new for the two-three more resets to complete the game. Just slightly more convenience and bigger numbers. I really think the underlying core of this game has serious legs as an active game. The idea - backpack management married to the Fallout world map - seems like the perfect narrative delivery vehicle for stories big and small. It's honestly extremely clever and I hope the developer spends more time with this mechanical structure. But it runs out of steam and all you're left to do to reach the (admittedly quite neat) ending is auto-explore to gather enough resources. It needs to be either shorter or more complicated.

It starts of quite interesting, but after the first ascension it becomes painfully clear that there isn't really much else to the game. Simply put, the ascensions don't make the game interesting enough to continue, making the game feel quite short. Which is a shame, because I liked the demo enough to buy the game, but the demo was pretty much the entire game.

Very basic and not really fun. It's a neat concept, but it's missing that dopamine/fun-engagement factor and it feels like you see everything in the game fairly fast. The only idler portion of this game is energy whenever you set it up to increase energy output or metal/other outputs when "traveling," other than that you have to be active 99.99% of the time.

This is a great shell for a bigger game, that being said I can't recommend this as it is now. The "rebirths" take out a lot of the tedium, without innovating the gameplay further. If this was concept was fleshed out more (map, story, and gameplay elements), I could easily see it being sold for $10 or more. TLDR: If you've played the demo, you've played the entire game already.

It pains me to do this, but I really can't recommend this game. While I did 100% the game and played around 70 hours, I don't think most people are going to find that level of enjoyment in the game as myself. The main issue stems from the lack of content and pacing as the first two hours and first "rebirth" will be the only fun part for most people. I'd highly recommend this if I had only played a demo. After that however the game feels like a painful slog. The objectives amount to - go to location and collect a metric ton of resources so you can rebirth. The new mechanics introduced feel less impactful and shallow. There is a bad balance in that you can't really idle the game efficiently or feel engaged while actively playing. My 70 hour experience condensed to watching movies while passively playing this game in the background. I find enjoyment in that but I'm aware it is not a good average user experience. For the devs I would recommend - introducing some mechanics that really switch up gameplay to keep it fresh - perhaps introduce random events or make bases where players can process/store materials (you end up with huge amounts of stuff at locations you want to salvage but it's too clunky to move). Reduce wait times to repair, no one wants to wait 4-6 real life hours for a terminal to repair. Make the locations have some more unique flavors or actions - they end up all being the same thing repeated over and over again. And finally rework the augment system - right now a lot of the game mechanics are locked behind it and require a substantial amount of points to unlock - ie the crafting and contract system should be either available from the start or only require 1-2 points to unlock. I think there is potential for this to be one of the greats, I just don't think it the samey slog will be appealing for most. People will be brought in by the initial start, but they'll become disillusioned by the 2nd or 3rd run. It is a shell of a game, where the meat is only really in the beginning. After that it becomes a waiting simulator. The game could easily have been less than five hours if the numbers had just been lower and you didn't repeat the same experience hundreds of times.

I've tried to find the fun in it, but its just a grind and very tedious. It shouldn't be called an idle. There is like maybe 1% idling, 99% active play, and offline progress actually is bad for this game as you will probably run out of critical resources. The 1% idling, is where you turn on auto-explore in the late to end game of prestiging. I've offered all sorts of feedback and criticisms. Either they just missed them, or actively is ignoring them. Either way the core problems with the game aren't being addressed, the balance is way off, and the game has zero respect for your time. Each prestige feels less like progress, and more of self-flaggelation. Most of the upgrades requires so many prestige points that you have to grind constantly. Or waiting constantly for reactors to be repaired. I did one Terminal repair, it took me 4 real hours of waiting. I have upgraded the thing in the prestige system, but at max value, you still have to wait 1 real hour. Seriously, developer... why? The costs to repair terminals are endgame, so you can't rush to it at the start of a run, start the repair, then come back after doing the run for it to be complete. There is so many problems with the game that it overshadows the positives. I'm just so exhausted of trying to find the fun, and yeah sure, numbers go up, but the progress slows to a crawl then you prestige, redo the early torment train, and then get slightly farther. Each run took about 2 hours a piece, and I'm not even complete with the augment tree because the costs scale massively. Like I have one prestige requiring over 100 prestige points, and its not easy getting those points. I'd wait for a deep discount before trying it out. If you love having your time wasted and treat your gaming time like work, then buy it sooner. I'm done waiting for the developer to fix this mess, and done wasting my time suggesting all sorts of stuff that isn't being noticed. Whatever man, I'm out of here. I had some fun in this one, maybe ~10 hours, spread out over the ~40 hours I played.