The Crust

Whoever wrote this character 'Alice' did the rest of the team a major disservice. There is an interesting factory/exploration/colony sim game here that I would probably spend tens of hours enjoying. Yet less than one hour in and I can not stand to spend another second listening to Alice's condescending voice lines. Bad writing can be tolerated. This is worse. The writer chose to make this character insufferable. How sad for the dev team; to have all their hard work marred by one writer's inadequacy.

The game itself shows a promising base. Bugs are to be expected, since this is an Early Access release, and the game has plenty. Unfortunately one of the biggest problems is performance currently, but the developers promised an update soon which improves the performance significantly. I don't see that this can be the final performance improvement, it's lacking too much. All in all, up to this point, the review would be a "Yes, recommended, if you don't have an old computer". But then, what is the problem? The reason I don't recommend getting the game in Early Access is: The game had a small, but serious, game breaking bug which basically rendered a lot of savegames unusable, and the developers are not very straightforward with this situation, lacking communication about the topic, lacking explanation why this bug can not be fixed in a way that broken save games can be corrected. Hence, many players are losing their tens or hundreds of hours of progress because they can't live with the bug. Of course those are mostly those players who play a lot, which are, coincidentally, those with the biggest knowledge, who help other players, who file the most bugs and suggestions. In my eyes, the decision to keep the communication about that bug so low shows a lack of the required respect for the players. And that makes me not recommend to get the game in Early Access, when the bugs are aplenty and support should be just around the corner.

[h1] Лунная Колония [/h1] Многогранный симулятор. [h1] СЮЖЕТ [/h1] Корпорация всего лишь хотела немного прибыли и всё шло по протоколу, но теперь от успеха лунной миссии зависит судьба всего человечества. [h1] ГЕЙМПЛЕЙ [/h1] Игровой процесс представляет собой мощный тайкун. В начале всё идёт штатно. Обычные процедуры, разворачивание начального оборудования. У нас под командованием хитрые автономные дроны, которые умеют и грузы таскать и добывать ресурсы (конечно, придётся их сперва дооснастить, но это очень просто), так что — не пропадём. Наша небольшая миссия прибывает на уже готовую большую базу. Но дальше происходит катастрофа! В Луну врезается здоровенный астероид и сносит на поверхности почти всё! К счастью, наши дроны выжили в подземной части базы. Отсюда и начнётся наше триумфальное восстановление. Действие игры происходит в наземной, подземной частях базы, а затем и по всей поверхности Луны. На поверхности ставим солнечные батареи, аккумуляторы, площадки для прилунения космических аппаратов и тонну всего другого. Со временем также можно будет разобрать на запчасти руины старой базы. В подземелье начинается добыча ресурсов и производство всякого полезного. Сперва копаем обычную или богатую руду, потом это дело очищаем, потом ещё какое производство, а на выходе готовые и нужные изделия или их компоненты. Сказать в данном случае проще, чем сделать. Производственные цепочки тут достаточно сложные. Хотя со временем их можно будет упростить или расширить, например, за счёт подземных конвейеров. Чтоб поставить какое-то важное здание, обычно сперва придётся исследовать соответствующие технологии. Очки технологий нам выдают за выполненные контракты или квесты. Вот так эта система и развивается — выполняем миссии/контракты, получаем очки науки (трёх видов) — качаем технологии — строим более крутые производства. На поверхности Луны тоже есть, чем заняться. Тут полно разных точек интереса. Какие-то можно разобрать для получения ценных ресурсов, а где-то будем спасать немногочисленных выживших. Для исследования планеты понадобится организовывать экспедиции с разными настройками участников. Время от времени возникали небольшие непонятки. Как правило, это я что-то недопонимал. Например, забывал поставить очистительную постройку для руды, а сразу пробовал её гнать на плавильный завод. Но было и что-то типа багов. Однажды просто отключился работавший до того конвейер, перестал соединяться с постройкой. Ну или меня заглючило, хотя вряд ли, т.к. продукция уже с постройки шла, значит всё было норм. Немного некорректно, на мой взгляд, работают роботы добытчики. Они почему-то тусуются у экстракторов и добывают руду там. Хотя мне куда интереснее было бы, если б они копали породу вокруг базы, а у меня этим занимался всего один робот из пяти почти постоянно. Высокий приоритет копки породы не помог, а напрямую управления ими нет. Рассмотрим плюсы и минусы игры, подведем итоги. [h1] ПЛЮСЫ: [/h1] 👍 Отличная для жанра графика. 👍 Хорошее музыкальное и звуковое сопровождение. 👍 В наличии сюжет. 👍 Можно играть в песочнице без лишних хлопот. 👍 Очень мощная система прокачки технологий, экономики, строительства, много видов ресурсов и производимых изделий. 👍 Русский язык текста, есть русская озвучка. [h1] ТО, ЧТО МОЖЕТ БЫТЬ КАК ПЛЮСОМ ТАК И МИНУСОМ: [/h1] 😐 Тут придётся прямо потно продумывать функционирование производств. Причём чем дальше, тем это будет проще, только придётся перестраивать базу и всё ещё раз продумывать. [h1] МИНУСЫ: [/h1] ❌ Дроны-добытчики почему-то игнорировали приказы раскапывать породу вокруг базы, а копали руду у экстракторов. ❌ Показалось, что один раз сам по себе отключился конвейер к одной из построек. Не факт, что это меня не глюкнуло, так что этот минус может и недействителен. [h1] ВЫВОДЫ [/h1] В совокупности игра очень крутая. Особенно понравится любителям конструирования производств и экономическо-изучательных симуляторов — это дело тут устроено основательно. Крайне рекомендую к ознакомлению. Традиционно, полную версию обзора, со скриншотами, красивым оформлением, можно найти в кураторе. [code] [b][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6851324/]Если понравилось – жмите палец вверх и подписывайтесь на куратора Runner Streams. Здесь масса скрытых бриллиантов игровой индустрии.[/url][/b] [/code] Всем хороших игр!

Edit 10.07.2026 - After recent update I gave it another shot. I must admit the devs improved many things, but also left dissapointingly many issues unadressed. - What has clearly improved: 1, Drone logic and prioritization in early and mid-game. 2, Added some tutorials, also to outpost building, and added a nice warning before triggering key timed event 3, Added new tech, new resources, new mechanics 4, Added nice contract filters (but it could also use reward filtering) - What is still lacking 1, Drone logic in late game - again you can't expect to have anyting done without setting it to the highest priority 2, Optimization in late game - I believe I have a decent rig, so significant lags in late game were diappointing. 3. They didn't fix the bug where drone's won't finish building living quarters walls - very annoying 4, The logic of research and conveyor money balance is unchanged (still absurd) 5, Late game is quite tedious, especially contracts - it is possible to automate them to some degree but the automation is tiring to design and maintain, while you still have to do plenty of things manually. While fulfilling first 50 contracts is actually fun, fulfilling another 500 is just an increasingly tedious chore, and fulfilling any above that is just a torture. 6, I'm very disappointed they didn't add more story arc yet. For the first time I have finished the laser cannon quest, and was very disappointed that was it, with all the important questions left unanswered. 7, There are still many minor areas for quality of life improvments, like in colonists management and assignment displaying their personal traits descriptions after hovering over them with the mouse cursor. 8, They could really expand the music playiist - it looks quite long, but after few dozens hours of playtime I had the feeling it is just few most distinct pieces playing over and over again. 9, Some game parts still clearly unfinished - like empty slots in the late research tree or missing voiceovers. So, all in all, I still can't receommend the game at the current state. I really can't wait for the full release and sincerly hope I will be able to change my review to thumbs-up then. Cheers! Edit 29.04.2026 - Still waiting for 1.0 Full Release. Over 3 years in early access sounds like quite enough, don't you think? Can't wait to change my review to positive ^^ ---------------- Original review ---------------- Tldr, it is a decent game but still too many bugs and unfinished content - I played twice from the beginning till like the late-middle of the story and gave up due to bugs, optimization issues, balance issues, and missing features. On plus I can say that the game plays really well in early and early-mid game. The story is intriguing, and the gameplay is rewarding. But the farther into the game you go, the more issues you'll discover, and as soon as you get colonists to your base, ploblems start piling up. The main problems I can see now: 1, AI poorly prioritizes what drones are doing and where they are taking resources from and to. And I cannot highlight this point enough! - you could easy fix tis by adding manual drone control if needed in some cases. 2, unclear resource management rules (input/output filters, stuck resources) 3, building/restocking prioritization - sometimes you have to destroy a building and build it anew to have it restocked for production. But even without that, setting priorities works just poorly, soon you will discover that anything that is not set to highest priority will not be resupplied/delivered/built or serviced at all. 4, lack of direct colonist control, especially there is no option to fire a colonist if they cause trouble, nor any direct mitigation options 5, outpost building is very poorly explained, you end up researching a bunch of tech before you even know what it is for 6, speaking of whitch, the tech research tree is also absurd sometimes, it takes more resources to desing a table or a chair for colonists (why do I have to research such stuff anyway??) than to research a factory or a new energy production tech. Really? And also, why do I have to research stuff like refrigerator to be allowed to research, idk, better boots for colonists? Like, what do those things have in common that one is a condition for another? Those conditions are pretty ridiculous sometimes. Devs should make the research tree way more flat and with more internal logic. And also, there are still many empty spaces left in the tech tree, and I could think of plenty additional tech that could be added. 7, Speaking of logic, we pay for all the buildings only with resources, but for some reson for wires and conveyors you need money. And not like pocket money, they cost like s**tload of money. I can see this is a major balancing idea, but it could really use redoing, bucause now it is just like "f**k logic". 8, Late-game is poorly optimized and framerate drops drastically 9, Voiceover is not done and many dialogues are not dubbed yet. I could go on and on, but I guess I made my point. I will definitely come back to this game when it is fully released. For now I've got enough of early access misery :D Do I recommend it? Probably yes whn fully released. Now? Not really, unless you are someone that knowes what you are signing up for.

As of now, I cannot recommend The Crust. The foundation for the gameplay mechanics are more than solid and the mix between factory building, moon exploration, colony management and contracts is very varied. I see the potential, and if the developers continue to fix things on this [b]before releasing into 1.0 in three weeks[/b], I can see myself changing this review. There are minor or semi minor bugs and necessary QoL features missing at almost every corner of the game. [list] [*]some descriptions and tool tips are conflicting each other [*]active delivery contracts just disappear from the menu until you restart the game [*]some tool tips don't appear at the right location [*]some building menus don't display the costs of the buildings [*]some modal popups in the foreground of the UI still let you click things in the background (which are almost not visible) [*]there is no way to copy more than one building at a time [/list]

Before anything else: I don’t really like Steam’s Recommended / Not Recommended system for this game. If there were stars, I’d give it 4 out of 5. My assessment takes the current Early Access state and the size of the dev team into account. Choosing the “Not Recommended” thumb was honestly hard – but there are reasons for it. First things first: the game itself and its scenario are fantastic. It gives a very realistic impression of how difficult life on other planets could actually be for us. More on that later. The early game and base expansion are genuinely fun, but after three restarts now, my excitement consistently turns into a “Hm… why keep going?” around the mid-game, followed shortly by a complete loss of motivation. At first I blamed Early Access. I didn’t expect it to instantly click. But after the third run ended unfinished, I started asking myself why this keeps happening. Here’s what I figured out: 1. Performance The game looks gorgeous. However, like many games in this genre, performance slowly degrades over time. I’m not running a potato PC (AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, RTX 3060 12GB, 64GB RAM, Samsung Evo 980 1TB NVMe), but also not a high-end monster. I’m well above minimum and recommended specs, yet in the early late-game I can barely get past 20 FPS if I want the image to remain sharp. That alone isn’t a dealbreaker – FPS aren’t everything, and I’m sure there’s room for optimization. Still, it was the starting point. 2. Game design Early on, logistics problems feel unavoidable – which is fine. But even deep into the late-game, you never really reach carefree automation. Resources are scarce, and basic processors waste too much to be truly viable. The better buildings that process everything efficiently can take a long time to unlock depending on your run. What starts as a manageable issue slowly turns into a race (hello, time-limited missions) and eventually frustration. Slag, for example, is a binary problem: you either have way too much of it or far too little. A stable balance is rare – and as soon as you find one, it’s gone again (due to depleting resources or mobile drillers producing more slag as regolith quality changes). Combined with other micromanagement (colonists, expeditions, etc.), this becomes exhausting over time because you’re never really “done.” On top of that, there’s an immersion break. The technology is highly advanced (hoverboards, quantum computers, etc.), but robotic arms between conveyor belts? Apparently unknown. Autonomous rovers mapping the moon? Nope – despite AI centers existing (which would honestly be underchallenged by that task). Even the Titanic wreck was mapped by two autonomous probes that took a long time, but worked on their own. In-game, this could easily be handled by a trained specialist overseeing them. Everything also happens on a single vertical layer. We’re talking sci-fi that somehow forgets the basics of warehousing and factory history. For almost everything in human industry, we invented regulators, automation processes, and optimization. That whole “things get easier over time” idea gets lost in the current design – and in my opinion, that hurts the game flow. Unfortunately, this trend continues. I recently jumped back in for the auto-sell update and was… disappointed again. Instead of selling surplus goods flexibly, each station can only sell one (!) resource. Want more? Build another station. And that was the moment my biggest issue with the game finally clicked. 3. Ambivalence in game design The game wants to show us what the future could look like and what challenges await us – but it never really delivers a strong sense of progress. And if you think just a little bit ahead, you eliminate your own reason to keep playing. Resources on the moon are finite. That means the game has a built-in ending. Not sudden – but inevitable. Colonists can’t survive there indefinitely either. Once the ice is gone, factory productivity drops significantly. What’s missing is a motivational carrot. Something like: “Deliver absurd amounts of materials to X, they’ll build a space station that mines ice on Titan. If your (automated!) supply routes work, you’ll receive X ice per month. Donate more, get more.” Just a small UI, a massive resource sink, and a very clear motivation: becoming independent from the moon and moving forward, no matter how long it takes. I’m not asking for it to be easy – just for the possibility to eventually put one major worry aside, even if it takes 100 hours. Visually, this could just be progress bars you slowly fill. Motivation-wise, it would help enormously. As it stands now, once this realization hits, motivation collapses. Final thoughts That said: this is an impressive game for such a small team, and it’s clearly made with a lot of love. High-quality visuals and videos, an interesting story – and the devs actually listen to the community. Even though I personally could never pull something like this off, I don’t feel like a single minute spent playing was wasted. I had a lot of fun. It’s also possible that, as someone who enjoys Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program, Per Aspera, Surviving Mars, and other survival/base-building games, I’m simply not the target audience – which might skew my perspective. Still, I see the potential, and I hope this helps the developers in some way (if they happen to read it). I’ll keep an eye on the game and its development and will definitely give it another try – the beginning is just incredibly captivating 😄 (Yes, i asked GPT to Translate and Structure my pre-written German Text, to transfer my Thoughts right. :) )

The game is filled with bugs and the dev team decided to implement new features when they didn't even solve the old problems. You can expect surprising game crashes, that your components or production facilities just don't work as they're expected which leads to problems in the gameplay because you're missing certain resources. The game is ridiculously not optimised and if you want your lategame to be from 5-15fps then this game is for you. The game itself has potential, the idea is great. Even if there is a lot of factory production games on the market this is still something new and I want to congratulate the dev team for their vision for this game. In my opinion the game was released in a not completed state and in its current state right now I don't recommend buying it. AFTER UPDATE 2.0 After many hours gameplay in the new update, same old story. Game crash in mid/late game when you want to build outpost on moon surface every time. I`m stuck in the mid game because of that, and this game is like demo free game. I almost forgot to mention that game have huge bug with Large hidrophonic farm from the begining, and they still did not menage to fix that. What is about.... One production ciclus is about 30 days, when ciclus is ower you shoutl get 50 Organics, but you get only 3-4 organics. When bug apears it stay and you have problem with colonst starvation, low or no production of carbon fibre and carbon fibre is in many recepies for production advanced materials. Then you are stuck. GAME END! Try game on two separate PC one with win10 and another with win11 both clean instal without success. Optimization and frame rate is a little bit better but still far away from good. Just do not waist your money until they fix the game. Going to uninstal 4 time and I not shure would I try again to play.

The Game is fun. Fumbling with belts, automate refining and production works good. I've done two playthroughs up until this review and the progress from the first to the second regarding mechs, techs and added stuff is realy good. But the optimization is still bad. After around 25 ingame hours the game crawls down to 22-25FPS for me with my 7800X3D. It seems it's not very multi core optimized since one core get's to 95%, 2-3 others to like 20-30% and the others just do nothing. My 4090 is just sitting in the corner with 3% utilization so it's not graphics. I've played some other builders (Factorio, DSP, Surviving Mars) and all crawl down over time, yes but muuuch later and with much more stuff happening on the map. So it's sad that I can't build a realy big base in this game without hitting the Seconds per Frame threshold and that is why I don't recommend it. Edit: with the update from 30.04.26 the performance improved quite a bit. The same save went from 23fps to 35fps and that is realy good. But my point still stands I think. It's too low far to early in the game.