Recent reviews by CawsForConcern

it has been brought to my attention that this incredible game was made by a singular person

it cannot be understated what an achievement that is

Brimming with potential. It's shocking that a small team managed to create such a cool and detailed simulated world, and it makes me wish there were more simulated-world heavy games out there with bigger budgets.


Edit for the 1.0 release:

The game is unfinished. It's fun, but there's still performance issues and bugs galore. It feels like the developers rushed to get the game 'out the door', I'm assuming due to technical debt or complexity.

Had this in my library for a long time, but I didn't try it out until Cities Skylines 2 flopped on release.

After giving it a solid try, it's genuinely of the best colony sims / city builders out there. The water management stuff is *cool*, but the vertical building is truly great.

Stacking buildings is really, really fun. It's a whole Factorio-esque belt puzzle in itself, figuring out how to get get beavers vertical access to each level of your increasingly elaborate vertical homes, warehouses, and workplaces. It also adds a ton of visual variety that other city builders and colony sims lack.

tl;dr - I never thought that breaking down a ship could be so engrossing.


The writing for the setting is superb and jam packed with the driest humor (it's great!), but the writing for the main story / dialogue misses a little. Since you're forced to take breaks between game segments (each 'shift' is 15 minutes), have to sit and listen to cutscenes which are done by intercom.

I wouldn't mind that so much if I could fiddle with my upgrades, look at emails, etc, but you just kinda have to sit there for a few minutes listening to the characters talk. I wouldn't knock it so much if it was interesting dialogue - but it's no where as engaging as the gameplay is. I genuinely started using them as breaks to stand up from by PC and go do other stuff. This is contrasted pretty hard by radio chatter you hear between the characters while you're out in the shipbreaking yard - it's fun to listen to and you can multitask while listening to it.

The art direction is kickass. The soundtrack is stellar (and will get stuck in your head), and the environment sounds and SFX for your tools are all really well done.

I was a little bummed to learn there's no 4th tool (the slot remains tantalizingly empty). Some kind of extinguisher would've been a nice 4th tool.

Touching on the upgrades: some of them are pretty minor. Don't get me wrong, upgrading the grapple gun is great - more tug force, more push force, better tethers, it's all good stuff. I was REALLY surprised to find out that the cutting tool never progresses on beyond Grade 1 hardness surfaces. I don't think it's a huge downside - I get it's probably for the sake of balanced gameplay - but it feels like an obvious to put a "cut higher hardness" on the cutting tool. Also, I feel like this is an oversight but you don't actually need the last Oxygen upgrade for your suit? The penultimate one is enough for your entire 15 minute shift.

The demo charges kinda fill the niche of "better cutting power", but you can't upgrade their cutting power either. They're stuck at Grade 3. Being able to cut Grade 4/5 surfaces with the demo charges would've been fun and opened up some new routes for shipbreaking.

Also, I was ready to hate the 15 minute shift time limit, but I can appreciate that it does encourage you to get into a good workflow. Still I would've liked having an upgrade that let me have longer shifts (maybe 30 minutes or so) just to reduce the amount of loading screens between breaking down bigger ships.


Overall, this is a really great game. I'd love to see DLC for it, adding in new tools, ships, and mechanics.

Switched this to a negative review. The game itself is good, but there's a big dumb FOMO cash shop (where you can "miss" buying cosmetics because they're on a weekly timer).

The premium currency that doesn't "split" evenly into the prices (i.e. you can only buy their V-Bux in increments of 500, but the items cost 400).

I can overlook some launch issues and bugs, but c'mon. Don't be greedy.


Original review:
Playing Ogryn activates a primal part of my brain. Brain gives happy chemicals when shoot M4 Browning.

A friend held this game in high enough regard that they outright bought it for me. I'll let that speak for itself.

My first play through took about ten hours split between two sittings, and was utterly enraptured by the mystery of the setting. The setting and characters are complex, but the game does a really good job of not loredumping you into oblivion.

The lead-up towards the end of the game was incredibly tense - moreso than many, many games I've played before. I think it's an experience that will stick with me for a long while.


Also worth mentioning: the soundtrack is utterly fantastic.

this is unironically too good to be free

please let me pay you money

Frostpunk sets a *high* bar for city / colony sim games, to the point it's kind of hard to go back to the others. The stakes are tremendously high, but they're incredibly fair, and the stories presented are incredibly engaging.

I will also mention this: I'm not usually into Steampunk art in a lot of games. You might not be either, but Frostpunk is an exception. The art direction here is phenomenal - there's no gaudy brass gears and widgets glued onto everything, rather, every building and every machine feels like a big, cool, industrial workhorse with a real purpose.

I slept on this game for years and I cannot recommend it highly enough now that I've given it a chance.

Project management made utterly thrilling.

A fantastic game only brought down by the fact that I can't post a review including about all the things that make it great because that'd be hella spoilers.

Go in blind and enjoy the ride.