Recent reviews by RunzWithScissors

This game is awesome. It's still in beta for sure, and it has its rough edges that are still getting smooth out, but for all of its faults, this game is amazing, unique, and brilliant.

I love the setting and technology. Its all near future with no space magic stuff. It has only the lightest dusting of sci-fi actual. Your spaceships look and act like real space ships, complete with big dumb radiators you better pull in before battle. All of the weapons both you and the aliens use are all things that exist or could definitely exist. The game does an excellent job of simulating the real world physics of space ship maneuvers. This game makes The Expanse look like hokey and unrealistic sci-fi.

What really sets the game apart though is the feeling of threat, and how it translates both to the theme and the game play. This isn't a game where you just run up a power curve, and always easily meeting the challenges in front of you. The aliens are a completely lethal and overwhelming threat from the very beginning, and their threat only ramps up as time goes on. The aliens start vastly ahead of you in terms of power, and their power only accelerate away from you as the game goes on.

The absolute brilliance of this game is that it makes starting from far behind and getting left in the dust something you can survive, and eventually overcome. It's a great narrative and game play trick because you feel desperately under threat at all times (because you are!), but you have ways to keep scrambling away from your doom and fighting back. You pay for every small victory with brutal and disproportionate losses. The first time you find yourself treading water and being able to hold back the aliens temporarily in one place feels like victory, even as you pay for that victory by being ravaged elsewhere.

What's so great about the game is that you feel like you are losing and struggle to stay alive for so long, until one day you realize that you are holding the line and can mostly defend your stuff, and then years later you start to take the fight to the enemy and begin to see the strengths that the humans have over their invaders. Its just such a well crafted game play arc because you feel like you are losing and falling behind for a very long time before you start to see how you can actually win.

All of that said, I should throw in a few disclaimers and complaints. This game is still definitely in beta. The over arching story is great, but the factions need to be more distinct in terms of game play. They are all very different narratively, but other than the Servants, the difference between the factions are pretty slim in gameplay terms, which is a bit disappointing.

The UI, especially the tech tree UI, needs some help. You can't have a tech tree that big and complex, and have it be so painful to figure out what any technology does. The information is there, the UI is just in desperate need of more tool tips so you can get to it without clicking through a bunch of slow loading screens and painfully searching around. There are good ideas in the UI, but there are some places where it just takes too many clicks to get something done. It sounds like UI is next on the developers list, so hopefully they clean that up.

My other mild complaint is that the gameplay built around agents fighting for control of Earth can be kind of distracting from the awesome battles in space. The Earth layer of the game isn't bad, but I find it a lot less interesting than the space aspect, and wish it ate up less of my time. This is a very long game that will eats an absurd number of hours, and so I just wish I spent a lot less of that time shuffling orgs around and moving agents around Earth.

Finally, this is a long game and it takes a while to wrap your head around it. Its amazing if you have the time for it and like the idea of grappling with a complex alien invasion simulation, but you've got to be a bit of a nerd willing to burn some hours to really get what this game is offering. Its well worth it though if you are into this sort of thing.

I am really excited for the developers to keep polishing this and can't wait for a final release. I think if they just polish this up a bit more, Terra Invicta is going to be legendary. It's already well worth my time and money.

Factorio was always a brilliant game, but after playing it for a bit, I hit my limit. The biggest issue was that in the original Factorio, you eventually hit a point where you don't really have a reason to do anything differently. If your main bus design is working well, why change? I mean, sure you CAN change it to try something new, but the game doesn't really push you. Eventually you look at what is next and go, "Uhg, that's just more of the same, but more tedious" or you start challenging yourself.

Anyways, I hit my limit on Factorio a while ago.

Then Space Age came out. Holy crap. This changes everything. It's an absolute masterpiece. It is possibly the greatest expansion I've ever seen for any game like it. All of the old elements are there, but right at the point when the experience is starting to feel samey, it throws you a completely new problem that forces you to completely reevaluate how you build. Every new planet is a totally unique challenge that requires you to throw out the rule book and keeps the game fresh. I'm more addicted than I ever was with the original. They have simply out done themselves.

On top of that, they just stuffed Space Age with amazing quality of life upgrades. The game plays so much easier and smoother now.

Space Age is amazing. If you've ever liked Factorio, Space Age is something you absolutely need to buy.

Everyone seems to love this game, but I'll be the bad guy and tell you that I do not. The core problem I have with this game is that it actually isn't the physics based puzzle it advertises to be. The gameplay is that you need to carefully break levels so that once you hit the go button (usually an alarm) you can then quickly move through the level collecting specific targets, blow up particular things, or move specific objects to a particular place in a very limited amount of time. You are not destroying levels; you are carefully modifying levels so that you can speed run collecting/hitting/moving some objective.

The "physics" is far more Minecraft than Red Fraction. If you demolish every single piece of support for a building except for a single flimsy piece of wood, the building will continue to stand until you destroy that last piece. The building will fall to the ground and then nothing will happen. It won't implode from the impact, shatter or anything else. It will just be half a building laying on the ground otherwise unharmed. Things only break when other things run into or explode on them. You cannot use something's weight against itself.

The point where I finally put the game down was in a level where I have to demolish a food court. Bowing to Minecraft physics, I carefully set up my explosives and positioned my trucks so that I could demolish every single brick connecting the top floor to the bottom floor of the food court. My goal was the drop the top floor onto the bottom floor, smashing the entire building. I achieved my goal of carefully blowing out every single brick of all of the support and guess what happened? The top floor fell a few feet onto the bottom floor and... nothing happened. Nothing was destroyed, the completely unattached upper floor was still considered intact and just sort of floating there. This is no Red Faction. It's literally like destroying stuff in Minecraft if long things in Minecraft could bend a little.

This game has no physics simulation beyond gravity for completely unconnected objects, and ramming stuff into other stuff makes that stuff break. You will not be demolishing the base of a building to bring it down. You will not be knocking out support struts to make a structure collapse. Dropping heavy things onto other things might destroy what is literally touched, but that's it. If you drop a tank onto building and then blow demolition charges all around the base of the building, you will blow up the first floor where the explosions touch, damage the top floor where the tank physically touches, and be left with a mostly intact building.

If you you like the idea of gently messing up a level to do speed runs on, and there is some limited fun in that game play, this is your game. If you want to set explosives at the base of a structure and cause it to collapse in on itself, you are playing the wrong game. This is not puzzle version of Red Faction; this a puzzle version of Minecraft. This will not scratch your physics based desire for destruction any better than Minecraft. If that is what you are here for, you have come to the wrong place.

I just can't recommend this game for the price. If you see it for $1 and want a very brief kind of pretty experience, it isn't a total rip off. This is just a few short tech demos where you stand around a pretty underwater landscape unable to move beyond the bounds of the room. There is almost no interaction. There is no game. At $10 (the price as I am review this) this is an awful rip off of a demo. This should be nearly free.

This game is just a joy. Imagine something vaguely like Terria, but with a real sense of progression, physics, and purpose. This game just does so much right. Everything you do feels meaningful. I built a base and spiked it with guns. Why? Because I freaking needed those guns to hold back the monsters at night or else they would destroy my base and overrun me. I set up a semi-elaborate system of water power. Why? I needed to set it up so that I could use a teleporter between two areas of operation. I built a bridge and later on a couple of towers; both of which were kind of challenging because physics actually matters a little. I built those things for a purpose; I need to span a chasm and to get to something high. Build your tower or bridge without enough support and it WILL fall down. If you don’t stud them with turrets, monsters will eventually rip them down.

This game (at least right now while in Early Access) isn’t a hundreds of hours of sandbox time game. You can play it like a sandbox, but you can also win. I just beat it after roughly 40 hours, and I feel like I spent the right amount of time doing it. I am satisfied and done. If this game gets released with more content after early access, I’ll probably be back to do it again. If it doesn’t, I’ll still be contended with what a got. If it didn’t say Early Access, I would have never of guessed because it is pretty damn complete as it is.

The only real possible negative I could see someone having with this game is that it is smaller in terms of scope and sprawling then Terria and other Terria-alike games. It doesn’t have a dozens of biomes or hundreds of enemies. It is smaller, but I actually kind of find this to be a positive because it is so much tighter than other Terria-alike games. It is like the developer picked a proper amount that they could bit off and made it exactly that big.

Overall, if you like Terria flavored games, this is easily one of the best right now. If the developer adds more between now and release, that is all just gravy to me. Seriously, congratulations to whoever developed this; this game is just great.

This game is utterly amazing. Don't be put off by the mildly ugly graphics. You will forget them in no time. What makes this game mind blowing is that it is a rogue-ish game with permadeath, yet it doesn't feel like it. Sure, the first few times you play you are going to measure your lifespan in hours, but once you get the hang of it you realize that survival is all up to you and completely possible for very long periods of time. I am writting this after burning a solid 6 hours on this game in a single sitting. In that entire time I had thrills, upsets, and close calls, but never died. This is a rougalike game to be sure, but don't let that cause you to run screaming.

The survival aspects of this game are absolutely awesome. You find yourself searching for food and water, planning ahead, and deciding when it is worth a risky encounter. There is no "I am a bad guy" badge on people. See a fellow stranger in the distance? It is up to you if you want to use surprise to take out a possible threat, or wave and see if he is friendly and wants to talk. Do you risk a fire to boil water, knowing it might attract a threat? When it gets dark, do you stumble blindly looking for a good camp, or take a risky spot in the open and hope for the best? What do you do when you wake up to find a melon head stolen your weapon and backpack; grab a stick and give chase, stalk them, what? There are always so many options, and that doesn't even get into the tactical turn based combat!

The combat, while simple on its face is complex and interesting. Planning is rewarded, but so is on the spot craftiness. The the game never demands a split second decision, so you have time to ponder your move and roll the dice. It lets you do so many crafty things and it tends to behave as you would expect. For instance, imagine you come accross some scary looking person who looks like they want to eat you, and have a host of options. Do you sneak in close and try and stab him with your trust spear, hoping that this game awesome wound system will let you stun and cripple the guy before he realizes you are there? Do you try and slip away before he sees you? Maybe you decide to bluff and at a distance try pointing your rifle (with no bullets in it) at him, trying to scare him off, if he charges anyways, flip that rifle around and show him the butt of it. You can jump out of concleament and egg him on, hoping in the rush to get to you he gives you a solid opening to land the first blow. Perhaps you get out your old butchers cleaver and start the fight by charging him over onto the ground, and hacking him apart before he can get up. Hey, he might not even a bad guy, you can always just wave from a distance offering friendly chat and see what he does.

This game is so unassuming, but it is solildly on my top 5 for 2014, and for the value for the price, it is easily #1. It says "early access", but as far as I can tell, this is a full game. This game is an absolute gem. The worst thing about this game is that there are so many things that might scare people off from what is an awesome experience; perm death, ugly graphics, early access, a slightly obscure interface (until you get the hang of it), and a strange theme. Don't let any of these things scare you off. This game is amazing! I can't even imagine what it will be once it is out of early access. Don't wait for a sale, buy it now.

I am a little leery of Early Access games these days. Far too many are just a neat idea that is bare bones in execution. This game though... this is a meaty game. Not only is there an awesome idea in here; realish wilderness survival, but it is very well implemented. There is a fair amount to do, a lot to explore, and it is pretty well balanced. For me personally, I have found the struggle to survive to be just about perfect. I am try hard, succeeding for the most part, but I can see death stalking me as I struggle to keep warm and fed. The balance really good for something that isn’t released.

If a survival game where the primary opponent is nature (not zombies or anything stupid) and you spend most of your time unarmed sounds like fun, I really can’t recommend this game enough. It is worthwhile in its current form, and some sort of story mode (there is only an open world mode now) is just gravey.