This is so close to being good, but it gets done in by a few inches of bad ui and terrible pathfinding.

In particular, the pathfinding lost me more than one game as my units failed to navigate around an obstacle to reach an emergent breakout in time, and several of the single-unit mission failures were because of characters getting stuck on obstacles or, worse, completely unclear visual range on explosives. I don't think there's anything more frustrating than the lack of proper visual guidance in the build mode, you have to effectively guess the range of several building types and explosive ordinance ranges since there's no information provided by the interface as to what that range might be once they're placed. EXTREMELY annoying lack of quality-of-life there, especially with how strict some of the goals can feel even early on.

The voice-acting is also so bad that I had to fully disable unit voice in the settings. It feels like the actors were professional enough, but didn't have any direction whatsoever. Lines that are meant to be sassy or enthusiastic all come off as flat or too quiet, like someone trying to voice a character without waking their parents in the other room.

ON THJE GOOD SIDE: I like the strict goals mentioned earlier. Even early on, the game is teaching through failure. Walls aren't optional, for example, get those up quick or they're just going to go around them. And you better be segmenting your society, or one munched tent is going to quickly become a horde of infected. The cascade failures are a wonderful element of the game, and it really sells the concept. More ways to HAVE cascade failures likely would have made this game work a bit better, too, since a key aspect of steampunk is having to manage inefficient technology. As it stands, it's little more than set dressing, and comes off as a somewhat derivative warhammer-like setting, complete with shoutouts of "for the emperor!"

I think if they can fix the pathfinding this game would be worth playing, but as is, I think these small frustrations outweigh the promise this has.

This is so close to being good, but it gets done in by a few inches of bad ui and terrible pathfinding. In particular, the pathfinding lost me more than one game as my units failed to navigate around an obstacle to reach an emergent breakout in time, and several of the single-unit mission failures were because of characters getting stuck on obstacles or, worse, completely unclear visual range on explosives. I don't think there's anything more frustrating than the lack of proper visual guidance in the build mode, you have to effectively guess the range of several building types and explosive ordinance ranges since there's no information provided by the interface as to what that range might be once they're placed. EXTREMELY annoying lack of quality-of-life there, especially with how strict some of the goals can feel even early on. The voice-acting is also so bad that I had to fully disable unit voice in the settings. It feels like the actors were professional enough, but didn't have any direction whatsoever. Lines that are meant to be sassy or enthusiastic all come off as flat or too quiet, like someone trying to voice a character without waking their parents in the other room. ON THJE GOOD SIDE: I like the strict goals mentioned earlier. Even early on, the game is teaching through failure. Walls aren't optional, for example, get those up quick or they're just going to go around them. And you better be segmenting your society, or one munched tent is going to quickly become a horde of infected. The cascade failures are a wonderful element of the game, and it really sells the concept. More ways to HAVE cascade failures likely would have made this game work a bit better, too, since a key aspect of steampunk is having to manage inefficient technology. As it stands, it's little more than set dressing, and comes off as a somewhat derivative warhammer-like setting, complete with shoutouts of "for the emperor!" I think if they can fix the pathfinding this game would be worth playing, but as is, I think these small frustrations outweigh the promise this has.