Recent reviews by Compugasm

This game has a good mix of stuff to do for every player type. If you want front line combat, base building, or running a factory to produce war materials. All of this kept me busy for 1,200 of game play.

However, you will find the base building to be unsatisfactory. Because you can build the best, and most indestructible base possible, and nobody will help you supply it. Worst of all, the infantry only care about "pushing". Noobs are constantly crossing bridges and taking territory they have no hope of holding. They can't be content to hold out, slaughtering enemies outside your fortified gates, and stock up. Nope, they gotta load up with gear, run past all your defenses, then die like idiots in wide open ground. Repeat that, until your base is drained of supplies. So, ultimately, the 20-30hrs it took you to build that base was totally pointless.

The facilities are also disappointing because of maintenance cost. When you first plop down a factory, you might be the only one in the area, so it's cheap to run. But, as soon as you get 2 or 3 neighbors, the cost to run the factory goes up by a factor of 3-4x. As a solo player, that cost will crush you. Because you'll spend a good 2-3hrs of your day just on maintaining the factory. It's fun for two days, but then it feels like a job. Even in a regiment, the workload is not easier. Now, instead of running logistics to support yourself, you're supporting X players in the regiment who don't want to supply anything.

Being a front line soldier is fun, for a while. But unless you are in a regiment, you rarely get to play with cool toys. Mostly, that's because this stuff has to be made by players, which takes factories, and bases to defend the factories (see above). Without access to cool stuff, you just take your chances with whatever someone has already stocked at your spawn point. You'll run to the front, die, and repeat. Maybe your push will be successful this time. But, the next time you log in, all those gains are gone, because nobody built a base to defend what you took.

My last game, Liberation Point was completely neutral and undefended for more than a real day. All defense has decayed away. Nobody bothered to take the point, rebuild the town base. Could've been done by a single guy in a jeep, with some bmats for the construction vehicle that was right outside the building. Instead, they spent all day fighting over the wooden bridge into Abandoned Ward.

Even though this is a negative review, I still recommend the game. You also will probably spend 1,000 hours figuring out why you're never going to play again.

I play every 4x/base building game that comes out. In almost every game, I find myself wishing that X would be automated in some way. Such as, hiring bots, employees, or machines to do marketing, sales, shipping... whatever the task happens to be in the context of the game, and I'm invariably let down every, single, time. No developer has ever gotten this workflow right. In fact, some even argue that too much automation takes away "work" from the game. I've hand delivered X item to X person 100 times now; Why do I have to keep doing this same damn mission over and over Elite Dangerous? I literally can't hire a space mailman to deliver packages? I gotta do it myself? Jesus.

Thankfully, FortressCraft: Evolved has none of that grindy crap and they did automation properly. I spent a 1100hrs playing this game. I've been on Steam for 6 years and never bothered to write a review before. You need to buy this game.

The entire purpose of this game is to automate production. You build a machine that poops out other machines, which poops out crafted items. Automate all the things!! In one sense, that does make it feel like Factorio, and it has blocks like Minecraft. But boiling this game down to simply those observations shows how little you actually understand. FortressCraft has snap-to production building like Big Pharma and tower defense like Clash of Clans. Unlike Minecraft, there actually is a goal to achieve in FortressCraft. Quite simply, this is the best game of 2016 and I doubt you've played anything like it before.

If there were any downsides to this game, I'd say it will take longer to win than you think it will. You will lose a few times because you don't know how much power all the guns take. So, you try to half ass it and get power. But, then you find out you need 10x power you though was required, and your production chain is a mess. So, you have to rip things up and move them around. Some people don't like ripping everything up and redoing their base design. But, that's part of the experimentation and learning process everyone goes through when they play this game.

The "winning condition" is to power the orbital transmitter, and the expansion goal is building a machine that will drill down to planetary magma. Pro Tip, you can not power the damn thing with just 10 generators you started out using in the beginning of the game. Don't be "that guy" who complains the game is taking days to power the Orbital Transmitter because you are using coal you found in the beginning of the game.

If you find yourself complaining FCE should build products like Factorio, then the problem is that you are not automating properly. See, as long as you have the technology in Factorio, you can build products without setting up the proper production chain, and that's cheating. In FCE, you need to place the wire maker down, and supply it with copper, or you will have no wire. No Factorio style cheating here. What I'm getting at is that the game isn't badly designed. You are simply being lazy and spolied. If you can't be bothered to place your own machines and conveyor belts, then you can just go play any LEGO game where you mindlessly click on some self assembling blocks and be done with it.

Additionally, the limited graphic style of Factorio means it's all 2d. But in FCE, you build 3 dimensional. This creates interesting tasks to do for people that like to do things "just so" in a quest for perfection. The most inefficient automation is always better than manual effort, and multiple solutions will all work, so don't worry about perfection. The thing to remember is if the game feels "tedious" then you're not automating enough. Like if you find yourself shooting enemies with your pistol, that means you haven't built enough gun or missile defense. So, stop trying to gun down bosses with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pistol. If all those guns you made drain your power, then guess what? Yeah, the next thing you need to do is build more power. In fact, it's the consumption of power that drives the game foward. More power creates more enemies, which require more guns, which creates more loot drops, used in machines which requires more power, etc.

There is enough stuff to do that you shouldn't be sitting there watching machines tick away. That's means you're wasting time. Yes, that landscape clearing machine does work slowly. It's supposed to. You're not supposed to sit there and stare at it like a tea pot. Give it power, and go do something else for ten minutes. Mine more coal, research something, harvest some crystals, and by the time you get done with that the base will be clear. This is what makes you fell like real game progress is being made. You will literally be absorbed into 10 things going on at once before the sun comes up. If you're bored because "things take to long" then what you need to do is multitask.

Unlike every other "something-Craft" game, there is no "build order" to follow by rote memorization, or a plan to spend your power efficiently. Such as; make 10 tin, then make exactly 2 hoppers, then make 2 lasers... No no no no. This isn't StarCraft. Consume all the power you can. When you run out, just build more generators. Build thousands of missiles, burn hundreds of coal a second. Consumption. This game is a consumption simulator. It doesn't matter that a quarry is less efficient than an excavator. Because the whole point of this game is to build all the machines, power them, and have them do stuff automatically! What I said will take the average player 100hrs before it finally clicks, "Oh, build lots of everything. I get it now".

The developer made sure you can play the game "to the end" without needing the expansion. The thing is, much like a Star Wars movie, you've just watched Star Wars, and your NOT going to see Empire Strikes Back... are you crazy? You have to see Empire! So, in that sense, Frozen Factory is a "must have".