Solar Baron
Solar Baron is a real-time tycoon resource management and logistics game. The game is set in a seamless, randomly-generated solar system with a range of resources to gather, pump and mine for maximum profit.
The world faces a resource shortage. In desperation, the world government has privatized the under-performing global space agency in the hope that profit-driven individuals will find a way to tap the vast amount of resources available on other worlds and deliver them back home.
You are one such profit-driven individual.
LIFE-SIZED SOLAR SYSTEM
Solar Baron features a vast, life-sized solar system of procedurally generated planets and moons. You’ll need to solve the logistical challenges associated with transporting tons of valuable resources across billions of kilometers of space by constructing a network of strategically-placed orbital and surface depots.
SPACECRAFT AND SPACEPORT DESIGN
Research new technologies and design spacecraft capable of carrying out specific missions. With a range of available engines, fuel types, and other components, you will be challenged with designing spacecraft that strike a balance between maintenance requirements, production time, mass and – of course – cost.
Design spaceports from a range of modules to serve as fuel depots, research stations, tourist destinations or any combination of these. Just remember that each module must be launched into orbit, so design with caution.
ORBITAL MECHANICS AND MISSION PLANNING
Solar Baron simulates realistic orbital mechanics as well as real-world orbital maneuvers. However, you don’t need to figure out the gritty details yourself – you pay people to do that for you. The game features a streamlined mission design system, which will calculate every detail of a spacecraft’s mission from a list of actions to perform created by the player. This leaves you to do more important things: creating a strategy, setting goals, planning missions and watching the bottom line.
Read More: Best Automation Economy Games.
uFactory
I believe someone already said somewhere that uFactory feels like what we would get after Factory and BigPharma had a baby. As much as I enjoyed both of those games, uFactory feels like it hits the sweet spot for me in many ways. With the limited space and funds, maximising every level is super satisfying and with the products of your factory being so different every time, it feels fresh and it doesn’t get boring at all (awesome way to prevent having to do the same thing at the start over and over again).
– Real player with 146.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automation Building Games.
uFactory is well worth the price! I appreciate the method the game uses to coach you through the required machinery and resources. Too many games these days give you a play-by-play walk through and ruin the challenge. Let me elaborate, you are required to look through a “Manual” which presents the information as if it were taken as notes and sketched in a notebook. This information will guide you on what order to set up your machinery and what resources are required. Figuring out how to deliver said resources at the proper time can be quite challenging! After you have spent hours playing and have mastered the art of delivering resources and parts at the proper time, you can then spend hours upon hours tweaking your factory to higher and higher efficiencies. uFactory also contains some “Hard modes” by allowing you to process raw resources into more elaborate components that would be simply bought in “Easier mode”. I happen to be an Automation Engineer in profession and have found the game quite entertaining yet challenging. If you are a perfectionist as I am, you will enjoy hours of fun tweaking your factory until you cannot squeeze any additional production or profit from it. I recommend this game and am eagerly awaiting expansions/updates! As for cons… At this time, the game is in early access and a few achievements are not working correctly. And, of course, you are bound to find a few bugs. However, if you save often, I have not found any game-breaking bugs, and I have been able to complete all scenarios without major issue. Good luck!
– Real player with 65.7 hrs in game
Automation Empire
I wanted to like this game, I really did. I put in a bunch of time so I could experience all versions and content of the game. Here is some of what I noticed:
1: There is no need to progress beyond steel plates and gold, you can win every map by using only those 2 material exports.
2: Every map is absolutely 100% identical when it comes to resources. They all have the same amount of iron, coal, gold and oil nodes.
3: Late game means severe and I do mean severe lag. 1 frame/2 seconds is not out of the ordinary on a game load.
– Real player with 333.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automation Building Games.
First I thoroughly enjoy this game, and it does have its ups and downs, but I cannot recommend it more highly.
I would like to address my opinion on what most negative reviews have to say. These are my opinion only. YMMV.
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it is not a sandbox or an optimization game. It is a puzzle race against the clock.
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It is NOT Factorio, that’s not a fault, it is just different. Why make a clone of another game?
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It does not have blueprints. - Part of the gameplay is to continually rebuild factories in new and different styles to match each level of tech you unlock, staying ahead of the tax curve. Blueprints would reduce this part of game play into cloning rubber stamps all over the map, and limits creativity and ingenuity.
– Real player with 209.4 hrs in game
SimPocalypse
UI has an unusal design to help increase the options for the massive number-growth generator applications that all idle-clickers are.
The demand for input from you as a player feels obstructive at a fair bit of time and the techs that allow you to automate yourself away are not clearly advertised with the tech tree being ‘shrouded’. This can add some frustration.
There is little else to add, the combat is mostly for show - my own ‘35K force’ tank brigade does not take any damage at all anymore when facing supposedly superior forces and development of my faction has pretty much gone to a standstill for the past 5 hours while I’m tabbed out letting the auto-combat handle conquering everything.
– Real player with 92.4 hrs in game
This is a ‘yes, but’ review, so. If you’re skimming, pass this one up. If you’re interested in details on why this MIGHT be for you, read on.
So. This is one of those compelling semi-idle games where you fundamentally click things on spreadsheets to make the numbers go up until you literally take over the world. And that’s pretty fun! However.
For the random store browser, there’s not much more to it than that, and I think there’s a lot of room to be disappointed with your purchase.
For people who enjoy the semi-idle thing…?
– Real player with 23.9 hrs in game
BARRICADEZ
BarricadeZ takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where the only things left are monsters, and you, a robot. Yet, there’s a tiny spark of hope falling from the sky; a baby. Now you have to get to work, because of course the monsters are after the little bundle of joy.
You have to build your own defenses, and that’s the meat of the game. The gathering and crafting system reminds me a bit of Terraria (to name one), and is nicely done, imo. During the night the monsters will test your design for you, and failure is definitely not an option. Remember the defenseless baby?
– Real player with 293.1 hrs in game
It’s ok but definitely not worth $20; get it on sale. Technically a 2D Tower Defense game. There is fun to be had in finding a base design that works for you, lots of options and flexibility. But some very questionable design choices concerning the mining/resource gathering you’ll be doing a lot of underground. You might think that you would be splitting your time between topside and the mine; being topside during the nightly attack waves. You’d be wrong for the most part.
The clock is always ticking (except for pauses during daylight to build/upgrade your base) and you will eventually realize that the game actively punishes you for being topside during attacks at all. That is precious time you could be spending downstairs gathering resources that you need. Now early on, maybe being topside in battle might be useful to scrape by some in-battle repairs between waves. But by day 30 or so of a 78 day campaign when you have enough resources to be well established, there is no good reason to be topside at all. Good defenses will require virtually no active maintenance at all aside from a swift repair visit come daylight. Your war effort is actually crippled by wasting time topside during attacks when you could otherwise still be mining. This means that to play “well”, you must never waste time being up in your base during battle - which is really strange for a TD game. Watching mobs march through your death trap is kinda half the fun of a TD at all and here it is very strongly discouraged to do so. Expect two thirds of this game to be straight up Terraria mining, only the mines get very boring, very quickly. There is some mystery in “Is there a bottom to this mine?"; don’t bet on it, even when you think you’ve found it.
– Real player with 106.3 hrs in game
Kingdom Workshop
Become a workshop owner!
Build base, plan manufacture, hire workers, trade and finally decide the outcome of the war between the kingdoms.
In a far-away mysterious kingdom where are plenty of secrets and adventures, you have been entrusted with building a workshop. But what to produce? That’s a question you have to answer for yourself.
You can cook chicken, you can make pots, or you can make swords. Or maybe you’re more comfortable with machines and making siege guns?
User-friendly building.
In few clicks you can build rooms of any shape.
User-friendly production planning.
In few clicks you can customize thing and planning for production .
An endless kingdom sandbox.
Relax and watch while others work. Work for the Kingdom or analyze the market and choose what to produce.
Create a huge number of different products. Choose materials, artifacts and colors.
Develop.
At first you have only a small meadow in the forest. You decide what and how should work to grow into a huge factory with several production lines and hundreds of complex products.
Features of the game
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- Diversity of production processes and goods
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- Plan production on the screen of the drawings
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- Expand and increase production capacity
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- Control the mood of the workers
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- Work shifts. Timetable.
Per Aspera
It’s rare for a city builder / logistics game to have a good story, but this one sure does. Through monologue and dialogue options we follow the self-discovery and existential ruminations of the player character, an AI tasked with terraforming Mars. The planet visuals are beautiful. It’s incredible to zoom in and look at the contoured terrain and watch it change as it fills in with water and plant life.
Gameplay is less elaborate than most city builders and the logistics are not even close to the level of complexity of something like a Factorio style game. Managing the interconnected temperature and atmospheric composition is interesting. The end result is a casual, relaxing builder with a memorable story.
– Real player with 95.2 hrs in game
===SUMMARY===
This is my favorite game of 2021. I like simulation games as a group, and this is a beautiful installment of this growing genera. I love what simulations teach me, being spoon fed facts off a list. I love that (having played Per Aspera) I know the landscape of Mars better. I know some of the names, sure, but grokking the SCALE, the oddness, sparking my curiosity about Noctis Labyrinthus, just from working on the planet is priceless. I became familiar with Mars in a way that Surviving Mars never did (though I played that a lot too).
– Real player with 68.7 hrs in game
Transporter Manager Tycoon
OVERVIEW:
The game is a continuation of Freight Simulator (which I have also played). Transporter Manager Tycoon is a management game, which allows you to expand your company to several branches and follow different paths, different than Freight Simulator where you only managed your transport company, you can now transform your company into a distributor or in a stock holding. Of course, I couldn’t miss the chance to play this game, after having played Freight Simulator.
POSITIVES:
– Real player with 30.9 hrs in game
It’s funny how Steam (and life) works sometimes. I spent £42 on CK3 and hated it so much I had to ask for a refund which is something I can never remember doing. I then spent £7 something on this and I haven’t stopped playing since. Goes to show some of the cheaper games can be better, Of course it can be improved, it feels a little bit clunky and it’s not exactly realistic. Why should a manager have to fuel a truck halfway through a trip, surely the driver would? Then you can stop a trip halfway through and come back to it later. Not something you can do in real life! I think it would be nice if there was some kind of basic geography included so you had loads going to and from different geographic locations and you could warehouse goods at different places, swap trailers, etc to make it more realistic. Overall though I really like playing and I’d recommend a buy.
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
Software Inc.
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Gameplay
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Replayability
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Building/Office Design
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Realism
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Developer
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Stability
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Peer Game Comparison
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Procedurally Generated Worlds
+/- Learning Curve
+/- Graphics
+/- Sound
+/- Difficulty
+/- Interface
+/- Modability
+/- Optimization
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Music
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Campaign
I will mark whether I like something +, dislike something -, or am neutral +/- as I write the review.
You start as the founder of a software company in a standard sandbox enviroment +/-. You can choose the difficulty, speed of gameplay, starting funds, starting time period, traits, and skills of your founder +. You are able to set a basic appearance for the founder, but this is clearly not a focus of the game +/-.
– Real player with 617.8 hrs in game
A10: The polish is coming along pretty nicely although since I posted the review (Late 2016) although I do have to say that some of the changes have made the development process a bit too hit-and-miss since you really have no idea how a product is going to turn out until it’s too late - while the code reviews are a nice addition, they’re not really that useful as far as ensuring a good product as most of the quality control process is out of your hands.
You can also put the best staff on a project, allocate teams optimally etc and it’ll still come out as rubbish, so I don’t know, maybe that needs to be more sensible.
– Real player with 132.2 hrs in game