MewnBase
The Survival-Crafting polar opposite of Don’t Starve. It’s a gentle and relaxing sci-fi survival game - deaths are rare and usually only the result of overextending yourself (e.g. being away from base too long and running out of oxygen or food).
Although at this stage of development (April 2020) there isn’t much content, it’s very stable, rare bugs, with consistent, high quality art assets - it doesn’t have the rough “beta” feel of many other early access games.
Good:
- Fairly casual/relaxing survival game, with tech tree/research based progression.
– Real player with 58.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Base Building Exploration Games.
MewnBase is a cool little survival crafting game about a cat.. in a space suit.. driving a buggy on another planet. What’s not to like :)
The default day/night cycle is quite relaxing to play, although you DO have to work to get food and maintain your base.
Oxygen levels drain fast once you start exploring and so is the contents of your stomach or the power levels of your suit when you enable your headlight.
While there isn’t that much to do compared to the more known games in this genre, it certainly is entertaining. Slowly expand your base, research upgrades, grow some crops and try to automate things to make life easier. By the end, you’re speeding around in a buggy, with or without additional trailers to pick up more goods.
– Real player with 32.5 hrs in game
Time to Morp
Time To Morp is a game about weird and quirky creatures, building bases, exploring worlds, automation, research and much more. But most importantly - friendship!
Explore a vast world!
Search for new resources, discover different biomes and rare plants, climb mountains or delve into caves, search for secrets or just chill near a lake while some sneaky morp is trying to steal your sandwich…
Morp?!
Morps! A whole bunch of cute little creatures! Some are friendly, some are not, some bite, and some just run in circles and scream… But the most important part is - they MORPH!
Morph?!
Shapeshift, change, mutate, you name it! Feed it metal - crunch! - it’s producing metal now! Leave it near water - splash! - it’s your personal walking fountain! Mix and match to produce every resource you need!
Build a base!
Place fences, pipes, pumps, wires, decorations, lights, music and sit back in appreciation of a job well done and everyone living in peace and harmony… for five minutes tops.
Automate everything!
Use our patented Not-So-Complicated Pump Systems™ to easily automate everything from morp routes and food logistics to sleep schedules and power consumption. Set it up and watch everything go horribly wrong.
Fun Multiplayer!
Invite your friends to play, explore, build and collectively wonder who fed fruit to an electrical morp and now you don’t have enough electricity and oh my god why is that tree on fire
Research, expand, unlock!
Collect resources, receive gadgets, invent tools, craft vehicles, invest in technology. Spread out, travel, explore. And never complete the main story because you have this little thing you can optimize juuust a little bit more.
Read More: Best Base Building Automation Games.
Genomon: Genetic Monsters
Even in the modern age, there are locations on Earth so remote that few people have ever heard, let alone visited. Among these obscure places are the WHITHERWARD ISLANDS, a collection of six islands in the South Pacific so distant from other landmasses, so removed from shipping lanes, strategic passages, and air routes that the world has nearly forgotten their existence.
Push the boundaries of science while battling the creations of rival genetic engineers on the beautiful and remote WHITHERWARD ISLANDS. EXTRACT, SEQUENCE and SPLICE DNA. INCUBATE, BATTLE and UPGRADE Genomon. Genomon is a genetic monster making lab and battling sandbox.
EXTRACT!
Extract DNA from animal specimens.
SPLICE!
Splice animal DNA with viable Embryos.
INCUBATE!
Incubate your Genomon! Man Rat Crabs, Man Spider Frogs, the combinations are endless!
BATTLE!
Battle your Genomon to level them up and unlock genetic traits!
BUILD YOUR DREAM ISLAND GENETIC LABORATORY!
Build your lab using a variety of devices and architecture.
Read More: Best Base Building Life Sim Games.
Ginger: Beyond the Crystal
I spent a lot of time with this game and played it thoroughly, but I just can’t recommend it…the things I disliked about the game outweigh the things I did like about the game, which sucks because I had this on my Wishlist for a long time.
What I loved about the game was that it was how obvious the team who worked on the game loved it. After leaving the (bland) hub worlds each of the 15 levels are vibrant and distinct. I also really enjoyed the different costumes you unlock as the game progresses and the special ability that each one of them has.
– Real player with 18.3 hrs in game
Ginger: Beyond the Crystal was a fun game, I did enjoy it while i played it but there were a few things that stop me from giveing the thumbs up.
1. There is a bugged achievement, you can get it buy NOT buying every accessory before getting all the in-level ones.
2. The game has a few bugs, these bugs were in no way game breaking however.
3. There is a lot of unnecessary stuff, ALL of the quests given were one of 3, Race, kill monsters, collect items. the fall damage was 100% uneeded and felt like it was really holding me back as you dont need to fall but 10 feet to instantly DIE
– Real player with 15.4 hrs in game
New Frontier Days ~Founding Pioneers~
There are a couple minor issues I have with it but overall I definitely feel I’ve gotten $9 worth of play out of it even just so far ;) and I’m not done.
– Real player with 48.2 hrs in game
I bought this game because the ad for it looked like it was a good game. Sad to say the game play is nothing like that. The User Interface jams up A lot and is not easy to use, also it has some glitches, I had to restart the game like three times thanks to that. I would NOT recommend this game to anyone!
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
OF MICE AND SAND -REVISED-
The gameplay of MICE AND SAND is literally just micro-management, ala SimCity style. There’s very little of consequence that occurs outside of your sand crawler, and 44.5 of my 45 hours spent beating the game was in making sure I was producing the proper products through a spaghetti-labyrinth of factory dependencies without ever completely running out of resources, or completely running out of space. (In fact, more than half of the time, my sand crawler was parked while my factories did their thing.)
– Real player with 50.4 hrs in game
Of Mice and Sand is a nice little game about travelling the desert for ‘el dorado’
Problem that many people will find is a lot of repetition. Going between towns to do quests, grind resources, and managing many things your crew will need in order to survive.
Believe me, I finished the game. I spent a lot of time going between towns, building up my ship, fighting desert creatures, and overall making sure I am ready for the next leg of the journey. My ship was taken down a few times, sure, but I learned from what happened and did improvements until I was able to defeat the next gatekeeper(so to speak).
– Real player with 32.8 hrs in game
Monster Outbreak
About The Game
Monster Outbreak is a wave defence game at its core. You start with a resource building and gathering phase, followed by a wave of monster combat. How you do it is up to you, but you need to craft and build your tools:
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Melee and ranged weapons, from swords to bows to magical staffs
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Weapon based structures like the bomb slingshot and crossbow turret
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Trap structures like spike traps and bomb tripwires
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Weapon enchantments for elemental attacks
Feature List
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Wave survival. Fight as long as you can!
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Single player campaign, local split-screen, and online co-op
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Variety of monsters! The dimensions are always letting through new creatures, from carnivorous plants to wolves!
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Bosses that spawn as you go, including the giant rock golem
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Weapon and item crafting with the items dropped by monsters and scavenged from the battlefield
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Structure construction like the crossbow turret and the bomb-javelin launcher
The Story
It all started when they found the Dimensional Orb. Humanity just couldn’t help themselves. The Orb was too tempting. We now had the ability to explore alternate realities, see things that we never could have imagined ourselves. Of course, when the orb began to go out of our control, we were now faced with an invasion from multiple dimensions.
Yulia, a surviving Royal Guard is now the last hope. With monsters everywhere, the only way forward is to find the orb and destroy it once and for all.
Merchant of the Skies
First of all, let me say that this game is a great-looking interesting bite-sized experience. If you are looking for TTD in clouds, this is not that game. It’s a “tycoon” in a very shallow sense of the word. In fact, it’s incredibly hard to describe this game with nowadays expectations other than a “trading game”.
It will not have you coming back to replay again and again, but it will captivate you for a session or two. It’s like a great meal at that new place you are trying out. You wouldn’t necessarily keep ordering it again, but you do not regret the experience. I bring up a lot of mixed points below, but keep in mind that it’s all still held together impressively solidly and does not break apart.
– Real player with 44.5 hrs in game
A niche merchant game with the challenges of completing tasks and finishing five ultimate goals to complete the game. The story is about a you, a merchant who follows requests from an uncle and various other characters, using a airship. Different to the usual games I regularly play, but I love it for the fantasy elements and challenges.
The story is odd in a way where it has five main goals, the last one is the restoration of the botanical garden, while the rest are more like side-quests in this adventure world. How you adventure is by flying an airship across to floating islands, you examine the different tasks, refuel, and can buy or sell items. I really like this due to my obsession with steampunk themes, the fantasy world which is floating while working, as though it is a job. Additionally, you get to know the world a little, like the uncle and a couple of characters that want to go to tourist places, but not as in depth in the case of getting to know your crew. It is a single player game, but it is how you want to play, making profit and buying islands in order to fulfil requests and keep your business a float. As for the art, I love it, pixel art can be simple but make so much detail, and with that sort of colour palate, it is up my street. The little wacky details like the singing carrot, the octopus that has a rapper hat on, all of it adds to the personality of the game. You can upgrade your ship too, making it easier to travel and transport cargo, which is helpful to complete more side-quests to bring in the profit. If you cannot gain profit because of your output on workers and fuel, then the bank will pay you off once, then you are in dept, you will need to pay off the bank or go bankrupt. An interesting way of teaching people about the real world and dept, but it forces you to do some unplanned action by juggling the main story to side-quests, making it challenging.
– Real player with 24.1 hrs in game
PlateUp!
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Classic co-op cooking action, with a wide selection of mains, sides, sauces, toppings, desserts, and starters.
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Choose your equipment, lay out your kitchen, curate your menu and plate up your dishes.
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From bubbling soups to sublime salads, tender steaks to hearty pies, there’s something for everyone.
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Look after front-of-house: seating customers, delivering orders, and managing patience.
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Equip your restaurant to handle the most fickle of customers and deliver them what they need, right when they need it.
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Co-operate with the rest of your team like a well-olive-oiled machine, or bite off more than you can chew with crying children and dirty dishes.
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Upgrade and rearrange your restaurant to your personal taste: when the restaurant closes for the day, the planning begins!
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Decide what new equipment to purchase, and place it wherever you want.
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Want to go high-tech? Install the turbo-ovens, crank up the conveyors, and make way for the robo-kitchen of the future.
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Fancy something a little more… fancy? Curate your art collection, fix up that wallpaper, enlist a friend as a maître d' and get ready to provide the culinary experience of a lifetime.
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Exceed your goals and start over at your next location, bringing with you new unlocks and upgrades.
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Tailor your brand towards gourmet dining, or fine-tune your fast food franchise.
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Every restaurant is procedurally-generated with its own climate, customers and conditions.
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Return to your franchise HQ to view your achievements, customise your characters and upgrade your kit, ready for your next adventure!
Autonauts
Thanks to Aaron and Gary for their game and their thoughtful and constructive response to my hasty previous review.
I would recommend this game for fans of complex city or factory games, and for anyone even mildly curious about programming.
Autonauts is a beautiful little zen garden in which you build and operate a colony of spoiled and helpless colonists, using an unlimited army of multi-purpose programmable robots. The player is never penalized for not playing a certain way. The colonists become more and more demanding with each level, but nothing bad happens if one of their demands is not met. There’s nothing even demanding that you raise colonists at all, you and the bots can happily build and play without that progression but higher levels of construction are only unlocked by meeting colonist goals.
– Real player with 506.4 hrs in game
Duration: ?? hours – 70 Hours played at time of review, still lots to discover!
What is it? Don’t let Autonaughts’ cutesy aesthetics fool you, Autonaughts is a hardcore colonisation and crafting sim. Starting with nothing, you build up your colony automating activities to robots (which you also craft). Virtually everything can be automated, and programming is simple: The robots just copy what you show them (and then you insert repeat and conditional loops). Programming is all done keyboard free (mouse and CTRL key only required). The GUI is excellent.
– Real player with 110.7 hrs in game