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
Outer Space Shack
Plan your space program, and send your precious rockets to the Moon or Mars. Build a small space base at first, and ensure the well-being of your astronauts. Feed them, protect them from hazards and radiations, and keep them happy.
Progressively, use more and more local resources, and make your settlement sustainable.
NEW Kickstarter campaign has started.
Space Center
Prepare your ‘rocket’ missions in the space center. Optimize every kilogram of payload of your precious rockets, and launch engineering projects to improve your rockets and the base hardware.
Base Building
Plan an efficient layout for your base, and increase its capabilities through new buildings and machineries. Start doing all the heavy work with a few rovers, and when ready, make your first astronauts come. Grow from an uncomfortable shack to a small village. Develop businesses on your base to make it sustainable
Astronauts
Feed your astronauts, ensure they have proper living space, protect them against hazards of space: radiation, space dust. Make sure they stay sane in the complex environment
Read More: Best Base Building Sandbox Games.
Honeycomb
Day by day, technological progress changes not only the lives of people, but also the smallest life forms on our planet. In our project, we would like to direct your attention to a very important issue of our times - the extinction of wild bees, which despite their tiny size, has a huge impact on the entire Earth’s ecosystem.
Greetings explorer! You are going to spend quite some time in the laboratory - don’t forget to go on a research expedition into the unknown. A world full of exploration, building and crafting awaits you!
You are the last hope of Earthlings.
Research both flora and fauna - standard scanning is not enough. Explore the world of genetics and experiment with various possibilities to even create a new plant genera. Mutating plants and species promotes new raw material discoveries and blueprints. Experiment to master new technologies and settle your base in new environments.
This new world can be beautiful but dangerous as well - an undiscovered fruit or a contact with previously unknown, even the most innocuous-looking animals can provoke a disease, for which you’ll have to invent a cure. Some of them are tamable, some can only be feared and fled from - there is only one way to find out.
For optimal productivity, an explorer’s life has to be comfortable! Take care of your “workplace”, create the needed conditions by yourself and even decorate your base. Build drones, mobile laboratories, habitat, and research stations. Don’t stop there - create multiple stations in optimal locations, safety, weather or raw material wise, and ensure safe travel between them - hoverboard is the best way to start.
The planet stores the secret key that may help you in saving the earth and its inhabitants. Remember! It is up to you how you use that knowledge.
Read More: Best Base Building Exploration Games.
Energy Island Corp.
In Electric City Manager, you’ll manage an electric grid on small islands. When you arrive on an island, there is only few inhabitants and no electric facilities.
It’s your job to build a robust electric grid which can support the development of the island in every domain: tourism, industry, residential, health, …
Every day starts with a preparation phase. You can construct new buildings, buy raw materials and manage different aspect of your grid.
When you’re ready, the clock starts and you can see in real time, minute by minute the electricity quantity you produced and the electricity being consumed by the city.
It’s important to produce enough electricity to match the demand and avoid power outage. On the other side, producing too much electricity will damage all your electric grid and waste a lot of money.
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Make your own energy mix: Solar panels only produce when sun is up, oil generators are expensive to run, … Each primary energy has its own characteristics, you must mix them to find the better balance.
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Manage raw materials supply: Some buildings need resources (oil, coal, …) to run. You must buy them at best price, and build infrastructure to store them.
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Watch electricity production / consumption: Managing an electric grid is hard. Electricity is hard to store, consumption vary between consumption peaks and low demands periods. Adapt yourself and manage your grid with information you get from the production / consumption chart.
Star Sonata 2
I cautiously recommend this game only if you can look past its shortcomings. I have been playing since ~2008 when I was only 12yr old.
The Good:
There is something about this game that can get you addicted like no other. The player base is very close (admittedly also rather small) and everybody knows everyone else and that makes the community very strong. You can create your own team join a team (aka clan, faction, country) and take control of start systems and use the resources within them to build ships, weapons, space stations, and become an industrial powerhouse. But you better be prepared to defend what you own. Much like a country in real life, your team could become a true superpower with all the fame and infamy that comes with it. You can exercise your hard and soft power as you see fit. Politics are very real in this game and I love it. Likewise, if you upset too many players they may declare war against you. Every solar system you own and space station you build is at risk. In a worse case scenario you could lose all of your territory, all of your industry, and be forced to surrender which almost always results in the death of said team. This is something I really like about this game. You have a lot of freedom and the choices you make can make you insanely rich, respected, and powerful. But you could lose it all.
– Real player with 4273.5 hrs in game
TLDR - A decade+ after the game’s initial launch there is still nothing else quite like Star Sonata on the market today.
The game is heavily influenced by the Star Control series and combines 90’s style arcade action with MMO character development and an almost limitless item progression that rivals many modern MMOs. It has in-depth base building that is basically a whole different game unto itself where you can make money doing colonies, making gear, selling industrial commodities and more. The PvE content is typically fun and offers a variety of solo and group style engagements.. The PvP and team vs team combat probably needs the most improvement but the game doesn’t really revolve around those.
– Real player with 3859.9 hrs in game
Territory - animals genetic strategy
Territory is an isometric 2D real-time single player strategy about genes and animal species. Animals are behaving the way they would in nature, but you can indirectly control them and mutate them to achieve various goals like dominance in the ecosystem.
Core Gameplay Mechanics - Challenge Mode
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you are entering the game with one species and mutate it to different species later on
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you are playing on the map with existing ecosystem that is producing various sources of food
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you are changing species genome and that is changing its attributes and behaviour
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map is populated with various species (~10 depending on map size), species can die out, species can mutate to new species in time
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each species has its own territory, its size and shape can be adjusted
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species can be herbivores, omnivores or carnivores and can have one of five different sizes
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species lives complete live from being born to death, need food to survive
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individual animal can die in fight, starve to death, can be killed by predator, die by disease or die by old age
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species are hostile only when they share the same source of food and has similar size
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you can migrate your species to new territories
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you can invade enemy species on its territory
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you can defend your territory from enemy species
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you are evaluating your surroundings and complete ecosystem to determine your next steps
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species are reacting indirectly on player’s command if certain conditions are met (migrate to new territory only when not being hungry, having certain genes, etc.)
Core Gameplay Mechanics - Sandbox Mode
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you are playing on the map without any species
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you can create unlimited number of species
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your goal is to achieve the largest biomass and/or diversity
BlackChain
Great game. Pathing and controls are super smooth. It is incredible that this is made by a single person. Only in terms of features, you notice that it’s just a single dev. It is only one race and multiplayer is only possible through LAN (virtual LAN for online play) and 2v2 still has some issues with desyncs. But everything that is in the game is unique and high quality. I really enjoy the micro in this game. It has a bit of a modern Starcraft: BroodWar feeling but it is still quite different. With the low price of only 4€, there is no reason not to get this game. The AI is pretty good even without cheating and tries to actively hunt down your workers with air units for example. The dev deserves the support so he is able to create more content for this. (I have received the key from a giveaway which has nothing to do with the dev)
– Real player with 11.2 hrs in game
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Review by Gaming Masterpieces - The greatest games of all time on Steam.
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Real-time strategy, once the second most important genre after FPS games, is dead, isn’t it? While the few releases of recent years were mostly below average, there are some exceptions. This is one.
Great indie real-time stragegy game, heavily inspired by the seminal Starcraft. Build structures, build units, mine ressources and crypto-currency, wipe your enemies off the map. Fully voiced units and 12 campaign missions (all unlocked from the beginning), even a network option. Great little game - what a nice surprise!
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Empires of the Undergrowth
One of my favorite indie games. While only in early access, it easily has several hours worth of content already.
Four colony types are available as of posting, with more to be released in the future, each with its own unique features. The ereptor, gene thief ants, a fictional species that allows the player to mix in other ant species and their abilities; the fusca, black ants, which act as an introductory species with basic worker and soldier roles; the rufa, wood ants, which split their soldiers between defensive and offensive roles; the atta, leaf cutter ants, which have a unique resource system involving gathering, food production, and waste disposal, as well as four castes to make resources and combat more dynamic.
– Real player with 683.7 hrs in game
This game is great and is most likely to be enjoyed by fans of the real time strategy genre. Currently there are 4 levels each with a challenge mode and many difficulty settings which you will tackle as you control two different species of ant colony. The ants must collect food to grow their colony which can in itself have various different methods applied such as the strategic placement of tiles for upgrading purposes to the ratio of worker ants to warrior ants so that they can defeat the many hungry predators around them which seek to devour their queen! For those who like a challenge you will get quite a bit of enjoyment and playtime from tackling the hardest versions of these levels as for others this will be a shorter 2-3 hour experience which will be enjoyable nonetheless. inbetween these levels you will visit your formicariam (ANT TANK) where your success in these levels provides resources for your main colony which is a species of ant that can take the genes from other ant species and have their queen produce them within the colony. This formicarium colony itself has two challenges to face which are kind of like a hoard mode. If you finish all of this content and are still eager for more there are a handfull of other modes which may entertain for awhile such as the demo levels (earlier levels with a more basic concept), arena mode (a mode where you can pit various creatures found in the game against each other) and Freeplay mode (where you start a colony on one of two maps with many options for you to tweak for a customised experience which is scored upon the defeat of your colony) and finally the hungry spider level which sees you take control of the one of the ants most deadly predators THE WOLF SPIDER! (This is a slight genre flip as you control the one spider which grows and levels as you defeat enemies working your way up to bringing down other huge predators.) I very highly reccomend this game and support the development team who are constantly keeping the community around the game informed on what they are working on next.
– Real player with 281.9 hrs in game
Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox
Science!
This is a game for people who enjoy patiently solving puzzles. Completing all the game objectives is not the end game, it’s where the game starts. Once you know how everything works, you spend time trying to develop genetic recipes for plants, herbivores, and carnivores. You can conduct experiments inside the contained forcefields. You tweak the balance until it stays stable. You observe how random mutations either help or hurt the design.
I spent an entire day developing my “stepping stone” plant recipe. Over the next few hours the plants mutated into taller “fat candles” that were better able to stand up to the stresses of wild fires and getting munched on by herbivores. This weekend I’ve assigned it as a science project for my homeschooled kid. I haven’t figured out how to get the herbivores and carnivores into a stable balance yet. I have lots of experiements left to run!
– Real player with 60.1 hrs in game
this game is interesting enough in its mechanics, to me, to give it a thumbs up, although seeing the general opinion and commentary on this game i see there are just as many reasons to give it a thumbs down, a neutral vote would be amazing here.
all in all this is a fairly simple looking game, but not very optimized for what it needs to do, especially when populations start going into the thousands the game grinds down to a snailspace or worse, this is because of the many calculations going on while the game is not multithreaded, leaving it incapable of processing its own data at a fast enough rate,besides that, and if you keep populations low enough (amount depends on your pc’s cpu power) you will have a fun time for a while.
– Real player with 35.9 hrs in game
Remains
Very satisfying for an early access game. I have just a little over 24 hours into the game and highly recommend joining the discord to search for solutions/answers to some basic how-to’s in early game.
Like commented elsewhere, the gameplay is very raft-in-space. I like the story-line and blackbox gigs as the early access campaign pre-cursor. Good mechanics IMHO and I have yet to run into any serious bugs. In the current release there is a items-stop-spawning issue that is easily remedied by save-exit-load game.
– Real player with 27.4 hrs in game
Ok so Im gonna start off by saying, Yes this is LIKE Raft. we all know that raft has shaped the open world survival craft genre. but Remains has similarity’s to Desert Skies and subnautica and Void Train. i have spent 2 hour trying to decide if this game is just a lame reskin or a game all its own and im leaning twords the second option. I am glad that its only 6 buck cause there is not much content. but im very very happy with it so far and im eger for more updates. this is really gonna be a game to follow! now time for the negative……..and its 3 words, IN.GAME.TUTORIAL! there is not help on how to play the game! you just get dropped in and kinda have to figure it out on your own. if a basic tutorial was added it would clear up major struggles and confusion. but thats really my only issue. now that im done writing this imma go play this some more! Cheers!
– Real player with 10.6 hrs in game