Mars Horizon
Iniital Review 12.4 hours into Mars Horizon®
Update since initial review at bottom of review.
Second update December 2022 since initial below that update.
An update beneath an update… that is like four wall breaks. Mind blown!!!
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Graphics are fantastic
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Smooth operation and easy to follow learning tutorial
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Not for under age of 12 years old, bit too advanced for under this age.
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Few small non game breaking bugs, grammar, and what not. Nothing to get excited about.
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FPS runs fine on a modern machine 2012 or better. Older and you may have some issues with processing of the information or video being smooth.
– Real player with 71.3 hrs in game
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Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. This is easily the best manager I have played in a decade.
However, a warning up front. This is not readily obvious. Not, because the game starts outright weak. Instead, it seems to deliver exactly the underwhelming gameplay one learns to expect from indies nowadays. You build a rocket, you fire a rocket, and sometimes it rains. Everything hangs on the roll of a dice. Which makes the space missions look like a lackluster mini game.
Here’s the good news. It gets better. A lot. I just ended my first (short) campaign after 65 hours by landing a crew on Mars. While doing so, my palms were sweaty, because up until the very last turn I wasn’t sure I would make it. Magic question: When did the last manager make your palms sweat?
– Real player with 67.8 hrs in game
The Technomancer
I vacillated at first about buying this game. I’m a novice gamer, just started playing last year, in fact. As a fulltime novelist, I have down-time between books, when I need to rest my brain, and I liked the idea of playing story-driven games for entertainment.
I started out with ALIEN ISOLATION, being a huge fan of the ALIEN saga, and had a blast. I went on to devour DISHONORED and several ASSASSIN CREED installments, then all of the DRAGON AGE games, where I discovered my gaming soul-mate: multi-faceted storylines, coupled with compelling characters, challenging combat situations, and complex moral decisions. I followed DRAGON AGE with all the MASS EFFECT games in a head-exploding row and was enthralled; Bioware has a customer for life in me, if they don’t go down the route they seemed to be headed toward with ANTHEM, sacrificing single-player immersion for multi-player commercial gain, though I understand gaming companies must turn a profit. At a loss after MASS EFFECT, I scoured Steam for other RPG games and stumbled across TECHNOMANCER in my recommendations. The reviews turned me off, but I added it to my wishlist anyway. It wasn’t on sale; based on the meh-to-hate-it reviews, forking out $29.95 seemed a streach for a game that appeared likely to disappoint. Then I decided to buy it anyway, as I tend to enjoy a lot of things others don’t. Plus, as a writer who gets online customer reviews for my novels, I know how people will complain about - well, about everything and anything, so I figured I should determine the merits of the game on my own.
– Real player with 89.3 hrs in game
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Short: Technomancer = Deus Ex meets Mass Effect. Personally loved it. Primary gripe is the karma system implementation and the need to return to one of the main cities over and over again to complete about 75% of the quests.
Long: Technomancer is a party building RPG, set in a futuristic world of politics and conspiracies. The games general ambiance from the sound track to the protagonist’s special abilities all remind me of the original Deus Ex. Only with Mass Effect 2 quality graphics and travelling/fighting companions. For those who played Mars : War Logs, the game takes place roughly parallel to the events of that game, but from a different perspective.
– Real player with 68.0 hrs in game
StalakMiner
Wow such nice developers!
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
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good
– Real player with 5.7 hrs in game
Gaia Beyond
Gaia Beyond is a handcrafted 2D Action-RPG in space.
-multiple save slots, quicksave and quickload, autosaves.
-open world
-quest with multiple solutions
-ship building, upgrade-able weapons
-fight stations with your ship
Sure we’re fans of the genre and bound to like the game more than the usual fare,but those looking for an original and thrilling, handcrafted open world 2d space shooter, this will not disappoint. Gaia Beyond introduced a world with characters I actually cared about, and combat gameplay I could get behind. This game really does have something for every sci-fi shooter fan: Good writing, characters with depth(you get to meet the most spaced-out guys in the galaxy), huge amount of side quests(some with multiple solutions), factions, intimidating ships, upgrade-able ships and weapons, mining, trading, nice OST etc. It was not a very demanding game. You were just a simple nobody mining and shooting your way up, trying to make your way in this seemingly peaceful mysterious space. While all the ships were actually flying in the game world in real time, most of the time it was quite relaxed. Some fights were tough when I didn’t upgrade or choose my guns properly. It played especially good on big monitor(this game has 4K support). No other 2d space shooter I’ve ever played has impressed me like this one. Maybe Starsector has better combat than this but that’s the only thing it is better. I’d played 3030 Deathwar Redux , Star Valor, and Starcom Nexus, this game is better. After playing for around 30 hours , I doubt that I had reached even halfway of the main story, this game is loooooong. Yuki, one of the game writer, said the game is still a bit rough around the edges, but I could see that they were updating and patching up the game almost monthly, and they were quite active on the forum answering questions and acknowledging bugs, so I would not worry about that at all.
– Real player with 51.1 hrs in game
I would recommend this so much, but…I’d wait until the main quest is extended by at least 300%.
In a nutshell: Great game but I’d wait until the main quest is extended by at least 300%. Don’t bother grinding unless you really want to, regardless of main story.
Long review: This is a very cool 2D “Galaxy on fire 2-ish” space action RPG game where you explore, mine, hunt and upgrade your ships and weapons. Kind of like Zelda / Diablo in a spaceship and a huge map set in our solar system in a dystopian future.
– Real player with 34.3 hrs in game
The Last From Mars
‘The Last From Mars’ is a pretty traditional alien shooter. You get wave after wave of cute looking aliens all wanting to eat you alive, or maybe implant their eggs into your stomach. There is only one play area here and a handful of guns with a few powerups thrown in for good measure. It looks OK I guess and feels OK to play, but none of it is original and there is nothing ‘stand-out’ here. I would have liked to have seen it a little chapter than £5.79 (the current asking price) as there isn’t a lot of content here, but even so, I feel you will probably get your money’s worth if you take the time to get into the game. Personally, I found it all too…“meh” to bother with, but I do still recommend it (I just wish I could be neutral about it).
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Gaia Project
I had zero Gaia Project experience before booting this up. I think there’s a marginal learning curve to the UI, but after you run through the tutorial and get a game or so in, it’s totally reasonable.
The AI is also fantastic, really an exceptionally well done AI for a game of this complexity. I have about 15 games under my belt, all on 3-player 8-sector, and Hard AI continues to offer a real challenge (winning scores tend to be in the 160-170 range, whether it’s me or the AI pulling it off). The paths taken to victory also seem quite varied, so it’s not like it’s just programmed to spam Econ4 or something dumb; there’s real complexity going on under the hood. It’s not like every decision is perfect, but I seriously think it’d be difficult to find a better done digital board game AI for a game of this sheer scale.
– Real player with 88.7 hrs in game
Honestly I’ve played countless games of Gaia Project IRL, it’s absolutely my favorite TTG, and this digital adaptation is perfectly fine. Yes, there are grammatical errors, but how many of us actually read the EULA to begin with? Oh noes, they forgot the C in Bescods in the achievements! Time to review bomb the game, amirite?
And sure, the UI is “clunky” compared to in-person, but let’s be real here - Gaia Project is probably one of the most complex games most people will ever learn. If you’re taking the time to learn it, you probably have enough smarts in you to get through some menu screens. Upgrade your cognitive navigation track past 1 before you throw your hands up in defeat.
– Real player with 49.5 hrs in game