Anno 2205™
A bold new direction for the Anno Series, but it’s going to be a hard pill to swallow…
We’re now several patches in, I’ve decided my old review no longer applies because frankly the game that’s taking shape from the patches is something new and interesting. It’s still Anno to an extent, but there’s a massive raft of changes. So let’s deal with the TLDR first and foremost.
If you want a multiplayer anno experience, right now this is not the game for you. Go back to Anno 1404 Venice. I wouldn’t even recommend Anno 2070 because in my extensive experience of the Anno series, 1404 is the stronger entry, Anno 2070 is too crufty, and too overloaded with some really strange ideas that just don’t quite work. Venice is a far more consistent, challenging and interesting experience, and you’ll find it a far more -fun- game to play. As a multiplayer game, and indeed, as a versus AI, 1404 wins against 2070 for that purpose.
– Real player with 203.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Economy Games.
*** SUPER UPDATED ***
I liked this game. But then the Tundra DLC released and suddenly I could no longer play it. No big deal, I guess, I was pissy but that didn’t make the base game bad.
All my attempts at getting a refund or a fix were ignored, which made me more pissy.
Now they’ve released a DLC that season pass and Gold Edition buyers will have to purchase.
THIS IS NOT OKAY UBISOFT.
UPDATED
It’s hard to give a review for this game.
I’m a big fan of previous Anno games, and I’ve spent a lot of time with Anno 2070, doing little side missions, replaying the main content, continuous games… I never did multiplayer, admittedly, because I’m not a huge fan of acknowledging other people even exist, let alone let them invade my game.
– Real player with 170.2 hrs in game
Aven Colony
Aven Colony, from Team 17, is a colony manager / city building / spinning-plates game where you need to juggle multiple responsibilities simultaneously. Some of the scenarios are interesting, if a bit contrived. But it may be a bit overwhelming for the un-prepared.
The colony ship still has a ton of people in orbit, and you need to establish a colony so you can get them down to the surface by juggling responsibilities such as power, housing, food, water, employment, crime, air quality, health, and morale.
– Real player with 63.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Colony Sim Games.
I bought this off humble bundle for around Au$10. Great deal. At the time I am writing this review, there are still two more days to get it at that price from humble.
I like city builder games that invite me to mellow with a glass of wine or cup of coffee while I ponder where to put my next building. This is exactly that type of game. It is playable on pause - the game will allow me to place buildings while it sits on pause and then I ramp up the speed while the buildings are building.
It’s a nice little compact game. It all happens in a very small screen space. After a day of playing Banished, I’m scrolling across screens and screens of farms and pastures looking for where my next buildings go. A day of playing Aven fits in a fraction of a screen.
– Real player with 56.9 hrs in game
Intergalactic Transfer Station
Hundreds passenger daily from different planets change their spaceships in the famous Intergalactic Transfer Hub. That’s your turf. Your work. Your life.
Here, you control everything: from sending spaceships to docks through eliminating alien viruses to building special defense perimeters.
Key features:
-
Manage the docking of spaceships.
-
Take care of passengers.
-
Expand your transfer hub.
-
Control the economy on many levels.
-
Watch out for unexpected events.
Expand your station
Your Intergalactic Transfer Hub has to expand constantly to receive more and more passengers. You may buy as many platforms as you want. Build and remodel shops, improve your facilities and upgrade machines. Take care of different alien species, building hotels for chlorine-breathing beings or restaurants for creatures fond of lava food. Optimise your station design to increase passengers flow, arranging corridors, shops and waiting areas to your exact needs. But do not forget about the station’s defences!
Receive travelers
Every spaceship brings travelers from different planets. You decide when and where it will dock. And you have to help passengers find their connections. But travellers will also spend time in your Intergalactic Transfer Hub, where they can eat, shop, sleep - and spend money! Remember that different species have different needs. And some maybe dangerous!
Expect the unexpected
Terrorists. Biohazard contaminations. Asteroids flying nearby. Alien warships. You have to be prepared for everything! Control travelers who look suspicious or dangerous. Keep an eye on new types of passengers. Kill viruses before they contaminate your Intergalactic Transfer Hub and the inhabited world. Build special defensive cannons. Prepare for everything, but still be ready for the unexpected.
Optimize economy
Make good use of the economic opportunities of the Intergalactic Transfer Hub. Check your income and expenses balance. Observe which businesses are most profitable. Change taxes and prices. But do not forget about your staff and passengers. All of them have to be happy and healthy. And, on top of all this, you also need to establish the good reputation of your Intergalactic Transfer Hub.
CHECK OUT MORE FROM GAMES OPERATORS!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1416360/Dissident_Frostland_Escape
Read More: Best City Builder Building Games.
Cliff Empire
It’s quite a decent game for $15. There is a lot of unlockable content in the mid to late game that the sheer scale of the world makes you think that you really got value for money. The game starts off slow but picks up the pace later so in the beginning expect to wait around a lot for your production to catch up with your construction needs.
At the start, you can get whatever you need from your great “supplier” in the sky as long as you have money but in the later part of the game, the “cheat” in production closes and you’ll start to need to produce everything by yourself. This slowly ramps up the difficulty. Expect to lose your first 3 or 4 games before you learn the mechanics of the game and it becomes easier, if you go in with preconceived notions of “how the game MUST work!!”, you are going to be in for a rough time. Remember to save a lot if you’re still learning if you don’t feel like restarting from the beginning often.
– Real player with 175.9 hrs in game
Wow. This game is my surprise packet of the last 5 years.
Bought game in very early access for about $8.00 - could see potential, but it needed work and content was limited. Thought it was a good concept and small amount of money well spent. Never expected what I got for that paltry $8.00.
After playing about an hour and moving on, I noticed that the game was constantly on the update list, so started taking notice of developer updates - man these guys, whoever they are, or whether they are “guys” at all, work very damn hard.
– Real player with 92.7 hrs in game
Project AURA
Early Access Review
This is probably one of those games that I least expected to get addicted to.
Its a city builder that (at least for me) had a rather steep learning curve. Typicly that makes me walk away and not return, but thankfully I was persistant this time and kept doing new city after new city unitl I finally got the tech tree right. Hopefuly, the tutorials will get an overhaul and be made more compleate as the current setup is very lacking.
The visuals are sub-par compared to other games within this genra and era, but the layout and mechanics does make up for it enough so as not to become a problem. I do like how that the tech tree is rather well spread out, and its made up so you are not fixed into one path, but there are certainly those that are easier to follow than others (for example, I like to make money by spamming water/seaweed. Its low value compared to others, but easy to complete and avalible at game onset). The diversity of the crew that you can recruit is also a nice touch as you need to pair up the best citizen with the job in question. A good idea is also to give the ability to shoehorn in other citizens when your optimal choice is not readily avalible so you still do get room to play if your impatient (I’m a perfectionist so I typicly wait for the right citizen to spawn)
– Real player with 217.7 hrs in game
TL;DR – As an early access game this has a lot going for it already. It needs to work on balancing resource development and technology progression, but the management systems at the core of the game are excellent and the devs are present in the steam/PA forums so the Q&A available makes getting a grasp on the mechanics more than doable.
This game takes the concepts behind the Anno series and games like Banished and then dives into the mechanics of colonist, resource and technology management and lets you micromanage the heck out of them. Progression is slow and every advance you make, be it adding a food item to the menu or unlocking a new tier of technology, must be meticulously calculated. That’s why I love it.
– Real player with 147.9 hrs in game
Imagine Earth
I purchased this game some time ago and have waited a long time to review it, due in part to some issues I had with it, but also because I wanted to be fair, considering that it is an early access game. So with that being said, my review:
So I was flipping through the steam games and I came across this game called “Imagine Earth” in the simulation section, I saw that it had a demo and decided to try it. At the time the demo only had a missions available, a simple interface and not a lot in the way of content… but I was hooked.
– Real player with 41.7 hrs in game
I really like Imagine Earth. It’s a fun, lightweight city building game, where you have to keep track of not only economical, but ecological development as well.
The game has come a long way since its appearance on Steam. I get, that a lot of people compare this to games like Anno, don’t! Anno was made by a company worth billions, this game was made by a small indy team.
And especially in times of heat waves and forest fires in North America and South Europe, never seen floods in Europe and Asia it is good to see, that some people still try to educate about global warning.
– Real player with 29.0 hrs in game
Planetbase
REVIEW AND GUIDE
This review will basically criticize bad reviews of this game and hopefully provide insight for those seeking it. I am not affiliated with this game.
I’m thoroughly enjoying this game. It looks to have good replayability. Like every other builder I’ve played once you have built everything there is not as much to do except to keep it going. In other games, for me building up is the most fun and the building-up part of this game is a blast. It is challenging(!) and keeps me on the edge of my seat. I checked guides before playing, but still had things to learn.
– Real player with 273.8 hrs in game
In short:
You can barely interact with anything. There is not enough content. Haven’t noticed any update. The game is way too simple. Once you complete the initial tutorial the game has nothing more to offer.
How do I spend most of the game time?
-
The speed of the game is almost always at maximum, yet still have the bored feeling of having to wait for way too long (half an hour?!) for anything to happen.
-
Turning on or off structures to reduce electricity usage.
-
I can even ignore emergencies as I can’t really interact with them and a redundantly built base just survives anything.
– Real player with 71.0 hrs in game
20 Minute Metropolis - The Action City Builder
I’ll confess I’m biased because a friend that works for me did some of the artwork on this and I’ve long been a fan of Dejobaan.
This is a fun, bite-sized strategy game and less than $3. It’s hard to go wrong. I can’t think of any time I’ve actually regretted spending $3, but this was enjoying to play, and I will keep trying to get my name on the top page.
I would love to see a couple quality of life improvements: namely drag and drop roads, hotkeys or an expanded toolbar so I don’t have to fuss with the selection menus. Daily leaderboards would be nice too, so I have a better chance at the top ten.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Super fun and hectic. It can become a little easy after you’ve figured out a good strategy but you can always use a different starting perk which adds and takes away some difficulty. The models are really cute, reminds me of a toy town or Lego.
Some improvements I’d make would be, dragging roads to build instead of clicking for each tile. This isn’t a big issue, but could herald RSI if played too often.
I’d like more maps, a random map generation would be cool, it would make each run very different and unique.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Moons of Ardan
So I really wanted to like this game….. And I do!
I figured Id give this a try not expecting it to be all that since it’s very early access and cheap, boy was I surprised by a well thought out, fun game to play with no crashes or errors. Yes it has some teething issues of course and those are annoying flashing lights when night time comes, the lights seem to flicker a bit. Also, if you send feedback it will not lock the mouse and keyboard to the feedback page, so if you go to edit you will be spinning your world and placing random buildings all over. Other than those 2 things its silky smooth really.
– Real player with 80.0 hrs in game
Short version: game has potential, but needs a lot of work.
Long version: It runs at a solid 6 fps once you start getting things set up on the other moons. Increasing or decreasing the graphics settings (which give no indication as to what they actually change) seems to do nothing. There is no way to change keybinds, the sound effects are (probably) just default sounds that come with the Unity engine. Switching views to the other moons is clunky at best, and painful at the aforementioned 6 fps. This feels more like something that should be on a kickstarter as a proof of concept rather than released as even an Early Access game. The music is decent, albeit a bit repetitive. The balancing feels a little off, though that’s to be expected for an early access title.
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
nStations
Great basic space builder game. Unable to get last achievement because game will not do tutorial after initial colony so I can not do achievements if I do not know what they are?? Have to build 5 different colonies to complete final achievement?? No way to launch to next colony from the first that I can figure out. Do not know how to delete saved colonies…game has good bones, but needs added features and accessories. Will update/edit comments upon game update.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
So far, so good. Slow going but getting interesting. Could use more info on, well, everything. Like what does what (various buildings). Stay tuned!
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game