TransOcean 2: Rivals

TransOcean 2: Rivals

Triggerwarning: (this will be a ranting first impression review)

TL:DR version at the bottom. (playtime is not reflective of actual playtime. I left the game running with computer on for nearly 400hours)

My oh my. Deck13 along with publisher Astragon Entertainment, what is this and did you listen at all to your fanbase?

I don’t even know where to begin, I clearly remember a dialogue about what the fans wanted for the follow-up and did you collectively decide to do the opposite of what they wanted in about every way imagineable?

Real player with 413.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best Economy Realistic Games.


I’m a fan of tycoon games, and I really like the idea of one based on the shipping industry. (I also played Ports of Call back in the day.) TransOcean 2 looks good and runs well but I can’t recommend it for the following 2 reasons: 1) Lack of gameplay balance and 2) lack of gameplay depth. The following focusses on single player modes only as I’m not into MP. (A word on that later)

There is a ‘campaign’. It’s basically a tutorial that delivers what scant details there are to know about TO2 in an unnecessarily drawn out, grindy way. And it’s set to a painfully corny story. (Why does this game even need a story?)

Real player with 35.1 hrs in game

TransOcean 2: Rivals on Steam

Dreamhouse: The Game

Dreamhouse: The Game

Dreamhouse: The Game, is a game that allows you to get closer to the process of designing and building a house, from the foundations to buying flower pots. The task of the player is to take care of all the details necessary to finish the building. This seems to be easy and trouble-free at first glance, but in practice, difficult and important decisions will need to be made, which will affect the functionality of the property.

In the game, you play the role of a beginner construction engineer whose dream is to earn enough money to build your dream house and then build it himself. Lead the company from scratch, accepting orders for the general renovation of a ruined house, undeveloped land requiring leveling, excavation of house foundations, or the construction of a small hut in the forest up to a real hacienda on a sandy beach.

Some of the features of Dreamhouse: The Game

  • Multiplayer/online co-op mode – cooperate with your friends or compete with them online.

  • VR - Dive into the world of Dreamhouse. Discover VR from an unexpected perspective

  • Photo mode – build your home, photograph it, make an album/movie, and share it.

  • Community – boast about your construction, compare it with others on leaderboards.

  • Unique mechanics - import real objects & export real home projects to use in real life

  • Different surroundings - forest, town, village, beach and more

Every player once wondered, when the times will come when it will not be possible to recognize the graphics in the game from the real world. Perhaps the day has just come when you can see in the game the same things that you see in real life or buy in the store what you’ve created in the game.

Create the perfect place. Plant trees, shrubs, set stones, lanterns, fence, and kennel for the dog. If you want to see how the furniture from the store will look like at your home “borrow” them from Dreamhouse: The Game. Take a picture and throw it into the game. After a while you will see them in the house you’ve built. Maybe you plan to build a house in real life, but don’t have a project? Create it here, export it, print it out and you’re done. You have just created your first home project.

Do you think your customers will not know that you cut corners at work? Not a chance this time. An advanced Artificial Intelligence algorithm will evaluate the effects of your work. Style (e.g. classic, modern, Scandinavian, etc.), cost, speed, and precision will determine the rating of your actions. If you thought that building your dream house is easy… you thought wrong.

Now you want to build yourself a house. No problem. Do you want to build a beautiful, luxurious house, whose design you can copy in real life? So you have a long way to go. Firstly, you have to earn enough money in the game (orders, new every day, limited by time). Then master the basics of design, construction, electrical, and plumbing.

As it usually happens in life. Everything that can be built can be also destroyed. Are you a lousy designer? Take it into consideration that you will build the same house several times. On the guard of the perfection of houses in Dreamhouse: The Game stands Chaos technology. It’s because of it, if you screw up the house construction, the house will collapse. Wrong installations can lead to tensions, leaks, flooding, which can result in an impressive collapse of your dream house.


Read More: Best Economy Indie Games.


Dreamhouse: The Game on Steam

CITYCONOMY: Service for your City

CITYCONOMY: Service for your City

Ok; forst of all I want to thank everyone who helped me get this game up and running, a particular thanks to mayamak who was first on the scene to help, thank you very much :) Now that I have been able to play the game for a while; there are pros and cons to it, just like there are in most games. For anyone who is having issues getting this to run, the tips I got from mayamak and others were fantastic!

mayamak 4 Dec @ 11:51am

what is your system settings?

Real player with 35.2 hrs in game


Read More: Best Economy Open World Games.


This game is not now like it was in at launch. It has now turn lights, police fines for crossing the red light or hitting cars. You can disable those from the options menu. You can also turn off the rain in the options becasue that was very annoying :)

You can drive a lot of machines in this game if you dont mind grinding the experience to unlock them all. You gain experience ONLY when you are doing the jobs yourself but you can have employes who make money for you as log as you have the trucks available for them.

Real player with 17.6 hrs in game

CITYCONOMY: Service for your City on Steam

4Prot

4Prot

this is a masterpiece

Real player with 1.6 hrs in game

⣿⣿⣿⠟⠛⠛⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⢋⣩⣉⢻

⣿⣿⣿⠀⣿⣶⣕⣈⠹⠿⠿⠿⠿⠟⠛⣛⢋⣰⠣⣿⣿⠀⣿

⣿⣿⣿⡀⣿⣿⣿⣧⢻⣿⣶⣷⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠶⡝⠀⣿

⣿⣿⣿⣷⠘⣿⣿⣿⢏⣿⣿⣋⣀⣈⣻⣿⣿⣷⣤⣤⣿⡐⢿

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣆⢩⣝⣫⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠿⠿⠦⠀⠸⠿⣻⣿⡄⢻

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣶⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⣼

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⣰

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢀⣿

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⣿

⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⣿

⣿⣿⣿⠋⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⣿

⣿⣿⠋⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⢸

Real player with 1.3 hrs in game

4Prot on Steam

Circle Empires Rivals

Circle Empires Rivals

Circle Empires: Rivals is the multiplayer successor to Circle Empires. At its core, Circle Empires Rivals is a 10-25 minute long real time strategy game. Despite the short game length, it has quite a lot of content and depth, and easily gets a strong recommendation given its moderate to low price point.

At the time of writing this review, the game has 7 different game modes, 26 commanders with unique army compositions and bonuses, 6 difficulty settings, 5 different map sizes, and within the various game modes (such as stop the army and monster hunt) there are also different scenario selections available. The different game modes range from very easy to very difficult, and even with 4 people working together in a co-op game certain modes like Defend the Castle mode is extremely difficult on even moderate difficulty settings, so if you like a PvE challenge, the game has this available.

Real player with 66.5 hrs in game

Must buy for every RTS fan and people who would like to experience something unique with alot of variety.

You can play this game on easy mode or incredible challenging. There are a lot of game modes and coop makes alot of fun too. The game is also very well made no bugs and a great interface!

Got 32hours on the first one and with this game I expect getting closer to 100+ hours for only 8-12 euro you got great value.

If you want to play this coop, but don´t have someone to play it with, I am always looking for people to play it with, since it just makes even more fun in coop-mode.

Real player with 44.5 hrs in game

Circle Empires Rivals on Steam

Kiospoly

Kiospoly

Buy land and build the best food kiosks until you form a big monopoly in the neighborhood.

Become the best businessman, and bankrupt your friends through an evil capitalist strategy!

You need to keep your money in the positive through property management, negotiations, and of course, luck!

Kiospoly was based on classic board games from the 90s, themed with banking, simple economics, and fast food.

It can be played online supporting 2 to 6 people.

Kiospoly on Steam

The Guild 3

The Guild 3

(Detailed review. Will be updated as necessary. Patch 0.5.4)

I wanted to give myself adequate time thoroughly testing and playing this game before reviewing it. With over 100 hours put into testing this game, I’ve written this review taking all things into consideration with a neutral stance.

Between recommending this game or not, I conceded to recommend it. However, there are some factors each person should consider before purchasing the game in it’s current stage and that ultimately comes down to your personal preference, there is no “one size fits all”.

Real player with 157.8 hrs in game

I bought this game a few years ago since I really enjoyed The Guild 2. It was bare bones back then and not comparable to The Guild 2, which made me not play it for a long time. I started playing it again recently with the newest update to check the game’s progress and now I’m hooked. Exact same thing happened when I first discovered The Guild 2. I feel like The Guild 3 is now an improvement and proper successor to The Guild 2, as it should be. The development of this game has been extremely slow since it was released in Early Access, which may upset some people who want to see more progression in development. I understand some of the frustration but The Guild franchise is more of a niche type of game and fan base that it will never be extremely popular. They have steadily been updating this game over multiple years and it has improved immensely. The game is still unfinished and I’ve encountered some bugs but nothing too serious. The game has been very stable for me and I have not experienced any crashes. Graphics are not great by any means but a massive improvement from Guild 2 and offers some high quality textures and many more armor and clothing items. Overall there is a lot more items than in the Guild 2.

Real player with 74.8 hrs in game

The Guild 3 on Steam

Ymir

Ymir

I whole-heartedly recommend this game with a few caveats.

-The game is early access and is being worked on my a single developer.

-This game will not be completed quickly. The game will not always be updated quickly (although he has been doing quite well so far. An update every couple weeks usually).

-There will be bugs (although generally not game breaking, they can be a challenge and if you do not want to deal with it, I would wait).

-While there are official servers. They are usually quite full. So, the other servers are entirely player run. They can be hit or miss. So, until there are more official servers / there are better server hosting tools / more dedicated server hosts are better equipped to handle the job, you may very well sink 2-3 weeks into a game and one day it is gone. This can be avoided by doing your research on servers before joining. Some server and their hosts are amazing such as Age of Porcos run by Shem and PigsLands run by Jey.

Real player with 5283.9 hrs in game

New changes and recent major update have slowed the already awful pace of the game and made the overall progression and experience worse, to name off a few problems. I am giving this a negative just based on the early neolithic stage of the game alone, it is that fucking bad.

-You are now locked into where you spawn, you use to be able to move your starting tribe around a bit and maybe find a better spot at the risk of losing some or all of your tribe; you could even force settle onto another primitive tribe if they had a better spawn and after you reached a certain size you would have to fight them for the land. This ruins Arid players who spawn in the desert and rely on river networks to farm crops during agriculture and ranching phase of the game. Already players are just straight up abandoning and respawning if they get a godawful spawn.

Real player with 3036.9 hrs in game

Ymir on Steam

Parkitect

Parkitect

Let me begin with, I was one of the individuals who contributed to the Kickstarter to help this game become a reality. Heck, I remember when Sebastian was showing off his concept work using programmer art to demonstrate the systems he was working on. Then Garret hopped on the train and the game REALLY took off. I would liken this game to a beautiful fusion of the original Theme Park by Bullfrog and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. I will explain the how and why later on in my review. This game as a whole is a massive labor of love by everyone involved and it truly shines because of this.

Real player with 1688.1 hrs in game

Buckle up; it’s a lot of words!

I initially “reviewed” Parkitect back in 2016, while the game was still in it’s alpha state of development. Not a full-fledged review, more a preview. It would be unfair to judge something that isn’t done. Yet, back then, I felt the urge to write about this wonderful game (as will be clear when you read it below).

The alpha version in 2016, it was already really good. But it has always been good. The thing is, now, it has consistently gotten better - and better. Every month, somehow, the updates are exciting and interesting. Sometimes grand, sometimes small but helpful. Always stepping up from the excellent work that has been done before.

Real player with 1056.2 hrs in game

Parkitect on Steam

Sid Meier’s Railroads!

Sid Meier’s Railroads!

Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon was the third game I ever purchased back in the 1800’s, no, I’m kidding (Though it feels like it at times.) I actually purchased it in 1990 not long after acquiring my first desktop PC. I have played the series religiously since. I have roughly 100 hours in this game in the original 2006 disc retail box version. It certainly isn’t a successor to the venerable Railroad Tycoon III, but it’s still quite enjoyable if you realize this going in. The game is more of a “beer & pretzels” type real time strategy game with an emphasis on attracting more casual type gamers. The game has a charming art style more akin to an HO or N scale model train layout than the ostensible real world look of the previous Railroad Tycoon games.

Real player with 131.1 hrs in game

I’m big on train games. I’m also not the most educated on the finer details of signalling and routing, and find the concepts confusing. I enjoy the business aspects of railroad games more, and like games that let me focus on that.

Sid Meier’s Railroads does just that. It is a very approachable, enjoyable take on the transportation tycoon genre. Block signalling is automatically done for your tracks, and is easy to understand. You get to focus on the fundamentals: what industries have goods? What industries need goods? How can I get from A to B profitably? That is what the game gets fantastically well.

Real player with 85.9 hrs in game

Sid Meier's Railroads! on Steam