Beetle Uprising

Beetle Uprising

  • Very cute.

  • Very relaxing.

  • The evolution system is realistic.

  • You can feel the power growing.

  • Kind of dislike the fact that we must kill our own beetles.

  • Don’t be too boldy. It is a relaxing game. Not a “Conquer as quick as possible” game.

  • You end up with a mess on the floor.

  • Decorations are useless and lack of potential.

  • Kind of annoying how the inventories work. Lack of organization. Annoying to navigate.

Conclusion :

I am really not sure if this game is supposed to be beautiful or efficient…

Real player with 22.2 hrs in game


Read More: Best Nature Real Time Tactics Games.


While at this time it is still in early access, this title has a lot going for it even with some of the drawbacks.

Its a nice little management game with some real time tactics for the combat, that grows in depth once you start playing around with the genetics to improve your combat abilities. You go from simply looking at your highest stat numbers and trying to combine them, into looking at the genetic tree of your particular units then breeding based off that to improve on your entire gene pool, which does lead into one aspect of the game that needs some work in my opinion at this stage as you spend a lot of time just sat there, combining genes then throwing the inferior beetles into a blender to make room for the next set.

Real player with 21.3 hrs in game

Beetle Uprising on Steam

Arboreal

Arboreal

Welcome into the life of a tree. It’s time for you to grow a little seed into the most magnificent plant of the forest.

Growth

In Arboreal you need patience and tact to raise your fruit tree. Select between 36 fruit species to cultivate and graft. With your roots reach the soil sources needed to improve the growth. But balance your branches and the flow of resources with caution to avoid breakage.

Nature Spirits

Spirits are the native of Arboreal. Nourish them with delicious meals to get their help. And be careful, the more you grow, the more demanding they become… if you fail them, be prepared to endure the consequences!

Insects

Host inhabitants in your tree and let them take care of the harvesting, the food cooking, to speed up machine construction or tend to the plant’s needs. In no time you’ll transform your tree into a place full of life.

Machines

Build tracks, engines and conveyors to automatize production. Combine various cooking machines to transform and stock your meals. And let’s not forget the mushrooms with special perks!

Three game mode available in Arboreal

  • Time Limit: Nourish as many Spirits as possible before time runs out in various scenarios

  • The Grand Tree Hostel: Spirits arrive endlessly faster and faster. Keep up the pace!

  • Zen Garden: Flourish simply in peace


Read More: Best Nature Automation Games.


Arboreal on Steam

Empires of the Undergrowth

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


Read More: Best Nature Strategy Games.


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

Empires of the Undergrowth on Steam

New Colony

New Colony

ant

Real player with 0.5 hrs in game

Not very good. You will constantly be getting stuck on and in things and it’s very buggy. Just a terrible experience.

Real player with 0.4 hrs in game

New Colony on Steam

Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox

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

Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox on Steam

Territory - animals genetic strategy

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

  • you are entering the game with one species and mutate it to different species later on

  • you are playing on the map with existing ecosystem that is producing various sources of food

  • you are changing species genome and that is changing its attributes and behaviour

  • map is populated with various species (~10 depending on map size), species can die out, species can mutate to new species in time

  • each species has its own territory, its size and shape can be adjusted

  • species can be herbivores, omnivores or carnivores and can have one of five different sizes

  • species lives complete live from being born to death, need food to survive

  • individual animal can die in fight, starve to death, can be killed by predator, die by disease or die by old age

  • species are hostile only when they share the same source of food and has similar size

  • you can migrate your species to new territories

  • you can invade enemy species on its territory

  • you can defend your territory from enemy species

  • you are evaluating your surroundings and complete ecosystem to determine your next steps

  • 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

  • you are playing on the map without any species

  • you can create unlimited number of species

  • your goal is to achieve the largest biomass and/or diversity

Territory - animals genetic strategy on Steam

Seeds of Resilience

Seeds of Resilience

I had hopes for this game, but unfortunately it seems like it won’t be developed further, and I don’t think it’s worth the price in its current state. Even with the current 30% off I’d say only get it if you really like what you see.

The game is mostly good, very atmospheric, nice music, there are no major bugs.

However the gameplay is very rigid/static/uncreative, short and unbalanced. There are interesting ideas in it, but they aren’t developed enough or used in a meaningful way. That’s the main reason I didn’t give it a negative review right away… because there seemed to be potential.

Real player with 39.3 hrs in game

Seeds of Resilience

| Genre | Survival simulation & RPG |

| Version | 0.8.3b |

| Campaign | Not yet, only survival mode with 2 islands |

| Game length | maybe 4-12 hours if you want to do all stuff? |

| Difficulty modes | 1 |

| Achievements |

Real player with 37.6 hrs in game

Seeds of Resilience on Steam

Fleeting World

Fleeting World

not much to do and not much to look at.

But the soundtracks is very pleasant and the concept of a changing landscape is interesting.

All things together it feels like I just paid for a very simple ludum dare game.

Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

Fleeting World is a somewhat simplistic “city builder” strategy game where you must build a village, then place various resource harvesting outposts around yourself on the grid (so you can afford to place more resource harvesting outposts, etc etc). The trick is that the small 16x16 grid that is the game world changes over time. You need to regularly pay a bundle of resources to the gods or they’ll increase the rate at which the world changes (and thus destroys your village/outposts etc, setting you back).

Real player with 0.1 hrs in game

Fleeting World on Steam

Imagine Earth

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

Imagine Earth on Steam

Architects of Shangri-La

Architects of Shangri-La

Architects of Shangri-La takes you to a beautiful, mountainous land full of myths and untold stories. The state is led by thoughtful monks that constitute spiritual, political and economical power of the nation. Help them build their community, spread wisdom, make Shangri-La thrive and guard it against enemies!

Colonize uninhabited wild slopes. Search for the right spots so that your settlements are easy to reach by traders and porters, but also safe from natural disasters, animals and foes. Make sure that there is room for necessary infrastructure and future expansion. Try to make living in the mountains easier for your citizens.

Take care of physical and spiritual needs of your people. Give them shelter, provide with food by building farms and breeding cattle, ensure access to water, organize trade, construct places of worship and meditation to keep their morale high. Protect your citizens from wild animals, weather breakdowns as well as raiders wanting to disturb your peace.

Communication in the mountains is essential. Carve your way through rocks to connect your settlements with the net of roads and narrow, hazardous paths. Monitor their state and repair them to maintain supply chains, necessary for your people to survive.

Fulfill your spiritual duties. Schedule regular prayers, build chapels and temples to keep evil spirits away and be blessed in your deeds. Meditate to acquire wisdom and remain in balance with your body and mind, assuring happy and peaceful life.

Architects of Shangri-La on Steam