Screeps: World
I have played lots games over the years. have forgotten 95% of them, 4.9% of them i remember due to them being an excellent game and myself enjoying, Paradox games I love but don’t rate as in the top .1%. Only a very rare game has me remembering epic or defining moments that really set that game apart for me. EvE online is one, for creating a sandbox of such freedom, politics, warfare, resource gathering, trade, which all helps to create proper player driven stories.
The other is Screeps….which has given me my most proud moments in any game i have played. The games are of course markedly different but also surprisingly similar. Screeps like EvE has trade, crafting, factories, land ownership, politics/alliances, resource gathering, warfare, but ants instead of ships and where in EvE when u get killed you take a big loss, in Screeps it can mean game over, time to respawn from scratch……again.
– Real player with 3117.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming Sandbox Games.
Note: I am not associated with the developers in any way, I’ve just been playing a lot recently.
Screeps is a game for programmers.
But it is possible for someone without any previous programming experience to learn it with enough dedication, though I recommend at least learning some basics of programming/JavaScript from somewhere like codecademy first. And try the free tutorial before you buy the game (I am still running code that started out based on the tutorial code, 2 months later).
The game has deceptively simple visuals, but a lot of increasingly complex systems that you gain access to as you progress within the game, providing interesting challenges for your programming ability. How complex it ends up getting depends in part on how much of it you end up wanting to automate. Pretty much anything you can do, you can get your code to do for you.
– Real player with 2606.2 hrs in game
Stormworks: Build and Rescue
the game is generally good and i enjoy playing it but it has its fair amount of downsides too, but i am only making this review to complain that they changed how rocket fuel tanks looks, because it seems that they failed to realize that players have been using the rocket fuel tanks for decoration and now when it became simplified it just looks stupid. and there is no way to use the old ones. :(
– Real player with 2347.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming Sandbox Games.
Honest review from someone who has put a huge amount of time into this game
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Badly optimised, crashes are fairly common.
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Multiplayer mostly unplayable due to desync between clients.
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Base game content is lacking after they pulled the original missions
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Original purpose of the game entirely lost and forgotten by the devs based on a single discord poll
As much as I had no issues with the weapon DLC coming as it could’ve added some real great additional content but sadly the entire focus has been on the weapons.
– Real player with 588.9 hrs in game
The Alpha 001
By far, this is the most confusing mess of cobbled together Unity assets I’ve ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_T1THdZuHg
Avoid at all costs, at least for a year after this games launch date of January 18, 2021 because it will definitely take this developer at least that long to fix this completely broken pile of garbage.
NOT RECOMMENDED. ..My Score: Another Google Zero Asset, but hey it’s floating in the air like all the text and your U.I in this game so that’s an lot better right?
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming Sandbox Games.
Else Heart.Break()
So many bugs, so little help. You have to coax the game into continuing the storyline. God forbid you didn’t spend five to ten minutes walking back to the hotel to sleep at night, otherwise you might fall asleep before you finish a key plot point action that has roughly a minute-long window to do. The premise seemed fun, but I am having the hardest time even getting the first few things done.
The backpack system is a mess, especially given the fact that you’re going to want to collect every floppy disk you find. There are tons, so you’ll be constantly flipping through them, dropping them places you’ll hopefully remember you dropped them, and potentially rediscovering them later.
– Real player with 56.7 hrs in game
This game drove me crazy. I finally finished it, but I wouldn’t have been able to without consulting the online forum repeatedly. There is a lot of great potential here, but most of it is wasted. The first thing to realize is that this is not a “programming game”, in the sense that none of the difficult aspects of the game have anything to do with tricky programming puzzles (unlike, say, Zachtronics games). This game is a role-playing point-and-click adventure that happens to feature programming (hacking) as a key component. The game features an in-game programming language called Sprak, which is a pretty simple imperative language that nobody with any programming experience will have any trouble with. However, very little real programming is necessary to progress in the game; usually you just modify tiny snippets of code and then you’re done. (Basically, the game makes you into a script kiddie.) The one difficult aspect of programming in the game is figuring out just which built-in commands are available. The game helps you a bit with this, but every programmable device has a different set of built-in commands, and some critical ones are only found in a few places. But the biggest problem with this game is the plot. The plot progression is wildly uneven, with long stretches where nothing is happening punctuated by short bursts where critical stuff is happening all at once. Plot triggers are very easy to miss, and if you do, you will wander around forever trying to figure out what you should be doing, while none of the in-game characters will talk to you. Worse, many triggers require you to behave in exactly the opposite way that the game suggests you ought to behave, or thwart your expectations in other ways. Contrarily, many things the game suggests you should be doing turn out to be completely unnecessary and a waste of time. The worst part of it, for me, was that the programming part of the game can’t start until you get a hold of something called a “modifier”, and it is by no means easy to do so. I probably played for 20 hours or so before giving up and consulting the forums to find out how to get this absolutely critical piece of equipment, without which the game cannot progress. The best (non-spoiler) advice I can give you is to talk to every person you meet, and keep talking until all possible conversation paths are exhausted. Also, the game world is large enough that it’s very easy to get lost, and although you have a map, it’s pathetically bad, with many important landmarks left off. And when you finally get a modifier, you still aren’t out of the woods. You have to figure out how to join a kind of “resistance” against an evil system, and again, it’s very easy to completely miss the trigger that will get you into this group. Once you do, the game (finally!) starts to take off. This is fun for a while, but nothing you do matters much until the final confrontation happens, which will be glaringly obvious. However (once again!) what you need to do to fix things will not be obvious, so you are left wandering around again while nobody will talk to you, wondering what you should be doing (this seems like a theme here). When you finally realize what you need to do, doing it is quite easy as long as you can get into a particular room. There are floppy disks scattered all around the world that contain hints and clues, as well as code examples that you can learn from. You will need to spend a lot of time looking at these unless you (like me) run out of patience and just consult the online forum, and then you can literally finish the game in five minutes. There are multiple endings: several “you lose” kind of endings and one “you win” ending which is so unsatisfying it feels like you just lost a bit less. To sum up, I think this game had huge potential, but it was ruined by poor execution. I almost can’t fault the developers for this; to do a game like this right requires more resources than a small team can provide. I think in the hands of someone like Valve, with expert writers and large numbers of playtesters, this game could have been something amazing. As it is, it’s more of a proof of concept. (OK, great, concept proved! Now go make a real game!) If you’re going to play this game, save yourself endless frustration and consult the online forums when you get stuck.
– Real player with 51.0 hrs in game
HEDE Game Engine
Stars received: 2/10
Overview: junk to make even more junk xD
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
HEDE Game Engine wants to be the next “easy” game maker out there. While it might be easy, it is so extremely flawed and absolutely terrible! Between missing features, glitches, annoying features, and just how lazy this engine is makes this a hard pass!
All you need to know why to avoid this is this posted on the store page.
“At the current state, you can’t make a build of your game. You can play it only inside our game engine."
Let me just say, that some the artwork assets included in this are actually pretty good! No real complaints there, other than there is not a whole lot to pick or choose from. Half of the assets shown in the store page are not in here, so be warned with that… Here’s the thing though. It’s all just repackaged Unity Store Assets. With very little looking you can just find them all there.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Modbox
Oh…. my…. god…. seriously, THIS is what we’ve all been wanting, like since we were born.
I’ve always wanted to make games, but coding makes me want to choke puppies. Here’s the solution, plain and simple. I’ve owned it less than a month and already have 116 hours logged, if that says anything. The developers and community are fantastic as well!
I’d go into more detail, but it’s hard to since you can literally do anything your imagination can come up with, and once you get a feel for it, you can go from an idea to a playable prototype in literally 15 minutes or less. Not only is Modbox a hell of a lot of fun in and of itself, it also shows potential to become a true next-generation game development platform.
– Real player with 204.6 hrs in game
I should have reviewed this a while ago, this is just an amazing VR sandbox game/creation/work of art and i look forward to just watching it grow and grow with updates and support from everyone.
With each world you create your mind just goes wild with possibilities of what else you can do. (cant wait for dungeon and ai…and the possibility of room escape games)
This is the 2nd time i bought this game at first i refunded and in all honesty i didnt give it a chance. I still followed it closely though and re bought when the latest update came out with rc cars and much more.
– Real player with 56.7 hrs in game
ComPressure
One of the best zach-like games to exist thus far; A perfect rendition of simple rules leading to complex interactions. The retro pixel art and story featuring historically accurate rock star scientists lends itself well to a fun and engaging game about building the worlds first analog computer. The developer is active and responsive, adding more content fairly frequently, and the community is already both friendly and competitive.
10/10, would request lewd etchings again
– Real player with 395.8 hrs in game
First and foremost: This is a positive review.
I’m unable to beat this game however (PEBKAC) though, so I’m going to caution prospective players:
This game is HARD, and the tests in each level are NOT comprehensive, nor will they give the same results when run individually versus the ‘run all tests’ results. It’s VERY possible to make solutions which pass in test-all but fail on every single test when run individually. Chasing the test scores can easily box you into a dead-end solution path.
The test score results are NOT an actual metric for how usable parts you design are, and almost every part is meant to be used later after it’s made, without any clear description of errors compounding or what to watch out for.
– Real player with 16.5 hrs in game
Starbase
LauriFB is the disease of this game. Everyone that was loyal has left. The only people here now are the multiple dev accounts or the yes men that the devs like having around oblivious to their own existence. Or the few left in the ship designer.
No PVP - they banned them all for not PVPing the way FB wanted them to (banning in an alpha LOL)
No PVE - Devs are idiots - no trade, no missions, no bounties, nothing to create a single drop of PVP. They even stated NO PVE EVER, should tell you their brain capacity. I mean look at all the other successful MMO sandbox space titles with PVP only. HAHA
– Real player with 1236.8 hrs in game
Played this game for quite awhile in earlier days. just came back to try it out while im still waiting for capital ships. but Super surprised at how smooth the game runs now. definately get the sense that theyve been working on it.
For those who care, the ship and station building is unsurpassed by anything i ever played. you will lose ships to the EZ builder unless thats been fixed. the level of freedom you have to do what you want is just amazing. when capital ships come out which make it so u can have a mobile safezone out in pvp space you will litterally be able to live anywhere and do as u will, store your own ships, explore the great reaches of undiscovered space. seriously cant wait for that. and if you have a group the scale and scope of what you can do is pretty redic.
– Real player with 150.6 hrs in game
Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor
Nimbatus is a great game that ha sucked away my free time.
Tutorial:
The tutorial is not the best, it only tells you the bare minimum in its first section on how to build a mobile craft, and all the other tutorials are basically useless, the only usefull one for the ingame content is the logic section that teaches you how to build a basic ramming style sumo drone even thougb the objective is to create a drone to fly forwards with no context as for why you need to know what this could be used for. ALSO the in the harvesating tutorial the ore does not get harvested correctly, it shrinks into the center unlike chunks being ripped off of the ore in the acutal game.
– Real player with 99.3 hrs in game
This is tough to rate this as not recommended.
The main appeal of this game, for me, was concept of creating completely autonomous spacecraft. And at a glance, it does that very well. I was able to create several different ships that were able to go off alone and solve missions by themselves, and even a ‘factory mothership’ that would replicate a variety of subordinate drones that would do the dirty work for mom. It is pretty satisfying at first, almost like a simulation of 2D electronics with a unique environment to play with.
– Real player with 38.0 hrs in game
The Caregiver | 終焉介護
As a fan of Chillas games, this is possibly the first negative review I’ve given of his/hers games.
Pros:
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Bigger maps than usual (or so it feels).
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Superb atmosphere as usual.
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Sprint ability!
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Collectibles.
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Good story.
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Good sound design.
Cons:
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Objectives are a bit unclear. Like, after cleaning up urine one would assume next step is to put the cloth used in the washing machine, but I guess in Asian countries you just throw things in a plastic bag and keep it around your house…?
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AI enemy very fast finding and attacking you when needing to perform actions. You need to run around and close doors behind you all over the house for at least half of the clocks in order to try and make it in time before being killed.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
Curator page here-- [url] DaRevieweD #81 [/url] -- [i]New review every Sunday[/i]
The Caregiver (TCG) is the most recent j-horror experience to come out from Chilla’s Art (CA)- who doesn’t even need an introduction at this point! It’s no secret, I’m a huge fan of theirs; I actually want to review all of their games but it’s easier said than done because you must have nerves of steel and not prone to mini-heart attacks. If you love Japanese horror movies, and want to be a glorified “extra” then play any one!! My first ever was when I worked in The Convenience Store (TCS) , but that’s because I was shopping for more than I bargained for.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game