ASTRONEER (10/30$)
This the type of drawing that makes me want to go back to square one and kms.
Astroneer has a great set of bones and makes interesting design choices that help it stand out, but don’t make it a great game. From the start I admired this games level of polish that so many survival games lack. The UI feels incredibly clean to use, but offers a surprising amount of creativity within the building mechanic. I could see someone sinking dozens of hours into this game, instead of my 15. But what this game has in polish and design, it lacks creativity within the worlds that makes its moment to moment basic gameplay, a lackluster event. And its aesthetic seems too familiar despite being very well done.
I went into Astroneers looking for a co-op title that I could play slowly, over long stretches, with a dedicated group of friends. This game is half of that. The missions take a long time to complete and there is Co-Op, but this game feels better played in a short bursts. With the exception of the creative mode for players that just want to spend their time building and not worrying about breathable air. You crash into your role as the sole survivor (unless you are playing with your buddies) the first world is magical and feel great to explore, but after that the game starts to lose me.. The big gimmick of this game is the need for air and terra forming and while the latter feels great, the need for air felt more like a boundary to block progress rather than an obstacle to overcome. I’m sure there will be players out there that enjoy the challenge of counting your every breath as you run risk reward scenarios to get rare materials. I got bored when I realized I wasn’t building toward anything. The harder things to craft don’t feel like gaining an item, but more of completing a puzzle you already completed several times. The best part of the game is the terraforming mechanic, sucking up earth and spitting it back out is incredibly fun when manipulating the planet's features. I wasn’t even building anything, just creating random foam formations and towers.
The novelty quickly faded when I had to deal with the terrible inventory management system. It seems like the type of system that is perfect for seasoned players, but is entirely off putting for new comers and what’s more, is unclear about how it works to begin with. The whole game is designed around this frustrating backpack, and it was demoralizing to see that I dropped rare materials thinking I was setting things up to print out of the backpacks printer, because the UI is so not clear. I’ve messed around a bit and have built some pretty cool things, but it was always with the environment gun as opposed to crafting systems. Despite the system allowing for the creation of some helpful and cool items like planetary rovers. As I progressed in the game I lost the desire to build for new items since those cool items are few and far between In other crafting games, you make things that directly affect how you play, in this game there is building for storing building materials used for more building. That’s it.
The game does shine when you play it with friends, cause that lets you mess around with the rovers/terrain gun and the aesthetic is nice. But at the end of the day, I got bored of the cool systems since they never changed. Over several hours the worlds were forgettable and lacked variance. This is going to need more content and cleaner systems before it truly takes off (10/30$).
