Dawn Apart aims to mix various game genres while using a colorful voxel-based graphic style. You start with a handful of crew members on an unexplored planet. The ship you arrived in contains some initial resources and can be completely dismantled and recycled. That's when the management begins: The crew must chop trees, level the ground, mine ore, eat, drink, sleep, and… sometimes take care of important personal business 💩

All these activities happen automatically (with adjustable task prioritization) or via direct player commands. On top of that, resources need to be transported, buildings, materials, and decorations need to be crafted, and objects need to be placed. So you need to plan ahead, which task should be done in what order.

But why are we even doing this? Well, we've been tasked with mining the valuable ore "Lucrum 115" and shipping it to our employer — long live the capitalism! xD Over time, the required quotas increase, forcing us to become more efficient and extract the ore from increasingly distant locations. The only way forward: automation and fabrication. Drills, furnaces, smelters, stamping plants, presses, chemical labs, conveyor belts, cranes — you name it (Factorio vibes, anyone?).

To make all of this work, we also need to extract and process iron ore, coal, copper, granite, quartz, and several other natural resources — ideally, in a fully automated way.

So far, this would be a standard factory automation game with worker micromanagement. And in its current alpha state (demo and playtest), that's exactly what it is.
But we won't be alone on this planet, and the locals won’t be too happy about us tearing it up and exploiting it. We’ll have to defend ourselves: automatic defensive weapons, equipable weapons for our workers in a battle of humans vs… aliens (?).

So base defense will also be a key element. And as if that weren’t enough, we'll have to deal with fire hazards, destructible factory buildings, environmental influences, and other challenges. How all of this will be implemented remains to be seen. As this might by a controversal part of the game: Some like the idea of a destructable base and the pressure of defending it, others (like me) want a more relaxing atmosphere and want to concentrate on effeciency and creative building. Hopefully we will have the options to enjoy the game in both ways.

The game already feels really fun. It has a fantastic soundtrack, a beautiful visual style, and for die-hard fans of the mentioned genres, it's already quite enjoyable to play.

BUT: For newcomers, it’s complicated. The game mechanics and user interface could use some improvements. There’s a lot of reading involved, and even then, trial and error is often necessary — figuring out how task prioritization works, how to position cranes and conveyor belts so they automatically supply factories and storage, how deep drills can mine, and what kind of interactions are possible with a right-click. :D The list can be expanded, but I hope you get my point.

That’s totally fine, though. It’s still in alpha. The game isn’t even in Early Access yet and still has years to develop. It would be highly unusual if everything already ran smoothly without bugs.


That’s why I want to evaluate the game’s potential and, most importantly, how the developers engage with the community.

They do not just have a Discord server — which is actively managed, by the way. The developers have a transparent development process, allowing us to observe their daily work on Dawn Apart. There are polls, contests, bug trackers, and they actually listen to feedback.

If they keep this up, I see no reason why Dawn Apart won’t achieve everything it set out to do.

(Disclaimer: I spent more than 24h in the game so far if you add my time in the play test on top)

I bought the game the second day it was on early access. My friend and I directly testet Online-Coop on a private server. So far, I only played 2,5h but the game has a huge potential.
Let me summarize my thoughts:
- There is no real tutorial yet but a few lines of text when you first enter a menu. But I was able to understand the main mechanics in the first 2 hours.
- It is an exploring game (at least in the early stage). Unless you play in creative mode, you will need to drive around a lot at the beginning in order to find enough resources to build you very first outpost.
- It is an multiplayer game. Yes, you can play for your own and it will be fun as well, but especially in this early stage of development I recommend playing it with friends. Together it is much more fun and easier to learn the game.
- There are bugs. For sure. This is a very new early access game. The driving of cars can be "optimized". But "hey". In comparison to many other games I played as "early access", this game looks to be somehow robust and the bugs I encountered didn't want me to throw the game away, so what better can happen?!

I can understand if people want to wait and see how the game develops and in what direction, but I can totally recommend the game. There are at least 30-50h of gameplay until I would expect the game becomes repetitive and such things. But there are 27 biomes to explore and the worlds are HUGE. It's a sandbox game. Play as you like, invent stories or implement ideas alone or together with friends (or start war against your friends *evil laugh*). That's the idea behind such games.

Have fun.

Herausforderung offline - Heiterer Spaß online
GWYF ist ein Spiel mit Charme. Es sieht gemütlich aus, ist gemütlich und konzentriert sich auf das Wesentliche: Mit Freunden zusammen einen Minigolfplatz unsicher zu machen.
Seit Release gibt es regelmäßig neue Features, Maps, Bugfixes und seit einiger Zeit auch Hüte und Laufspuren für die Golfbälle. Es kam also auch noch ein Sammel-Sucht-Faktor hinzu.
Das Spiel macht tatsächlich am meisten mit Freunden und per Voice-Chat Spaß. Denn das Mitfiebern mit den anderen, das Ankündigen eines "Hole-in-One", dass man dann doch knapp verpasst, oder der wütende Aufschrei, wenn man kurz vor dem Loch von jemand anderem weggeschubst wird, ist einfach super.
Neue Freunde finden wird man mit dem Spiel wohl eher weniger, aber wenn man welche hat und mit denen Spaß haben möchte für Zwischendurch, dann kann man hier keinen Fehler machen - schon gar nicht für den Preis und gleich gar nicht, bei den Systemvoraussetzungen.

Man sieht sich auf dem Grün o/

Definitely the best city builder since SimCity 4.

Pros:
+ Huge maps
+ Very complex simulation
+ Although easy to learn
+ MODS ! (Additional buildings, game changes via scripts)
+ Nice graphics
+ 3D (in comparison to SimCity 4 ;))
+ Huge community -> see Mods
+ Hard mode (difficult to maintain your city) or Unlimited money (just build the city of your dreams)

Cons:
- Some of the original AI scripts need an upgrade (problems with tourists, garbage collection), but this can be fixed by official patches or custom mods
- Creating custom content could be made easier (asset editor)

A 'must have' for all who wants to build the city of his/her dreams.