This game is frigging amazing. The whole split fiction in the last boss fight is incredible

11/10

The game is cute and peaceful. Its a very light casual puzzler. I walked through level after level rarely getting stuck, but I felt no sense of achievement with any of the puzzles, as the logic itself takes some leaps so I felt like I stumbled on the solution.

The mechanic gets quite boring after a while.

If you want to switch your mind of completely this is a good game. Otherwise pass.

I got it on sale for about £5.

I got 7 hours of playtime out if and that was about it, so not great value for money, for the type of game it is.

I very much want to like this game, but just can't. I loaded straight into Hard Difficulty, had idea wtf was going on, just tried max all my numbers. By turn 200 I no longer was able to spend all my money, except for loaning to other banks, (even with all my guys at 100+ stats). However, the AI was somehow going ham, and doubled its money in 10 turns causing a massive breakaway into stratospheric levels. Turn 220 I'm sitting at 40 million, and AI leader is at 160 million. So, I just bumrushed the Federal Reserve and it was GG. I also at this point had almost max tech.

Once buying an asset, there was pretty much no reason to ever sell the asset.
The UI is so utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage, that even attempting to try and figure out where my competitors had their investments to start using revolutions and other options given tot he player was pretty much void. Why I cannot just select a competitor and then have an organized list of their assets, I do not know.

The UI also makes effectively nosense, as many of the tabs are labelled or mislabelled with no explanation as to what they mean. I'm on the "enhance Agriculture tab", and I got an "investment value" and a "property value", but neither value actually relates at all to my agricultural investment for that particular region. Why you might ask? Lazy developers, who knows? Like come on, UX and data is not a big ask, when you already must have a database stored somewhere.

By the time I hit my first Million, the game was basically just "press next turn" > issue all loans > Invest in Region > Buy max Investments > level up region > Press next turn , loop. WIth a short break every 20 turns or so to upgrade my managers.


The game could be so much better with some value tweaks, and a proper UI, that its just sad. I like the premise and idea of the game, but the execution is a garbled mess, and ends up being less interactive than most Idle games.

Fun little game, but some of the recipes make absolutely no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense. Bending a H gives an A ??????

It is also a shame you cannot make upside down T and flip them, but instead you just get question marks.

Pros:
Nice Story
Nice Settings
Nice Music, and Thematic

Cons:
Poorly explained UI
Frustrating Resource Management System
Extremely unbalanced and poorly designed game

I would not recommend this game, as there are many similar style games (although not in this sort of setting), that simply are better, and do the gameplay loop better. Games like Frostpunk work, because there is a scarcity on resources for survival. Ixion doesn't work, because survival resources are abundant, but resources required to progress the story are scarce, and tech (unless you know to get the upgrade) is impossibly slow. This basically means, that you are either forced to wait in a chapter for 3 years afk while you grind out tech and resources, or you have to restart. (Now why does restarting fix this?)

Yes, welcome to the environmentalist overlords. The only way to overcome the scarcity of carbon and silicon that you need to progress the game, is (amazingly) Waste management. Unfortunately, waste manager is so overpowered with its infinite resource loop, that it trivializes the whole game.

Now, all of this is easily fixable.

1. Completely redesign the tech system from the ground up
2. Make resources abundant, but
3. Massively increase the negatives of idling, to enforce story progression, and to keep a sense of urgency. Now, instead of randomly running out of carbon to mine in the universe (like really, how is there no carbon to find in our solar system?????????), you will actively be having to make choices as to what you mine and where you mine it to avoid impending doom as you race against the clock.
4. Nerf Waste management
5. Remove softlocks from the game, and allow for resources to be pushed rather than pulled to your sectors

Developers for this game at Volvo must be stoned or something.

7.33 not only destroyed the game balance, but also made the terrible matchmaking system even worse.

No idea, why they thought it was a good idea to recalibrate all players directly after fundamentally changing and imbalancing the game to such an extent. If they want to recalibrate people they should do it when the meta has settled, not when you have heroes with record high winrates across all ranks, because of poor balancing decisions.

Usually, horror games will have a very strong story element, and then will either mix in stealth (Amnesia I'm looking at you) or puzzle elements, as you traverse from A-B. Its a game of cluedo. With the evil or whatever giving you a sense of urgency as well as keeping you on your toes.

This is not a horror game. You get a few QTE events that serve as annoyance rather than as actually being scary. This is essentially just a puzzle game.

How does it perform as a puzzle game?

Frustratingly terrible.

Controls: Interaction is limited to what you are next to, and for example at the fireplace in EP1, half the time It wants me to interact with the Deer head above the fireplace instead of the fireplace itself. This is terribly frustrating as I am spending several minutes walking in circles trying to position myself how the game wants me to be.

Camera: Frustrating, as it obscures and blocks out important game elements such as doors. There is really no reason why this game needs to be isometric. It would have actually been scarier as with most horror games to be in first person.

Puzzles: 4/10. Not many puzzles in each episode, and they are poorly thought out. Half the time information is obscured so that you spent half your time figuring out what the rules of the puzzle are.

The overarching story puzzles, don't actually make sense whatsoever. I understand for example in EP1 that the dolls are voodoo dolls and the black doll is the evil which you are then burning. But how does this tie at all into the Music Box? Why am I able to do all this, but Daniel got firetrucked in the first 5 minutes of him being in the house? Why do I have to go to several arbitrary rooms to find corpses and collect notes.

Story: Non-existant. Generic ghost, generic theme. Not much is explained, not much to actually care about. The backstory of the characters in the house you are investigating is revealed through scraps of paper and cassettes so far and few between that you honestly don't actually care.


Honestly don't bother. 90% of gameplay is you doubling back on yourself arbitrarily. if they want you to re-explore old areas, then they should link this into the story. If a room is special for example where the corpses are put, then this should be indicated. The lack of cogency in the games story telling ruins it.