I love you all. Keep doing good. Sad and happy and fascinated to see what's next here and with Alex and Vinny and Brad. I remember when videogames.com was a lonely green coming soon page and have watched all these punks evolve from their earliest days there/Gamespot into where we are today. What an era. <3
Heck yes! I saw this and immediately heard the hi-hat tsh tsh tsh tsh in my head . . . and you delivered. OK, maybe I should actually listen to the episode now. RIP Ryan <3
Anyone else intimidated by games like these? I thought Factorio looked rad, but I figured it'd be too much for me. I was curious about this one, too, but I'm still not sure.
I think Vinny overstates the learning curve of this game. I'm 200+ hours into this so far and never once had to resort to tutorials or online guides. In fact, I'd actually recommend against doing that, as it lets you come up with your own designs and solutions, and it allows the game to unfold in front you gradually.
It's probably one of those cases where going online and looking at everything all at once makes the game seem way more intimidating than it actually is to just play it. The progression system is very paint-by-numbers and tutorializes through how it reveals resources, items, buildings, and principles so you're never really overwhelmed with too many new things. In the beginning the resources you're harvesting are close by, easy to access, and simple to utilize, and as you progress, more stuff is layered on top.
The negative aspects of the game would be that it's not balanced in several key ways between the mid-game stuff and the current end-game stuff -- several components of the game are unlimited and/or overpowered, leading to later components being redundant. Examples: oil/fuel power vs nuclear power, conveyor belts vs vehicles/trains, etc. The survival element also feels pretty redundant, as you have the ability to build free-floating walkways that completely bypasses anything that's threatening. I don't think I've had to do more than a few corpse runs over the entire time I've played.
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