This was definitely worth 10 bucks. The writing is definitely pretty out there, but it's well within the realm of soft science fiction. As long as you don't go in expecting rigorous adherence to modern science, it works just fine, and the technobabble is just good enough to smooth things over. Most of the choices seemed to have pretty obvious Right Answers, but there were a few that gave me some trouble picking between my priorities - and only one was because the answer I absolutely wanted just wasn't available. I'll discuss it in a second spoiler, below.
Oh, I don't mean the science is soft or anything like that, I more took issue with the whole "those Elysium guys nuked Earth!" plot point, which raised the very good questions of
how and, more importantly,
why. They introduce the idea (based on zero actual proof, mind you) out of the blue, with spurious reasons advanced as the motivation, for basically no reason other than to make Bowman look bad and remove him from the relatable position of needing to cope with the extinction of humanity.
And then they throw the transhuman thing from Alpha Centauri right at you as well. This plot didn't really need a villain, to be honest. An antagonist, sure, though a more natural one would have been the player character you didn't pick. They even start to build to that, but without any serious payoff.
It also doesn't help that it feels a lot like they wrenched a 5-hour plot into a 2-hour game.
Mechanically, it seems like it could use some polish. I didn't quite realize that I'd be permanently out of expansion space before I ran out of modules, so I was kind of sad to see that Mining Module collecting dust when I needed Resources during after scavenging dried up and before I stabilized. It definitely feels like there's a lot of room for expansion in the building and exploring bits, but on the other hand I had the economy on a pretty solid lockdown after the initial stabilization. Finishing with Great morale and health (and 7 days of supplies), despite choosing the less popular leader, felt a lot easier than it probably should've been. I may have been taking an overly optimized strategy for fear of catastrophe, but the game's blurb suggested that's something I should be worried about.
It's pretty easy to become self-sustainable once you let ecology take its course and disease eliminates two thirds of your population. Did you find another hydroponics module, perhaps? I felt like I could have really used two.
Also, remarkably difficult to recover from a full-blown tilt in public health. Took like a week or two to get back from Critical to Bad on double rations. Guess that's the plague for you, eh?
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Topic: The Next World [GIVEAWAY] (Read 7428 times)