The Universim
After waiting 4 years after the kickstarter success, I believed it was actually being released in August 2018. To see that it was only going into Early Access and only 20% of the content was done, I basically gave up on it ever happening. It stayed in Early Access for another 6 years until it eventually released in 2024, and subsequently had the "We've released the game and now we're moving onto other things" even though there are still plenty of major issues with it. I won't be touching anything else by this studio again.
Pros
- Big technology tree, from the stone age to the space age. I've been wanting to do that since Rise of Nations
- I found myself getting rather involved with the starting nuggets. Eve was eaten by a wild animal. A few years later, Adam died of old age at 42. Most of the other nuggets I haven't named though and they have no identity
- There's a black market system that allows you to pay for things with people, or by receiving disasters
- You can assign nuggets to be ministers of things like water and food. After that, they will decide when to build new buildings instead of doing everything manually
- There are tooltips for practically every icon in the game
- While I really love the tiny planet sphere, it can make it a bit difficult to find buildings you're looking for as the view is always changing
- Happiness and crime are basically a balancing act of which buildings you create
- Planet health based on civilization use of resources and deforestation
Cons
- The colours are kind of weird. Too vivid. I think it's missing anti-aliasing or something, everything is too sharp
- Why are there rain streaks on my screen when it's raining? Is the creator looking at the world through a window?
- It's a bit difficult to tell if I have enough of something. When do I need to build a new eatery?
- Camera movement feels very sluggish
- I really dislike the scroll wheel god power selector, it's difficult to find the power you're looking for
- Eventually I realised the notification settings were under the main menu. It would make more sense to put these with the rest of the notification filters in the game
- I'm not really sure what to do to gain followers other than having a temple staffed. Currently at 250 people, only 100 followers. Nothing I do seems to change that
- In general the tutorials are pretty good, but there's a few things missing. For example, does the road turn pink when placing a building to say 'bad placement' or 'Building will be connected to road'?
- The game is very slow, and not very interactive. The game more or less plays itself and it becomes a waiting game for research