This arrived in early access today:
Hex map!
Only tangentially related:
I liked the Plan B demo but I could see, even from the start, how your production chains could devolve into a nightmarish system of spaghetti depots and roads. But hey, for only 9 bucks I might just go ahead and pick it up anyway.
My experience with the demo was kind of the opposite. Not that there aren’t spaghetti conduits, but that it’s very generous in letting you undo and redo everything, so I found it less hardcore (and basically less challenging) than games like Factorio. I liked it, but I’m not sure if it has as much longevity as some of those other games, partly because of that laxness. Granted, I didn’t get that deep into the actual terraforming stuff before I had to set it aside.
Way too close to the day job!
I have never been able to develop an interest in Factorio. Whenever I watch a Factorio video my eyes glaze over after about two minutes and I find myself falling asleep. so I actually like products that are more lenient in that regard.
I played Factorio all the way through to the rocket launch. Had no desire to play through it again. Dyson Sphere Program would be much more interesting to me to play again at this point.
Most people I know who played Factorio ended up spending hundreds of hours. Earlier this year I finally got into and really enjoyed my time. But once I launched my rocket I was more than ready to be done and don’t feel compelled to go back.
I just got through to rocket launch myself. Definitely want to play it again at some point, but not immediately
Looks like greenmangaming has Pharaoh for 32% off.
The Workers & Resources devs are under legal assault from a disgruntled community member, who has been submitting DMCA takedowns of everything they own, including their listing on Steam, which is currently down.
Pretty awful stuff!
That is awful about Workers and Resources - one of the only challenging recent city builders I can recall. I’ve been putting off a start to end play for it to be more complete, but maybe this realistic mode is the time to jump in.
Crazy that they’re a lawyer, given that knowingly filing false DMCA requests is illegal. Seems like their bar association might have thoughts about that.
They’ll probably plead insanity. IANAL.
Amazing that Steam still doesn’t have it back up. This guy is like a patent troll without the patents.
Caught this mentioned over on RPS, going to try the demo next.
Yes I noticed that in the Wallet Threat Level thread; looks like fun
One of the interesting aspects of One Military Camp is that you’re not just building stuff, you also recruit and train soldiers and specialize them in different fields (rifleman, demolitions expert, commando, etc). Then you send them out on missions to reconquer territory on a big map (that I’ve seen described as reminiscent of Evil Genius). Not sure how much freedom you have to go to territory A vs. territory B (from what I’ve seen the first couple of missions are fixed but it may be just to get you familiar with the mechanic).
There appears to be a ton of building upgrades and the tech tree looks reasonably large, both of which give me hope that the game will have some staying power.
One aspect of the game I’m not sold on is the need to manually keep supplying your troops with different resources - food, oil, and uh, two other things. You build a depot and then you have to manually order a supply drop for the camp. It seems super fiddly. However, it’s possible you unlock some sort of tech that will automatically resupply your camp. I sure hope so. And to end on a positive note, as you conquer more territory, you unlock different suppliers, so while at first you may only have one food supplier, if you conquer a territory with a food supplier, you can then choose who you want to provide your food (possibly giving you different bonuses or whatever).
Here’s a shot of the map:
