I wanted to see my cube mystery through to the end so I pushed on. I do like the flavor that the mystery added. I ended up with around 250 colonists. My difficulty was set to a pretty easy level, I think it was 50% because I chose the International Mars Mission, along with an easy site. I’m sure this took away much of the gravity my decisions might have made. I pretty much ignored any traits my colonists had because managing them did not seem like it would be an enjoyable task. I just let them work where they wanted to.
I won’t go so far as to say I really disliked it a lot, because I stuck with it. I liked getting my wonder built right at the buzzer too. The game play does seem more repetitive than most city builders, even with the genre tending to be repetitive. I think it’s because there ends up being these pockets of developed land. They all need power, probably a drone hub to keep things running smoothly, gotta keep things connected with power lines.
If there is some industry that requires people, then you need to built a dome, which will require more power, some water and air with the necessary pipes. Probably want to store some power, water and air locally to prepare for problems. Then you either need a food source, or at least some storage to dump some off at and some services to try and keep the colonists content.
I didn’t even really pay attention to if they were happy. I just put down a diner, and maybe a grocery store. In another dome I put a gym. I think the International Mars Mission makes it easier to keep people happy, so that may be why I didn’t need to pay attention to that stuff.
The flying drones definitely make it easier to keep things stocked up at different locations, but they frequently didn’t seem proactive. Many of my buildings would run out of inputs for a short time before a drone would drop off more.
This may be a game that gets better once they apply a few updates, but as of now this seems like the Stellaris of city builders - looks good initially but is rather thin and contains quite a bit of busywork .