Despotism 3k

Despotism 3k
N/A
Metacritic
81
Steam
76.162
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$7.99
Release date
8 November 2018
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
81 (880 votes)

Humanity is enslaved by an AI… which is awesome, because we’re on the right side of the conflict. Exploit puny humans to extract power and build your own empire!

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Despotism 3k system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows Vista or later
  • Processor: 2GHz+, SSE2 support
  • Memory: 512 MB RAM
  • Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 300 MB available space
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r00ster91
r00ster91

I think it can be pretty difficult to get into and the humans get exhausted quickly but this game has great potential.

My Name Is Tony
My Name Is Tony

Great time killer with lots of easter eggs

Winterous
Winterous

Fun for a while, packed with character, good music (although I think there might only be one track?) and great art style; but gets stale quite swiftly.
Buy it on sale, but not full price.

Mara
Mara

Cons
- wee humans keep striking
- wee humans don't want to copulate
- wee humans get trapped under the wheel and slow progress

Pros
- I'm highly motivated and the wee ones won't stop me from reaching my goal.

Overall, great game. It's the pathetic creatures that keep messing things up, but I will reach the end one day. Today is just not that day.

Hashish Hussar
Hashish Hussar

Great time killer with rather challenging gameplay. Lots of fun for its price. 7,5/10

yckmciaiy
yckmciaiy

Making purple people mate, then feed them with their own children is Despotism 3k! Totally would play other missions.

Yngvarr
Yngvarr

This game is not forgiving. If you miss the mark by a millimeter, you lost, period. Sometimes it's just to tough.
Nevertheless, it's fun to play. Just don't forget to swap your humans in the right moment.

Genicode
Genicode

Interesting game, but little boring and repetitive.

Chuck Jenkins Noris III
Chuck Jenkins …

This game is a wonderful treat, More than worth the price.

But why?

You know why. You know where you are getting the kicks from.

The name is a hint.

Despotism 3000 is a management game of breeding, enslaving, regular fast food jobs, and people cooking. Confused? Well allow me to elaborate.
The trailer is quite a bit of the game, along with funny little decision making events at the end of each day, which could either boost, hinder, or do nothing. You may draw upon the eldritch powers, or you may make your breeders uncomfortable by having a permanent dead stripper for decoration. Or you may get some silly references. It is a bit rng, but mostly wise management. It only took me like 6 (fast) failures before I understood what I was doing wrong. I can't really explain much past that to be fair, it is a nice attention grabber with cute dictatorship and salacious elements.

It's a good.........cherry popper for these type of management games, and very fun besides. Easily worth the buy.

BUTTERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tarantula
Tarantula

Google Play Introduced this game to me, I bought it and liked it.
Then the phone is broken, so I bought the Steam version.
But found this game hasn't been optimized for touch screen (both Macintosh and Windows), so I finished this game on iPad Pro with Apple Pencil...

Lord Knightmarez
Lord Knightmarez

hilarious and good for understanding ecconomy. Hard tho!

Vicenti
Vicenti

Buy it on sale, play it a few times, find jokes a little funny, find the randomness annoying, find the jokes repetitive, get bored, give it another chance, get bored again, never play it again.

Strange
Strange

Very unusual, challenging and fun game with a dark sense of humor. You play as a malevolent computer that has enslaved humans. The gameplay is very much like an arcade game. You have to send humans via robotic cranes into different stations... a hamster wheel to produce power, a breeding chamber to create more humans, a food chamber to create food, a holding chamber to rest the humans (they tire out over time) and the bioreactor to... ahem... kill the humans and harvest them for energy and food. Everything runs on a timer, with feeding cycles at which time your food and energy will be zapped (make sure you have enough by the time the counter reaches zero). with the more humans in a given station, the faster it produces that item. If you run low on food, humans die, and if you run low on energy, you have to start from the beginning. As the game gets along, you find yourself having to manage the humans at a rapid pace (upgrades to the cranes are needed, as you might be shuttling several humans around at once). Random events come up that can affect different stations depending on what you choose. It is never clear what choice produces what result, so you'll end up learning by trial and error, sometimes with the events helping you and sometimes hurting you. This is not the sort of game you play linear from start to finish so much, as it's a game that you try to last as long as you can, as it gets wilder and faster, with more humans, higher energy requirements every day.

Very fun game, and nothing really like it out there. Excellent replayability, as it's an arcade style game. I would recommend it.

Vacuum Sealed Nutsack
Vacuum Sealed …

My review after 25 hours of gameplay:

The game is difficult. You'll have countless restarts. Every second you'll need to be asking yourself "what should i be doing in this situation?" This makes it all the more rewarding once you complete your first play-through. The game is essentially only a resource manager, however the game's events and the pressure created cause it to become unbelievably entertaining for what this game is. The second campaign along side the modifiers that are unlocked after completing the game gives it amazing replay value. All in all, I believe my 25 hours where well spent enjoying this game.

Keibal
Keibal

Um excelente jogo rogue-like de estrategia, muito viciante e bem feito

Shevek
Shevek

Sigo en la primer campaña ;_; difícil pero entretenido.
Im stil stuck in the first campaign ;_; hard game but really funny to play.

Bitcoin Baron
Bitcoin Baron

No save system no likey. If you make a mistake you have to start the full game again. My time is precious.

HotPelmeni
HotPelmeni

pure fun
half the time it s mostly reading and tbh that s the part that got me hooked
i want to read more short stories
action novel gameplay
these little events about every possible scenario from all over the board
for me it is about getting punished for the fun choices you can make
sure the events recur but i see them more as a learning curve like in every game out there
so therefore i just start a new run

EmiliaBestGirl
EmiliaBestGirl

The game had great potentials with its unique pixel art and creative theme, but the execution is left to be desired. The general META strategy seems to be to just use up all the stamina and toss into bioreactor, which isn't great when most of the time you would have to focus on managing stamina bars, the variance in gameplay feels lacking after a mere 16 minutes, and the random effects are just so significant it may as well decide your game, I wish that the random events would generate different strategies but it just seems to game over you. However, I have to say this is only from a first impression and I have not thoroughly played the game, since I have simply lost interest over time.

Thinking Bot
Thinking Bot

The whole idea is not to be too good on one single thing. Need to keep everything in balance. There is abit of life lessons here too. It is a long game with high replayability. Highly recommended for its dark humour. Can be addictive.

uzeth
uzeth

kill the humans, use the humans, kill the humans? use the humans. kill the humans.

killer203040
killer203040

hard game but good cool story line and funny

carles.llacer
carles.llacer

Very addictive game with great music, great pixel art and great sense of humor. Full of scifi and fantasy references.

Nyx11
Nyx11

Despotism definitely has a somewhat sharp learning curve to it. it took me about half an hour to get a grip on the order I should invest in things. After you figure out how to not screw yourself in the first few weeks there are some definite game play style choices. Do you want to constantly use the bioreactor or supply power and food the regular way? Have you made a choice that screwed you out of using something? How do you cope with that loss? Its a very fun somewhat challenging game.

SantaBear
SantaBear

Do you like to enslave humanity and feed on their suffering? I do, and oh boy this game really hits that sweet spot for me. This game, for how simple it is, is fun. At the same time be warned, for it is quite tough and punishing to new players.

iEnlightened
iEnlightened

I'm too dumb to win this game.

LegalTreacle
LegalTreacle

This game can be incredibly annoying: you have been warned. It probably has made children cry, I wouldn't recommend it for younger ones (for a number of reasons).

Game mechanics are simple: manage your stock, ensure you survive, learn to manage random acts of nature by answering weird multiple choice questions...

It takes some practice (and trial and error) to work out both how to micromanage the efforts of the puny humans and answer the interlude questions without destroying yourself. The humour isn't for everyone, and I'm probably missing a few in-jokes, but I'm not bothered much by it.

It takes probably 45-60 mins to complete the first campaign, but you'll need to die quite a few times (or get very lucky) before you're able to clear the 25 days.

I was about 1 minute (2 cycles) away from finishing the game, watching my power quickly deplete, unable to do anything since a bad answer just before had *$%^ed me over completely for day 25.
Despite that, this game gets a thumbs up, as I still decided to try again. I was probably about 8 hours in by that point, and I didn't get a good enough run-through to win until around 13 hours.

Spot
*****
Puny human! Run the wheel
Make food faster, try to heal
Angry protests? move into
the Bioreactor...
Why am I thinking of butter?

Capitalism
Capitalism

Like RNG? Would you like to play a resource management game where your entire playthrough is decided by random events? Then this game is for you!

6/10

Jet
Jet

I really wish there was a neutral thumb for cases like this game. It's a cute little game. It has a sense of humour and the graphics are nice to look at. But. The RNG. It's like as soon as you actually start to get somewhere, balancing everything out so its running smoothly, a random event will happen and there is zero indication of how each choice will help you. So you are picking one blindly hoping it will help (it won't) and then two minutes later, everyone dies, or you run out of energy. Its very, very frustrating and not in the good "this game is frustrating but I love it so will keep playing" way. More like, "I am getting sick of the game randomly ending because I chose the wrong random answer. Do I really want to put myself through this again?" Sometimes the answer is yes. Yes I do. But sometimes the answer is Hell No. So I wish there was a neutral button to say "It's OK, but...." I don't really want to neg the game though, so I guess it's getting a yes vote, if reluctantly.

Pancakesburn
Pancakesburn

Not what I expected, very frustrating with the mandatory random events...

Hans Hantelmann
Hans Hantelmann

7/10 Voting down out of sheer frustration. Played a 4+ hour game (2nd campaign), almost finished, got suddenly overpopulated, didn't react in time. This game isn't played like you drive a fast car, it is a very sluggish steamboat, you have to adjust things in time or 10mins later it's game over without any chance to bounce back. Thx to permadeath I'm not sure if I will give it another shot.

Bathory
Bathory

Be prepared to lose a lot... Took me 8 hours before I finished the first campaign. But the music is great, the concept is great, and the gameplay loop is fun.

But yeah, at first it is BRUTAL. "Fucking BULLSHIT" is what I thought at first. Actually it's pretty straightforward once you get your thinking cap on.

General Wok
General Wok

Not a very fun management game. It's decided entirely by RNG, so you win or lose based on the random events you get and not anything you actually choose. Random events can be fun, but they shouldn't be the primary factor of success.

dewbertb
dewbertb

Fun little roguelike sim. I suck at it -- but it's still fun!

Xenosbreed
Xenosbreed

It's not just hard, it's unreasonable without random events happening in your favor. I'm not sure if its even possible without random events, if it is it would require incredibly tight management without allowing much flexibility which I don't find particularly fun. You do unlock an easy mode after 3 losses so there's that but there are challenges that I don't think you can do on the easy difficulty so a lot of they replayability is locked to the extreme randomness.

This is one of those game I wish there was a middle or meh button. Get it on sale, you'll get an evening or two out of play from it.

Rock Always Wins
Rock Always Wins

I clicked Yes on would i recommend this game, but it's not that black and white.
here is my list of pros/cons:

It's hard. even on the easiest setting.
The RNG will make or break your run.
It's one of the most rage inducing games i've ever played.
But i can't stop playing it.

and therein lies the rub. You may notice that i didn't do a stupid pro/con list like i said i would. and that's because i think the items i listed are both pros and cons.

this game is addictive but not in a fun way, in an "you're not gonna beat me that easily" way.

anyway i love it... no i hate it..

i don't know anymore, all i know is i'm gonna keep playing it till i at least beat easy mode.

see you never.

captainspikester
captainspikester

I really like the concept and the visual style, but the game is very frustrating and punishing. Masochism.

Bought on sale and still refunded.

Halley
Halley

poorly made. awesome graphics, shit balance. had all stations level 4 at day 11, max humans in all, constantly feeding humans to bio reactor, with 11 humans in wheel, still fucking failed. wtf? I'd like my 3 dollars back please.

atarashiijoeydesu
atarashiijoeydesu

This game robbed me of my innocence, my time, and my lust for killing all humans!

10/10 will murder again.

Kiros
Kiros

Time Limit.
You have no time to look at the nice graphics and animations.
The whole time, you are just looking at progress bars to keep ahead of the crushing power requirement accelerating toward you.

TheCodingGamer
TheCodingGamer

I discovered this series after trying the demo for the upcoming Despot's Game and I'm glad I did. These guys are top tier in every aspect. Awesome pixel art, great writing, and the ability to make easy to understand games while still providing depth for the more dedicated players.

Despotism 3K is one of the most fun resource management games I've ever played. You're tasked with managing various activities like generating power, producing food, and breeding the population. There are also random events that give the game a deck buiiding like aspect as you will pull both positive and negative effects. As the difficulty ramps up and the game throws you into more and more creative spots you will be forced to make tough decisions. The real jewel to its simple gameplay loop is that since there are limited options, every piece is critical and keeping your facilities functioning requires careful planning as you'll often have nothing to fall back on.

The game also has a surprisingly large amount of content for those that want to keep playing after the main story. These include a second campaign that adds a new mechanic, as well as a large set of modifiers to do gimmick runs, and even an endless mode.

Overall I've loved my time with this game and plan to continue playing. If you're looking for a good casual game that can also cater to a strategic player and don't mind a bit of RNG, then I recommend you give it a go.

|/|/573|)|/|006™
|/|/573|)|/|006™

Fun litle roguelite "city" management.
It has humor, nice gameplay ,it gives a fresh touch to the genre
but it needs more content
developers kinda forget about the game hope whty will give some love aftert hey publish the new game

symphony
symphony

It's literally impossible to get enough energy. Max out the wheel every time, max out reproduction chamber, and throw every excess body into the reactor as soon as they spawn and yet it's still not enough to keep up with the increasing power draw.

Bunz4u
Bunz4u

Stupid puny humans can't do anything right, make them bang so we can boil their children.

xubiod
xubiod

a micromanagement type game

gotta balance the energy production with the fuck tube

PasasEnCereal
PasasEnCereal

The RNG has poisoned my soul

Almost every achievement requires a luck streak in order to get and i'm not really about that stuff. The problem is no necessarily the random chance you get to obtain modifiers, rather it takes a lot of time to get into de mid-game, but then get a negative perk that sabotages the rest of the experience.
It's not about strategy or being good, it's about luck.

SEnXi
SEnXi

Holy Hell.
Those facilities costs so much power.
Damn.
But I do like kill creatures... in game...

adsilcott
adsilcott

It reminds me a bit of the Eyemaze games, not just because of the stick-people, but because it's a puzzle where you have to figure out what to upgrade and in what order. Which means failing a lot before you figure it out. Add to that a worker placement element, with things happening in real time, and there's a lot to keep track of. So sometimes even if you make good decisions, you might still die because you overlooked something.

I beat the first campaign, partially using a guide I found online. Even using the guide it was a struggle, and I only had hunches that what I was doing was working as I developed a deeper understanding of the system. But once it started to work it was a wonderful rush. All of the failure made it all the more sweet, and worth my time and money.

However, the technique I used to beat the first campaign isn't working on the second one, which is good--now I have a new puzzle and I understand the knobs I have to fiddle to figure it out.

A lot of the difficulty is front-loaded, which is probably bad for getting people into the game, because it makes it feel very hard. However it's actually good for gameplay, because it means that you are most likely to fail early, before you have a big time investment. Kind of the opposite of Civ type games where you might not find out that your early choices were wrong until many hours in. In this game, if you can make it past some initial hurdles it becomes easier, although there's still a lot to do and keep track of later.

I love the details in the graphics, enjoyed the soundtrack and audio, and the story and humor gave it flavor. I'm glad I stuck with it past the initial frustratingly short games.

soloyolorolo123
soloyolorolo123

Great Base Management Game With Just A Touch Of Random, The Story Is Good, The Dialogue Is Even Better. Keeps You On Your Toes Throughout The Entire Playthrough.

Pseudo
Pseudo

A management game where you play an AI using humans to produce power so that you can rule the game. It's a simple game where you have three currencies - humans, power, and food - and have to distribute humans between the different production machines, keep them fed, and keep up with ever increasing power needs. The problem is it's just crushingly difficult, even if you unlock easy mode.

DarkPandaEyes
DarkPandaEyes

Awesome game with dark humor, totally made me hooked ;3 Love the pixel art.

bwdm
bwdm

🦾 🦾 🦾
🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍

TheWhiteCrow
TheWhiteCrow

In short: wonderful game! Dark humor but not depressing, pixelated but well-detailed and, even if it is a gestional game, there are so many events (and variables) that it keeps its freshness.
By the way, all the Events are NOT just lines, YOU CAN SEE ALL THE EFFECTS: all those things that you see on your screen are influenced: sanitizing a facility? You can see squeegees and soap water. Humans get cybernetics? You see teeny-tiny sparks. A rogue drone crash into your energy bar? Yep, you see the flying pest stuck into your battery. And believe me the list of what can happen in this game is very long and awesome.
COOL DETAIL: this game is a part of a post-apocalyptic universe. They released a RTS that elaborates on what happens outside the facility, so double awesomeness!

SK RaZoR
SK RaZoR

Its allright, what you see is what you get.
Decent value for money.

undead.alien.13
undead.alien.13

Suffer puny humans! SUFFER!

Watermelon Cat
Watermelon Cat

I'm giving this a tentative recommendation. This game is too hard... but just a little bit too hard for my taste. The margin for error is very very tight outside of easy mode, and luck is a major factor. A bad event early on can and will make a run impossible. There are some events which are unavoidable also, and it feels unfair when these items ruin your run.

Easy mode is a saving grace in that easy mode feels like normal mode should. I've yet to unlock hard mode, but I can't imagine wanting to make this game harder.

There may be some strategies to win which I haven't found, but it is an incredibly difficult, tight game.

It can still be fun though, and that is why it still gets a positive recommendation for me, but just barely. I keep coming back to it and trying to win, and I probably do so perhaps one in 10 times if I am lucky.

So, there are those who would like a game that is this tight. For me it is a bit too much, and if it were a bit more forgiving, it would be a lot more fun.

Still, I keep trying, so I can't call it a bad game and it just barely gets a thumbs up for me.

Phaxtolgia
Phaxtolgia

You're a cruel machine that runs on humans! NOW GET THEM RUNNING ON THOSE MACHINES! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

May
May

POP CULTURE REFERENCES ARE CRINGE
I REPEAT: POP CULTURE REFERENCES ARE CRINGE

at least when they are slathered this thick.
robot is cute, but yeah, please, write actual jokes

upd: changed to positive, robot is too cute, but my criticism still stands.

cwalen
cwalen

Not as simple as it seems to start with. Absolutely worth a bottle of beer.

Fierce time management with some story elements.

Nightbringer
Nightbringer

A lesson how not to design a game

On a surface it seems like fun, small little game. However, in reality it is hard as nails, overtuned grind. It is a game built on memorisation and luck.

What is wrong with it

    Extremely frustrating to play
    • This game is not enjoyable to play. Your life is constantly ticking down with electricity going down. You feel like a hamster in a wheel who can't stop. Constantly being on a verge of death and any small hiccup along the way can screw your run. When I had played this game, there was nothing more than looking at your humans and constantly moving them through different chambers while all the time being stressed about ever increasing survival needs.

    RNG
    • Game is entirely dependent on getting positive events. Even one negative effect is completely crippling in this game, because there is almost no room for error. If you do not play as developer intended, you are going to lose. In such an environment any downside becomes massive and these random effects are massive. 30% less endurance to your humans in a game where everyone is constantly overworked as it is? Completely game ending.

    Random events
    • They are extremely harsh and unforgiving. A wrong choice can cripple your run. However, these events never change. In order to beat this game, you need to memorise them. This is a cheap way to make game difficult.

    Pulse based resource system
    • This game is annoying, because resources are spent in one big pulse which is very frustrating. This means that you cannot get the feel of how much people you need producing a certain resource. It also can lead to easy screw ups. One failure to deliver enough energy means sudden game end. It is like playing a game on ironman with one life, extremely punitive. Even minor resources like food can lead to complete decimation of your population. I had missed one round of food by some margin and third of my humans just died. This meant that I lost, because for a brief moment I did not considered if I had enough food for that half a minute.

    Upgrades
    • If there is an award for bad game design, this must be it. Upgrades cost power. Power is also resource which you need to survive. This means that you can't upgrade your power generation, because you need it to survive. Amount of power needed to survive always increases. This means that you often get soft-locked way in advance from any upgrades and are forced into prolonged death spiral. This death spiral is a very frustrating element of this game. You know that you are losing, but you can't do anything. You will lose quite early on if you do not play exactly as developers intended and then other 10 minutes or half an hour of a run can be your slow, antagonising march towards your death.

Conclusion

I do not know why at the time of writing game has 83% overall positive reviews and 68% mixed reviews. Gameplay feels really horrible. It leans into everything it should not do and it doesn't even present an enjoyable gameplay loop. You will be staring at one screen all the time and the only thing you will be doing is moving exhausted humans from work to rest and vice versa while memorising correct choices to a random event and hoping that luck is on your side.

Zacinoff
Zacinoff

Game Score: 4/10

Despotism is a game about using humans to produce power. The 5 main components are; Waiting room, Running wheel, Breeding chamber, Food press, and Bioreactor. Your goal is to progress to day 14 without running out of power by managing your five rooms. Each day consists of five 20 second increments that end with you being taxed power and food. After the end of increment 5, you get a random event which is completely random. The game is pretty fun at first with all the silly stuff that happens, worm holes opening, pole dancers getting squished, teleportation, etc.

The fun ends pretty quickly since most of these random events generally end with you losing power or getting a major handicap. The worst part of the game is that your taxes at the end of each increment increase quickly, you're simultaneously hindered by your max power, which doesn't increase fast enough (why is there a cap anyway?). this is extremely frustrating because if you play really really well and get good RNG, you're still held back by the game. It's a damned if you do damned if you don't situation.

Pros:
- Simple fun graphics
- Clean UI
- Creative and fun events

Cons:
- RNG makes it so some run throughs are a complete waste of time.
- Max power limit hurts players that get lucky
- Power taxes rise too quickly

Overall I didn't enjoy my time playing. The first hour was fun, but then all the bad really gets in the way. I bought it for $3 on sale and I still regret it.

cvelth
cvelth

Fun and easy game to kill a bit of time, quite frustrating to keep loosing because of small mistakes caused by not paying enough attention. But I guess that comes with the genre.

TubeSockWarrior
TubeSockWarrior

If you play the game the way you *think* you should be playing, you're going to lose. If you get just one bad random event, you're probably going to lose. The game has charm but it's just not fun to play, even on easy.

BeagleGuy
BeagleGuy

I requested a refund because I didn't enjoy the dead end game play.

As others have noted in reviews, the daily tasks are often game-enders. One of the options is less-bad than others. That's just annoying.

Then there is an issue with power being the upgrade resource, as well as constantly being upgraded every day; this forces you to build, upgrade, and designate humans to the energy wheel at specific times in the run, otherwise you fall behind and only it's a matter of time before you lose. It's a bottleneck to the whole AI. Maybe that's the point?

If you enjoy repeated trial and error to find the one way to win a game, this is for you. Unfortunately for me, the tedium was beyond my enjoyment.

M_rxiplier
M_rxiplier

The concept's that you're a human who's using a computer to take control of a human-enslaving computer.

YuraConst
YuraConst

Being realtime makes it nearly unplayable on desktop with mouse. Needs a touch monitor and pretty fast fingers to keep all those idiots alive

Hagen
Hagen

The game is fun until you realize that success depends entirely on whether or not the RNG gives you a "good" random event.

Power management is painful because there's no indication how much each piece of equipment uses, or how much more it'll need when you upgrade it. The way electricity works is also a bit weird, because rather than having to carefully balance the needs of your equipment with how much power you produce, instead it's an annoying waiting game that can easily turn into a negative feedback loop if you get the wrong event.

Human management is painful because it feels like unless you get one of the events that gives the humans more endurance ( the blue skin one, for example ) you have to spend so much time trying to manage their exhaustion you don't get any time to meaningfully think about your next steps. Also, food is a pain; didn't notice you didn't have enough food? Well you lost a few humans that died of starvation, and you're now in the incredibly hard to escape negative feedback loop so you might as well start over right now.

The 'day' timer feels too short, leading to way too much anxiety for a game this small. Once you unlock "Campaign 2", it's even worse with the addition of the map & the ability to send humans out on quests. The game seems to be trying to put you in a constant state of anxiety or panic. And I think the timer is the core problem; the quickness of each "day" along with the endurance of your humans seems to be weighted towards being a negative feedback loop.

The random events give absolutely no indication what might happen -- including nothing -- but also, some of the outcomes are random. The mutant dog is a good example: one of the options lets you have the dog and it just wanders around the complex, but that same option MIGHT also kill half your humans, so good luck! But because the "good" outcome of these events are kind of key to actually surviving, you have no choice but to hope the game where you finally got to day 24 won't be screwed over by a previously benign ( or helpful! ) event that this time kills enough humans to put you in a death sprial.

As for the "campaigns" -- campaign 1 is fine, although it's annoying that easy is locked until you've died three times. The second campaign is where things definitely go downhill. On the one hand, the hard limits on how much energy, food, or people you have is gone. On the other hand, those limits were helpful for keeping things under control. Also, it feels like they tweaked how much power & food is required so that you're forced to send humans out on scouting missions.

Urgh. The scouting missions.

This is where the "hardcore resource management" & "silly idle game" really clash. First off, the number of humans you have to send to have a decent chance of suceededing starts high and seems to get higher quickly. But sending 10 humans for a 50% chance of success -- where success gets you 1 human, 100 energy, and 30 food is a really hard sell. This is made somewhat worse due to the fact that even if you "succeed", you still might loose people!

When the game seems to be tuned to force you to send people on missions almost immeidately, despite not having the humans to spare -- that's kind of when this whole tower of cards finally falls apart. You need to send humans on a scouting mission because you otherwise will be constantly low on everything; but sending enough humans to have a chance at success puts you either in or dangerously close to a negative feedback loop. Add in a random event that could kill a few more humans and now it's time to start the game over. Again.

The difficulty has either been so tightly tuned that it's mostly just frustrating -- or the game wasn't really tuned at all. The small margin for error means you've got practically no wiggle room for mistakes, but even playing perfectly you can still lose because a random event wipes out too many humans for you to recover from. On the other hand, winning the game is so dependent on those random events spitting out one of the ones with a good outcome that you can't ignore them. Lastly, the game hides so much of its inner workings that there's way to grow your skill level, because you can't make a plan on how to proceed and learn from your success or failures.

At the end of the day, it feels like someone wanted to make a silly and slow-paced idle game about being Skynet, and someone else wanted to make a nail-bitingly hard resource management sim ( maybe for "real gamerz" or something ). The problem is that these two ideas would be hard to combine in the best circumstances; what we get instead is kind of the worst of both. The core gameplay loop is set up in a way that you're always panicing about what needs to get done so that you can try to claw your way out of a negative feedback loop. Only for the game to spit out a random event that tanks your game by putting you into an unrecoverable position.

The best way I can show this is one one playthrough, all my humans died. Did I get a game over screen? Nope! I was sitting at 400 energy, and running out of energy is the only way to lose. Because I had quite a bit of energy, and no machines being used I could have gone several more in-game days before finally runing out of energy and causing the game to go to the game over screen. That was pretty much the icing on this terrible, anxiety-inducing cake.

I played this game for 5 very un-fun hours, and I'm never going to touch it again.

Dont.Fuck.wit.Storm. ...
Dont.Fuck.wit…

I really like the developers artstyle, possibly the best pixel art on steam. However this game just feels poorly balanced. Rogue Lites are ment to offer rng based success but this feels too punishing.
Everyday you are offered a challenge, fail it and theirs a good chance the run is over. The only way to achieve success is learn every single challenge simply by failing it as the questions are non sensical, which I enjoy, but there implications are game ending. There are very few good choices which leaves the player feeling just a little pissed off playing this.
Im not refunding because I like the concept and the gameplay is smooth. Cant recommend you buy this as is.

YourTurnMyTurn
YourTurnMyTurn

Some time and resource management games just make me aware that I am wasting my own time and resources playing them. The grim setting of this game contrasts with the sourly quaint 8-bit art in a way that makes me feel negative emotions... which isn't inherently bad artistically, but definitely affects my enjoyment of playing.

It's also quite difficult. With 2 hours logged, I still can't seem to get past the first in-game week, and I'm sure there's content to unlock beyond this point, but I just don't want to work this hard to find it. I have other things I need to do.

I'd enjoy watching a competent player of this title complete the campaign over getting good at it myself.

ninja368
ninja368

At first it's charming and cute in a raunchy, funny way, but then you realize as you go along that it is brutally hard and nearly unwinnable. The game balance is AWFUL. The crushing energy costs make it nearly impossible to upgrade the things you need to survive. You're lucky if you make it to day 2. As others have pointed out, you better hope you don't get a bad RNG event or you're doomed.

I just had a good run with the basic strategy being: process as many humans as possible in the bioreactor (basically the longer you play this is what you're doing the whole time, frantically clicking this button to stay alive because anything else will death spiral you, which by the way makes the game very unenjoyable because you can't breath just frantically clicking things) and the boom, RNG hit me with a negative 50 percent bioreactor speed. Everything else was maxed as far as it could be for the energy cap and this event alone killed me because every tick it takes more energy, your energy levels are capped based on the day so you can't upgrade when you have the energy to do it and when you finally get the capped raised so one little RNG and boom it's goodnight because you literally cannot get enough energy to upgrade anything anymore no matter what you do. It had nothing to do with how I was playing and everything to do with one game killer RNG. Not fun, not fair.

If I had to compare it to anything it would be one of those claw games at an arcade, it's the PC game equivalent. Teases you with a good time until you realize you're being ripped off.

Leorge Gucas
Leorge Gucas

Really simple, great art design, great writing, impossibly difficult. This game is the epitome of easy to learn, impossible to master. The choices can be a bit unfair and vague, but as a roguelite that's almost a positive and make sense, as you are a evil AI with 0 understanding of the intricacies of the world you inhabit.