gemini://mifuyne.capsule.town/gemlog/2024/snf

Almost forgot to write up the one for today! I'll keep it short though, don't got a whole lot of time. The two games I'm writing about here, I played on my PC (Windows 10).

At first, I wasn't sure I would be too keen on this game. I enjoyed the art, but the backstory to it felt depressing. This was a world where fresh water effectively dried up. Your little caravan of people had to uproot themselves from their now-dried oasis and find another source of water. Sadly, this body of water we've stumbled on is toxic. The game guides you through the process of setting up a water sterilization facility. The game continues its guidance through the way the game works. You can't avoid the tutorial scenario. It's the only way to unlock the rest of the game, or so it told me.

I enjoyed the fact that you're given the option to gather resources immediately, but you're left with one less resource node to harvest from. Harvesting being that your people pick the fruits, or prune the branches, depending on what researching those resources tells you.

I'm not sure I'm keen on having the weather... "rain on my parade," so to speak. The worst weather is drought season. The game implies there will be less water to draw from, it will evaporate faster. So I need to have enough stockpiled into cellars before that time comes. Maybe I'm just not in a mood for games like this where RNG can really ruin a good thing. I already have IXION, Against the Storm, and Slipways for that sort of gameplay, and I generally prefer high tech than post-apocalyptic, humanity is about to die out.

So my aversion to this game is very strongly a personal preference one. I think gameplay-wise, it can be rather engaging if you're okay with dealing with resource scarcity as well.

So this was made by the same studio behind Industry Idle. I remember playing Industry Idle a few times and it never really captured my attention long enough for me to stick it out. I think I was put off with the idea of having to trade with other players. Which I'm not sure I have to, but the game made it seem like it was a necessary part of the game.

Colour me surprised when I found myself playing Cividle for more than an hour. The game doesn't really tell you much beyond what the little tutorial blurb at the beginning. You put down buildings, and they trade with other buildings when those other buildings need things. The thing is, it doesn't tell you that you need to build outwards to clear the cloud/fog. I had to resort to using huts to build right next to them just to reveal the map. I'm sure that can't be intentional. Someone in the in-game chat called it "scouting huts." Seemed about right!

I wish getting an overview of the production and consumption wasn't locked behind a specific Wonder (which are unique and takes thousands of material to build). That said, I do get what the dev was going for. This is a civilization progression idle game, after all! Can't have nice things like that right off the bat. Plus, the tech I need to unlock for the Wonder that gives me that kind of data isn't that far into the tech tree anyway.

Luckily with building Wonders, you don't need to have all that material all at once. I do wish the game was more upfront about that, but it was nice to discover it for myself too. I know, I can't have it both ways. I just can't decide which way I really want it.

One sticking point for me is that only one producer provides for ALL buildings if all those buildings are in a cluster. I would almost prefer if I could specify routes and preferences per building. But the closest workaround is to micromanage the production priority and hope the buildings are close enough to each other. If not, they'll ignore what you want and continue doing what they were already doing.

I'm on the fence with this game. It's a free game so it's not like I lost anything other than time. And not even that much of it since it's an idle game. I can run it in the background or offline. But do I like it enough to go through the start all over again? This game does have a start-over feature, "reborn." I'm not sure I want to go through the building aspect all over again. From what I can tell the most you get out of it is permanent great people (who have their own buffs, but doesn't seem to be unique either...?)

I'll probably keep playing it here and there. Chances are some of my complaints here may be addressed if I progress some more.

Steam Next Fest - Day 5

Synergy

CivIdle