izigame.me

It's okay.
The game is enjoyable enough as a short romp (3-6 hours), but I was constantly having gripes or wishing for what could have been.
Things I wish for the game:
- Deplete the pips within your energy canisters to better reflect your fuel; early in the game only knowing that I'm somewhere between 1 and 50% of my energy is not enough info for me to plan around. It also just feels really bad that it doesn't do this.
- A warning or acknowledgement somewhere that this game does not autosave. Presuming the game saved after certain events and then encountering a softlock resulted in me losing my entire 2.5 hours of gameplay up to that point.
- The ability to save freely. I presume the fixed save points were necessary due to the random terrain, but this system feels extremely restrictive, especially with the necessity of saving not being as apparent. I feel a traditional save option that just placed you at the last camp or other static landmark would help.
- Conveying better the controls for side-content. The controls for fishing are not apparent as the sole indication for the expected input is small to begin with and hidden behind another UI element. I also had to test buttons when trying to navigate the terminal logs, where a small graphic of a joystick or somesuch would have made it clear from the start.
- Too much button overlap. Having interact and drill on the same button has bothered me on several occasions where I'm too close to a door, and needing to navigate your inventory to use a certain function is a bit of a headache when it could have had a dedicated button. It is also extremely frustrating when the button to advance dialogue is also a confirmation for decisions. I read faster than the text displays, so I advance the text to make it display at once; this causes issues when the dialogue is paired with a choice/confirmation that takes precedence over advancing the text.
- More meaningful rewards. My experience would have benefited from something like a heart-piece for energy. Too often I found myself disappointed by rewards, traversing a platforming challenge only to be rewarded with a picture, or finding a secret only to get a chest full of duracite which the world is already littered with. Not everyone is going to be incentivised by lore, and it's especially frustrating when every once and a while the reward is good and impactful so you can't ignore the content completely. Rewards that improve your character or improve gameplay are almost always well received, and a higher ratio of these rewards would have left me less disappointed with the exploration.
- Better utilization of currencies. Expanding on the previous point, some rewards already present, the energy and ores, are poorly utilized. Despite the description stating duracite is used as currency, I've only found one thing to purchase with it. And after obtaining two of each upgrade, the ores become seemingly useless. Resources that can be procured infinitely would benefit from having larger or more persistent outlets to spend them on. Additionally, a wider array of options engages the player by forcing them to decide when and how to spend their resources.
- More environmental hazards. Difficult to implement without a health system or such, but traversing the world felt lackluster as there was no real impediment. You can hold a direction and drill and more or less get there eventually. The only decision making or threat evaluation is "which route is slightly quicker" or "where do I want to drill to cross this gap," neither of which are of much consequence.
- Skippable cutscenes.