izigame.me

The status that the game is in currently, it's a 5/10, it's complicated.
There is a lot of good in the game but there are also MANY hair pulling issues and design choices that prevent me from recommending it.
I really, really, like the setting and many parts of the gameplay loop, the exploration, scavenging and figuring out where I am and where to go. There is a really interesting template of a game in here but it is hindered by the many problems, design and balance kind.
It is kind of like playing Super Meatboy. You need to bang your head against the wall repeatedly until you already know what is coming. There is pretty much the pre-determined way that you have to play, with slight deviation allowed, or you will fail.
Except you aren't playing a platformer with seconds to couple of minutes long levels. It's hours and hours long and something you did or didn't do at early hours can ruin you later.
Big issues :
*The "difficulty" curve*
Simply put, you either already know what is coming and you min-max from the very beginning.
Or
You fly in blind. In that case, prepare to completely rework your station, assuming you haven't locked yourself from doing so because of the full building refunding, which is actually nice. If you don't have room for the materials from demolishing, you are boned. Assuming you aren't already doomed because you didn't know what is coming.
Side note, the different buildings having greatly differing footprints doesn't make the challenge of reworking your station any easier.
There are completely useless "upgrades" that you can waste your precious science points on, only to find that they do absolutely nothing. COUGH "Survival" upgrades for your ships. COUGH COUGH COUGH
Also either a manual waypoint system for the station and/or the ships or give the ships some brains so they won't beeline straight through the lethal space weather instead of taking a slight detour to prevent death.
The death spiral caused by accidents in general.
*Nothing besides power is shared and things just not working*
The system for resource sharing works pretty well after you accidentally figure out how it works. Why is nothing shared across the station? The price for poor planning should be long logistic chains.
Why can I store and move around "ice" as long as I want but I can't move water between sectors? Why the hell isn't water of all things, a station wide pool, pun intended, to be used where it is needed?
The many negative stability modifiers are globals for the most part but positives outside of one or two are all sector specific. Why? If the memorial for the horrors of what has happened in sector 6 doesn't exist for people in other sectors, why do people in sector 6 give a damn about there being too many cryopods unpopped in sector 2?

*Lack of some tooltips and info in general*
The resource bar and the tooltips for the resources are great!
There is no indication of what is actually a different building in upgrades and what is a buff and to what.
What are research tiers and you do you actually unlock them?
Actually! I just found out that there IS a tooltip for this but you have to hover over a locked tier to see it, something you might not actually do because of the very reason that it is the locked tier. Just throw it in the tutorial page or stick it to the top so people actually see it! Speaking of the tutorial page, it says that spend your points wisely but you MUST unlock everything in every tier to unlock the next one! Which one is it?
What a building actually does and other info for it, size/prize/special requirements etc. -edit- In the research screen, otherwise the building tooltips and general infos are fine.
For the love of god, add a tooltip for what is lethal space weather, what is an annoyance space weather and what those things actually do to you.

*The useless people*
Is there a REAL function for the non-workers besides being a resource drain and, so far, a single time event material?
There are so freaking many of them just draining my resources. Oh, and it's just luck if you get boned by the thawing rolls.

*The game over conditions.*
Both the hull issue and the "trust" suffer from being on such small scales/ranges.
The hull situation becomes, by all indications, a "2-hit death" scenario by the end. I basicly got stuck "only" at the 3rd chapter and it became a real annoyance on the first try around. Restarted from the beginning again and attempting to min-max this time around if I actually manage to stick with the game.
The trust situation is either a pit you can't climb out of or it is a meaningless bar that is always maxed. Hanging on barely and your trust is slowly rising? Which one of the MANY negative stability modifiers you like? They come in permanent and temporary, both logical and illogical varieties. Hope you "remembered", read as "knew", to carve out a significant space in every sector for the multiple stability buildings in that case.
Having maxed trust technically forever means nothing, it should prevent some of the, while understandable, situational negatives like having many unfrozen cryopods or taking your time in a "level". Does the crew actually trust you or not?

*The Drain and everything related to it.*
Your BASIC building material, alloy, which you have a finite amount of, is drained from the moment you end the tutorial and start the "actual" game. Your hull not only permanently loses max HP, so to speak, that increases after every "level", I assume by the end your hull is permanently max 50% health, it ALSO has a permanent damage over time that ALSO increases after every "level". Thinking about opening more sectors to increase your hull repair? Expanding also increases the damage over time to the hull.
Every individual random accident, which you WILL have, that damages a building slaps ANOTHER damage over time modifier for your hull. Missed a building or two which were damaged? There goes 20% of your hull. Damaged buildings become "irrelevant" after you upgrade your construction building to do something that it should do ALREADY and by over preparing by expanding your station and hull repair building more which can always lead to a death spiral in many funny ways.
By the way. Why does expanding into a new sector INCREASE the drain on the hull!? It has to be sealed and everything to be usable but it makes the hull crumble apart even faster? If anything, you should have a negative modifier for staying in too few sectors rather than punishing you for expanding!
Finally as the figurative cherry on this disintegrating cake is the fact that if you move your station, you get ANOTHER significant damage over time effect. Oh, and you can't cancel your move, hope you don't get unlucky with your accidents. :)
There must be a way of making the degrading hull loop less annoying and feel less like a reason to stop playing the game.