Little Big Workshop: The Evil Review (Alejandro Monteagudo)
So many good ideas, so much potential, such innovation, squandered, and what are we left with? a gimmick.
This DLC does not integrate with the main game, which is kind of the point of a DLC, it is instead an alternative, inferior version of the game.... and the sad thing is, it could have been integrated.
The new products are good and would work well... Simple robots that justify the robotics workbench being unlocked near the beginning of the game (singing fish) more clothes that justify the sowing station beyond being a sidestep on other stuff and elevate it to a category of it´s own (or it would if there was more than just a coat and that coat needed a lot of woodwork because you build the display on every coat... the store burns them after the coat is sold I guess)The intriguing chemistry and bio workbenches (They are only used for sabotage) and even the sabotage and market share mechanic (I´ll get into it later) all for a mode that I honestly beat in an afternoon, never even making anything beyond basic shelves and tables to keep me afloat whilst spamming sabotage onto everyone. Also there is an ultra simplified tech tree.
Just in case the devs are willing to take ideas:
Integrate this into the base game by:
Making the clients take part of the market (I always found it weird that you are the sole supplier of goods for the market, even though you leave large portions of it unsatisfied), make sabotage either more difficult, less impactful or, this is my favourite, make it sabotage the production line of a specific product, granting you a bigger share of that market. Then make the clients give you less commissions if you sabotage them, allowing the player to be a commission junkie that tries to please the clients (Like I am) or a cut-throat saboteur that goes for market domination (I know many players use the market almost exclusively) Keep the fact that you learn more sabotage skills by using sabotage, that way you don´t mess with the normal progression, use mostly the normal stations for crafting the sabotage stuff, with maybe the evil assembler as an extra station)
Then develop some products for the chemistry, (perfume, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, chemically treated wood and metal) and the bio-lab (maybe plants for the before stuff, transgenic seeds for farmers, or genetically engineered gnomes, IDK)
Keep the buying out the competition if you are going for market stuff, and change the reach maximum level with a client with do that or buy them out, and add similar options for the complete commissions, allowing to go each route and boom, you have more freedom and more choice, a bit like when you either go Klong or Matter manipulator.
Then on the start menu you can chose between classic and DLC (if you want to play what the DLC currently is) and Expanded mode, for extra freedom for the player to play how they want