izigame.me

1. For some bizarre reason, the writer of this game has reached the conclusion that the ability to destroy a building (tech from 200.000 bc) has to be researched - in the year 2200, when you are landing rockets on your martian colony. Seriously.
2. Same writer designed a game where space management is quite important. Also, you can research better buildings. You cannot destroy the old buildings without midgame research.
3. You want to gain new colonists? Though luck. You can either use birth (requires monumental amounts of space) or order colonists from earth. Again, the same writer has reached the conclusion that you need to have a large storage of oxygen and water for that. All buildings, including storage, require maintenance. Pls NEVER EVER FORCE YOUR PLAYERS TO PLAY ACCORDING TO YOUR PERSONAL LIKING! If I want lower storage, LET ME ******* DO THAT.
4. Most of the DLC should be in the basegame. I see no reason to pay quadruple the price for some additions. You want to have smart housing instead of normal concrete housing in the year 2200? Better buy that DLC! :(
5. You start your game on an unexplored map. You are highly dependent on resources. You can reveal 4 locations. If you happen to be really lucky, you find no water or metal and can restart again.
WHY TF IS THE MAP NOT SCANNED? You are spending billions of credits to establish a colony and you dont bother to check of your colony is in range of water???
6. Your usual colony starts with 12 people. Those colonists are vital and do jobs that machines cannot do. You are required to run a bar and a grocer to fulfill basic needs. These jobs are not automated. To rephrase: 1/12 of your starting colony will do nothing but distribute food. Neither the distribution of food nor any bar is automated.
Disappointing.
Here are my concluding thoughs after finishing a mega colony playthrough:
1. 2/3 of the research tree is filler. Half of that filler is tech that is mandatory for maintaining a colony and should be free / nonexistent research. Dust propulsion is not a matter that you figure out on the planet. Neither is dismantling buildings!
2. Exploration is a key mechanic in the game. You will discover some surface metals and geographic features that provide minor boni - and underground resources. Your colony is extremely dependent on resources and surface resources run out rather quickly. So you extract underground resources. Those are inherently limited and will expire. A really lucky dome placement at the start (savescumming is the meta!) has 3 resource nodes in reach. As soon as those expire, you will have unemployed colonists, no resources and a dome that requires, not produces metals.
So logically, you would access new resource nodes, right? You find plenty of them during the game. Sadly, those resources have to be extracted BY HAND IN THE YEAR 2200! Okay, no issue you think. This means you have to build a new dome (very expensive) with life support systems. You can either buy those (expensive and requires a rocked and fuel) or research them. Or you completely dismantly your old dome, move it and rebuild it. You can have 2 separate colonies, but that requires a lot of micromanagement. Because of course, those miners need to have HANDCOOKED food, their own spacebar with a human bartender and all other needs.
So usually, you end up using 10% of the map in total and the other resources are inaccessible. You scan for anomalies, vistas, science and surface resources, the rest of the discoveries are irrelevant. :/
3. Every time, the tech tree is slightly randomised. To unlock new research, you need to research the previous technology. Did I mention that 2/3 of the tree is filler? And if you want to build lifesupport without buying expensive prefabs from earth, you have to RESEARCH THAT. You, the leader of the martian colony, do not know how to make fuel, oxygen, electronics, polymers or even tools, and neither does anyone who planned or joined the mission. Apparently.
4. Noobtrap specialists. Once you have your dome built and you somehow got life support running, you are allowed to order colonists. You think it would be smart to employ geologists in the mine, scientists for reseach, botanists in agriculture - hah! Wrong again! Sure, those colonists are very productive, but have advanced needs that you cant meet yet (both gold and spacewise). Okay, so does that matter? YES. Needs not met = unhappy colonists = no babies. Which leads to my next point:
5. Babies. If you work without immigration, your starting comfort is abysmal and people rarely give birth. It is really hard to even be net positive populationwise. You cannot expand without human work (mining, cooking food, selling art or pouring drinks or any factory work are manual tasks in this universe) and birth is not automated. Midgame, you can build robots, should you have excess people. You will spend considerable time afk, waiting to gain population, whilst being on a timer (inherently limited resources, whilst all buildings require maintenance over time, even when unused).
6. Lets say you made it over the founding stage and somehow got population growth (I changed the birth rate with the console and I am proud of it; afk for 2 years is nothing I bother spending my time with). You built multiple domes, connected them, you became self sufficient and you approach 500 colonists. Welcome to the lategame, where you are expected to micromanage that colony. Your colonists DO NOT MOVE DOMES unless told so. So you will find yourself in a situation where one dome is overpopulated, people are job and homeless and birthrate is nonexistent, whereas 50 m down a concrete passage you find vacant homes, plenty of jobs, life support o plenty and access to all services you might want.
The writer of this game expects you to MANUALLY move all colonists. There already is a beautiful almanach in the game where you can list and filter your colonists by work, trait etc - but you cannot move them from there.
All the things I mentioned are core mechanics of the game that no DLC will ever change. The game is 5 years old at this point, so my hopes are not very high. The game is frustrating and disappointing. It had a lot of potential and cool ideas, but it is just not finished.
I miss finished games.