Planet Nomads - Review

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Planet Nomads is a Steam early access, open world, survival game on a planet which has varying biomes for the player to explore. In the game, you crash land on this planet and have to survive in the wilderness by yourself. As a lone scientist, you, the player, have to use your wit and knowledge to create whatever basic needs you require in this sci-fi sandbox. The is constantly being updated and is never boring. When starting a new save in Planet Nomads the player is presented with a sleek looking menu which prompts them if they want to play a survival game, or a creative game. The feature is something fairly small, but it proves that the developers have thoughts quite deeply about who they might want to target for their audience. For an early access survival game, it is very good that they have already considered that not many people will want to do the “survival” element of the game and just want to build a cool base or a cool car. After all, not everybody is into resource...
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Celestial Breach - Review

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Before you read this, please note that this game has been abandoned and development has been halted.

When it comes to games, I tend to be quite interested in Early Access games, as they have the ability to improve and change the way they play, depending on the feedback given. With Celestial Breach, I was unsure what to think in the beginning. An arcade style flying game? Sounded fun so I bought it the week it came out and booted it up.

The game surprised me quite a bit, as I wasn't expecting the exceedingly beautiful graphics, nor was I expecting the prompt updates that the developer was pushing out. Let's start with how my first experience with the game went.

I booted up the game to find quite a pleasant menu screen, with all the options that a game would have needed. I adjusted the graphics to push my system as far as the game could (ultra), and then proceeded to check the key bindings. The game seems to be coded on a Swiss keyboard (I don't know what other keyboards are like this), as the Y and the Z key seem to be in different locations, with Y, by default, being for the flares (I know, didn't seem intuitive). After quickly adjusting my key bindings (will have them below in the feedback section), I went to the menu and pressed start. To my surprise, there was not a single server running, but oh well, it had only just been released and this is still the first week of the games release (I believe).


I then hosted my own server, and attempted to play the game as I would any game. Fly, shoot and blow everything in sight up. I died quite promptly and was forced to restart. The graphics were stunning though. There are some areas in which the graphics could improve, however, the overall look of the game is astonishing.

Once I figured out how to play the game properly, I had such fun. I boosted the difficulty up and flew around the skies of the maps like a madman. I then moved to my next step. I tried to get my friends to buy the game. "5 person coop" is advertised so naturally I wanted to try it (I still haven't been able to). None of my friends were too willing to buy a game that had so few reviews, so I resorted to the steam discussions and the discord server (the dev had this up and running so soon in development!). I asked around and found a player that wanted to play some Coop. We played for a bit and had heaps of fun blowing stuff up, with both of us wrecking havoc left, right and centre. Oh boy, that was a blast.

After forcing my friends to come and try out this new game on my computer, I managed to convince two of them to buy it. After having played a few hours with them, I asked them what they thought of the game and if they had had fun. One of them was very happy with his purchase and wished to join the discord, and the other didn't respond and simply shot me with the railgun, in denial that I had proven him wrong about a game he thought was not going to be too fun in the long run. 


Now, for the negative about the game. As stated above, the game has halted development and progress is not very likely. When I said that I didn’t expect the prompt updates that the dev was pushing out, that was only for a short while. Sadly the game isn’t in a very good state. There were so many ideas that the dev was going to add, but he seems to have given up and isn’t likely to pick the project up again.

This is an example of why some Early Access games are such a risk. One moment the game is doing swell, the next, no updates are coming out and no news from the dev. To me, this is one of the most upsetting projects that has been halted. I was really enjoying the game and then it just stopped. The saying “All good things must come to an end” rings true with this game. I still recommend this game and I probably always will. It’s really fun and a lot of people enjoy it! The Steam reviews are a prime example of that. Hopefully the developer will turn around and pick the project up.


-X_Pilot

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