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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ROKH - Review

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ROKH is a game with such amazing potential. The team working behind it are very experienced and the idea is crisp and interesting. As a player you find yourself on Mars with the previous colony having perished. Players have to survive together in the harsh climate of Mars by establishing a colony, managing resources such as ice for water and even oxygen. The game features quite in depth building and heaps of scavenging to be done! Straight off the bat, this game is not an easy one. It features an insanely in depth resource management system that has bitten me in my backside numerous times causing me to fail. As I said though, the idea for this currently Steam Early Access title is amazing, so what is it doing with mixed reviews and negative reviews on Steam?

The game is amazing in my opinion. It’s got a good core and it is a genuinely entertaining game. I haven’t been able to play with many other people, but when I did it truly was a joy. The essence of Co-op is captured so well by this game. Not for one second did I stroll around wondering if there was anything for me to do, as I was a part of a new colony. There was always stuff to do, places to be, minerals to mine and components to craft. The game was never boring for me, especially with the constant worrying about resources.


Besides stuff to do, the game also felt really nice to play. It had solid movement that complimented the terrain. If you couldn’t get somewhere by foot, you always had a jetpack to assist you. The game also has a very nice and understandable GUI system. I never found myself wondering what on Earth any of the icons meant either, as the tutorial covered pretty much everything I would have asked. Visually the game is quite stunning. The style is quite realistic, yet the materials are different enough for them to stand out. Quite a nice choice in my opinion, as if everything were covered with red dust, resource collection would be nearly impossible.

Despite the solid core and decent mechanics, the game still has its flaws. It is insanely buggy. Granted the game is in Early Access and that is to be expected with most Early Access games. People are getting very antsy about the game as the developers rolled out an update and then had to roll it back. The silence that has followed the roll-back has caused a lot of frustration in the community. Personally, I’m not too fussed. The developers have been keeping the moderators of the Discord in the loop and I see no issue with a mere 3 weeks of silence. Some games I’ve reviewed have been silent for far longer than that.


The gameplay does need some work though. It’s not perfect and some of the key bindings are a bit odd. The game also needs a slight addition to the tutorial regarding the different type of crates as that wasn’t too clear. The mining is moderately frustrating as it locks you in place. I enjoy running around what I’m smacking with my pickaxe, thank you very much. Switching between tools is also quite slow and frustrating, but that’s nothing a quick patch can’t fix. Apart from that I cannot really think of anything that bugged me too much, apart from the bugs.

So the developers have “abandoned” the project according to the community, but that is far from true. A game with such an experienced team can’t go dead so soon, especially when they announced that they are still working on it. All the negative reviews are complaining about bugs and the abandoned state of the game. I see a perfectly developing Early Access title that will flourish after their bug fixing phase. The rolled back update had some quite interesting features that if they weren’t too buggy and didn’t cause crashes as frequently as they do, would have been perfect for the game.


I still haven’t said if I recommend the game or not. This game has been insanely hard for me to review as I’ve listened to the community and my own opinions. I have read review after review and played the game quite a lot to see if they are true. Some of the reviews are quite old and some were quite new. All made valid points, but were all the negative reviews justified? “A buggy mess” is definitely how I would describe this Early Access title, but bugs can always be fixed. Without the bugs and the crashing, the game is solid. Even with the bugs I found the game quite fun to play.


-X_Pilot

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