The Crust

Most of the Games I've enjoyed over decades have been "Early Access". So, I always know there "will be some bugs". I've played "The Crust" for 50-hours, progressed to the "Save Earth with a Laser" stage and built a large underground base with a lot of manufacturing/production happening. I love building in this game even though there's lots of room for improvement and "clarifying" the game mechanics. Here's my largest issue with the game and why I'm tabling it for now. There's a significant problem with the Game-save mechanics, especially as your Base Build and progression gets larger. The game will crash, switch to the Unreal bugs dialog screen, but also tells you the Save you were just playing is "corrupted" and now can't be played. That is the truth, the Save file is toast and won’t load. But even worse, the current game "corruption" (somehow) also damages the play-ability of previous saves too. A previous Save (that shouldn't be affected) may still load, but then there wil...

The core gameplay is solid. However, the game has regressed, and at the moment the numerous bugs make it unplayable during longer runs—drones get stuck, transport belts stop working, and factories freeze. This essentially forces you to restart your game from scratch. On top of that, the team keeps releasing new features that come with new bugs, while the old ones remain unfixed. For now, I’ve uninstalled the game.

Currently Unplayable Due to Game-Breaking Crashes and bugs Played since launched on EA. After many attempts and 59+ hours of various gameplays (story/sandbox) my savegames became corrupted or crash every time I unpause. Major bugs with conveyor belts, and painfully slow research also hurt the experience. Great idea, ok graphics (albeit not comparable with modern competitors), but way too unstable — even after the latest update 99.12. Decided not to touch it again until full release and check bug reports from other players, waaaaay too frustrating to play now. IMHO remains at alpha stage rather than EA. If v0.99 is intended to suggest is almost ready for full release (1.0) I think the devs are kidding themselves. It needs: - engine upgrade - UE4, in 2025 when UE5.6 has been out for months already? That may help with some of the bugs, UE4 had some notorious shortcomings. UE5 is not all about lumen and the rest of graphical improvements. - AI/logic/queuing/pathfinding reworke...

Not worth the price. The game has a lot of different features, but none of them are integrated seamlessly. Everything is a struggle. Nothing is balanced, The main questline wants you to keep doing things that are beyond your current capabilities. Which would be fine, if it did not involve a huge grind for research. Will I keep playing this game, probably yes, The game's somewhat fun, just not $25 fun. This feels more like... $10 fun. You know what's even worse? The game gives tinnitus every single time you run the game. It starts with a cutscene with high pitched static, and you can't skip it fast enough. Mentioning this in their discord results in a total of 0 responses. Meaning that I doubt they care about our ears. The game is just a hot mess of 300 things thrown together. And everything demotivates you because it's not paced and is just thrown at you. The game is in "early access"... cool... but do I ever expect them to properly balance things when they don't even bother slow...

I recommend this game to players who have the patience to tolerate bugs, of which there are unfortunately quite a few. Version 0.99.14: Drone logistics works, to say the least, oddly. It’s hard for me to describe the bug precisely, but if you play the game you will understand what I mean. Prioritization exists, but it is limited by drone logistics bugs and the other bugs I describe below. The light vehicle assembly workshop works only immediately after construction. If you save and reload the game the workshop stops accepting resources. Drones stop delivering resources to it, no matter the priority. If you queued a construction before exiting the game you cannot cancel it after reload. The only fix is to demolish and rebuild, but that works only until the next reload. At least resources are returned on demolition. The super-heavy vehicle assembly workshop has exactly the same problem as the light vehicle workshop. The transport cannon does not fire when you are on the Moon map ...

Game is interesting for its potential but still very buggy even after the last big update 1+ years after first release. A lot of annoying bugs, micro management to manage, a clunky UI.

Somebody decided to take mechanics from my 5 favorite games and mush them all together. The game is well balanced, has a good pace and scratches a lot of itches. I'm really enjoying the early access. The thing that's getting in the way for me a bit is that many of the UIs need a lot of help. But for an EA title, surprisingly deep and well done so far... keep going!

Starts off really slow and sluggish. Midgame is ok. Endgame is just stutter and lag.

Scratches many itches, hits a sweet spot of accessibility and depth -- if you like Dyson Sphere Program but felt it got a tad too overwhelming, this one is for you (and me). Doesn't reinvent the wheel of automation games, but iterates nicely on it. Building is enjoyable and polished enough as is, still with some room for growth. I've reluctantly stopped playing for now as I've "completed" current content. I hope to come back in a year to find a bunch more stuff but, even if it hasn't had a lot more added,I feel I've had my money's worth. As for bugs, yes there are some, but I haven't seen anything game breaking and they are actively being squashed -- e.g. within the month or so since I've started playing, some odd drone and conveyor belt behaviour have already been fixed. No crashes in my 96h of play time. You'll see the usual negative reviews making a big fuss of scattered bugs (yes colonists' AI sucks, but that doesn't prevent your progress), or claiming that "devs aren't working...

really enjoying this game cant wait for full release!