Plan B: Terraform

First thing first: this game is not about terraforming. It happens mostly by its own. You do some trivial setup in the beginning, and a couple of hours later - BAM - you planet is perfectly habitable. What you actually do is some simplistic factory building. You have three cities that consume resources, half a dozen recipes with rarely more than two ingredients, and a magic railroad where trains have no collisions. Have fun. But be aware: the game is truly poorly, atrociously optimized. Despite its primitive graphics, it's hungry for both CPU and GPU, and the FPS constantly drops for no apparent reason. I guess the game simulates the whole water cycle on a planetary scale (which you do not clearly see, but it looks legit), but one might wonder, is it truly necessary with how much CPU it requires, and how little it actually affects gameplay.

Those kinds of games live and die by how interesting their logistics is, and Plan-B shoots itself in the foot right from get go because all logistics in this game is fundamentally build around "Depo"s which try to fill way to many roles (Collect, store, distribute), while also giving you very little control over them, which makes large builds both frustrating, and overly simplistic. And all other types of logistics (trucks, trains and ships) basically just work as "Teleport item from point A to point B with delay", did you put 50 trains onto a single track? No worries, they all just no-clip though every obstacle as long as you have set up two (and only two, cannot have anything more complex than that) points, technically connected by rail.

Uses a separate launcher that messes with your screen resolution. OK, some games do this, but the vast majority give you a command line option or other method of removing it. This game doesn't and apparently never will. I had held off leaving a review until it was fixed, but now that the game's released I guess that's never going to happen.

Actually a very neat logistics/automation game. The visuals are nice and the transformation of the planet is captivating. You will spend most of your time expanding production and transport lines to feed your cities, which is fine except for the last few levels where it gets very repetitive. One other beef I have with the game is how little the mechanics are explained. The interface is almost minimalist while I feel it is the kind of game where numerical information and statistics would be VERY helpful. Aside from the few tips you get, figuring out how things work is mostly trial and error, and I don't think that makes sense or is warranted here. Overall I recommend it, especially if it gets further improved until release. It is not Factorio but definitely one of the most charming and unique games that are out there.

I really like a lot of aspects of this game, only a few elements keep it from being actually fun. Everything you do is extremely tedious and often you will spend time rebuilding or re-purposing previous builds. Resources are scarce and finite, as soon as you get set up with something it will run out and you will have to pivot to a new location very far away. There's no way to know what is coming next or what building materials you will need, so it's a constant calibration. The game doesn't give you enough information on how to design things, ie. how many supply centers you need. How many supply centers and waste management is enough, it's literally pure guesswork.. google didn't have much. Leaving everything to your imagination is good in some ways but really takes away fun from the overall experience.

[i] Salesman slaps hood aggressively [/i] “This baby right here? She’ll eat up 220 hours of your life before you even notice. Runs on resource management, powered by trains, cruises through the endgame with zero stress.”

Super satisfying. Every update makes it better. It's really nice.

The game was pretty fun, but I just wish I could have had more freedom to do things in different orders or had a larger variety of ways to affect the planet. Its about terraforming, but you pretty much only add greenhouse gases and plant plants. Nothing about moholes, aerobraking asteroids, spreading black dust over the poles, or similar ideas.

Great game, City development progression, logistical management and water physics are my favs Looking forward to seeing more content in future updates. Would highly recommend

Played it pre-release and it was ok, but waited for release, and am quite happy with it. Decent interface and relatively interesting. Enjoying it with my 12 year old. Haven't gotten to late game content yet, but I think this one is a winner if you are interested in this sort of thing.