Scorchlands

I liked Scorchlands, but I feel I shouldn't recommend it. It's a very good game, but it's also weird, unintuitive, and opaque, which means it's quite likely *you* won't enjoy it. It's largely a simplified factory game. You place machines that gather resources, and other machines to process them to make more complex products. It also has a lot of mechanics that I had trouble grasping at first. It has a halfway decent tutorial, but the tutorial glosses over a lot of stuff. I think I was 10 hours in before I really understood everything. Well, almost everything. The major goal of the game is producing research items for the tech tree, unlocking more machines, combat equipment, and village size improvements. Every machine as a production rate, and that production rate usually depends on adjacency bonuses. There are a LOT of adjacency bonuses, which means that optimal layout is often not clear. For example, a stone mine gets +1 stone for each adjacent mountain, but it also gets +50% for each adjacent mine (of any kind), and each adjacent house. A stone cutter gets a base production of 4, +1 for each adjacent mine, and +1 for each adjacent house. The tutorial tells you to place ston…

I feel bad giving this game thumbs down because it doesnt really deserve it, but its got so many good reviews that people thinking of buying it might find mine. Its an ok game. Just not what I thought it was I see City builder and screenshots made it look like Creeper World to me. And trailer made it look like there is automation. I saw cities with population and influence area claiming resources and I thought it might be like Civ. But its none of those things. Its closer to a puzzle game where you need to figure out placement of cities and transfer of resources to unlock the next step in technology and progress. Its a decent game with its own unique mechanics that im SURE some people will enjoy. And it absolutely deserves 92% positive reviews. Its just not for me. Because its not what I thought it was going to be at all.

Scorchlands is a colony-building and automation strategy game developed by Ringlab and published by Star Drifters that successfully combines resource management, exploration, and industrial planning within a memorable science-fiction setting. Rather than constructing a city on a conventional world, players lead the Giwi, a technologically advanced bird-like civilization attempting to establish a thriving settlement on the hostile volcanic moon known as Helia. This unusual premise immediately gives the game a unique personality and helps distinguish it from many other entries in the city-building genre. The moon itself is one of the game's greatest achievements. Helia is a dangerous environment filled with volcanic activity, scarce resources, and challenging terrain. Every expansion requires thoughtful planning because the landscape is divided into interconnected hexagonal regions that must be carefully developed and integrated into the growing colony. Instead of simply placing buildings wherever space is available, players must consider resource locations, transportation efficiency, and future expansion opportunities. This design creates a strong strategic foundation that remains …

This is a puzzle game. I bounced off of it because I don't really like pure puzzle games. That doesn't mean it's not a good game, it just wasn't a game for me. I'm recommending it not because I liked it, but because I think that it is a decent game (once again, just not for me). Buildings don't cost resources, they just take up space, but must be placed carefully to get the most amount out of them. And the resources don't flow in, they're static. For instance, if you need 10 units to research something, you need to provide those 10 units, but that's it. Say you have a mine and it produces 10 units. Not 10 units per minute or second, it just produces 10 units. If you spend (more like allocate) those 10 units to research something, it's spent. If you remove the mine you don't lose that research but you're now 10 units in the hole. So it can be relaxing because it has no real downside to poor placement ... you can just change where you've placed something to get a better result. It's kinda like a more complicated jigsaw puzzle in that regard. But for me, puzzles like this HAVE a perfect answer ... there's only one way to properly put a Rubix Cube back together after all .…

Great puzzle game with an extra something to do at every step. Gives a challenge while being very chill!

Ye Nah. Terrible UI. Unintuitive gameplay. Restrictive gaemplay.