Icaria

I really like the *idea* of this game. But I really hate the reality of it. The UI feels really inconsistent and unpolished. Where you can do what is confusing. What has context menus or not is confusing. The way roles display and interact across different entity types is very poorly shown. So many things feel like you should be able to do 'a' from 'b', but instead there's some single arcane specific way (for example, just let me put roles in role groups on creation! Why do I need some bizarre second menu with drag and drop mechanics?). It goes on and on. Just feels like the game was designed for aliens and fights intuition every step of the way. It's exhausting for me to process and interact with - and this is coming from someone who programs professionally. I kept hoping some time would make it 'click' but after spending multiple hours with it I'm getting more and more annoyed over time not less.

Very confusing scripting. Some roles need very detailed moves and actions, other is a one key thing. Not sure what I do wrong, but assembler bots cannot seem to be able to pick anything from printers to finish a construction. Quite a steep learning curve.

Not enough explaination of the commands or scripting. For a 1.0 the documents and tutorial are lacking.

The keybinds don't allow rebinding the Z and Q keys The tutorial goes rogue when creating two fabricators. Product unusable in a European market. Do better.

What sets this game aside from other automation games with more content is the possibility to code the behaviour of ... everything (drones, buildings...). There are two distincts ways to code in the game: block-based and text-based. It gives this game the potential to be a fantastic tool to learn coding while playing. The block-based scripting is quite intuitive and can be used as-is, but the text-based scripting (much more useful skill to learn) sorely lacks documentation. That creates a tall learning cliff that, personally, I have not been able to climb, and the game does not reach its potential at present. I like the game, but the developper needs to address this (to be fair, he has been adding more documentation since release). It is however not there yet. As an alternative to documentation, the developper could give the possibility to convert a block-based script to a text-based script so that players can figure out the syntax. That would at least provide the first few rungs to the ladder needed to climb the learning cliff. Do this, and I will change my review to Positive.

Great little game, but frustrating. The documentation is severely lacking. In some ways this is fun, as lots of experimentation is required to figure out how everything works. In other ways this is extremely frustrating, as lots of experimentation is required to figure out how ANYTHING works. The husk mechanics and the endgame are not described anywhere in-game, and explanations on the web are also very scarce at this point, so be prepared to spend a fair amount of time banging your head against a wall if you want to complete this game. Some in-game help is all that's needed to make this a much less frustrating experience. I also think some of the recipes could be better balanced. Power in particular feels overly expensive and makes the game feel grindier than it should. But overall, great fun.