Icaria

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. Edit following Update 1.0.10 change log: "If you create a script with the block based editor you ca…

I really tried hard at this one commiting a lot of my time to it, but its just too frustrating. The conveyor network in this game is really badly made. Every single node within a conveyor network, duplicates the orders down the track and it just constantly makes a horrible mess as every single splitter stores say 50 iron plates. It should be entirely reworked, supply and demand should be solely driven by actual requesters, satisfied by suppliers. Everything in a conveyor network, including splitters should tally up the tottal of a requested item and deliver it to the requester. The current implementation is really frustrating. It's not only a challenge against the environment, it's a challenge to use the tools you are given. I really wanted to like this one, and come up with my own scripts i thought were innovative, but i felt like the game was just fighting me at every turn.

This game is very frustrating. It has a lot of potential. Unfortunately I cannot see what I need to do. I cannot get a storage to hold a certain item. This should be there for me. The game should not be hiding certain filters, or only letting me do things when it thinks I should be doing them. Currently I do not recommend. For example I couldn't get a crane to dig until the ground was flattened, to fill ground with a certain rock if it was full or had finished digging or to put stuff into a storage if it was full. I couldn't even get a normal storage to build because I couldn't get another storage to ask for iron. I shouldn't have to fight with the game to get it to work. Even hated ai couldn't work out. It was telling me that I should be able to do something but the game didn't give me the option to do it. (Not ai's fault but the game didn't give me full option) My recommendation to make the game easier to play and to have more people interested in it is to not have the game decide what options it thinks I should have. I want full control. I don't want to go into a text editor thing to get it do something. If games like Autonauts and Desynced etc can do it then this game should be…

I will eventually return to this game again and give this a good review if the UI or the "programming" is overhauled. I dont want to replay the tutorial each time I come back to this game after a while.

Theres no way we're calling this 1.0

The requirement to program the drones makes this a more accurate simulation of world colonization than its competitors. The voxel terrain creates a large and beautiful world where you wonder how it does not eat your entire ram. Kind of like Minecraft. The visual programming language is slow to put together and limited, but can get your bots doing something useful. If you want them to enter the age of high performance orchestrated actions, you need to use the text language, which unlocks the powerful ability of math operators. However, it's underdocumented, which means you likely need to already be an elite code slinger to work it. The visual language will get you up to speed on programming if you are not. The game is janky but large compared to other programming games. For example, the text editor word wrap behaves incorrectly.