Expansion

While the core concept is interesting, it seems little love has been put into this game. There are spelling mistakes in the text, the graphics are poor, the interface is lacking, the rules are poorly explained, and there is no tutorial, or campaign as such. It's almost like a little concept demo, as opposed to an actual game.

I’d probably go with a mixed review if I could. It’s not the worst game I’ve played, but it’s not something that I’ll replay over and over again either. I’ll go with a thumbs down because the gameplay should be explained better.

The game itself is a very simple board game. Just keep adding green population to the board. If you expand next to a resource, then you will collect a bonus each turn. Eventually you expand next to the other populations and you will try to assimilate each other. Some assimilation occurs automatically each turn, but the exact mechanics of assimilation are not explained. This is frustrating because assimilating the other colors is the lion’s share of the game.

Going in, I though Expansion looks a bit like the board game, Go, but I was so wrong!

I have never played a game like Expansion before and I've got to say, the game is a lot more confusing and frustrating for me than fun. Considering how new the game is to me, I find that the instructions available in the game is woefully insufficient and despite my best efforts, I still can't figure out how my enemy is able to assimilate my people so quickly. As embarrassing as it is, I've got to admit - I've got my ass beaten to a pulp AND handed back to me on my first Very Easy run >.<

Note that I am/was (respectively) a pretty proficient player of Minesweeper and Go, both games that I think Expansion has a bit of similarity to.

Watch me play... and lose to the AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4nRIEVxLSk

- For some reason, my recording software isn't picking up the game music which was very loud for me even though I've reduced it to only 40%, so I ended up talking a bit too loudly in this video - really sorry about that! Please feel free to lower the volume as you see fit.
- Also, I should really clarify that the board game that I was thinking of is "Go" and NOT "Chinese Checkers". Sorry for the mistake!


Anyway, here are some feedback:

Feedback

- Better tutorial please. Maybe instead of a static image showing the assimilation process, a gif might work better? Or you could just go with a more interactive tutorial? Either way, the tutorial and how Expansion eases new players into the game needs some serious overhaul.
- You've mentioned that the 3 enemy races have their own unique bonuses. What are those bonuses? This is the sort of crucial information a player would need to come up with a more foolproof strategy.
- Resource production rate and bonuses aren't transparent. For instance, by capturing a "U" node, how many more Unobtanium will I get per turn? Also, the bonuses associated with Battlenium and Populanum aren't properly shown or explained to the player. How many % increase in assimilation rate if I have 1 Battlenium, for instance? It seems rather insignificant though, since even with 3 Battlenium vs the Reds' 0 Battletonium (assumingly), I don't seem to be dominating the Reds in my playthrough.
- This probably isn't a huge deal since you can just restart the game if you happen to get an "unfair" map that was randomly generated, much like Minesweeper, but yeah, I've noticed that "randomly-generated" oftentimes means "unfairly generated" in my case. Some races will have almost instant access to several resource nodes right from the get-go and I had to thin my population out just to reach far-away nodes because I had almost none nearby.
- Nothing was mentioned in the tutorial about the stars that can apparently explode at will. Gave me a nasty surprise when the explosion happened. However, for some reason, near the end of my game, the stars start to spawn randomly and they don't even stay on the map for a while - not that you can do anything to prevent your people from being blasted into smithereens though - before blasting away huge chunks of your defenses.
- Not sure why but the Building option isn't working for me @7:10 of my video, but it worked not long after. Might be a bug?

Overall

Maybe Expansion can be a lot more fun if you actually understand what's going on, but from my own experience playing it, I'm sorry but I have to go with a "Not Recommended" rating. Although I don't mind the graphics since I think it works well for this sort of games (just look at Minesweeper), Expansion isn't as easy to get into because many of the important mechanics or features aren't properly explained, and that in of its own is enough to make me shy away from the game.

Side Note

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