Terraformental

Fell in love with the game immediately. It's a lot like Increlution, but unlike in that game, you simply cannot do *everything* each time. You have to choose. You actually have to read what's going on to understand where to go, it's not just "do everything there is in an area, proceed to next area, repeat". The solution isn't always straight-forward (though it's also not that complex either), but more intuitive.

I dunno, I completely recommend this game to whoever is into text-based idlers.

Though I have to say, it's not exactly an idler like "leave the game open for a day" or something. It's more like a text-based adventure with idler elements. I dunno, it's awesome, don't wanna give too much away cause spoilers.

OH and the setting? I've always wondered why so many people go into the over-saturated "magical" style, and none of them made something sci-fi. Well, here it is. You literally start on another planet.

I got it fullprice, and I personally don't feel like I wasted my money. But remember, it's text-based, don't expect any graphics apart from like 10 icons or something.

Edit: I should preface by saying I disagree with the negative critiques conclusion, but I understand their frustration. This is an issue of balancing effort to reward, and making sure repetitive actions don't become too repetitive - or further ways to simplify them.

I actually disagree with the negative review about time-wasting, and I'd like to give the developer an alternative perspective. I personally hate time-wasting in games. It annoys me to ♥♥♥♥ that developers pad a 20 hour experience with 20 hours of worthless content for a 40 hour slog. Worse are the games that intentionally make mechanics worse to make you spend more time on them. I absoltely hate getting my time wasted and have left scathing reviews for that before. That said, I separate time-wasting as meaningless time spent. Something that adds nothing to the experience, or takes away from it. Games like this that use part-idle mechanics have an important reason to waste your time. It gives weight to your success. Progress is meant to be taken step by step, and the time spent is part of the meaningful progression. This is why some people love Runescape, and others absolutely hate it. When you remove the time component of the game it begins to fall apart, because it was central to its experience. This is why people hate modern Runescape. Hell, the devs have done a complete 180 to try and recover their game.

Some people won't like the time element to the game, but I do think it's integral to the experience. Especially for a game like this where the story is centered around learning, adapting, and struggling to overcome obstacles. Each loop things are a bit easier, you're a bit more knowledgeable, you can go a bit farther. The game reacts to your progress and re-orientates your actions. The struggle part of that is directly tied to the feeling of progress. The time invested makes the outcomes meaningful. If it took 1 second to do every action none of it would feel meaningful. It would minimise the accomplishment of making it to the next facility, or discovering another piece of the puzzle. The only thing left to enjoy would be the story.

So that's my take. Though I don't see anything wrong with offering options to relatively speed up the game like Magic Research etc. does. Loving the game so far, and looking forward to more.

Ignore the hours. I've played this in beta several times.

There's a lot of love poured into this game and has gone through many iterations to be here. It's well worth £5.

I wish the UI had a bit more love. The grey boxes are a bit boring.