▼ Not recommended
3 hrs
Overall, I found this to be a disappointing clicker/idler.
In terms of the positives, the atmosphere and mood is on point for the concept, delivering the dystopic feel very clearly.
However, the mechanics and balance if the game itself were lacking. The biggest problem is the hugely uneven pacing of progress. It starts off well enough, but it hits a couple of major issues on the way.
The first of these is that the game allows you to produce prestige currency (without actually prestiging!) relatively early into progress. Once you have this, the benefit of prestiging is minimal - I only ended up doing it twice in the whole run. This is compounded by the fact that there are too few prestige unlockables and some are barely worth getting. You can unlock the ability to generate prestige currency yourself, you can automate a number of systems, you can unlock another currency that speeds up general progress, you can unlock a mode that makes the guillotine actually worthwhile, and you can unlock the nukes needed to complete the game (more on that later). Everything else you can get with prestige currency is either of low value or has diminishing returns (i.e. the multipliers for the capturing and guillotines).
The next issue is that unlocking nukes is basically completing the game, just slightly drawn out. The last level of nuke kills 1.5 billion. With the other methods, you'd struggle to kill a few million within a reasonable timeframe. It also doesn't take much to level up the nukes, so the deaths from fallout, which start when you use your first nuke, have a completely negligible impact on progress.
Indeed, this is linked to the lack of variety and content. You can kill prisoners in a few ways. Work them to death (about 1 every few seconds). Guillotine them (Up to a few dozen per second), Zap them (up to a hundred or so per second overall) mega guillotine (maybe a few hundred per second) fallout (about a thousand per second) or nukes (tens of millions per second, including time needed to produce the nuke). There's big gaps and nothing to fill it. It feels like the maker of the game decided at some point in development that they'd had enough of the project, so introduced a way to finish it, but without building up to it on a standard progress curve. In physical terms, it's like climbing up a few normal steps, then suddenly the fourth step is Mount Everest.
Lastly, the currencies themselves aren't balanced well. Iron can boost its own production and anything that is powered up by iron (e.g. prison capacity) soon ends up massively outpacing anything powered up by another currency (e.g. ability to fill the prison). Grease, by contrast, is boosted at an almost linear rate and feels far slower to acquire than blood, ash, heat, etc., even when you max out the modifiers. Generally, they fail to keep pace with each other, and you'll massively increase capacity to do things without increasing the benefits of that capacity.
In summary, I can't recommend this game unless you very strongly like the theme and are able to come in without expecting too much content and variety.
In terms of the positives, the atmosphere and mood is on point for the concept, delivering the dystopic feel very clearly.
However, the mechanics and balance if the game itself were lacking. The biggest problem is the hugely uneven pacing of progress. It starts off well enough, but it hits a couple of major issues on the way.
The first of these is that the game allows you to produce prestige currency (without actually prestiging!) relatively early into progress. Once you have this, the benefit of prestiging is minimal - I only ended up doing it twice in the whole run. This is compounded by the fact that there are too few prestige unlockables and some are barely worth getting. You can unlock the ability to generate prestige currency yourself, you can automate a number of systems, you can unlock another currency that speeds up general progress, you can unlock a mode that makes the guillotine actually worthwhile, and you can unlock the nukes needed to complete the game (more on that later). Everything else you can get with prestige currency is either of low value or has diminishing returns (i.e. the multipliers for the capturing and guillotines).
The next issue is that unlocking nukes is basically completing the game, just slightly drawn out. The last level of nuke kills 1.5 billion. With the other methods, you'd struggle to kill a few million within a reasonable timeframe. It also doesn't take much to level up the nukes, so the deaths from fallout, which start when you use your first nuke, have a completely negligible impact on progress.
Indeed, this is linked to the lack of variety and content. You can kill prisoners in a few ways. Work them to death (about 1 every few seconds). Guillotine them (Up to a few dozen per second), Zap them (up to a hundred or so per second overall) mega guillotine (maybe a few hundred per second) fallout (about a thousand per second) or nukes (tens of millions per second, including time needed to produce the nuke). There's big gaps and nothing to fill it. It feels like the maker of the game decided at some point in development that they'd had enough of the project, so introduced a way to finish it, but without building up to it on a standard progress curve. In physical terms, it's like climbing up a few normal steps, then suddenly the fourth step is Mount Everest.
Lastly, the currencies themselves aren't balanced well. Iron can boost its own production and anything that is powered up by iron (e.g. prison capacity) soon ends up massively outpacing anything powered up by another currency (e.g. ability to fill the prison). Grease, by contrast, is boosted at an almost linear rate and feels far slower to acquire than blood, ash, heat, etc., even when you max out the modifiers. Generally, they fail to keep pace with each other, and you'll massively increase capacity to do things without increasing the benefits of that capacity.
In summary, I can't recommend this game unless you very strongly like the theme and are able to come in without expecting too much content and variety.
29 found helpful
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