Recent reviews by D'Angelo

This is a really solid game and it really fills the light management niche quite nicely.

It's fun to play around in if you like designing and the requirements for all the different types of rooms and spaces in the school vary enough to keep things interesting. It manages to offer a little challenge for those who like adapting on the fly while still being engaging enough for those that like to tear everything down and rebuild in a more organized, modular fashion.

As opposed to Oxygen Not Included, the game doesn't require you to delve into the management of pipes and material transport systems (which was my least favorite part of ONI). There's basic farming and production limits and storage but that's about the extent of it. You can quickly craft little zombie bots to do a lot of your hauling for you which frees up your teachers and students to teach and learn and dance in a circle around an enchantophone.

Staff and student scheduling is simple, though the grouping system is still a bit wonky. I also get the feeling that the devs intend that the 'best' way to play is to churn through your students and staff. Graduating and Retiring your staff is incentivised through the reward of relics which are used to upgrade subsequent students/staff, so if you are one of those players that gets attached to your characters you're going to be making the game more difficult for yourself.

Overall I think this is an easy recommend. The developers have done a great job on the skeleton of the game, so depending on your options chosen it can play as a challenging, resource-scarce, base survival game, a light magic-themed school/base designer game, or anywhere in between.

A sadly overlooked game. Unique gameplay, a decent storyline, and lots of easter eggs for fans.

Started a little slow and I definitely questioned the hype about this game for the first fifteen minutes or so. The intrigue quickly picks up after that and even moreso the more you explore the town and characters. I especially appreciate the fact that throughout the story I remain unsure whether or not I made the right choices. It really lends to a sense that I'm creating a history rather than just trying to trying to get history 'right'.

Unfortunately at this point the game is completely dead.

It's amazing how absolutely soulless this game is. I'd heard good things about the series, so I gave it a try and it's exactly like every other game out there. It's Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs. Just painfully generic. And the itemization and item bonuses and bells and whistles do nothing but take away from the game. I'm here trying to get into the intro, and it's trying to set up this tense walk into a cult leader's compound, surrounded by zealots, and there are a dozen notifications still popping up about how I've unlocked a vehicle and I have 'a new bobblehead in my garage'. I don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ care about that right now, alright?

Buckets of fun

I'm a huge fan of EG1. I want to love this game, I really do. I'm torn on whether I can recommend this or not because the details kinda fell through the cracks on this one. Some things are jarringly unfinished. The dialogues are terrible. The animations were either ill-conceived or just cut for time. I'd literally rather than not be in there then exist in the shape they are now. Research is needlessly limited to one project at a time. It could theoretically work, but the game is such that side missions and story missions directly interfere with each other. On one hand I could research an awesome trap, or instead I could research the backstory of a random henchman. And that backstory that you research? That's not a real thing. It's just a filler stage for a mission with no payoff except for four lines of soulless dialogue thrown up while your genius and a minion crudely cycle through the same three unsynced gesticulations.

I could go on and on about power rooms, space management, and all sorts of tiny things, but it all just feels like death by a thousand cuts. This game really needed another few months of polish and sadly I'm jaded enough to believe that that polish won't happen outside of a DLC, if ever.

I've been jonesing for this game for fifteen years, so I'm damn well gonna play the ♥♥♥♥ out of it for a week, but after that I'll probably just file it in my 'disappointing' folder.

Final verdict: A flawed bit of entertainment for fans of the first. Unless they keep updating this thing, don't get it at full price.

This is a great game that can be played both seriously or relaxed. What I especially appreciate is that it's intuitive enough that my six-year-old can play it solo, sadistically creating the most revolting foods imaginable.

I've dumped tons of time into it, but it always feels like there should be something more at the end which isn't there. Don't get me wrong, I love the game. I just wish there was either more expansions or opportunities for development in post-terraformed play. A larger modding community would do this game wonders.

This is a hard game, but still has a lot of replay value, even several years after coming out. Simple mechanics, but a lot of depth.