Recent reviews by CyborgBalloon

I didn't actually receive THIS product for free - but I did receive the cumulative effort of a pair of talented brothers and the amazing community that they earned over the course of the past two decades. And that whole time it has been free, and it continues to BE free even with this release.

Dwarf Fortress is a vestige of artisanal game development trawling from a lifetime of impassioned exploration of virtual worlds: The inspiration for Minecraft (and through it all automation and battle royale games), the original colony management sim, and an ever-growing love affair with the welding of our imaginations and circuitry.

I cannot say enough to communicate the joy of experiencing it, so hurry up and STRIKE THE EARTH!

For less than the price of a water bottle at an amusement park, you can experience hours of nostalgic fun with all of the vibrant colors, crunchy sounds, and charming pixel art that marked an era. This is a game with a low and easily-reached skill ceiling, but plenty of room for strategy and optimization, tons of unlockables and progression mechanics, and a rapid development-to-release cycle that keeps things fresh.

I had tried to pick this game up multiple times without it clicking.

This most recent go-around (with the added benefit of some recent updates), I finally got things to click. And it's been phenomenal - this game, for all of its strangeness and occasional jank, is truly a wonderful experience. Alongside a friend, it is some pretty unparalleled cooperative zombie survival action.

Base building is wonky but rewarding and deep, looting is addictive and tactical, combat is nothing to write home about but serves as a perfectly acceptable glue to hold the rest together. Where the game shines most, however, has to be the POIs (points of interest) that dot the landscape. These handcrafted dungeons take the form of different houses, cabins, ski lodges, store fronts, libraries, skyscrapers, construction sites, military silos, and cult-infested houses. They are linear gauntlets full of loot, traps, zombies, and secrets - always with a delicious horde of goodies waiting at the end. They're a unique and truly kickass feature, that haven't grown old in nearly two hundred hours - and likely will not for several hundred more, seeing as I've only experienced a fraction of them.

I recommend 7 Days to Die; buy it now, and enjoy the regular updates forever. I promise you'll not regret sinking your teeth into this game!

Feel free to comment with questions, or if you'd like clarification on anything at all!
The game has never gone on sale. Read til the end to know why.
Let me start by saying that Factorio is a wonderful and unique experience. A common misconception is that you need to whip out a calculator and a spreadsheet to have any fun. You truly don't - gameplay begins slowly and simply, ramping up alongside your knowledge and comfort of the game and its systems. Get your iron/copper dug up by hand, then automated on a small scale, and finally forgotten about until the thousands of units of each that you have flowing in begin to dry up or fail to meet your needs. It is a satisfying loop that reinforces every new thing that you try out on a foundation of your own hard work, and the natural cycle of droughts and booms as you add new materials to your factory really connect you with the experience and give an appreciation of the millions of things occurring at any given moment.

Combat is fluid, expansive, meets you at the difficulty you seek out, and best of all - is *optional*. A Peaceful mode exists if you want a more zen scramble for goodies. Multiplayer, with a friend (or a few) or a horde of strangers, is seamlessly integrated with competitive and cooperative flavors as well as several bits in between. Mod support exists in-game through a quick and intuitive interface, giving you (and friends if you choose) a way to completely turn the game on its head with quality of life tweaks, fun new graphics and gameplay, or entirely transformed experiences that kick whatever part of the game it is you enjoy most up to 11/10. Combine all of these, throw in a built-in map generator that let's you decide whether resources are sparse and distant or near and abundant, and my ~318 hours ingame as of writing this will fly past.

The graphics are gorgeous and tightly bound to the theme of the game, the animation is fluid and consistent, and you will have a truly unique feeling the first time you watch a new shipment of freshly-mined ores pour into a stack of furnaces and feed into your starving behemoth of a factory.

The sound is phenomenal, with the gently-haunting music as you explore the wilds of the world naturally drowned out by the sound of your automation empire.

Finally, the developers are uniquely committed to ensuring their players have the best experience they can. This has been an early-access game for some time now, and there have always been clear and frequent content updates and bugfixes. The developers work with people on low-end systems or obscure Linux distros to iron out whatever kinks they can. They share their techniques and changes with mod authors to lessen the burden whenever an update breaks a mod - they even troubleshoot mods on occasion. They are warm and friendly with any interaction, and speak about their game with a sincere passion. ♥♥♥♥'s top notch.

The game hasn't gone on sale in the history of its development because it is created by a small team, with no big publisher or corporation to help them out. The price is flat, and while it has never dropped, it did raise once after they got the majority of their features in and their bugs fixed. When you spend the equivalent of six cups of coffee or a AAA game on sale, you do so because they feel - as does each of the 1-2 million people who have purchased it already - that the developers have given these few years of their life to make a sound product that you trust and wish to support. It is a product that makes folks like me say the things I say, and I hope you give Factorio a try.

The Factory Must Grow. Thanks for reading!

A uniquely-kickass cooperative game, I cannot recommend giving this a try enough. Your purchase is supporting the small and absolutely delightful team of developers as they churn out sizable updates month after month, in a game that already feels like a finished product but has so much more yet to come.

Music and sound design is spot on. Environments are gorgeous and memorable. The four classes are addictive and you will find yourself missing tools from each of them as you play. Give it a try today!