Recent reviews by Integer Devourer

Yeah:
1. I really enjoy the design of the rooms and building the goofiest house in existence.
2. Story/lore tidbits that slowly build as you explore.
3. Game's pace is nice and relaxing and has great atmosphere. The music is great.

Nah:
1. RNG can hit really badly sometimes and can decimate even the best run.
2. Not a big fan of some of the puzzles (especially mixed with the RNG).
3. You can't pause a run and come back to it. if you Save/Exit it will END the run. PLEASE ADD THE FEATURE TO SUSPEND A RUN.

Other:
1. I would love to see more rooms or a "build your own room" (design exits, color, etc).
2. A single use item that would guarantee a specific room or type of room would be a nice addition.

It's worth playing if you like an (mostly) at your own pace rogue-lite puzzle game that has a bunch of charm and oozes vibes, but just be aware that it can be very frustrating at times when you just can't seem to hit the right room or get enough key/gems/items to progress.

Everything is as I expected: a fun, buggy, beautiful mess of weird decisions and hilarious English voice acting.

The game in it's current state (Hot-Fix 0.5.01) is very rough and I do not recommend the game to people who do not enjoy difficult and often times frustrating gameplay loops. If the dev can iron out a few issues this game could be a lot of fun. It's only fair to warn you so you know what you are getting into. I'll update this later when things change.

For starters, movement is janky and unresponsive, sometimes I'll be pressing down a move key and the character will just not move. You get stuck on the smallest piece of terrain and their are invisible walls everywhere. It would be really nice if your character actually just climbed them without having to press jump (and thereby making noise and possibly alerting enemies). It would be really nice to be able to actually use some of the destroyed terrain to bypass groups of enemies, instead most of the time you are just following tight corridors of rubble.

The stealth system is BROKEN. Enemies will go from not seeing you to MURDER MODE in a split second, even when you are behind them and crouched. Darkness does nothing, cover does nothing (had enemies detect me through walls). When you are forced to defend yourself the game sends literally every enemy with a 100 mile radius at you even if they are opposite factions. There needs to be a way to distract enemies or to pull them from an area so you can slip by.

The relations does nothing other than for vendors, enemies seem to always prioritize killing you when alerted and faced with an enemy and you.

Enemy spawns are still awful, the game always decides wherever you are going absolutely needs to have a full squad of enemies there, no matter the area. I haven't noticed too many squads spawning right on top of me from earlier builds. Even when you do manage to clear out a squad, more come, either drawn by the fire or just another spawn nearby. The game always absolutely has to make sure enemies are always everywhere that is in front of you. Trying to exit? Here's a squad blocking the small narrow passage and they won't leave. Quietly looting? Shame if a squad decides to spawn and wants to run through here. God forbid it's one of the cyborg only maps, it's almost never ending.

Gunplay is hit or miss. Sometimes you can perfectly 1 tap an enemy and other times they are just absolute tanks and no matter how many bullets you put into them they won't go down. The single shot grenade launcher is bad, it will literally only kill the target it hits but does not do collateral damage it seems. Some guns have a lot of attachments and others just have nothing. First person shooting just seems off, not to mention the hand models sometimes are in front of the sights. The hit boxes on certain enemies are way off, especially the cyborgs.

Dying is punishing as it makes you lose all decent gear you had, which is frustrating when you need to recover it and forced to use even worse gear. Also several times my gear just disappeared and I didn't have a chance to go get it again on a subsequent mission,

Mission objectives can be hit or miss. I ran a mission a dozen times and never saw the quest item appear in any loot drops. You can also cheese collect quests if you have the item (and it's something you can carry into the mission) by dropping the item and picking it back up.

It sucks to have to use up your large item slot for gear that you probably should have access to without losing that slot. You want a LIGHT? Nah, you gotta take up an entire inventory slot for it. You want something that can detect enemies or loot? Takes up the same slot. It would be nice to have an utility slot that could carry one of these items without sacrificing your looting.

They changed how the water system works to their credit, which should elevate some players concerns.

Just play at your own discretion, you will get frustrated.

Don't come into the game expecting the level of complexity of big budget immersive sims, it's made by a single person. It's not particularly long and at the end you might feel a little unsatisfied. The combat is alright and at times it feels like it really just wants you to fight, especially near the end. Throwing objects is by far the easiest strategy to taking down enemies quickly, but it's inaccurate. I never felt like the increased stats made much of a difference in combat besides unlocking new moves/abilities. Health is extremely plentiful and the credits barely have an use. Levels are fairly linear and the world as a whole feels pretty lifeless. Lot of ideas in the game are not expanded upon (reputation for example) or just underutilized.

It's an admirable first attempt a full release, but you should probably avoid it unless you really like immersive sims. I had fun, but recognize that this is likely not for everyone. Play the demo, but be aware the full game isn't completely like that.

Other musings:
The power kick/punch and slide kick are very overpowered, often launching enemies off cliffs.
Allure seems like the most useless stat as there is little dialog.
The email/note tracker really doesn't record everything, but it largely doesn't matter.

Dwarf Fortress rewards you much like the dwarves in the game. Strike the earth, dig deep, and find wondrous surprises and FUN. Put sometime into the game and learn the mechanics and you will be pleasantly surprised at what you may find, build, or achieve.

Play it.

TL;DR: Frustrating game that doesn't respect your time and doesn't feel rewarding to play.

Outward often feels you are spinning your wheels, progression is slow at times and it feels like little progress is made. It asks a lot out of you, but doesn't give you much in return. I went into the game expecting it to be difficult, but I found it more frustrating than anything. It's often unfair or expects a lot out of your character for little to no reward. Your character only progresses through money, it lacks nuance and is largely uninteresting. It is clear the developer hates players and actively nerfed strategies to make money (read make your life easier), who does that?

The game's world is interesting: the different factions, society, and lore are generally interesting... but the actual physical world is expansive and mostly devoid of interesting things. Granted having more encounters along your LONG travels would probably make the game much more annoying, but it would at least give the impression that it was a living world. When you do find enemies, they are almost always either: one super tough enemy or a group of (still difficult) enemies. And if you manage to clear enemies from an area they don't return for quite awhile, leaving the place even more barren.

Your best course of action is usually to avoid fighting entirely, often having to run through areas without stopping and engaging with anything, not that there's much to interact with. The "death" system in the game is actually more frustrating than dying. Often times you are revived in a hostile area and just murdered again until the game mercifully decides to spit you outside. There are also times when the game is just outright unfair to the player for no reason. I remember one time just having a dialog with a bandit and was transported to a prison without a fight, don't worry I got my revenge by challenging him to a fight and lead him down a corridor filled with tripwire traps. It felt like a slap in the face when the game could do whatever it wanted to me.

Crafting is essential to the game. A lot of early recipes are handed out pretty quickly, but if you are new it might just be better to buy them from the get go or just look them up online. The crafting system is nice and it allows you to create most items as long as you have the components. Learn what components you need to keep and which ones you can sell. Some items I don't recommend selling: Blood Mushrooms, Gravel Beetle, Seaweed, Ochre Spice Beetle.

My best advice if you do intend on being stubborn and picking up this game is to use traps. It feels cheesy, but do everything in your power to cheese the game because it will certainly not hesitate to do horrible things to you. Tripwire traps fairly common and easily crafted, they provide a great edge against tougher foes, if you can spend the time setting them up in a long line you can quickly drain the life bar of even the worst of the enemies.

I am about 20 hours into the game at the time of this review and only beating it out of obligation to the $10 or so I couldn't get refunded... because I'm stubborn, but this is definitely a game I probably will never touch after that.

The game is far too frustrating for most to play and I don't recommend it. Maybe it is better with a friend, but I don't want to have my friend spend money on this game.

Review 2.0

The game is fun and frustrating.

Now that the game is released, they messed up the AI and now they are all John Wick and will kill you through walls with a Makarov. It's crazy to have some Joe Schmoe in street clothes be a tactical genius who can track you through walls. AI has such insane reaction time and accuracy making peeking nigh impossible and sometimes they will shake off stuns (Flashbangs, etc) instantly or not be effected at all.

The maps are beautiful and polished, but they are so cluttered and often times AI will see and shoot you through obstacles you won't be able to, which exacerbates the AI issues. Furthermore, the piss poor grenade physics makes these obstacles a pain in the ass to make sure your grenade goes where you want it.

Don't touch the mods if you plan on playing with other people, even touching the screen will prevent you from connecting to other people unless you get the exact same mods. If you do, make sure to delete all the mods/mod folder.

The game is so close to being a YES to recommend.

Visions of despair
but Visions of joy

Extremely fun and tense game of roaming around somebody else's property, screaming like an idiot, and dumping hundreds of dollars worth of equipment on the floor.