Recent reviews by The Chartreuse Leprechaun

The game itself is really good. It's a slow chill game, much like similar games such as Banished. The graphics and audio are excellent. The voice overs are solid. The game play isn't completely intuitive, but you can catch on fairly quickly.

This negative review has nothing to do with the game itself. It has to do with the information about the game, as presented by Steam. The problem is it has no controller support. And, due to a nerve issue in my arms and hands, I cannot play games using a keyboard.

The information on Steam says there is partial controller support for this game. It's why I bought it after one of my YT subscribers suggested it. But, the game does not respond to a controller. AND, I was told in their Discord that there is no controller support. So, either Steam has the information wrong, or the developers gave Steam wrong information. Either way, this game is unplayable for me.

And, I asked about this in their Discord. The feedback I got was excellent and fast. They let me know the game can be played with only a mouse--or almost only. I successfully played for a couple hours with no problem. So, the developers and game get high marks from me. And, if they change this incorrect information, I will happily change this review to recommend it.

This may be my new favorite game to play for fun.

Yes, it is an older game. But, it is a solid one. If you are into survival games, this is a good one. The make sure to tell you this is not some sort of survival training course. And, it isn't. But, it is a serious challenge to play. And, a fair bit of what it presents is accurate in real life.

This game has a lot going for it. There are two ways to play: story mode (Wintermute) and Survival. I hav enot tried story mode, but I have not heard great things about it.

Survival mode, however, is worth playing. Each play through is proceduraly generated. That means things you found at a location last time, may or may not be there next time. Wildlife may or may not generate at a given location.

The different areas have different difficulty levels. You can challenge yourself. Move from easier zones to more difficult ones--or vice-versa. Adding to the challenge, weather affects you differently depending on the zone you are in.Environment is grey and dreary. It makes the loneliness of solitude in winter real.

I play with a controller. And, there were some things I really had to scour the internet to figure out how to do. There were a few things other players told me about as well. And, that's another thing about this game. It has a pretty solid community, despite the age of the game.

This is an engaging, challenging, and addicting survival game. Well worth adding to your game inventory.

This is a great game. I have played it through completely solo. I have played it partial through in multiplayer.
The graphics are solid. The audio is solid. The story line is compelling, and nothing is really given away in advance. And, while it would have been interesting to have voice acting for the character lines, it doesn't take anything away not having them. Now, it is very much a grind game. It requires a lot of gathering, crafting and building. And, you walk around A LOT. But, if you can handle those downsides, this is a great game to play.

I loved this game, and The Spirits of Amazonia. Completed both.
The story line is first rate. The graphics are solid.
I play with a controller. This game says it has partial controller support. But I had no problems. I think there was one situation where I had to use a mouse to move something around because the hit box was being weird. Maybe? Might have been a different game I was playing at the time.
Other than the predictability (once you get used to it) of when threatening animals will show up, there really isn't anything I disliked a out this game.
Truly enjoyable.

OK. I am not a dungeon crawl game player. I am terrible at them. That said, I have immensely enjoyed playing Going Under.

This devs did a great job of setting the environment and, growing the difficulty of the game. I think they over did the difficulty jump from tier 1 dungeons to tier 2 dungeons. Still, this game is very enjoyable, challenging, frustrating, and all the things you would expect from a dungeon crawl..

I am giving a qualified recommendation to this game. This game has problems. And, for amny, they are likely deal breaking problems when it comes to buying this game. Yet, I still found this a lot of fun to play.

On the bright side, it is a very chill game. You can happily waste hours on end just going around doing things and completing the quest line. The graphics are great. The music is very calming.

HOWEVER

The story/premise makes no sense once you get in the game. The world was abandoned because we trashed the planet, but with no effort at all you can clean it up and solve all the problems?

Threats are not threats, just an annoyance, really.

Even at the basic level of production, you produce more wealth than can ever possibly be spent making most activities in the game completely pointless beyond the first use of each item.

There are base building elements. But, there is absolutely no point to them at all. Other than being able to build and place furniture and household appliances, there is no reason to do it. You cannot use them at all, other than your bed...which the game gives you.

The puzzles are not puzzles, or challenging. Anything you need to gather for a quest...there is about double the required amount of it in the game.

If you are willing to put up with all of that, this can be a very fun and enjoyable game to play. If you can't...save your money.

Even as an older game, this is still very enjoyable.
It has a great story. You have to hunt parts of it down, though.
The setting, the music, the feel, all make this a good game.
The weapons are good, and not overpowered.
Can be played with either a keyboard or controller.
There is even two different endings.
All in all: well worth the time to play it through.

A Retro game that is still very much enjoyable today, though I think it's overpriced.
Graphics tend to be dark, so be prepared to tweak your graphics settings.
It also has some crash issues, though not as many as the remasterred version.
On the downside, it is very linear. Though it does have two possible endings.
Well worth the game time, though.

The game’s premise is simple. You are alone on a planet that you must terraform. Sounds simple enough. And, it “kind of” is.

Your goal is simple: increase the Terraformation Index score. You do this by increasing Oxygen, Heat, Pressure., and Biomass. The tech tree unlocks as your Terraformation Index increases. The map is fairly large. There are plenty of things hidden around the map to find. The only stated goal is to terraform this planet. The back story and lore get revealed along the way. There are 4 difficulty levels. Each difficulty level causes stat bars to decrease faster and progresively fewer resources to work with. So, choose wisely.

The Planet Humbel DLC is more of the same, with some interesting extra mechanics that change the way you have to play it. The ending is...very different. I don't want to spoil it. But, personally, I was not impressed. Still a solid DLC, though.

Bottom Line: if you are into a relatively chill game, with lots of play time, that has a story and purpose: this game could be for you. If you are not into grinding games where you have to go out, gather stuff, then make stuff, then use stuff to make other stuff, this may not be the game for you.

But, you can try the Prologue for yourself to be sure. It’s well worth the time.

OK. This is a qualified recommendation. If you are into turn based games, and don't mind micro-managing everything. This can be a fun game. Here are a few highlight items:

It makes you learn how to use cover, mutual fire support, skills, traits, and more.
It has a good story to it. Not believable, my son described it as "very dramatic." But, it is well written. Although the ending was not as satisfying as I would have liked.
It is re-playable, at least a few times, because there are multiple decision tree story branches.
Each decision has an achievement. So, if you are an achievement hunter, this will take you several play throughs.
It has multiple difficulty levels.
The game has you use the same 8 characters every time.
And, each campaign is about 10-12 hours of game play. I only played one campaign. So, working through all the decision trees should take maybe 40 hours? Haven't done that (yet), so I'm not sure.
IF you are used to keyboard game play, this shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. I almost exclusively use controllers and I found the controller to be incredibly clunky.
I also crashed at least once per session, or about 4-5 times during my play through.

All in all, a good game. But, buy it on sale if you can. It isn't worth the full game price, in my opinion.