Recent reviews by shteevie

CANNOT RECOMMEND HIGHLY ENOUGH

Cobalt Devs, my hat is off to you. I am a 20 year dev veteran myself, recovering StS /addict/ enthusiast, and CC is my #2 game of 2023. I am impressed with the difficulty curve, the breadcrumbing for future unlocks, the straightforward tutorial and learning progression, the clever fights and combat mechanics, the polish and charm, the music, and how easy it is to be intrigued by and fall in love with your world's characters.

I wish everything good from the world to fall neatly into your path, and for more content for CC and games like it to blossom from between your collective ears. Thank you for a wonderful experience, which I have only scratched the surface of, and I hope this masterwork takes you far and to great heights!

Overly restrictive to the point of frustration. I want to have options and be able to fulfill plans, but at least half the time, the right play is to ignore the tile I'm given and hope the next one is better.

Not enough forward planning, expectation of what will happen next, or what kinds of cool things I can do later. Just a parade of bland tiles leading to uninteresting builds.

Art style is fine, but very static. Sound is serviceable and not obtrusive or memorable. These are the best parts of the game.

The story drags on without saying anything, using melodrama as a replacement for plot. The text describes the characters very differently than their visuals.

The gameplay is… poor. Cards have too many keywords, and these that refer to concepts that are not explained or demonstrated.

The player’s starting deck has loads of cards with interchangeable art but similarly negligible abilities. By contrast, the first opponent is a heal tank with better cards and regen that outlasts the player, meaning the first encounter is a 20-minute slow bleed to defeat.

I did not have fun with this one. I suppose there is a “right way to play” that renders the opponents simple to beat, but it was not apparent in my play and I wasn’t intrigued enough to seek it out.

Not yet, anyways.

The ambition is there, and many of the ideas are very refreshing. But right now, the middle game is empty - once the map is relatively full and you are waiting on techs and civics to allow you to claim/convert territory to cities, there's nothing much to do. And when you do get past that stage, the late game is quite unbalanced - pollution ends the game irrevocably if any factories are built, and warfare doesn't feel significantly different from the early game.

I'll keep an eye on the development patches, and hope to reinstall in time. Until then, I can't recommend spending time or money on the game.

Maybe one to watch as it develops; has a very unfinished and early access feel despite being "fully released". Controls, audio, visual assets, card design, tutorial, script - all need some major work, and issues were evident in the first 15 minutes of gameplay.

Recommended, BUT...

The start of the game needs a ton of work. I think the devs have gotten so good at playing their own game that they forgot what the starting experience was like. Since I have a fair bit of experience with MMBN [though about 20 years removed], I had a lot of fundamentals already leaned. However, the mass audience doesn't have these lessons already ingrained.

* The starting character needs to be focused on 2-3 brands, and not a mishmash of all of them.
* The first run should be 2-3 maps long and have a scripted set of enemies and upgrades that avoid the more complex battle mechanics
* The first distress, chest, camp, and Hazard nodes all need tutorials. Same with entering a new map and walking immediately into a fight.
* The whole game needs to be scaled back to about 20% of the current speed, with speed added at the player's discretion with every successful clear, like Ascension levels in Slay the Spire. This level of difficulty will drive the curious players away in droves, and indie games cannot afford that.
* Some ability to customize the run at the start, with a training wheels power-up for the run after an early loss would also help. Right now, I feel like I lost, cannot try again, and have to start over doing the same thing that led to my early loss.
* Tutorials for flow, frost, upgrading, deck size affecting mana regen, Pacts, on and on - this game needs a LOT of explainers, at least in a glossary or game encyclopedia, but better as contextual tutorials that can be replayed.
* Cracked / broken tiles need to stand out far more than they do.

If the game can get this level of support, they might have some magic on their hands. I really believe in the concept and love the art, presentation, music, attack design [for the most part]; it just needs to be made playable by someone who has never seen MMBN and isn't a fan of self-punishment.

It's early access, but man, is it early. Steering the default car is very poor, and that follows through to the self-made cars. Attaching pieces together is an extreme chore - it can be more than an hour between "I know what I need to build to get through that area" to "I finished my first try and it failed and I wasted my time".

The game should not hand the answers to you, nor should it limit the ways that you can build stuff. But it should be as easy as snapping lego bricks together, and it is currently a lot more like pulling teeth.