Voxel Tycoon - The good, the bad and the ugly I really wanted to immerse in this game but for now it is simply not yet there.I will try to explain why it does not fully work for me, although I was succesfully baited to believe it is a good successor to (Open)TTD and something similar to Simutrans. This game has potential and I am still interested to see where it will go, so this review is for what the game is now. And yes I get it is early access and everything, but on the other hand I think the "early access" moniker is often exploited to publish a half-baked game, get money for it and then try to reject any criticism because "you get what you pay for". I am not telling that this company does it, just that for a game produced in 2021 it deserves a honest review because it is practically no longer an early access game, sorry. First I think it is not really a "new TTD" - from where this game places accents and which part of it is more developed and deep, you can more fairly describe it as a factorio + some cars and trains, definitely not as "new TTD + some factorio features" - I hope you get my point here. So TLDR for a transport game lovers it will quickly reveal itself as a bit too thin. On the other hand this game has a lot of potential and there are things that I like in it. So let's divide this review into 3 parts. The Good Immersive and relaxed vibe I like challenging tycoon/strategy games. The games that push you into thinking, strategizing, complicated project management etc. However from time to time I just need a relaxing game, something that can calm me after a stressful week and Voxel Tycoon is great at that. The smooth moving simplified world, the carefully chosen color palette and a calming music are a great combo and they truly make this world immersive even if it is not offering any photorealistic and direct experience, like for example Transport Fever games would give you. I think that almost all us gamers that love trains and stations have that inner child in us that wants to relive an experience with a toy train when we were young and I admit that despite this simplified, voxelized world I find the game pretty immersive and striking that special chord in my psyche. A lot of the vehicles have also a little cute vibe to them, so they are in a way like the toys we might have used to play with. It's definitely something that makes this game special and different. Of course there are some train-puzzles game that sometimes offer a similar vibe, but then the fact these are just puzzles does not offer the same mood, which the Voxel Tycoon captures perfectly and I can fully see how it is a labor of love Gradual expansion by buying rights to more areas I know it is not the only game of this type that offers you first a simple and limited world and makes expanding to new territory a part of the strategy. I just want to say I like this idea and it blends with the vibe very well. It reduces the risk of being overwhelmed with the vast world or having a decision paralysis on where to even start. Some of you might hate it, but I actually appreciate it a lot and for me it connects really well with the vibe of starting the game in a relaxed mood and getting quickly engaged in the world without too much headache Overall if not the problems which I will describe below it could be easily my favorite game had it plaid its cards right.... But not all is so great... The Bad Before I go deeper I just want to put a little disclaimer that this part is the most subjective of the review. It focuses on things that I like or dislike but other players could love... So with that out of the way let's dig in.. From the description I expected a transport focused game, but unfortunately this game feels a bit like Factorio light + some cars and trains added as an afterthought. Maybe developers thought that going factorio all the way will get this game into too crowded a space and they decided at some point to mix-in some transport-tycoon elements? IDK for sure and I do not want to psychologize, but this is how this game feels. Once the first good impression washes away and you start to play, you will quickly notice how the "factorio part" is the centerpiece of that game. There is so much thought and functionalites in the whole "combine A with B to produce C, and combine D and E, to produce F... and wait.. wait the fun just starts now because now you can combine A and C and D and F and so on... And of course that all comes with increasing level of complication of how to connect all of that stuff with conveyor belts, mixers, filters and what not. If you read this and think "wow this seems like FUN!" this game is probably for you, but if you would like a game that is more like TTD/Simutrans/TF where sure, there are some production-logistic chains but 1. you can chose not to do them 2. they serve a purpose in the bigger game that is still focused on transport.... in this case you might get as irritated as I was. Maybe this whole conveyor-belt-reaseach-extract-manufacture-deliver extravaganza would not be so painful to me if the transport part was equally rich and diverse... but it simply isn't If you want (as I wanted) to focus on the transport part and only use the factorio part to make you money for what you want to do you will first be struggling to move forward (see more on it below) and then you will start to feel unimpressed. What this game offers are just trucks and buses and then many types of trains. Why is it a bad thing? Well because the game is so simple and minimalistic, there is not so much variety to be produced by different landscapes, building styles and towns, that means to keep the gameplay entertaining and challenging it would be great to have some more types of veicles. There is no trams, no ships no planes.... It just stops at trains and cars, combined with the fact that all towns look the same (or their variety is strongly limited by the voxel style). I could not just get rid of the feeling that the game feels very thin if you want to play a transport game What contributes to my feeling dissatisfaction with the tranport part (- factorio) is that there are also not so many tools to manage your lines, so for example for buses but also for trains, bunching is happening very quickly which leads to painflul micromanagement that kills the mood. The Ugly Bridges and tunnels Whover designed the track/road laying system in this game did a worst job in the history of transport games. It makes building bridges and tunnels an ugly, unaccurate and frustrating chore. Why oh why can't I just draw the tracks and decide if I want to pay for a tunnel (like TF) or just excavate or build on both ends and link them (simutrans). No, I have to guess the voxel distances from the obstacles and do and redo x times to get it right. And surprise surprise.. It has no level crossings! In a TRANSPORT game??? Routing You would expect that a TRANSPORT game will get routing right? Right? WRONG! Routing in that game is a disaster. Trucks cannot sometimes find their destination even on a straigt road. They sometimes u-turn spontaneously and go back or get lost in a town consisting of two streets. At the beginning you can sometime micromanage a truck, but not long term! It is also not better for trains. Sometimes a train will stop on a freshly laid track and just do not know where to go until you destroy some of tracks and redo them (believe me I triple-checked if it is not signalling etc) To sum-up Nice game but definitely not a next OpenTTD. Transport is clearly a half-baked afterthought to a game that wants to be a"Factorio" If you like Factorio with a more extended transport -get it If you want a transport game? Not convinced. It has potential to be a good but for this role it has to be much more than this. Say it has to add 75% of transport game to what is currently 25%
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