I grabbed this yesterday as I love Surviving Mars. My first impressions are not great.
The map part of the game and its combat are just pointless and could easy just be removed / automated. It quickly becomes tedious trying to control all your scavengers.
The base bit is very polished and has no bugs, but is just a bit 'meh' and has been done before.
If you took 'dead state' removed the combat and added a little more complex base building you would be close.
The whole dealing with bandits, sending out crews and connecting with other groups as teased in the videos on the store page just doesn't happen.
I think it is still classed as early access even though the store page is now saying 2019 for release. They are going to have to add a lot more content to give it anywhere near the re playability of survving mars.
On the plus side, I have a realy old PC and 6GB ram. It runs fine and looks great so will probably run on a potato.
The game is still in late Alpha not even Beta. There are many features and planned content missing. Hell even the bug reporting tool has bugs, or the trade center isn't implemented yet, just an dead building atm when you build it.
How's possible to love Surviving Mars, which is more tedious on gathering resources than this one. Actually you do not have to attack the bandits, nor harvest the resources found through the Explorers. Leave them until you are desperate for emergencies. True it could have been easier to automate the explorers but that's something not added into the game yet.
Personally finding Surviving the Aftermath really hard game even at 50% difficulty. You aren't that far from a wrong decision to get more colonists and then having the fallout event happening with whole thing going out of hand and dead pilling up. Hell this happens even when you hit a stage were you feel great for clearing the nuclear waste and stockpiling it, thinking that you can get ahead. And boom everything pear shape.
And that's the hard thing that makes it more exciting. On Surviving Mars, you can build whole infrastructure with drones over 4-5 hours gametime, not a single colonist, so by the time you decide to bring them to the planet, they have a full operating infrastructure and nothing can go wrong, even when disasters hit.
Here there are no drones. If someone dies you have one gatherer less, or one worker. People don't breed like rabbits and each person count as survivors are hard to come by.
Also there is no automated research ticking, you have to make critical decisions when you find a research spot.
Closing, this game is more fun and playable in this mid-Alpha stage than some fully made games tbh. And at £15.49, having played it 7 hours since yesterday when got it, has better value for money that other "full" games just came out recently.
