This game starts out with turning lava into water. Once you've grown yourself some algae/moss, made dirt, gotten wood, grass, and crops, you're well on the way to terraforming the surface. Ignore most of the cooking recipes, as the result isn't as filling as stuffing your face with an apple when you're hungry.
Now for some better tools!
...
Don't waste your time hunting iron on the surface. The midgame is all about farming cotton and watching grass grow when you're not digging your borehole to -1000 by hand (I'm to -300 and still no gold) and without an elevator back up. Want decent torches? Cotton. Want that extra inventory you'll need for actulally digging? Cotton, cotton, cotton! While writing this review, I decided I had enough metal to play around with, and I managed to kill off some of my hard-earned grass nodes when I learned how manipulate water with a pump, pipes, and a faucit. I would find it more useful though if I could figure out the tanks so I could have a relatively portable safe-drop.
I suppose this game struggles with communication. My character is dropped off on this planet, and I expect he's supposed to know a thing or two about macheniery, yet the only lead I have is the far-off goal of marble and obsidian. In-game tooltips on what elevations to find different raw materials, like emerald, would go a long way towards making this more playable.
I agree. The game is still in an early stage and many of the ideas I have for it aren't there yet.
The readme currently provides a rough "getting started" guide but it's not perfect either.
I do plan to massively extend this game later tho. And yes, the plant balancing will be reworked as well; I agree the overemphasis on cotton isn't good.
The digging is incredibly boring, it has to be agreed. The water pipes are actually a familiar system if you've played with pipeworks before. A lot of the game's content is recycled and sometimes quite chopped versions. The decision to omit the pneumatic tubes and mesecons is somewhat annoying, but I suppose not part of the design.
This game starts out with turning lava into water. Once you've grown yourself some algae/moss, made dirt, gotten wood, grass, and crops, you're well on the way to terraforming the surface. Ignore most of the cooking recipes, as the result isn't as filling as stuffing your face with an apple when you're hungry.
Now for some better tools!
...
Don't waste your time hunting iron on the surface. The midgame is all about farming cotton and watching grass grow when you're not digging your borehole to -1000 by hand (I'm to -300 and still no gold) and without an elevator back up. Want decent torches? Cotton. Want that extra inventory you'll need for actulally digging? Cotton, cotton, cotton! While writing this review, I decided I had enough metal to play around with, and I managed to kill off some of my hard-earned grass nodes when I learned how manipulate water with a pump, pipes, and a faucit. I would find it more useful though if I could figure out the tanks so I could have a relatively portable safe-drop.
I suppose this game struggles with communication. My character is dropped off on this planet, and I expect he's supposed to know a thing or two about macheniery, yet the only lead I have is the far-off goal of marble and obsidian. In-game tooltips on what elevations to find different raw materials, like emerald, would go a long way towards making this more playable.
I agree. The game is still in an early stage and many of the ideas I have for it aren't there yet. The readme currently provides a rough "getting started" guide but it's not perfect either.
I do plan to massively extend this game later tho. And yes, the plant balancing will be reworked as well; I agree the overemphasis on cotton isn't good.
The digging is incredibly boring, it has to be agreed. The water pipes are actually a familiar system if you've played with pipeworks before. A lot of the game's content is recycled and sometimes quite chopped versions. The decision to omit the pneumatic tubes and mesecons is somewhat annoying, but I suppose not part of the design.
Perhaps mining could be fixed by adding some sort of drill you can craft with materials from a strip mine just below the surface lava.