Nodecore will be many things to different players. The nodecore you're presented with when you play for the very first time is an open world take on a puzzle game. The experience invariably starts with "wow, I can't mine a tree with my bare hands? how am I meant to gain its powers?" Details aside, with diligence, you may come to find that you can indeed gain the tree's powers. Then the puzzles quickly open up, with many avenues you can explore... replenishing the earth. Harnessing fire. Delving for signs of ores. It becomes hard to call it a "puzzle game," yet it remains hard not to call it one.
You learn to interact with bits of the world and craft more stuff, little by little, and it paints an immersive big picture. There's an elegant minimalism, with nodes having a variety of uses, and many parallels in the recipes and interactions. As you tech up, you find more opportunities for optimization and process refinement, and similarities in different interactions allow you to get creative making infrastructure with multiple uses.
Nodecore's detractors will claim that the game is too hard to play as intended, and that it's not reasonable to expect someone to figure out the game's mysteries with only what it provides. Are they right? Well, sorta. Mostly yes. It depends on the player, really. But you don't have to play "as intended"! So by all means, you should give it a try, and if you get stuck, come ask the community. Nodecore players will generally give gentle hints at first, in the spirit of the puzzle. But if you get seriously frustrated, just be direct and honest about what aspects of the game you aren't enjoying, and request more direct information. The game opens up from exploration of mechanics to engineering with those mechanics, and it's valid to end up skipping the first step. Just try it first so you don't rob yourself of the chance to enjoy it. If you do skip to engineering gameplay, though, it stands out on its own.
Nodecore will be many things to different players. The nodecore you're presented with when you play for the very first time is an open world take on a puzzle game. The experience invariably starts with "wow, I can't mine a tree with my bare hands? how am I meant to gain its powers?" Details aside, with diligence, you may come to find that you can indeed gain the tree's powers. Then the puzzles quickly open up, with many avenues you can explore... replenishing the earth. Harnessing fire. Delving for signs of ores. It becomes hard to call it a "puzzle game," yet it remains hard not to call it one.
You learn to interact with bits of the world and craft more stuff, little by little, and it paints an immersive big picture. There's an elegant minimalism, with nodes having a variety of uses, and many parallels in the recipes and interactions. As you tech up, you find more opportunities for optimization and process refinement, and similarities in different interactions allow you to get creative making infrastructure with multiple uses.
Nodecore's detractors will claim that the game is too hard to play as intended, and that it's not reasonable to expect someone to figure out the game's mysteries with only what it provides. Are they right? Well, sorta. Mostly yes. It depends on the player, really. But you don't have to play "as intended"! So by all means, you should give it a try, and if you get stuck, come ask the community. Nodecore players will generally give gentle hints at first, in the spirit of the puzzle. But if you get seriously frustrated, just be direct and honest about what aspects of the game you aren't enjoying, and request more direct information. The game opens up from exploration of mechanics to engineering with those mechanics, and it's valid to end up skipping the first step. Just try it first so you don't rob yourself of the chance to enjoy it. If you do skip to engineering gameplay, though, it stands out on its own.