Before We Leave
analyzed 2026-10-20 · complete count of 982 English reviews
Across all 982 reviews, the game's strongest pull is its calm: relaxation comes up in 23.5% of reviews and is overwhelmingly positive, with players describing "good depth without it getting stressful" and calling it "the sit back and relax game you are looking for". Art style and graphics draw similar warmth, and the music is repeatedly singled out as "very upbeat and cheerful". Gameplay is the most-discussed aspect at 39.1%, leaning positive, though a substantial negative share keeps it from being unanimous. Criticism clusters around friction rather than tone. Level design is the clearest sore point, with 62 of 100 mentions negative, alongside UI (62 of 91 negative), pacing (44 of 69 negative), and balance (34 of 41 negative). Players cite "way too few hexes and way too many unusable or bad hexes" and a UI that becomes "slow and cumbersome" late on. Progression splits nearly evenly, and the learning curve divides opinion despite praise for the tutorial. Smaller themes recur without consensus: resource management, grind, micromanagement, depth, and logistics surface throughout. Bugs and performance draw more complaints than praise, and stability mentions skew negative. Replayability and content amount land close to even. The overall picture is a gentle, attractive builder whose systems and interface are where players part ways.
numbers checked against this report's stored data · quotes copied verbatim from reviews · plain text is the language model's own wording
Aspects
share of sample, axis to 40% · exact counts, no margin of error
- positive
- mixed / neutral
- negative
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gameplay
240 positive · 99 negative · 35 mixed · 10 neutral
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It was fun game and created interesting complexity as you built your civilization
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This game has no business looking so good, being so much fun and being so engaging all at the same time.
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-Solid city builder. Fun to get into.
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relaxation
211 positive · 13 negative · 6 mixed · 1 neutral
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For an easy going slower game this is intensely satisfying game.
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Its a stress free, but challenging puzzle!
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+ good depth without it getting stressful like some other more serious games of the same genre
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learning curve
90 positive · 46 negative · 8 mixed · 7 neutral
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-Tutorial gives the vital information needed.
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There is a balance to the flow of the game and the tutorial does a great job getting you into the grooves and progressions that can lead to success.
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The tutorial is nice and detailed (just what I expect from Team17), explaining everything thoroughly (as is appropriate, especially for this genre).
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difficulty
65 positive · 27 negative · 5 mixed · 10 neutral
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-Difficulty customization is very flexible.
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Its a stress free, but challenging puzzle!
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Its so wholesome and chill to play, it can also be quite challenging as you gain more and more planets.
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price value
68 positive · 21 negative · 10 mixed · 6 neutral
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Worth the money.
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Certainly worth the coin it costs getting those peeps out of the ground to rebuild humanity!
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Highly recommend even on full price!
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level design
34 positive · 62 negative · 3 mixed · 1 neutral
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The world limits were too harsh though, with way too few hexes and way too many unusable or bad hexes.
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There are some questionable design decisions, I think, with requiring certain buildings as arbitrary road blocks to expansion.
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Eventually this combined with the dwindling options for locations to place new buildings leaves me exhausted.
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progression
43 positive · 46 negative · 6 mixed · 4 neutral
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-Research can be roadblock to needed items. And the requirements to collect it can be cumbersome.
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WAY too many steps to research ANYthing.
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-Research locked to specific limited resources
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art style
82 positive · 6 negative · 3 mixed · 1 neutral
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Also, the peeps are too cute.
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Hits a lot of nails on the head with the theme and design department.
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The game is relaxing with good background music and pleasing art style.
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ui
27 positive · 62 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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-Peeps happiness can be hard to navigate.
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- UI could use an overhaul because as you reach endgame managing shipping lanes (a core game mechanic) en mass becomes slow and cumbersome
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Searching the community discussions I think they just are transporting power more efficiently/consistently, but as far as I can tell there are no indications on individual buildings that the power grid is affecting them.
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graphics
74 positive · 9 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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This game has no business looking so good, being so much fun and being so engaging all at the same time.
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Before We Leave is a hex based city/planet building game that offers nice graphic elements and gaming experience.
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Graphics is great, stability is top notch.
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see more
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music
62 positive · 5 negative · 4 mixed · 0 neutral
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-Great music and sound design.
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The game is relaxing with good background music and pleasing art style.
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The music is very upbeat and cheerful.
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pacing
17 positive · 44 negative · 7 mixed · 1 neutral
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All forward progress is guaranteed with enough in-game time and there's no reason not to always have maximum time compression turned on.
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I do think that's where some of the unnecessarily dragged out sections of the game come from - there's no real way to speed up transport other than to assign dozens of ships to every trade lane which creates a lot of busy work as they all take a pinch of something for the arduous trip back.
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-Repetitive after first settlement
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addictiveness
59 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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you get caught up in the lives ofyour peeps really quick and next thing you know its been 14h
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I can actually stop playing this one and go to bed on time, lol.
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The game is quite zen but also absorbing and with a good management balance (enough detail to be work but not so much that it is a grind)
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content amount
33 positive · 26 negative · 2 mixed · 1 neutral
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I love that this game is more expansive than any previous city builder, and also less 'fragile.
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Simple little colony sim to get into with enough content and busy work to easily sink a few dozen hours into.
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Lots to do in this exploration and management game. If you aren't good at logistics (I'm not), you will be eaten by the space whale.
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world
42 positive · 8 negative · 1 mixed · 2 neutral
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The planet-scale city builder is very pretty, and the hex-based, constricted building system forces you to really think carefully about how to develop each island.
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The spherical shape of the planet and map make the growth and expansion of your city rather attractive to watch progress.
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And don't forget to watch the sunrise over your planets. It's pretty.
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replayability
26 positive · 24 negative · 0 mixed · 2 neutral
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+ worth the full-price/replayability
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A cute game with a lot of replayability!
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And it feels very replayable even if I manage to discover everything in my current save, since there's a scenario page and other ways to vary the game, aside from the already randomly generated planet layouts.
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bugs
9 positive · 37 negative · 0 mixed · 3 neutral
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[*]Bug - Editing the Storage Capacity values is currently borked - you cannot manually type unique values for 2 separate items, it'll just auto mess all the other quantities on either side.
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-Tools resource requires tools itself to build
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The pollution is FUBAR.
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performance
16 positive · 32 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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This game makes my 1660 ti run hot. Really hot. Had to turn it off after a couple of minutes.
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this game runs hot! Like my PC fans are turbo just with this game lol even on low graphics my pc wants to take off like a jet engine.
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I still hear all my fans irk up for hardware stress, in the middle of winter.
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exploration
39 positive · 6 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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I could clear the map fog on planets made of hexagons all day.
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Its a lot of fun to see the new biomes and islands make use of their natural resources and specialization.
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The hex based base building and exploration is quaint, with the way the hex grid pops up to reveal the area as you explore the void compared to a traditional fog-of-war is a nice touch.
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balance
7 positive · 34 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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-The dangers can either be there for show or completely throw off the flow of your game.
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- randomly losing a bunch of tiles permenantly due to 'events' can lead an island to become completely worthless, and could be a death sentence to your campaign in certain scenarios.
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This game has a ton of potential but the pollution mechanic is absolutely ridiculous.
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game length
10 positive · 9 negative · 0 mixed · 15 neutral
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It took me about 20 hours to finish a standard "campaign" and i never felt bored during that time as there is allways something to optimize, upgrade or beautify.
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Fun game, could amount of strategy involved with setting up industries and using resources but all in all it's probably about a 15 hour experience for a person like me that is just going to play through unlocking everything once and trying it all out.
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Game Time- ☐ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☑ Depends on you
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story
16 positive · 10 negative · 1 mixed · 7 neutral
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The story is light but charming, and watching a space whale twice the size of a planet swallow up half of your under-prepared island is a humbling experience.
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But the game play is pretty fun and the story I have seen, so far, is reasonably engaging.
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There isn't all that much story to be had, but I feel like it was well done.
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atmosphere
27 positive · 3 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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An inspiring and uplifting colony sim that has all the feel of the childlike wonder of space exploration packed into an artistic and beautiful game, complete with challenging logistics and resource management.
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Very chill, very charming, very boring.
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Honestly, it's a shame, as the game COULD be very good - it has everything, cute graphics, nice music, chill atmosphere, exploration, etc.
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combat
11 positive · 7 negative · 0 mixed · 8 neutral
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I loved solving conflicts without guns.
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The lack of combat is actually a great thing in this game.
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Overall the game is amazing, I always wanted to play a City Builder without worrying about fighting or protecting my hard work from monsters or other factions, etc.
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updates
18 positive · 8 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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I'll definitely come back as they bring in content updates.
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The developers appear to be engaged and adding additional content, so I have high hopes for the future of the game; what I've seen of it so far definitely puts it on the recommended list though.
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Played a lot when it came out, I will pick it up again because of the wasteland update but a positive review is long overdue :D
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sound design
13 positive · 9 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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-Great music and sound design.
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Visuals, sound and interfaces are all top notch but the mechanic just isn't that exciting.
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Nice background music and cute sound effects.
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developer conduct
9 positive · 9 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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active devs on the official discord.
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I Played it once a couple of years ago on another account and now that I'm playing it again I can see that the developers really care about this game.
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Anyway, it's visible that the devs have their heart and minds on the right path here.
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ai behavior
2 positive · 13 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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and that AI ain't anything but smart.
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This did not stop my peeps from trying to build the forests for 20 min at max speed. The bar never progressed and I couldn't find a way to get the peeps to do the high priority task of harvesting wood/fruit first.
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Until your settlements gets bigger, you conquer more islands, and at one point, the whole logistics gets too complex for the AI.
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controls
8 positive · 6 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Very good UI, keybinds, and trade routes.
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Easy to use, cool world-building game.
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+Controls, rebinding
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stability
2 positive · 10 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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It's a fun game & I can only scrape the service before it crashes non stop.
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Game crashed 3 times prior to the tutorial breaking.
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(There's also a point around the first scout boat / first autosave where my computer always completely locked-up and needed rebooting, 5-6 times altogether, but that might just be me.
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player choice
4 positive · 7 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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4/10 dont really get a choice in what you do or build. The game forces you down the same path every time and its not fun the 2nd time
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It's not like you have any meaningful choices either because everything needs to be done in a certain order to make it work.
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now I have to triple check ever decision I make and pray things don't explode and lock me out of entire sections of the game due to the slim chance the roll of the dice will corner me into a gamebreaking failstate!
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characters
7 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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you get caught up in the lives ofyour peeps really quick and next thing you know its been 14h
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The little peeps are adorable, the music is enjoyable and gameplay is great once I got the hang of it.
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The citizens, known as "peeps," are adorable wooden toy-like figures, each with a unique name, personality quirks, and happiness levels that can be influenced by various factors.
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lore
8 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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very interesting lore buried very, very deeply beneath dozens upon dozens of mechanics.
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Also, quite a number of hidden bit of lore, which is always enjoyable.
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Plus there's lore to unlock.
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animation
3 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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It does however need work, I found the graphics a little lacking with the peep animations and the overall game feels a little souless.
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The big one barely even animating is kind of lame.
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and let me stress this: "THIS GAME HAS MINIMAL ANIMATIONS", might as well be a chessboard game.
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quest design
3 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The final goal to complete the whale charmer is an expensive building and FIVE UPGRADES which is just insane.
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I find myself colonizing most of the first world, then having a hard time figuring out what I need to do next.
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Also, sometimes it's absolutely unclear what people want - "do something to make them happy"
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build variety
4 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Many ways to play and none of them wrong.
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But the colonies on your first planet are still humming along, which is a great mechanic as it allows the people who like building big efficient colonies to play that way, and those that like following the power spike with new beginnings to play that way.
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Plenty of building adjacency bonuses and room for creative solutions.
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multiplayer
3 positive · 2 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Very good game if you are on call with your friends and just relaxing, very decent game I would buy again.
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Would be cool to see a 2 player online mode come out though.
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However, what is really intended by this claim is that you will NOT be competing against other players or player-like AIs, in the vein of the Anno games.
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customization
4 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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There's things I wish you could adjust, like HUD options or minor aesthetics, but overall it's already very customizable.
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Big plus for having a planet editor as well, custom worlds gives tremendous replayability.
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… to shake things up and maybe add a bit of challenge and, if you want to personalize your gameplay experience, you can create a custom game, with almost no resources or giant piles of stone, depending on what you're searching at the moment XD
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dlc
5 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Here's hoping for expansions later on as it has a particular style motif that I find very appealing.
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I look forward to upgrades and expansions, and I have yet to play the scenarios which may add some fun challenges to the gameplay.
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It looks like the developers really care to develop their community and their game, putting forward timely updates, bug fixes and game improvements (WITHOUT resorting to the DLC model that other studios use).
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Emergent themes unvalidated
topics reviewers bring up that are not on the validated list; raw counts only, no error bars
- resource management 13
- grind 10
- micromanagement 10
- depth 6
- logistics 6
- shipping 6
- space whales 5
- trade system 5
Review timeline
monthly peak 436 reviews · all languages
monthly share rated positive · 50% reference · months with <5 reviews faded
the timeline as a table
| month | reviews | up | down | positive | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2021 | 436 | 346 | 90 | 79% | |
| Jun 2021 | 88 | 71 | 17 | 81% | |
| Jul 2021 | 65 | 47 | 18 | 72% | |
| Aug 2021 | 34 | 23 | 11 | 68% | |
| Sep 2021 | 40 | 30 | 10 | 75% | |
| Oct 2021 | 12 | 9 | 3 | 75% | |
| Nov 2021 | 48 | 48 | 0 | 100% | |
| Dec 2021 | 15 | 14 | 1 | 93% | |
| Jan 2022 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 89% | |
| Feb 2022 | 15 | 11 | 4 | 73% | |
| Mar 2022 | 32 | 26 | 6 | 81% | |
| Apr 2022 | 18 | 16 | 2 | 89% | |
| May 2022 | 22 | 17 | 5 | 77% | |
| Jun 2022 | 14 | 12 | 2 | 86% | |
| Jul 2022 | 21 | 17 | 4 | 81% | |
| Aug 2022 | 32 | 21 | 11 | 66% | |
| Sep 2022 | 15 | 9 | 6 | 60% | |
| Oct 2022 | 12 | 10 | 2 | 83% | |
| Nov 2022 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 89% | |
| Dec 2022 | 11 | 9 | 2 | 82% | |
| Jan 2023 | 15 | 13 | 2 | 87% | |
| Feb 2023 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 57% | |
| Mar 2023 | 48 | 41 | 7 | 85% | |
| Apr 2023 | 17 | 15 | 2 | 88% | |
| May 2023 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 57% | |
| Jun 2023 | 16 | 11 | 5 | 69% | |
| Jul 2023 | 14 | 8 | 6 | 57% | |
| Aug 2023 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 67% | |
| Sep 2023 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 100% | |
| Oct 2023 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 50% | |
| Nov 2023 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 70% | |
| Dec 2023 | 14 | 7 | 7 | 50% | |
| Jan 2024 | 19 | 15 | 4 | 79% | |
| Feb 2024 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 62% | |
| Mar 2024 | 11 | 9 | 2 | 82% | |
| Apr 2024 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 56% | |
| May 2024 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 67% | small sample |
| Jun 2024 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| Jul 2024 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 71% | |
| Aug 2024 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 50% | small sample |
| Sep 2024 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0% | small sample |
| Oct 2024 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 70% | |
| Nov 2024 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 83% | |
| Dec 2024 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 80% | |
| Jan 2025 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 75% | small sample |
| Feb 2025 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| Mar 2025 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| Apr 2025 | 18 | 13 | 5 | 72% | |
| May 2025 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 88% | |
| Jun 2025 | 14 | 11 | 3 | 79% | |
| Jul 2025 | 12 | 12 | 0 | 100% | |
| Aug 2025 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 40% | |
| Sep 2025 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 75% | small sample |
| Oct 2025 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 67% | |
| Nov 2025 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 33% | |
| Dec 2025 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| Jan 2026 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 57% | |
| Feb 2026 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0% | small sample |
| Mar 2026 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| Apr 2026 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| May 2026 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 71% | |
| Jun 2026 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| Jul 2026 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 89% | |
| Aug 2026 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 71% | |
| Sep 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 100% | small sample |
| Oct 2026 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0% | small sample |
How this report was made
- Population
- all Steam reviews of the game (every language, purchase type, and verdict), walked newest-first per window; only English-language reviews are analyzed
- Sample
- complete count: every usable English review (982), fetched whole-life
- Aspect yield
- 804 of 982 analyzed reviews carry at least one aspect (81.9%); every share on this page divides by all 982
- Interval regime
- exact counts, no margins of error to calibrate
- Fetch paths
- 1 time window fetched directly (windowed)
- Language mix
- 1,733 fetched: english 985 · schinese 221 · german 128 · 21 more
- Steam-marked windows
- none flagged by Steam (Valve's off-topic flagging began March 2019)
- Marked share
- 0.0% of sample inside marked windows, under the 2% floor
- Narrative
- passed the grounding gate first try
- Evidence floor
- aspects and emergent themes appear only with 5+ supporting reviews; smaller counts sit at the classifier's false-positive floor
- Instrument readings
- measured once on the study corpus for this model and prompt: frozen calibration, not properties of this run
- · aspect tagging vs. human labels
- 0.801 [0.752–0.844] (F1 against a human-labeled test set; 1.0 is best)
- · quotes filed under the wrong aspect
- 11.6% [6.6–19.6] of quotes, measured by hand on a sample; lower is better — measured on the prior model (2026-08-05); re-measurement pending
- · independent model vs. production labels
- 0.791 [0.772–0.810] (F1 of the production labeler against an independent judge model) — measured on the prior model (2026-07-25); re-measurement pending
- Versions
- deepseek-flash · prompt classify-v1 · ontology v2
- Run
- serve-20261020T215120Z-84bd7f5d · code 798e06c
full methodology in the milestone write-ups