As soon as I launched this game, I was immediately concerned I installed a generic, asset-flipped task simulator. The high-definition polygonal landscape, buildings and equipment seemed that way.

Digging deeper (pun), it's actually a pretty unique and well-constructed base-builder FPS in early access with some jankyness. I was reminded more of the time I enjoyed The Signal From Tölva, with some caveats.

From an economy-simulator perspective, this is incredibly shallow (pun). All the manufacturing in this game follows a simple: level 1 mineral and level 1 ore make level 1 equipment, upgrades and devices. This goes up to level 3, and the equipment and enemy encounters scale each time in somewhat interesting ways.

I played this game in solo, and a lot of the FPS aspects were very difficult, even on one of the lowest difficulties. The scaling of difficulty is kind of interesting because new weapons and enemy types are introduced, but the final stages depend heavily on throwing dozens of enemies in waves while trying to meet objectives.

There's some minor bugs that weren't too intrusive but worth mentioning. For example, hitboxes on enemies and landscapes sometimes didn't really add up sometimes, and the weapons and some movement over hills feel kind of clunky and sticky.

I could see myself really enjoying this more if I had played cooperative with some friends, running around a base doing repairs while others collect resources or organize a raid on an enemy base. I've played a lot of Deep Rock Galactic, which has a lot of similarities with this, and I would recommend that more for a cooperative miner-shooter.

While it has been in early access for 4 years with frequent and significant updates from what I can see, I don't know what it would need for me to be excited and revisit the game at release. It is a pretty unique concept and looks actually decent, but it doesn't really satisfy me as either a simulator or shooter.