The allure is undeniable and, as someone who generally despises idle style games, I think this offers just enough to be more interesting, but I've come to realize that the current circumstances in my life have just been agreeable to its "depth" which is to say I can kind of mindlessly chill to it after particularly exhausting work days. I'm recognizing now that that's incredibly faint praise, and normally this likely wouldn't appeal as much.

It's also been nagging at me trying to figure out what's especially not working for me, and I think it's actually the downfall of Void Bastards from a few years ago. For a "roguelike" style game the stakes in Void Bastards felt low to me for a handful of reasons, namely that randomly assigned traits could just make runs feel worthless before they even started, but also a typical run didn't feel like it offered much resistance--so either I was blowing through a run or I was just immediately doomed. I didn't feel like I was learning anything, which is honestly a terrible feeling for a roguelike.

Same vibes here--if I don't get enough encounters early on I'm probably just screwed because I'm not able to improve fast enough and the run is cursed, yet even in those runs they remove the risk for you too easily. I can run away practically at any time and keep most or all materials I've collected to chip away at passive upgrades with base building. And when the run is going better I'm murdering creatures at a faster rate than I can even process. Everything just leaves the impression that I'm either lucky or I have a pulse.

I don't regret playing it, and I did enjoy the slight differences between classes--I only played the warrior and rogue but the latter was different enough to revitalize my interest in the game when it was waning a bit. I don't think I'm intrigued enough to try the necromancer though. Oh well.