I've been watching this game for quite a while, thinking I was going to wait till full release, but it is pretty close to that now and since there is a -35% sale going on I decided to take the leap. For those interested, there is a demo available through the Steam store that allows access to the full game, except that you are limited in only being able to build so many of this building or so many of that vehicle. There is an in-game tutorial you can go through that nicely shows off the mechanics of the game.
So this is a colony builder, except instead of some mysterious island, or maybe Mars, it is in a mythical Soviet Republic with start dates of 1960, 1970 or 1980. Your task is to go there and start building up a town that will eventually grow to a city and then to a whole province. There are varying levels of difficulty from Very Easy to Realistic. Very Easy is where you plop down residences and industries and other buildings and folks show up and you have a town going. The increasing difficulties add complexity and depth. Things like providing power and water to the buildings and taking away sewage and garbage.
Only it's not just connecting up a line and voilà, there's your water system (for instance). You have to provide a source, like a well or a pumping station that connects to a lake. Then you need to send the water to a treatment plant. And then you need to distribute the water which means making sure you have the right size pipes. And just wait till you check out the details of the sewage system
Since it's the Soviet block countries and therefore cold, you also need to provide heating to buildings which means a lot of underground pipes and the heating plant etc. And everything needs power to run and that means high voltage lines feeding low voltage lines and substations and whatnot.
So, that's just the basics, but remember I'm talking about the hardest difficulty here, Realistic, so don't panic. And then there's people management. People are invited to come live in your new town, but you have to provide for them. Food, clothes, entertainments, spirituality, culture, etc. And even then you need to do something to make sure they are Loyal... people who don't have enough Loyalty might be tempted to escape to the West. So you need your Secret Police
.Did I mention you can also build trains? Not just the tracks, although you do build those, including signalling and rail yards, etc. No, you actually can build your own locomotives and railcars. Cool. Also automobiles. And airplanes.
And it snows in winter, so you need to have a part of your infrastructure set up to handle removing snow so your trucks and buses can keep going.
And you'll need orphanages, because when people don't have enough Loyalty and start being a nuisance they end up in prison and you'll need to do something with the kids. Till they are old enough to be put to work of course.
Did I mention that the game supports Steam Workshop and there are already over 8600 mods available?
If you have questions please post them and I'll try to post some more impressions and screenshots, like this one:
, never riding the bus back. According to a Discord poster this is because the devs haven't been able to implement the full tracking of individuals, so when a worker finishes their shift they just magically appear back in their residences. I'm putting the game aside for now since more updates are expected before the end of the year and I don't want to have to unlearn stuff.
