Reviews

It works fine with a game pad but sometimes I miss a PC mouse. While the actually simulating agents is neat and it's fun to watch people do real things, I sometimes wish it simply pretended in order to speed up the simulation and increase city sizes.

Unlike recent SimCity games, I like that you can have one city that just keeps growing.

After loving Dig 2, this game was released on the Switch. When I started I was disappointed at the graphics and it didn't feel as fun. But as I played it and gained power ups I realized I was comparing the fun and speed of the end of Dig 2 with the start of Dig 1. By the end I was having just as much fun. The games are different enough to both be a great experience. Image & Form worked hard to distill the game experience. Their games seem to transcend their genre. If you played Dig 2 first you may be let down by the graphics, music and randomly generate underground. But it's still a compelling experience with many interesting designed elements.

Positive points: The core game play is really fun.

Negative points: Graphics are less clean and sharp than Dig 2. Randomly generated underground is good, but not as unique as Dig 2.

The main gameplay takes most of the hassle out and speeds up the game. There was just enough time to say something or grab a handful of chips between turns. Unlike early reviews, the frame rate is steady and load times fixed. The game worked great with 5 people on one Switch, everyone using their own JoyCon, JoyCon Grip, Pro and 8bitdo controllers. It automatically pulled player names from user profiles, or lets you use "Player X."

Problems:

▫ Guests cannot set their name, and only the first 6 profiles can be used.

▫ The menus for selling, mortgaging and trading take getting used and slow down the game a bit.

▫ The bus on speed die rules doesn't always let you see where you will land. (I wish we could move the camera with the joystick.)

▫ If you forget how much rent you have to pay, you have to exit out of the menus to sell or trade to see the amount. (Showing rent on the left, unused part of the screen would fix this.)

Positive points

▫ Automatic and nice looking

▫ Uses user accounts

Negative points

▫ Menus and trades inputs take getting used to

Some levels got really hard, but infinite restarts made success almost inevitable. The challenge of trying to get 2 or 3 stars can get tedious. But there are so many levels it's really fun to get through them all. Some may like that you can make your own objects and characters, but I wished it had a cleaner look and dropped the 3D aspects.

Positive points: Fun action, many levels.

Negative points: Simplistic graphics.

It's really neat to walk around Lego worlds and see all the neat stuff the designers hide around each planet. It's fun running around and seeing the sights. I sometimes find progression hard and small randomly generated planets at the start sometimes glitch in ways that make it hard to complete. But you can always delete them and try a new one. It also took me time to realize how to generate a planet of a different type than the previous planet. Fun for the small price, but I haven't played it much since the most recent patches, and haven't progressed to larger planets.

Positive points

▫ No long story, long cut scenes or walls of text

▫ Really is Lego: runaround, build and destroy

▫ Keeps being updated with UI improvements and upgrades

Negative points

▫ Updates keep changing frame rates and draw distance (no longer updated)

▫ Randomly generated content is occasionally hard to complete

I liked the digging aspect and trying not to get trapped. It has a fun core mechanic to the game. This was my first SteamWorld game. Image & Form worked hard to distill the game experience. Their games seem to transcend their genre.

Positive points: Looks great, good music, digging is surprisingly fun and the action platforming is tightly controlled.

Negative points: Though less narrative than most games, still too much dialogue for me.

It's not skill based: You follow the arrows and press A, then listen to a joke. Sometimes there is no way to know what you need to do, but the arrows point you in the right direction. It's not always clear the exact spot you need to stand to progress. It's very automatic, mindless fun. There are occasional 3D platforming skills needed. It's basically a parody of cop movies. The locations keep changing, the dialogue is funny and it's not hard, so it's amusing. The missions can feel pretty long, however. There were also a few bugs, like during the first chase where I couldn't steer until I reset the mission manually.

Positive points

▫ Fun game with funny dialogue

▫ Fun to play Lego and destroy things

▫ Looks simple but nice

Negative points

▫ Go to location, press A (very simple)

▫ Sometimes the Switch struggles to keep up (choppy)

▫ So automatic that you rely on it knowing what you are trying to do