“It’s for sure less guided but I would say that simulation is too far,” Tomaszkiewicz clarifies. “We’re taking from our previous experience [The Witcher 3], the things we feel that makes the quest cool - how to build the storytelling in a way that you are engaged and you are immersed, but giving you more freedom.”

I would actually like it if the devs leaned more into the simulation aspect, if they are going to lean into more of a sandbox experience. With 155 people onboard to make the game there should be plenty of knowhow and resources to make it happen.

“Our game is more similar in this area to the old Fallout, the first and second [games], where you have a clear goal and everything is optional - you decide. You travel the world, you decide what you want to do. There is no main quest.”

As someone who likes the first two Fallout games over everything else published into the series, I’m fine with this. Also, as a TTRPG sandbox nerd this makes me more interested in the game.

The more effect you have, the more the gauge will fill; and the more the gauge fills, the more actions the antagonist will take against you, such as passing edicts to close shops and sending assassins against you. “We wanted to create a world which reacts to what you are doing,” Tomaszkiewicz says.

Going to express skepticism about how well the system is going to be able respond to player agency, but also hope to see something special. Maybe there will be some kind of AI director to keep things interesting based on what you do in the game. Kind of like how things work in Rimworld? I would be cool with that but skeptical about how things might work outside of a colony builder.

Anyhow, I’ll keep an eye out for what might happen sometime next year.

A bit of Anno: 117, but mostly Surviving Mars: Relaunched.

Surviving Mars still feels buggy and unfinished, but at least there’s a promise of getting the published game mechanics functioning as intended in the future. One patch after another the devs keep fixing and breaking and fixing the game’s various mechanics. At the moment it would be cool if they could get trains to work as intended, but so far the trains are more like unreliable passages between domes. True to form, the base game’s original limitations are still causing issues. Originally, the game was not designed to work with connected domes, and this limitation has never been fully resolved. It’s possible to have a lot of fun with the game, if one is willing to work around the limitations and unwritten rules inherent to the game. So, for example, I build domes into triangles, so that every dome is always only one passage away from another. I also micro manage workers, mess around with shifts, and block off undesired work slots in otherwise functioning buildings. All to make sure workers, more or less, stay put and keep doing what they are supposed to be doing. Similarly, I don’t even attempt to make any kind of utopian domes, where everyone is satisfied and sane, but instead use officers to keep radicals from becoming a major issue. Still, as far as Mars colony sims go, there’s nothing quite like Surviving Mars, so even though this is a flawed game, it is a good game.

Anno 117, on the other hand, seems to work as intended as far as I can tell. It is more of a bare bones game at the moment, but then again doesn’t have a gallery of hit-or-miss DLC like Anno 1800. The core game play loop feels satisfying. You build houses, build infrastructure to fulfill the desires of different layers of citizens, build increasingly complex supply chains (while keeping an eye on optimizing throughput), take advantage of production building radius effects (with some nice combos between different kinds of buildings), optimize islands for different kinds of productions like you would cities or towns in any number of other strategy games, research (mostly incremental stuff that adds up nicely), and build boats & soldiers for some light RTS flavored fun. The RTS side of the game is robust enough to be entertaining, while not being the main focus (probably will be fleshed out in future DLCs). Currently it’s not hard to keep citizens happy and productive, and it is very easy to play tetris with both homes and production buildings to optimize resource output. With not a ton of content in current game, I’ll probably get a couple of hundred hours out of Anno 117 before waiting for future DLCs.