I must admit that @nextcolony has great PR, and great targeting. They created atmosphere and illusion that they will give us some brilliant game, yet they didn't show much (when the first auction started they didn't give us anything) of the game. Even information that the first payouts will be in 14 weeks, and that only (yes only) 30% of they income will be given back to players didnt lower steemians enthusiasm. Last auctions give them 30k steem. And when the game "successfully" started players buy all available (very expensive) packs (with resources, and boosts). What can i say... LOL ok but lets talk about "game" itself.
UI
Someone told me not so long ago that nowadays no game that has bad UI won't be popular, Players won't accept UI that is unfriendly. Suprise they will, here on steem. Shitty UI second time (the first one was DrugWars) doesn't mean that game will not be popular. Why shitty?
The first ppl who entered the game didn't know how and thought that they can't build anything. It is not intuitive that you must make skills for your account to build anything.
The main page doesn't say anything about your account or what you should do, there is only a text and some information about your first planet that doesn't say anything useful
We get 3 menu buttons, one for our account with skills(very important because you must train your skills to build something), shop to buy res and boosts, ranking, and faq (and list of planet but it won't be useful for a long time, and the list of all planet hm if you like to see all same "alfa" planet here you are, but be ready to wait long time for them to load). Then you have "planet list menu" there is one planet at the beginning so don't bother, and planet menu, where you can go to the building site (also shipyard and other but for now aren't very useful). The menu at mobile has to small buttons like for me so it is one more minus.
At the building site you can see your buildings but you don't get much information... there is no info about time and resources producing for next lvls, only the one you have, and the one you can build, so planning strategy is hard (resource producing rise x2 maybe it changes later, we don't know. time i dont know, for first lvl also ~x2 but then it rises slower. i asked about this, but didn't get info so can't tell you). The best thing is with the research lab: "Note: Nothing special so far.". Yea great. So why you give it anyway?
Skills site looks similar, and also no useful information like how many lvl do you need to unlock producing ships. Sad.
O, and about look. It is very like in the last era. it is just text, and few (nice looking) images. No 3d effects or something like that. You can call it "oldskool" yes, and it wouldn't be bad, but hm. Maybe this is just me but i didn't like it.
Gameplay
OK so lets go to the most important thing in browser games. What you can do now in this game? Not very much. You can train your skill, to build your building. The idea with skills would be good if they give us some skill tree, but no. You can train them all, and even in one moment. Only restriction is that you need to have enough resources, and you must wait. And rather long time. lvl 1 - 15 min, 2 - 30 min, 3 - 50 min, 4 - 1:15 min, and to give you image how long this time is, you need lvl 13 of shipyard to get your explorer ship, and 20 lvl of explorer ship skill... a lot of time, and a lot of resources. I think it will take something like 2 weeks, maybe with resources from boxes little less time to get this ship. So as you see there is no skill tree that would lead you to other interesting things in the game (no discovering/unlocking here). You get all the skills at one... BORING. And what you could already notice there is NOTHING else to do at first 1-2 weeks (probably). So just clicking upgrades. BORING.
Exploring, and fighting maybe will give to this game some fun, but for now, it is only for ppl who like to work (there is no fun from discovering in this game, and nothing else to do than upgrade buildings and skills), or ppl who will make bots to work for them. THIS IS NOT A GAME, there is no fun in just clicking blindly for upgrades... One more thing, it is normal for blockchain, but still, when you click you must wait a few seconds so it is a little annoying.
"Successful start" and economy
Nextcolony said that the start of the game was successful. It is a nice PR post, but. First of all, when we were trying to get to the game at 22:00 a few ppl, get there, but most of us saw "forbidden" site or other erros. The reason was that they didn't think about that they need to have some time to get money from ppl who won last auction. So they block registration. When money get to them we could register again but... it was not so easy. Server for the game wasn't enough, and it could not handle so many ppl registraiting to their game. Now it is working fine so its is great. Nevertheless, game start for devs for sure was successful, the last auction give them around 30k steems, and players, when they at last get to the game, bought all boxes that were available (there is 24h limit of them) And also. The boxes are really expensive for something that is giving not so much in the game in where is so little to do. But ppl buy it anyway. The limit of boxes is a really good idea. Devs are saying that this is to make game more balance, and less P2W, and maybe it is the truth and it is good, but i think it also makes these items more desirable. You see that someone else is buying it and there will be for a moment no more left, so you buy it too... Great idea to make money, good job!
Summary
There was a lot of hype for this game (i also have a lot of hopes for it), auctions is showing this. But what we get is... i cant call it even a game. Maybe this is a good start. It works, and it is on the blockchain, maybe in a few months it will start to look like a game, and players will be able to have fun from it. But now it is only "investment". Jus to have rare planet that will be able to sell in the future. My ratings is 2/10.
O, and ppl that is saying in discord hurr durr great game are not doing a good job. It won't give the game anything. I played in a lot of browsers and desktops games, this is not because i dont like devs or something. I wanted to play a great game here on steem but well, i cant. @steemnova for now (clone of ogame) is much better and gives more fun to me. I am a fan of strategy games, but even "simcity"(i like more Cites: Skyline) where there is just economy is much better and have much more things to do...
Unfortunatly you are really right in those points
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Yes, i am also sad about this :/ i really hoped that it will be great fun.
I hoped for a steemnova v2
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There is a saying : "remeber no pre-orders"
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NOTIFYI will let you know in ~3 weeks if exploration is any fun 😂