>>16631895
I pirated it, managed to get a bit ahead, so I'll give you the skinny.
>Is it worth a buy?
No.
>Is it worth a pirate?
If you're into the genre, yes. Otherwise, skip it.
It's an interesting take on the survival genre with decent new ideas that it's worth checking it out if you like survival games. It also plays a bit like a roguelite with pseudo-permadeath. You have extra lives before your progress is erased (and rare consumables that grant you extra ones) as well as permanent upgrades that persist throughout different playthroughts.
>What's so great about it?
Like many survival crafty games, you can harvest materials and craft upgrades, tools and consumables with them.
Unlike almost all other survival crafty games, you're not expected to do all the gathering yourself. Rather, you'll find a copse of trees, fell a single one and that area is now marked for exploitation. Any NPC in your base that can harvest trees will passively harvest from that spot and drop the resources in your base.
This changes the gameplay from a "hoard all you can find" that tends to be horribly boring with plenty of "hold button to harvest X", towards a "find new areas for resouces, keep moving and exploring" which is far more fun.
Since the resources are limited and areas eventually run out, you're always under pressure to find new places to harvest from before you run out of whatever you need, especially wood and food.
The temperature and food aren't anything too extraordinary, but they work well enough for atmosphere and gameplay, giving you incentives and pseudo-timers to work with. The fact that Cold does damage to your max health that you can only recover with Heat, much like part of the damage you receive in combat, makes for a decent exhaustion mechanic that's not too complex or cumbersome.
The writing is kinda meh, but serviceable. Haven't found many survivors to add to the camp yet but the few I found seem like cringe on 2 legs. The voicework isn't anything special either.
Getting new NPCs to join you is also a neat way to reward exploration and gives you more options in gameplay, but I'm still not sure that making them having their own narrative in a game that's centered around exploring most of the time and focused on you and how you interact with the world was a good idea.
The atmosphere is great however. Enemies are kinda generic and so is the creep, but the scenery is well done with decent variety and detail. The Eclipse floating above (that I still don't know what it is) is also a great feature. Hardest enemy I've fought so far was the Stalker, that dashes around but otherwise it's not too bad.
<What's terrible about it?
THE FUCKING UI FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
Images can't even begin to describe it! I hate this minimalist style where every icon is a black stencil on a white background. Not only does it completely remove the appeal of looking at cool looking shit, it makes it harder to distinguish what's in your inventory since there's no color code to separate resources from equipment from consumables, for instance!
You also have a neat feature where you can store resources at the camp. But those aren't available in your crafting menu!
You have to open the camp stash, take the resources to your inventory, craft what you want and then store any leftovers. Standard for this shit is that you can use resources from both inventories while at the camp and it's results are placed on your inventory first and the camp second. Preferably both things on the same menu so you don't have to juggle with the fucking UI!
Even worse is that your inventory is very limited in space, which is okay, but if you're trying to craft something without a free space for it, you can't. Even if you would spend the last of a stack of resources and free a slot for the finished item.
It's horrible, you end up having to either avoid picking up too many things or drop something, craft and then pick it up again.
I've also had some issues with invisible NPCs but I'll chalk that up to my pirated copy not being the most updated version and hopefully that's patched up.
>TL;DR
It's a bundle of interesting ideas and a new take on the genre. If you like survival crafty games and want to see something different from the usual stuff, pirate it.
Otherwise, avoid it.