Aven Colony

Aven Colony is a sci-fi city building game. The visuals are nice, the game mechanics are simple enough... But nothing you do feels like it has any purpose. The game feels the need to constantly hold your hand during the course of playing. Each mission reduces to a series of trivial and pointless tasks, which you have to fulfill; otherwise, you can't proceed. For example: upgrade a farm (even though you have replaced the farms with greenhouses, so you effectively have to build a new farm, upgrade it, and then deconstruct it). Increase the food production to X (even though you don't need that much food; as soon as you fulfill the goal, you're going to reduce the food production to what it was before). Build Y amount of power plants (even though you have a power surplus anyway). The same goes for the special trade deals. You get a special deal - and you have to take it (regardless of whether or not you need the goods), because if you don't, it will stay active indefinitely and you won't get another. (Why doesn't the deal expire/get fulfilled by somebody else after a while if you don't take it?) Compare this with the old game 'Space Colony'. There each mission has one specific objective, the goal does feel to have a real purpose, and there is a series of missions with the same colony so that there is a real sense of achievement. (On occasion, some areas of the map only get opened after finishing the previous mission.)

This is a fairly standard city builder/resource organiser similar to the like of Tropico and the Anno series. You start with a small town with a few citizens and have to build up more complicated resource harvesting and processing while still supplying the basics to your growing population and dealing with growing issues like crime and hostile creatures. Aven does all this reasonably competently, but despite being set on an alien planet it brings nothing new to the genre. Indeed, if anything it leaves out far too many things that other games did years ago. The biggest problem is that lack of options and upgrades. You start out building mines and farms to produce basic resources and food, while later in the game you... build exactly the same things for the same resources. Upgrading to larger and more efficient buildings is simply a matter of money, with no tech, resource or population requirements. Worse, upgrading low level buildings costs exactly the same as building a higher level one from scratch, so there's no incentive to plan ahead. Unfortunately, that sums the whole game up. In Tropico, there's clear progression from early game selling basic raw materials to richer countries, up trhough industry in the middle, and finally to high tech, tourism and office jobs at the end. Planning when old things can be cleared for new, or what can be upgraded keeps things interesting throughout. In Aven, every part of the game is identical to the first 10 minutes or so. The game is also hampered by a lack of information, with things like food quality never explained, and while there are overviews for things like crime and air quality, there's no way to see why they are in a particular state or what effect things you do have on them. A big issue in this regard is citizens getting stuck, but with no way to know why or how to fix it. It looks good, but the poor interface and lack of progression leaves it seriously lacking compared to many similar, and much older, games.

Didn't expect much when I purchased this, but was incredibly surprised. Best game I've played in years that is anything like a Sim City game. I started with the campaign. Short decent story but allows you to learn everything. I love the campaign mode because it introduces you to just enough concepts to master at once rather than throwing everything at you at once. Moved onto the sandbox mode and still loving the game. Its just complicated enough to make you think, but it doesn't require you to memorize a book of strategy for success. I'm really hoping the developers continue with this idea with either an expansion pack or more updates focused on complexity for those of us that have a good handle on it.

Ok so I started with the sandbox option and trying to find everything out by myself. That was a mistake. Start with the campaign mode and you will get the hang of things by being told what to build and why. You will receive goals and if you achieve them they will get harder. From that point on you have to think for yourself. This game is unforgiving, you can easily cripple yourself and then it's watching your colony die slowly (or fast). If you like a challenge and you like building bases, this game is for you.