Where to even start with this? A conceptually interesting and fun game ruined by a plethora of issues that make it seem as if the devs are deliberately trying to make the gameplay as annoying as humanely possible. The base layout was nice and condensed last update, now it's even more tedious to navigate than last time, especially because you have to quickly switch back and forth to interact with the various functions of (power is at the bottom, server room in another hall entirely, etc.) it on top of having to babysit the protagonists hunger and sleep needs. Good thing the dev also decided to add hunger damage. Both of these stats could've been left out the game entirely, but they just HAD to be in there. Oh, by the way, since the Base is bigger now, the usual gameplay loop of Finish up a Crate with Processed Signals-->Carry to Pickop Point- involves walking through two doors and a hallway, the doors of which you cannot keep open.
Next up the various "little" things. Dear dev, please go outside, pick up a f*cking rock, and see how long it takes for you to smash a wooden board. Unless you have major motoric disabilities or late-stage osteoporosis, I guarantee you that its not going to take a few dozen times of smashing the board until it cracks. I do not see a single conceivable reason as to why it would be this way, neither story- nor gameplaywise. Did I mention that something as simple and ubiquituous as picking and placing objects also functions in the most burdensome way imaginable? It took me five minutes just to figure out how to fill and use a box of drives, lid and everything. Oh, and items stack in your inventory despite possessing different qualities (Batteries stack regardless of charge, Sheets of paper stack no matter if somethings written on them and what) forcing you to drop them on the ground and individually check them each time. If you're going to imitate a source Engine game, don't forego player convenience to make it maximally tedious, please.
Not to mention the dirt and trash everywhere - if the fact that the place looks worse than an illegal dumpsite in rural Bangladesh is supposed to convey that the research station is abandoned, it could've been demonstrated with environmental cues that DON'T obstruct what you're doing!!! If the base was abandoned, it would be dusty and overgrown, but it wouldn't look as if two rivaling football fan clubs inhabited it overnight. The buildings containing the transformators are so full of it that you cannot even enter without taking some of it out the doorway, with no rhyme or reason, just as if the dev felt like spamming trash in there.
If all the cumbersome features mentioned weren't enough (by NO means exhaustive) there's also the fact that the sleeping you HAVE to do (remember, stamina meter) is frequently interrupted by nonsensical, and yet aestethically identical nightmares that quite literally throw you out of bed, if you don't complete them. And guess what? If you dont, then it literally depletes part of your stamina, making it wasted time. Ridiculous.
Inserting a drive carrying a signal into the processor cannot be done from a comfortable angle, because the devs still haven't fixed it, so you need to literally throw it into the slot as if you're performing a bottleflip and hope it sticks.
Since not a single apparatus on base is allowed to function reliably, the devs also made the radio tower break down this update, since we didn't have enough micromanaging on our plate yet. And you do that via clicking a button on the panel. No visual indication of anything changing, no sign of you having actually done something in the world that affected the radio tower. Lazy. The radio tower adds absolutely nothing to the game aside from another chore to manage, and moreover, it seems like no thought went into it because your superiors insist that the tower is needed to "triangulate your location". You do not need to do this in the early 2000's or late 90's to digitally determine someones location (GPS exists, and they are apparently still able to message you to tell you that they cannot find you) and even if you were to somehow totally slip off their radar, the location the drone lands on is ALWAYS THE SAME. They do not even technically need you to broadcast your location at all times, they never track your actual location (which would make the game easier, therefore its not a feature).
Instead of adding new features that would build on the games strengths and make it more fun(f.ex. more ways to inspect or interact with the astronomical objects you're observing, especially when that very same process is also extremely tedious), the dev just adds more things to keep track of and more chores. At this point the game consists of 90% babysitting antennae, servers, and transformators (ordered on temu I suspect, with the frequency they break down at), your own physical needs, and 10% actual horror content or exploring the cosmos. The actual content you're working towards experiencing in this game is tiny; it's artifically bloated by the tediums and work routines the dev keeps piling on to make it seem like there's content.
Oh, by the way, some of the most glaring bugs still haven't been fixed yet. For example, the fact that the nonsensical automatic processing upgrade (essentially enabling you to flick a switch determining the level at which the processing ceases) is reset to 1 whenever you load the game. Since this game is all about time and resource management that creates a major annoyance, especially if you saved while being out in the woods. It's so full of them, in fact, that you often can't even tell if somethings supposed to be a horror element or if it's just collision glitching out and creating noise.
Speaking of the horror: The pacing of it is terrible. The game succeeds in making you feel on edge through the isolation and mildly creepy happenings around you, but never delivers, thereby overstaying it's welcome and wearing out quickly. The first weeks are more or less just your boring wagie-routine with tiny specks of spoopy here and there, spread on so thinly that its often impossible to tell them apart from the bugs. It needs more actually scary, not ANNOYING things happening. Less "Haha Burger"s, sexualized Aliens, Crates, and underpaid IT-Labour, and more atmospheric horror could do the trick, perhaps? Just a suggestion.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people asking the devs for an update are called out as impatient and "entitled", and that the devs were brazen enough to tell their community to stop asking for them. Guys - he earns 9.200+ Dollars a month on Patreon, this is no longer a simple passion project (it's his only active project in fact, that's where all this money is going towards). This game and it's community deserve monthly updates and a responsive developer actually adding real, tangible content, real QoL updates. You do not take that much money without being held accountable. It doesn't work that way. He doesn't even give proper status updates, let alone real updates, and yet the game is in a sorry state. How about he and his companion tackle all the issues mentioned above instead of adding funni sex aliens to the game? And like, soon? "It's out when it's out lol" doesn't work anymore when you're earning that much. The Game is not "BIG" - in fact, it's rather small in reality - and "taking a fat break" from it implies that a lot of hard, sudorific work has gone into it. 9.200+ Dollars, by the way, in case you forgot.
