Foundation - Probably the closest I’ve gotten to that pure bliss city building feeling of SimCity 4. That’s with 500+ hours of Cities Skylines 1 & 2 being the last CB games I really sank time into. It’s simple but deep. Bog standard colony building ala Banished. A trade system that’s fantastically responsive and again simple. Production chains that are sensible and responsive to change. It’s a little micro heavy but it’s fine. There’s always something to do and that’s what really had me into it. When you solved one problem you move to the next one and that keeps going and going. It’s wonderful.

Stardeus - Rimworld in space. I’m not the biggest Rimworld fan but this version of it has its hooks in me. The tutorial took almost 3 hours. 12 “chapters” with page after page of info thrown at you. Once you get beyond that and start a campaign it quickly falls into place. So far I’m loving it. I usually don’t like games that you spend hours building up a base for it to be blown to smithereens in minutes for God knows what, but this one makes sense. You’re set up with the knowledge that time is not on your side and the environment inside and out will kill you. Expectations are set in a way that’s better for a player to understand losing is a part of the process.

That being said it’s a lot. I’ve barely scrapped the surface. I’m already wanting to swap body parts and put human brains into robots. I just hope the space exploration is good because I haven’t even got that far yet and my mind is like let me set up a mining operation that can rob other ships and shit.

Two I’ve barely scrapped the surface with Mechabellum and Heroes of a science and Fiction. Mechabellum doesn’t have key rebinds but it’s kind of ok because 99% of the action is mouse based. I’m a wargamer and this game is basically lost building and testing in real time against other players. Fantastic concept. I need to dig deeper to see if execution is there. I will complain about the key bindings if it starts to effect the actual game play. In one brief match it didn’t. Verdict is out.

HoSF is HoMM. Not much to say about it besides it’s been enjoyable so far. If you like Heroes of Might and Magic you will like Heroes of Science and Fiction. It could probably use some faction diversity but if you really want that go play HoMM.