Info about Dream Engines: Nomad Cities:

Official game description:
Advanced society is long gone, the world is overrun by the Dream Plagues. The only survivors are small nomadic tribes that don’t attract too much attention. And now, the discovery of a long-abandoned project of the ancients lights a new hope - the flight-capable Nomad Cities.
Build an industrious flying city
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Your city’s population and economy form the backbone of your survival. Running out of food or resources can be just as dangerous as meeting a Dream Plague in the wilds. Plan and build **automated production lines**, and keep your people housed, happy and well fed.
Survive until the last moment - then run!
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Fortify your city and defend it against raids for as long as you can. But even the ancients were unable to withstand the Dream Plagues forever - the longer you stay, the stronger they become. Unlike the ancients, however, you are able to **grab your entire city and just fly away** when things become too rough.
Balance expansion and disposable buildings to be left behind
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Your city’s area is limited. You’ll have to balance between **expensive long-term upgrades** to expand your city, and building **disposable infrastructure that will be left behind**. Carefully choose which buildings you take with you and which you can live without - at least for a while.
Find and exploit scarce resources across different biomes
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Resources are rare, and you’ll need a lot of them to turn your city into a self-sufficient empire. Good thing you can always move to another area when you’ve depleted everything around you. Every biome has an **unlimited variety of procedurally generated landing areas**, that each have **different resources, opportunities, and challenges**.
Explore the world with a customizable Steambot
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The wilderness is swarming with Dream Plagues. To explore your surroundings, you **directly control a unique Steam-Bot in real time action**. You will upgrade, equip and customize that Steam-Bot to your preferred play style.
Discover ancient ruins
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The world is full of ancient ruins and strange mysteries. As you fly and land in different areas, you will discover these places and exploit them. As you progress with story missions, you will discover some of the history and lore of this strange world.
Research, craft, and upgrade your infrastructure
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The ancients used advanced Dream-Tech, most of which is now lost to the ages and to the Dream Plagues. In your flying city you will be able to build advanced research facilities and discover some of these secrets - **unlocking advanced buildings and new crafting recipes** for your Steam-Bot.  
Upgrades to your infrastructure provide permanent bonuses and abilities to best fit your preferred playstyle. Spend hard-earned **upgrade points** on your Steam-Bot’s combat prowess and raid enemy nests for precious resources, on your city’s defenses to build an impenetrable fortress, or on your administrative and economic abilities to build a thriving, rich, mega-factory.
Carefully manage your fuel and weight
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Keep a close eye on your city’s **weight and fuel reserves**. Being stranded at the wrong moment is a sure way to become extinct.

Release date: 9 May, 2024

Categories: City Builder, Factory Building, Tower Defense, Resource Management, Exploration, Real-time Combat, Character Progression, Procedural Generation


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Engaging & Addictive Gameplay (weight 0.93): Players consistently report the game is highly engaging, addictive, and provides many hours of fun. Its core mechanics are solid, leading to a rewarding and replayable experience, even in Early Access.
- Innovative Genre Blend (weight 0.68): The game is praised for its unique and innovative blend of city-building, factory automation, tower defense, and roguelike elements. This combination creates a fresh and engaging experience distinct from other games in these genres.
- Strong Developer Support (weight 0.6): Reviewers commend the developers for their active bug fixing and consistent support, even in Early Access. The game is noted for feeling polished, with many players reporting a bug-free experience.
- Adaptable Difficulty Options (weight 0.56): The game offers a range of customizable difficulty settings, making it accessible for beginners while providing a significant challenge for experienced players. This adaptability allows for varied gameplay experiences.
- Enjoyable Tower Defense (weight 0.56): The game's tower defense elements, including base construction, resource gathering, and defending against intensifying enemy waves, are consistently enjoyed by players. The need for quick resource management and defense building keeps gameplay engaging.
- Deep Strategic Decisions (weight 0.48): The game offers significant strategic depth, requiring players to make many game-affecting decisions regarding resource processing, city configuration, and gameplay focus. Complexity is introduced gradually, allowing players to master intricate systems.
- Unique Nomadic City (weight 0.45): A key innovative feature is the 'nomadic' element, where players frequently move their city to new areas. This constant travel adds a unique twist, encouraging exploration and dynamic supply line management.
- Rewarding Discovery & Progression (weight 0.21): Players enjoy the continuous discovery of new items, technologies, and mechanics, even after many hours. The exploration and upgrading systems are well-implemented, making the progression feel rewarding.

Common complaints:
- Convoluted factory automation (weight 0.68): The factory building and production chains are overly complex, lack scalability, and suffer from non-portable resources. The absence of a pause function and poor resource metrics make efficient automation and planning extremely difficult and frustrating.
- Repetitive, tedious gameplay loop (weight 0.55): Exploration and map clearing are described as tedious chores, with repetitive maps and a constant grind for resources. The overall gameplay loop, especially in the mid to late game, becomes monotonous and unengaging, lacking variety and a sense of progress.
- Poor overall design & UI (weight 0.5): The game suffers from awkward UI, clunky controls, and a general lack of polish. Many good ideas are poorly executed, leading to a frustrating and unrewarding experience.
- Boring, shallow combat (weight 0.43): Combat lacks depth, feels repetitive, and offers little sense of impact or experimentation. Weapons are uninspired, and enemies are similar with minimal animation, making battles feel like a chore rather than an engaging experience.
- Weak robot avatar (weight 0.23): The player's robot avatar is criticized for being slow, weak, and having uninspired attacks with poor visual effects. Its controls are horrid, and the manual combat feels crude, making the avatar a frustrating and unenjoyable part of the game.
- Poor resource balance (weight 0.18): Players struggle with resource scarcity, as needed resources are often distant or unavailable on current maps. This forces constant exploration and makes stable production difficult due to an unbalanced resource distribution.
- Scarce content, tech tree (weight 0.18): The game is perceived to have limited content, including few types of resources, monsters, buildings, and weapons. The tech tree, while lengthy, contains many useless researches and feels incomplete, leaving players wanting more after completion.
- Overly demanding difficulty (weight 0.18): The game is considered too demanding, requiring quick reactions and constant attention without rest. The lack of a pause feature significantly contributes to the high stress and difficulty, making the experience tiring, especially for new players.
- Meager tower defense options (weight 0.16): The tower defense aspect of the game is criticized for its limited variety of towers and options. It often devolves into simply spamming walls and bunkers, making the experience bland and unexciting.
- Inferior to similar games (weight 0.14): The game is frequently compared unfavorably to titles like Factorio and The Riftbreaker, being described as a low-end substitute. Reviewers feel it lacks the quality, depth, and polish of these superior alternatives, despite similar pricing.
- Limited city space (weight 0.13): The restricted city space forces players into constant building movement and recipe changes. Upgrades often necessitate redesigning the entire city layout when transitioning to new maps, making base building a tedious and repetitive task.
- Missing camera QoL (weight 0.13): A specific quality-of-life issue is the camera position not being saved between game sessions or saves. This forces players to constantly reset their zoom and rotation, leading to a minor but persistent frustration.
- Confusing map design (weight 0.13): The minimap is criticized for rotating with the player, causing disorientation. The cramped terrain and small enemies make navigation difficult, and the need to click the minimap to view other areas adds to the frustration.
- Unpolished, buggy state (weight 0.12): The game is criticized for being unpolished and buggy, with fundamental issues persisting since early access. Reviewers state it still needs significant work and tweaking, making it difficult to recommend in its current state.
- Unclear game vision (weight 0.11): The game deviates from player expectations, with some aspects feeling "almost there" but imperfect. Reviewers suggest the developers should reconsider the game's core identity, as its potential is hindered by an unclear direction once the initial novelty wears off.

Gameplay feedback:
- Nomadic City Movement (weight 0.64): A central mechanic involves the city lifting off and flying to new maps when resources are depleted or threats become overwhelming. Players face limitations on what buildings can be carried, requiring strategic decisions and re-establishment of bases.
- Hybrid City-Factory-Defense (weight 0.56): The game blends factory automation, city-building, and base defense elements, centered around a flying city. It incorporates resource management, crafting, and a tech tree, often compared to games like Factorio.
- Resource Scarcity & Movement (weight 0.56): Maps have limited, depleting resources, forcing players to quickly gather and process them before moving. This nomadic approach is key for acquiring diverse and advanced resources, though it means leaving raw materials behind.
- Complex City Management (weight 0.48): Players must meticulously manage various resources including population, food, electricity, and Phantasm Energy, alongside intricate production lines. Balancing city growth, defense, and resource allocation is crucial for survival and development.
- Dynamic Tower Defense (weight 0.43): The game features significant tower defense elements with regular, escalating waves of enemies. Difficulty ramps up over time and across maps, requiring players to build robust defenses and adapt to stronger foes.
- Flexible City Building (weight 0.34): Players construct and arrange buildings within a limited base space, with the ability to freely move most structures. This allows for optimization of layouts, though some defenses cannot be moved during attacks.
- Tech Tree Progression (weight 0.28): The game features a vast tech tree and a separate skill tree that unlock new weapons, combat abilities, and production enhancements. While extensive, some players find the tech tree vague or lacking deep production line enhancements.
- Cyclical Exploration Loop (weight 0.25): The core gameplay loop involves landing on new maps, securing resources, exploring, defending against raids, and then taking off. Each new location offers varied environments, resources, and escalating enemy activity, driving continuous progression.
- High Difficulty Curve (weight 0.16): The game is noted for its unforgiving nature and high learning curve, especially on higher difficulties. It provides a significant challenge, requiring strategic play rather than simple "facerolling."
- Robot Character Control (weight 0.13): Players control a customizable robot named Tiny, who is central to construction, exploration, resource harvesting, and combat. Tiny's gameplay is described as relatively simple.
- Pacing & QoL Features (weight 0.13): The game offers features like pausing, quick save/load, and time acceleration, enhancing player control over pacing. However, some feedback notes a lack of pause during construction or for all actions.

Performance notes:
- Stable performance, no crashes (weight 0.06): Players report the game runs smoothly without crashes or significant lag, even on older hardware. This indicates good initial optimization and stability, providing a positive technical foundation.
- High hardware temperatures (weight 0.06): Players observed unusually high GPU and CPU temperatures (e.g., 98°C GPU, 80°C CPU) after short periods of gameplay. This suggests significant optimization issues leading to hardware strain and potential overheating.
- Late-game FPS drops (weight 0.04): Players experience significant frame rate drops, particularly in late-game scenarios with many buildings and high threat levels. This issue is exacerbated when switching to construction mode during enemy waves, indicating a specific performance bottleneck.

Recommendations:
- Conditional Recommendation / Wait (weight 0.37): Many reviews express a hesitant or conditional recommendation, often suggesting players wait for future updates or sales due to the game's current state being perceived as mediocre or incomplete. Some players even temporarily refunded, hoping for significant improvements.
- Strong Positive Recommendation (weight 0.31): A notable number of players highly recommend the game, often emphasizing its enjoyment and value, particularly when purchased at a discount. They believe the game is worth supporting and will improve further.
- Niche Audience Appeal (weight 0.18): The game is primarily recommended for players who enjoy specific genres such as factory/colony simulators, automation, roguelikes, and tower defense. It also appeals to those who appreciate its unique fantasy-steampunk or whimsical aesthetic.
- New Player Tips & QoL (weight 0.18): Players offer various specific tips for new players, such as ignoring fuel concerns, remapping keybinds, and adjusting combat settings. They also suggest quality-of-life improvements like automatic camera/pause in build mode and enhanced tutorial guidance for mechanics and take-off processes.
- Difficulty & Pacing Feedback (weight 0.08): Players appreciate the game's flexible difficulty settings, allowing them to learn at their own pace and offering long-term mastery challenges. A specific suggestion is to relabel preset difficulty levels to encourage players to adjust them without feeling dissuaded.
- Negative Recommendation / Refund (weight 0.08): A subset of players explicitly advises against purchasing the game, with some even initiating refunds. Reasons cited include an unsatisfactory experience or the availability of superior alternatives in the genre.
- Suggests Game Alternatives (weight 0.06): Some reviews recommend alternative games, such as "Against the Storm," for players specifically seeking well-polished city builder or tower defense experiences. This implies the current game might not fully satisfy those specific genre expectations.
- Need Unique Mechanics (weight 0.04): There's a call for developers to implement distinct mechanics that will help the game stand out from other similar Factorio-like resource builders. This feedback aims to enhance the game's unique identity and appeal.
- Price Point Concerns (weight 0.04): A specific concern raised is that the game's current price tag, such as 30€, is considered too high given its present content and state. This suggests players feel it does not offer sufficient value for money.

Other player notes:
- Early Access Potential (weight 0.37): The game is in Early Access, showing significant potential despite being unpolished with minor bugs. Reviewers find it enjoyable and believe it can be greatly improved with further development and updates.
- Unique Art Style & Atmosphere (weight 0.16): The game features a distinctive art style, blending medieval, steampunk, and surreal Halloween-like elements, often compared to Tim Burton. This, combined with good music and overall atmosphere, creates a beautiful and thematic experience.
- Niche, Learning Curve (weight 0.14): The game is considered niche and may take time for players to understand due to initial complexity and imperfect controls or translation. However, the developers and community are noted for being responsive and helpful.
- Innovative City Builder (weight 0.13): The game is praised as a unique resource management city builder, particularly for its innovative space management concept. This involves a gradual process of increasing city area and managing carrying capacity with balloons, offering a fresh take on the genre.
- Tiny Robot's Core Role (weight 0.12): The robot 'Tiny' is central to gameplay, serving as an all-around tool for city operation, combat, and expansion. Tiny builds, destroys, explores, defends, and manages resident needs like food and electricity, making it a multifaceted core mechanic.
- Mixed Translation Quality (weight 0.09): While the Chinese translation is noted as very good, specific issues like the Russian translation of "Bild" and the official Chinese translation of "ironman mode" indicate inconsistencies or areas for improvement in localization quality.
- Sandbox Without Story (weight 0.06): The game is currently presented as a sandbox experience, lacking a defined story mode. This indicates a focus on free-form gameplay and creative building rather than narrative progression.
- Content & Playtime (weight 0.06): As an Early Access title, some content is still missing, but unlocking all unique content is estimated to take at least 100 hours. This indicates good longevity and potential for future content additions.
- Previous Map Resource Scarcity (weight 0.04): A common criticism highlights the issue of not having enough resources remaining on previous maps, which can hinder progression or create bottlenecks for players.
- Tutorial Improvement: Smashing (weight 0.03): It was suggested that the tutorial should include information about smashing things for resources, indicating a gap in onboarding new players to this specific mechanic.
- Wish for New Factions (weight 0.03): Reviewers express a desire for the addition of new factions, suggesting a potential avenue for expanding gameplay variety and replayability in future updates.
- Auto-collect Enemy Drops (weight 0.03): A quality-of-life suggestion is the addition of a building to automatically collect enemy drops, which would streamline resource gathering after combat encounters.
- Missing Module Return Info (weight 0.03): Players lack clear information on whether inserted modules from abandoned buildings are returned to inventory, leading to uncertainty or frustration regarding resource management.
- Repair Symbol UI Issue (weight 0.03): A minor UI issue is noted where the explanation for the repair symbol cannot be easily removed, potentially obstructing the view or causing minor annoyance.
- Combat Issues Addressed by Mod (weight 0.03): A mod that fixes a combat issue by removing mobs suggests that the base game's combat system may be problematic or undesirable for some players, leading them to seek external solutions.
- Achievements Anticipated (weight 0.03): Achievements are listed as an anticipated feature on the game's roadmap, indicating planned future content additions that will enhance player engagement.
- Unique Enemy Designs (weight 0.03): Enemy designs are described as strange yet cute, contributing positively to the game's unique visual aesthetic and overall charm.
- Promising Roadmap Features (weight 0.03): The roadmap includes interesting future features such as different enemy encounters and city-building concerns like happiness, suggesting planned expansions to gameplay depth and variety.
- Convenient UI Interface (weight 0.03): The game's user interface is described as very convenient and neat, contributing positively to the overall player experience and ease of interaction.
- Speculated Dropped Ideas (weight 0.01): A reviewer speculates that distinct tribe aesthetics or research might have been a dropped idea during development, which is an observation rather than direct feedback on current gameplay.
- Loved Game Concept (weight 0.01): The core concept of the game is highly appreciated by reviewers, indicating a strong foundational appeal for the game's unique premise.
- Nomadic City Title Implication (weight 0.01): The game's title is interpreted as implying a nomadic city that flies, drawing a connection to concepts like a 'Flying House Around the World', which aligns with the game's core premise.
- Platform Feedback: Neutral Option (weight 0): A reviewer wished for a neutral review option on the platform, which is feedback directed at the review system itself, not the game.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.25): Players feel satisfied by the game's refreshing and rewarding core gameplay loop, which offers strategic depth, customization, and a successful blend of genres. The game's high quality, unique art style, lack of bugs, and responsive developer support also contribute significantly to player enjoyment and a smooth progression experience.
- Frustration (weight 0.21): Frustration primarily stems from overwhelming and poorly balanced resource management, micromanagement, and tedious gameplay loops. Players also experience frustration due to significant quality of life issues, restrictive map design, clunky UI, and various technical bugs that hinder smooth progression and enjoyment.
- Disappointment (weight 0.21): Disappointment arises from the game's poor execution of promising ideas, leading to a lack of depth in core mechanics, limited content, and repetitive gameplay, especially in the mid-to-late game. Players also express frustration with unpolished features, poor UI/controls, and a general feeling that the game falls short of its potential or comparisons to other titles.
- Excitement (weight 0.11): Players feel excitement due to the game's innovative and unique core concept, particularly the mobile/flying city mechanic and its blend of genres. The engaging and addictive gameplay loop, strategic depth, and anticipation for future content and active development also contribute significantly to this positive emotion.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.04): Enjoyment stems from the game's engaging core gameplay loop, which provides fun puzzles, strategic planning, and a satisfying challenge. The interaction between different game modes and the overall gameplay experience contribute to this positive feeling.
- Boredom (weight 0.02): Boredom is primarily caused by the game's repetitive gameplay loop, especially in the endgame, and slow pacing. The lack of variety in environments and overall unexciting gameplay contribute to this feeling.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger is primarily directed at the game's poorly designed resource management and upgrade systems, as well as its overall design and execution. Some anger also stems from the game's perceived inability to compete with other titles.
- Mild frustration (weight 0.02): Mild frustration arises from specific quality of life issues, including UI/UX problems, performance glitches, and aspects of the combat system. The design of achievements also contributes to this minor annoyance.
- Joy (weight 0.02): Joy is derived from the game's fun and clear core gameplay loop, its unique twist, and its whimsical atmosphere. The overall enjoyable experience contributes to this positive emotion.
- Annoyance (weight 0.01): Annoyance is caused by clunky controls, problematic building mechanics, and the tedious and repetitive nature of the gameplay loop, particularly within confined map designs.
- Appreciation (weight 0.01): Players express appreciation for the developers' dedication and the game's innovative modes and aesthetic qualities.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arises from unclear game mechanics, such as specific factory functions or unique systems like "archeology" and "dream nullifier," due to a lack of in-game guidance. The unexpected mixed reviews also contribute to this confusion.
- Anxiety (weight 0.01): Anxiety is triggered by the game's time pressure during building and the vulnerability of the base due to distant resource points. The in-game timer also contributes to this stressful feeling.
- Mild disappointment (weight 0.01): Mild disappointment is caused by the repetitive combat and slow progression in the late-game, along with lingering imperfections in the overall game experience.
- Hope (weight 0): Hope is expressed for future content, specifically the potential introduction of new factions, indicating a desire for expanded gameplay options.
- Stress (weight 0): Stress is caused by the game's demanding gameplay, which puts pressure on players.
- Tedium (weight 0): Tedium is specifically linked to a particular "dusting" playstyle, indicating a repetitive or unengaging aspect of gameplay.
- Relief (weight 0): Relief is experienced upon realizing that certain perceived issues, such as fuel or weight limitations, are not universally problematic or are manageable.
- Neutral (weight 0): The game's neutral reception for some players is attributed to its niche appeal, suggesting it caters to a specific audience rather than having broad appeal.
- Love (weight 0): Love for the game is expressed generally towards its various elements, indicating a strong overall positive sentiment.}