Info about Cliff Empire:

Official game description:
Message for survivors on the Earth's orbit!  
After a nuclear war life on the surface became impossible, and a 300m thick radioactive fog covered the Earth.  
Our scientists in the past decade predicted such course of events and used all available potential to build cliffs in the mountain region to restore life on Earth.  
We are looking for bold active people to manage the process of restoring life on Earth. Join!  
\- develop in parallel the economics of several independent cities  
\- trade between your cities and the orbital station  
\- a dynamic climate change that will test the strength of your cities' economies.  
\- choose between ecological and harmful power supply  
\- 48 additional university research to improve the city structure  
\- over 120 structures for constructing the city  
\- 15 goods for trade and consumption  
\- possibility of switching between the 3D and the orthographic camera, as well as a free camera for walking around the city.  
\- additional 15 quests that open access to the orbital station and huge location in Late game  
\- sandbox mode  
\- tower defense more  
The compact gameplay involves the construction of three small cities in each randomly generated level.

Release date: Aug 6, 2019

Categories: City Builder, Colony Simulation, Resource Management, Trading Simulation, Tower Defense, Post-apocalyptic, Base Building, Single-player Story


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics:
  - Game completion: 30.0h
  - Story completion: N/A
  - Session length: 1.0h
  - Endgame: N/A
  - Reasoning: The completion estimate is based on multiple reports describing a full run or developed city: one says a run takes around 20 hours, another says a fully developed city takes 25-40 hours, and a translated review says the game ending was reached after over 30 hours. These cluster around roughly 30 hours, so gameCompletion is set to 30 hours. The session length is supported by the quote saying the player can spend an hour on it without realizing it, indicating sessions of about 1 hour. storyCompletion is null because the evidence does not separately describe a story-only completion time. endgame is null because the reviews discuss endgame qualitatively but do not give a specific number of hours for endgame content or reaching endgame.
- Time-to-fun:
  - Summary: Cliff Empire is reported as fun and challenging from early play, though onboarding and pacing complaints create friction for some players. The evidence supports immediate enjoyment rather than a clearly timed later click, and no specific anchor timing is provided.
  - Stance: Fun immediately
  - Anchor: N/A
  - Time to anchor: N/A
  - Friction: Missing tutorial for navigation and controls; Tutorial explanations may be incomplete or skippable; Frustration with supply distribution; Slow progression; High difficulty and risk of failure; Resource production pickup timing and cliff generation not user-friendly
  - Unlock drivers: Tutorial integrated into the main quest that explains mechanics; Reading additional tutorial information via arrows on the trading portal
  - Conditions: Tolerance for slow progression and difficulty; Willingness to learn controls and supply distribution; Tolerance for incomplete or skippable tutorial explanations; Engaging with tutorial guidance rather than skipping it
- Player Archetypes:
  - City-Builder Genre Loyalist (buy)
    - Motivation: Enjoying familiar city-building and management-sim gameplay.
    - Playstyle: Replays city builders and seeks more building/management games in the same genre.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: city builder fan; simulation/management fan
    - Reference games: N/A
  - Feature-Discovery Systems Explorer (buy)
    - Motivation: Uncovering layered mechanics and surprise features as the chain expands.
    - Playstyle: Pushes deeper into progression chains to see what new systems reveal.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: N/A
    - Reference games: N/A
  - Discount-Waiting Critical Player (deep sale)
    - Motivation: Value for money and a strong opening before later systems undermine the experience.
    - Playstyle: Tries the opening, then disengages when later systems feel repetitive or confusing; waits for a deep discount before committing.
    - Experience: mixed
    - Purchase stance: deep sale
    - Labels: N/A
    - Reference games: N/A


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:
- Unique sci-fi setting (weight 0.96): The futuristic, post-apocalyptic cliff setting is frequently highlighted as original and interesting, blending high-tech and classic architecture.
- Beautiful futuristic visuals (weight 0.8): Many praise the game's beautiful sights, art style, and detailed graphics, especially the futuristic aesthetic and day-night cycles.
- Engaging gameplay loop (weight 0.78): The core gameplay is described as fun, engaging, and immediate, with a loop that keeps players coming back and losing track of time.
- Challenging yet fair (weight 0.72): Players find the game difficult and demanding but never unfair, with challenges that keep them engaged and scrambling to meet demands without collapsing the economy.
- Progression and unlocks (weight 0.65): The progression system, with milestones and research unlocks that introduce new mechanics and building types, is consistently praised as rewarding.
- Complex economy and depth (weight 0.58): Reviewers appreciate the complex economy, progressive complexity, and deep development layers that reveal themselves over many hours.
- Space constraints central mechanic (weight 0.53): The limited building space on artificial cliffs is repeatedly mentioned as a core and interesting mechanic that forces careful planning and replanning.
- Underrated city builder (weight 0.48): Reviewers repeatedly call it an underrated, great, and awesome city builder, indicating strong overall satisfaction with the genre entry.
- Relaxing and immersive (weight 0.45): Many find the game relaxing, immersive, and a comfort game, with a calmly paced but not simple experience.
- Solid concept and direction (weight 0.44): The game's idea and direction are considered solid and well-made, with cool concepts that fulfill sci-fi building fantasies.
- Polished and finished (weight 0.36): Reviewers feel the game is finished, works as intended, and has come a long way since beta, with polished graphics and animations.
- Highly replayable (weight 0.3): Players note high replayability, keep coming back, and find restarting common yet motivating.
- Rewarding achievements (weight 0.22): Building iconic structures like the Tower of Light provides an unparalleled sense of achievement, and the game is seen as rewarding overall.
- Cliff-building innovative solutions (weight 0.22): The cliff setting enables innovative solutions like building on cliff sides and uninhabitable ground to save space on top, which players find interesting.
- Engaging events and challenges (weight 0.21): Events are real challenges dependent on resource management, and the game keeps adding new things that maintain interest.
- No handholding (weight 0.21): The game does not hold your hand, and the combination of economy and lack of handholding kept the reviewer invested.
- Appealing city design (weight 0.2): The cities built are appealing enough to want to live in, and designing them is fun for hours.
- Tower defense elements (weight 0.12): The tower defense elements are considered fun and add variety to the gameplay.
- Great music (weight 0.11): One reviewer praised the music as the best ever, adding to the overall experience.

Common complaints:
- Long waits and slow pace (weight 0.54): Players experience extensive waiting for research, resources, and construction, even at maximum game speed. This slows progression and makes the game feel like a waiting simulator.
- Repetitive and shallow late game (weight 0.53): The game becomes repetitive with resource adjustments and lacks depth after the opening phase. The endgame offers little to do beyond waiting for population growth.
- Unclear and inadequate tutorial (weight 0.48): The tutorial fails to explain core mechanics, controls, and essential concepts, often resembling simple starter goals. Players must consult external guides to understand the game.
- Economic difficulty and money scarcity (weight 0.38): Players go broke quickly, and cash generation is inefficient, forcing long idle periods to accumulate money. This discourages experimentation.
- Graphics and quality below expectations (weight 0.36): Graphics do not match bigger productions, and the game looks different from AI-generated screenshots. Overall quality is below best games from 20 years ago.
- Counterintuitive menus and concepts (weight 0.32): The user interface and game systems are poorly explained and not intuitive, overwhelming first-time players. This leads to confusion and frustration.
- Cliff mechanic restricts expansion (weight 0.31): Limited cliff locations and restrictive building space hinder late-game expansion. Expanding requires building more cliffs, which feels unrewarding and leads to repetitive cityscapes.
- Bugs and instability (weight 0.31): The game suffers from numerous bugs, inconsistencies, and crashes, including save file corruption and building demolition causing chaos.
- Drone prioritization issues (weight 0.31): Drone task prioritization is flawed, causing inefficient logistics and forcing reliance on other delivery systems. Buildings cannot be set to accumulate resources before pickup.
- Trading portal confusion (weight 0.22): Players struggle with the trading portal, not knowing how to use it and missing hidden tutorial information. This creates a significant barrier.
- Unwinnable states and dead ends (weight 0.22): It is easy to reach an unwinnable state or get stuck, often due to resource shortages or poorly designed mechanics.
- Event system frustrates players (weight 0.22): Events are demanding, require penalty payments, and offer no way to prepare. This adds stress rather than enjoyment.
- Tech tree disconnected from progress (weight 0.22): The research tree does not align with game progress, requiring long waits with no indication of necessity. This creates pacing issues.
- Ending lacks closure (weight 0.22): Completing the final steps yields no congratulations or any message, leaving players unsatisfied.
- Prestige and honor point grind (weight 0.22): Raising prestige and earning honor points is a slog, requiring micromanagement and long waits without clear progress.
- Lack of production statistics (weight 0.22): There are no overall production stats, only per-cliff, and they are not always reliable. This hampers planning and optimization.
- Impossible delivery task (weight 0.13): A delivery task requires 126 engines, but the trade platform only takes 20 and arrives 6 times, making it impossible to complete.
- Micromanagement breaks eligibility (weight 0.13): Micromanaging while waiting can inadvertently break eligibility for the next tech or building, causing setbacks.
- Hidden resource information (weight 0.13): Cliff generation hides soil fertility, uranium, and matter deposit efficiency behind a tech, which can lead players to quit if values are poor.
- Tedious inter-city money redistribution (weight 0.12): Constant money redistribution between cities is tedious and adds unnecessary micromanagement.

Gameplay feedback:
- City builder genre (weight 0.87): Players describe the game as a city-building simulation or strategy game. Many emphasize it is a city builder that does not hold the player's hand.
- Random disasters and events (weight 0.45): Random events and disasters such as water shortages, earthquakes, storms, droughts, blizzards, and invader attacks can cause a well-planned economy to fail if unprepared. Events require resource management and can include contracts with penalty payments.
- Cliff space constraints (weight 0.45): Building space is scarce on cliffs, and players must make do with the limited area. Space constraints are a core challenge, especially early on.
- High cliff city building (weight 0.45): Cities are built on cliffs high above the ground, with limited space. Players must carefully plan and expand outward first, then upward.
- Balance people food power (weight 0.44): Players must heavily balance population, food, needs, and power. Keeping ratios and production chains in check is essential for survival.
- Research and resource gathering (weight 0.43): The game includes research and resource gathering mechanics. A tech tree gates information like soil fertility and deposits, and unlocks many building types.
- Tutorial and learning curve (weight 0.41): The game includes a tutorial campaign integrated into the main quest. It can be challenging initially but becomes simple once the player gets the hang of it.
- Sci-fi futuristic setting (weight 0.37): The game is set in a futuristic or sci-fi world, featuring advanced technologies and a post-apocalyptic cliff habitat. This setting distinguishes it from traditional city builders.
- Trading between settlements (weight 0.36): Players can trade between multiple cities or settlements, each with its own strengths and weaknesses such as soil fertility and ore deposits. Trading is a key economic mechanic.
- Post-apocalyptic survival theme (weight 0.3): The game is a post-apocalyptic city builder with survival elements, set on a small habitable cliff area. Players start with a blank plot and must solve for power, food, water, and survival needs.
- Milestone progression system (weight 0.29): Progression is milestone-based, unlocking new buildings and organization options. A tech tree and research further gate advancement.
- Space station and crises (weight 0.28): The space station serves as a refuge during food shortages and can face crises that the player must rescue it from. It is a key element in the game's progression.
- Strategic planning and ratios (weight 0.28): The game requires a planning approach similar to other city builders, with strategic building followed by managing change. Keeping an eye on ratios and production chains is crucial.
- Tower of Light endgame (weight 0.21): The ultimate goal is to build a Tower of Light. After completing everything, new locations, tasks, and colossal structures open up.
- Map design influences planning (weight 0.2): Map design, including cliffs and islands, influences city planning. Bridges and other islands are gameplay elements that affect strategy.
- Expand cliffs goal (weight 0.12): A main goal is to build more cliff to expand available space. This drives progression and city growth.
- Micromanagement affects unlocks (weight 0.12): Micromanagement can affect eligibility for later technologies and buildings. Players need to pay attention to details to progress efficiently.
- Prestige tied to happiness (weight 0.12): There is a prestige system tied to citizen happiness. Keeping citizens happy provides benefits and progression.

Performance notes:
- Performance drops in developed cities (weight 0.13): One player reports only about 40 fps in a fully developed city with maximum drones and 12,000 inhabitants at 7x speed on a 13500 CPU. This suggests performance degrades significantly in late-game scenarios.
- GeForce NOW crashes on saves (weight 0.13): A player using GeForce NOW experiences crashes when loading saves and auto-saves. This indicates a critical cloud gaming compatibility issue.

Recommendations:
- Worth buying on discount (weight 0.38): Several reviewers suggest purchasing the game on sale or at a deep discount. It is seen as good value when the price is reduced.
- Recommended for city builder fans (weight 0.29): Multiple reviewers specifically recommend the game to players who enjoy city builders. This is the most common recommendation, indicating strong appeal for that genre.
- Good for simulation management fans (weight 0.12): One reviewer recommends it for players who enjoy simulation management games. This aligns with the city builder theme.
- Worth it despite high demands (weight 0.12): One reviewer finds the game worth it even though it is demanding, likely referring to system requirements or difficulty. This indicates the game is rewarding despite challenges.
- Worth playing if time permits (weight 0.11): One reviewer says the game is worth playing if you have the time. This is a conditional recommendation based on available time.

Other player notes:
- Compared to city builders (weight 0.36): The game is frequently compared to city builders like Factorio and base builders, as well as other management sims such as Anno 1800 and Surviving Mars/Cities Skylines.
- Shorter playtime than other builders (weight 0.28): A full run takes about 20 hours, and building a fully developed city takes 25 to 40 hours, which is shorter compared to other city builders.
- Improved since early access (weight 0.21): The game was in beta/early access at purchase and has been improved since, with long-term updates adding new content and a graphics update.
- No performance issues reported (weight 0.2): Reviewers report almost no bugs or performance problems, indicating a stable experience.
- Developed by Lion's Shade (weight 0.2): The game is developed by Lion's Shade and originates from 2019.
- More engaging than other builders (weight 0.12): The reviewer found it more engaging than many other city builders they tried, highlighting its appeal.
- Great value for price (weight 0.12): The game is described as great for a modest price tag, offering good value.
- Story mode and honor levels (weight 0.12): The game features a story mode and honor levels up to 30, adding structured progression.
- Takes around 30 hours (weight 0.12): Another reviewer mentions around 30 hours to finish, aligning with the 20-40 hour range.
- Multiple guides available (weight 0.11): Several guides exist for the game, helping players learn mechanics and strategies.
- Unfavorable comparison to older games (weight 0.11): One reviewer compares it unfavorably to the best games from 20 years ago.
- Fast paced compared to Manor Lords (weight 0.11): The game is noted to be fast paced compared to Manor Lords, indicating a different tempo.
- Needs more visibility (weight 0.11): The reviewer says the game needs more visibility, suggesting it is underappreciated.
- Playable via GeForce NOW (weight 0.11): The reviewer plays this game through GeForce NOW, indicating cloud gaming support.

Emotions:
- Frustration (weight 0.18): Players feel frustrated due to restrictive late-game cliff mechanics, poorly explained menus and prestige systems, and supply distribution bugs that show needs despite full storage. Constant money redistribution and demanding events create cash scarcity, leading to unrecoverable dead-end save states and long idle periods.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.15): Players enjoy the challenging city-building gameplay with a futuristic setting, finding it fun once they understand the mechanics. The tower defense elements, minimalist visual style, and planning resource chains provide hours of engaging entertainment.
- Disappointment (weight 0.08): Disappointment arises from a lackluster ending with no congratulations message, and the game becoming repetitive with confusing bridges. The experience fizzles out due to lack of depth and nothing to do in the endgame.
- Admiration (weight 0.06): Players admire the beautiful visuals and depth, including the futuristic architecture combined with classic elements and stunning scenery with lights and colors. The challenging gameplay complements the aesthetic.
- Boredom (weight 0.05): Boredom sets in as gameplay becomes a waiting game for research and resources, with a middling experience. The late game involves repetitive resource range adjustments.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Players appreciate the original and unusual city-building strategy, as well as the solid idea and direction with futuristic building aesthetics.
- Engagement (weight 0.03): Engagement comes from the engaging gameplay loop, where the economy and lack of handholding keep the reviewer invested.
- Relaxation (weight 0.03): The game provides relaxation through low-stress gameplay and immersive, optimization-focused mechanics.
- Annoyance (weight 0.03): Annoyance is caused by bugs, instabilities, poor game systems, and issues like stupid drone prioritization and unreliable production stats.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.03): Satisfaction comes from the game feeling finished and working as intended, with a balanced challenge and aesthetic that fulfills its ambitions.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.03): Enthusiasm is driven by fun gameplay, unique cliff building, satisfying progression, and the best music ever in a city sim.
- Desire (weight 0.02): Players desire a bigger Space Station section, wishing for more content in that area.
- Interest (weight 0.02): Interest is sparked by the complex economy and the game's interesting concept.
- Desire for more (weight 0.02): Players want greater content and depth, indicating a desire for more beyond what is currently offered.
- Anxiety (weight 0.02): Anxiety stems from the fear that touching anything would delay progress, creating a sense of apprehension.
- Fulfillment (weight 0.02): Fulfillment comes from fulfilling fantasies about sci-fi building games.
- Achievement (weight 0.02): Achievement is felt after 30+ hours when building the Tower of Light, the game's ultimate goal.
- Calm (weight 0.02): Calm is induced by the calmly paced gameplay.
- Nice feeling of the future (weight 0.02): A nice feeling of the future is evoked by the futuristic concept and atmosphere.
- Overwhelmed (weight 0.02): Players feel overwhelmed by too much information in the menu.}