Info about Final Upgrade: Official game description: In Final Upgrade, you will experience the role of artificial intelligence (AI), created by mankind to help spread colonists across the galaxy. In each game session, you are tasked with conquering one of the regions of the galaxy. Arriving at the site with one ship carrying minimal resources, you must build a massive factory spread over 100 sectors, producing all sorts of resources that the colonists might need. Use various construction tools. ------------------------------- In addition to the classic build mode through the objects panel, the player has the option to use the quick build mode, which allows you to install fully connected machines or even an entire production chain in a few clicks. Any segment can be saved to a module for later unlimited use. Design unique ships and stations. --------------------------------- The player can use the built-in blueprints for stations and ships, create their own unique blueprints, or download blueprints created by others from the Steam workshop. Automate resource flows. ------------------------ The player can both perform many tasks manually, and automate them there by running one of the auto-logic on controlled ships and stations. Here are some of them: transporter, builder, miner, energy carrier, ammunition carrier, warship. Create complex supply chains. ----------------------------- There are three main ways to build a logistics system: routes, a network of teleportation relays, and auto-logic waypoints for direct docking of ships and stations. Terraform planets. ------------------ For population growth, each habitable planet requires a supply of a certain type of resource. When a planet reaches its population limit, the colonists request some resources to terraform the planet. Unlock technologies. -------------------- As it develops, the AI becomes able to unlock and use more and more advanced technologies (over 150). AI data placement requires memory, which is provided by colonists for certain achievements (capturing new sectors, increasing the level of planets, reaching global population marks. Conquer the galaxy for humanity. -------------------------------- Part of the planets is under the control of mechanical factions of old, dead civilizations. To free the territory, you need to open various combat technologies (weapons and armor). Different metal alloys have different resistances to certain types of damage. In the later stages of the game, the technology for the production of living metals becomes available, regenerating upon taking damage. They can also be combined into an alloy for even more damage resistance. Customize the game. ------------------- At the beginning of the game, there are many options available for every taste. Many features can be enabled and disabled for a unique gaming experience. For example, a peaceful mode in which there are no enemies. Starting from very simple settings where the game is fast paced and relatively easy to achieve, the player can progress to higher difficulty levels where every choice counts, and every opportunity must be used to move forward. So, let's get our Final Upgrade now! Release date: 6 Dec, 2022 Categories: Factory Building, Resource Management, Automation Game, Ship Combat, Strategy, Research and Discovery, Vehicle Customization, Single-player - 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 Logistics & Automation (weight 1): The game offers a deep and satisfying logistics and automation experience, praised for its unique approach compared to other factory games like Factorio. Players enjoy the core loop of building, optimizing, and expanding production and transportation networks, finding it both challenging and relaxing. - High Value & Enjoyment (weight 0.9): Reviewers express strong overall satisfaction, highlighting the game's significant potential, current completeness for an Early Access title, and excellent value for its price. Many report playing for extensive hours, finding it a rewarding and addictive experience. - Excellent Developer Support & Updates (weight 0.43): The developer is highly praised for their exceptional responsiveness, quick bug fixes, and active engagement with the community. Frequent updates have significantly improved the game's stability and added new content, making it feel polished even in Early Access. - Robust Ship Design System (weight 0.31): The game's ship and station design system is a standout feature, offering immense creative freedom and depth. Players enjoy spending significant time crafting custom blueprints, experimenting with different layouts, and optimizing designs for various purposes, finding the interface intuitive and the process highly engaging. - Appealing Visual Style (weight 0.16): The game's graphics and overall aesthetics are generally well-received, described as pleasant and effective for the genre. Some reviewers specifically note them as an improvement over similar games, contributing to a positive visual experience. - Flexible Difficulty Options (weight 0.15): The game offers a good range of challenges, including a satisfying 'Impossible' difficulty and extensive custom difficulty settings. Players appreciate the ability to tailor the game's complexity to their preferences, making the learning curve enjoyable. - Engaging Combat System (weight 0.09): The combat system is described as well-done, fun, and smoother than expected. Improvements like the combat movement mode enhance the experience, making battles more enjoyable and less frantic. - Extensive Tech Tree (weight 0.07): The technology tree is noted for its depth and promising nature, offering a wide array of technologies for players to research and unlock. This provides a sense of progression and long-term goals. - Accessible System Requirements (weight 0.07): The game is praised for its low hardware requirements, making it playable on a wide range of machines, including laptops. This accessibility, combined with its affordable price, makes it a good value. - Immersive Soundtrack (weight 0.07): The game's soundtrack is highly praised for complementing the space theme, described as 'bomb' and having a retro sci-fi vibe. It enhances the overall atmosphere and player experience. Common complaints: - Confusing, ineffective tutorial (weight 0.77): The tutorial is criticized for being excessively long, overwhelming players with too much information without proper context or pacing. Many players reported being completely lost and unable to understand core mechanics even after completing it, often needing external resources to learn the game. - Poor, unintuitive UI/UX (weight 0.53): The user interface is widely criticized for being clunky, overwhelming, and difficult to navigate. Players found it unintuitive, with too many menus, unnecessary elements, and poor design choices like small fonts or an outdated appearance, hindering the overall game experience. - Unpolished, unfinished game (weight 0.43): Many reviews indicate the game feels incomplete, lacking polish, and suffering from numerous small issues and bugs that detract from the fun. Players expressed concerns about the game being abandoned or not receiving necessary updates, suggesting it needs significant work to be enjoyable. - Poor, buggy ship AI (weight 0.38): Ship AI, including combat, mining, and trade, is consistently criticized for being unintelligent and requiring excessive micromanagement. Issues include friendly fire, ships blocking firing lines, aimless movement, inefficient resource transport, and getting stuck, significantly hindering gameplay. - Simplistic factory mechanics (weight 0.26): The factory and automation aspects are criticized for being uninspiring, bland, and overly simplistic, especially when compared to other established factory-builder games. Players found the manufacturing process repetitive and lacking unique challenges, making tinkering difficult and unrewarding. - Weak combat system (weight 0.25): The combat system is described as one-dimensional, uninspiring, and a chore. Players found it poorly explained and often frustrating, feeling more like a puzzle or a slog rather than engaging combat, leading to disappointment. - Flawed blueprint system (weight 0.23): The blueprint system is problematic, with issues like overwriting manual changes, severe limitations, and the inability to paste blueprints for upgrades without manual deletion. Players also noted the lack of a clipboard function and that premade blueprints removed the incentive for customization. - Tedious building/deletion (weight 0.18): Building and deletion mechanics are criticized for being unintuitive, tedious, and buggy. Players reported difficulty deleting items, manually placing individual armor squares for upgrades, and issues with custom stations, often requiring manual fixes or leading to flawed constructions. - Tedious end-game (weight 0.14): Players found the end-game experience tedious, with activities like upgrading the tech tree and expanding industries becoming hard work rather than fun. The most interesting parts of the game became optional, and tracking resource routes became tiresome, leading to a lack of motivation to finish. - Imbalanced random tech mode (weight 0.14): The "Random tech" mode is criticized for being heavily reliant on luck, making many games unwinnable due to imbalanced technology drops. Players felt that their actions had little impact, as high-level technologies would appear that were impossible to master, turning the mode into pure chance. - Ship production/storage issues (weight 0.1): The game's production and storage tracker breaks when production is built on ships, despite the game not indicating this is unrecommended. Players found it easier to build factories on spaceships due to limited station space, leading to confusing design decisions and broken tracking. - Imbalanced difficulty modes (weight 0.08): The game's difficulty settings are criticized for being poorly balanced. Many challenges and achievements are impossible to complete on 'easy' mode, while anything less than 'impossible' difficulty is considered trivial and merely time-consuming, lacking a proper challenge curve. - Random recipe progression (weight 0.08): Players found some recipes and planetary resource requirements to be random or illogical, especially in the later game. Progression felt limited, relying heavily on new recipes from technology upgrades to improve mineral output, which sometimes felt contrived just to give intermediate products a purpose. - Poor pacing/progression (weight 0.07): The game's pacing and progression are described as poorly structured and at times "insane." This suggests that the flow of the game, how new mechanics are introduced, or how challenges scale, is not well-designed, potentially leading to player frustration or disengagement. Gameplay feedback: - Deep Factory Automation (weight 0.43): The game's core loop revolves around building and optimizing complex, automated production lines and supply chains, similar to Factorio but in a space setting. Players manage resources, expand factories, and automate processes to build an intergalactic manufacturing empire. - Custom Ship Combat (weight 0.42): Players can extensively design and build custom ships for various roles, including combat. Combat involves tactical decisions, managing fleets, and engaging AI opponents, with options for manual control and specialized weapons. - Galactic Empire Management (weight 0.36): The game involves expanding a galactic empire by colonizing star systems, managing resources across planets, and satisfying colony demands. The end goal often involves reaching a large population count and maximizing planetary production. - Challenging Learning Curve (weight 0.2): The game is noted for its significant complexity and arduous learning curve, requiring players to master many details. While challenging, it offers a decent amount of content and multiple difficulty settings. - Research & Tech Tree (weight 0.2): Progression is driven by a technology tree where players research new technologies and upgrade existing ones. XP is gained through trade orders, building ships/stations, or dedicated research stations, unlocking upgrade points and new elements. - Diverse Resource Acquisition (weight 0.19): Players acquire resources from various sources, including planets and now more significant asteroids. Strategic decisions are needed on where to manufacture products based on resource availability and demand to optimize supply chains. - Flexible Blueprint System (weight 0.17): The game features a flexible blueprint system allowing players to use prefabricated designs, modify them, or create entirely new ships and stations from scratch. This system is crucial for expansion and optimization. - Interstellar Transport Logistics (weight 0.17): Players must manage complex logistics for transporting materials between planets and stations. This involves choosing between different methods like transport ships and teleporters, and setting up efficient trade routes. - Modular Station Design (weight 0.13): Stations are central to resource processing and production, with specific mechanics like materials being taken directly from the station body. Players can build efficient multi-item production stations, though only one station is allowed per sector. - Inefficient Trade AI (weight 0.13): The automated trade AI is criticized for being unintelligent and inefficient. Trade ships often make many small trips instead of fewer large ones, wander unnecessarily, or wait far away due to insufficient warehouse inventory. - Triggered Alien Hostility (weight 0.08): Alien factions in the game can become aggressive based on player actions, such as building too many machines or occupying too many sectors. Hostility often escalates after initial combat encounters. - One Resource Per Planet (weight 0.08): A core design choice is that each planet produces only one type of resource. This can lead to specific resource shortages and necessitates extensive inter-planetary logistics to manage supply chains. - Multiple Ship Efficiency (weight 0.08): Players find that using multiple smaller ships is often more efficient for tasks like construction, repair, or trading multiple item types, compared to relying on a single large vessel. - Warehouse Storage Mechanics (weight 0.08): Warehouses are a key component for material storage, allowing for compact facilities. However, recent changes have reportedly weakened their capacity, leading to potential material storage issues. - Unique Strategy Mix (weight 0.07): The game is praised for its unique combination of strategy and management elements. It introduces features not commonly found in similar games, such as dynamic colony requests for goods. Performance notes: - Excellent Performance & Optimization (weight 0.12): Players consistently report that the game's core logic is highly optimized, allowing for very high framerates and smooth simulation speeds. This indicates that the game runs efficiently, ensuring a playable experience on various hardware, including regular laptops, despite potentially high demands. Recommendations: - Refund/Value Concerns (weight 0.51): A notable number of players expressed regret over their purchase, with some requesting refunds or advising others to do so. This sentiment suggests that for some, the game did not meet expectations or provide sufficient value, even after significant playtime. - Wait for Game Improvements (weight 0.45): Many players suggest waiting for future updates and developer improvements before fully committing to the game. While some express initial positive impressions, a significant portion advises against playing in its current state, indicating a need for further polish and fixes. - Niche for Strategy/Factory Fans (weight 0.38): The game is highly recommended for players who enjoy complex automation, strategy, logistics, and base-building genres, similar to Factorio or Dyson Sphere Program. It appeals to those willing to embrace chaos and wrangle intricate controls, indicating it's not suitable for casual players. - Purchase During Sales (weight 0.23): A recurring sentiment is that the game is a worthwhile purchase, but primarily when acquired during a sale. Reviewers often recommend waiting for a discount, suggesting that the full price might not align with the perceived value or current state of the game. - Tutorial is Crucial (weight 0.1): Players emphasize the importance of the tutorial, with some recommending playing it multiple times to grasp the game's complex mechanics. There's also a sentiment that if basic mechanics require extensive tutorials, it can be a barrier, highlighting the need for an effective and well-structured onboarding experience. - Specific Gameplay Suggestions (weight 0.05): Players provided concrete suggestions for game improvements, such as modifying the starting zone to be a station with slow resource generation. Another suggestion is to remove premade ship blueprints, indicating a desire for more player agency or a different design approach. Other player notes: - Early Access, Active Development (weight 0.26): The game is currently in Early Access, with frequent updates and an active development roadmap. This roadmap promises significant future content, including new recipes and addressing system limits, indicating ongoing evolution. - Responsive Dev & Community (weight 0.14): The developer is highly active and responsive to community feedback and bug reports, especially on platforms like Discord. The Discord server is noted for its welcoming community, which actively participates in testing and suggesting new ideas. - Translation Grammatical Issues (weight 0.07): While the game offers Russian language support, its translations into other languages exhibit grammatical issues, impacting clarity and player experience. - Clean Graphics, Chill Vibe (weight 0.07): The game is praised for its clean graphics and overall chill atmosphere, complemented by good vibes and music, contributing to a relaxing player experience. - Tedious Ship Building (weight 0.06): The ship building mechanic is described as overly tedious, which may be a significant deterrent for players who are not accustomed to or do not enjoy intricate 'build your own ship' gameplay. - Unclear Steam Page (weight 0.06): The game's Steam page does not effectively convey its true nature, leading to potential misunderstandings. The game could benefit from more targeted marketing to better communicate its core appeal. - Multiplayer Potential (weight 0.03): There is a suggestion that the game has the potential to evolve into a multiplayer RTS-like experience, offering both player-versus-player (PvP) and cooperative (co-op) modes. - Request for Soundtrack (weight 0.03): A reviewer expressed a desire for a dedicated soundtrack to serve as background music, indicating a potential area for enhancing the game's ambiance. - Small Dev Team (weight 0.03): Observations suggest that the game is being developed by a very small team, possibly even a single person, which provides context for its development scope and pace. Emotions: - Satisfaction (weight 0.23): Players feel satisfied when they overcome challenging gameplay, enjoy the core mechanics like logistics and automation, and find the game offers substantial content and depth. This satisfaction is further enhanced by responsive developers who provide frequent updates, fix bugs, and engage with the community, ensuring a high-quality and valuable experience. - Frustration (weight 0.2): Frustration primarily stems from technical issues like bugs and crashes, coupled with a clumsy and unintuitive user interface and controls. A significant source of frustration is also the confusing, lengthy, or inadequate tutorial, which hinders player understanding and progression, often leading to a lack of motivation to continue. - Disappointment (weight 0.19): Disappointment arises when the game feels unfinished or abandoned, failing to meet player expectations, especially regarding its early access state. Specific issues include a bland or weak combat system, a lack of quality-of-life features, and convoluted mechanics that make the game unpolished and difficult to enjoy or understand. - Excitement (weight 0.05): Players experience excitement due to the game's dynamic gameplay, particularly its challenging logistics puzzles and engaging combat. This emotion is amplified by the game's high quality, its perceived future potential, and the anticipation of new updates and improvements. - Confusion (weight 0.05): Confusion is primarily caused by a lack of clear direction, such as an unclear endgame or purpose for actions, leaving players unsure how to progress. This is exacerbated by a confusing UI and an inadequate tutorial, which fail to provide sufficient information or tooltips, making core mechanics difficult to grasp. - Joy (weight 0.04): Joy is derived from the game's engaging and unique gameplay, particularly the satisfaction of designing and observing complex factories in operation. The successful combination of genres and the overall fun and value provided by the game contribute significantly to this positive emotion. - Enjoyment (weight 0.03): Enjoyment is consistently reported across the entire game experience, particularly highlighting the engaging logistics gameplay and the depth offered by intricate production chains. The ability to custom design and optimize these systems significantly contributes to player satisfaction. - Annoyance (weight 0.02): Annoyance is frequently linked to an unreliable and frustrating combat system, often due to poor AI. Additionally, issues with the user interface and overall user experience design, including graphics and background music, contribute to player irritation. - Interest (weight 0.02): Players express interest due to the game's unique approach to automation and crafting mechanics, which sets it apart. This interest is also sustained by the anticipation of future content and developments. - Appreciation (weight 0.02): Appreciation is directed towards the developers for their responsiveness, active engagement with the community, and consistent efforts to provide balanced progress and updates. Players also value the game's overall quality and the positive community environment. - Anger (weight 0.01): Anger arises from critical functional issues such as the inability to properly use menus, which severely hinders gameplay. Poor translations and fundamental flaws in core mechanics like station building and resource handling also contribute to significant player frustration. - Contentment (weight 0.01): Contentment is found in the game's relaxing gameplay pace, allowing players to enjoy the experience without feeling rushed. Some players also express contentment in being able to understand and progress in the game even without relying heavily on the tutorial. - Addiction (weight 0.01): Players describe the game as addictive due to its highly engaging nature and compelling gameplay loop, which consistently draws them back for more. This strong pull indicates a successful core design that encourages prolonged play sessions. - Love (weight 0.01): Love for the game is inspired by its innovative core concept, particularly the freedom and creativity offered in ship creation and base building. The introduction of new buildings and transportation methods, alongside appealing graphics, further enhances this strong positive sentiment. - Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom sets in when the gameplay transitions into repetitive busywork, especially during the end-game phase. This suggests a lack of engaging challenges or meaningful progression in later stages, leading to a monotonous grind. - Optimism (weight 0.01): Optimism is fueled by the developers' consistent activity, including regular updates and helpful engagement with the community. This active support instills confidence in the game's future development and improvement. - Surprise (weight 0.01): Players express surprise when encountering the game's uniquely complex systems, which exceed their initial expectations. This pleasant surprise indicates a successful delivery of innovative and deep gameplay mechanics. - Relief (weight 0.01): Relief is felt when significant improvements are made to previously problematic areas, such as the combat system. Additionally, the game's accessibility and ease of entry for players familiar with similar titles like Factorio contribute to a sense of relief. - Engagement (weight 0.01): Players feel engaged due to the game's compelling ideas and concepts, which successfully draw them into the experience. This indicates a strong initial hook and sustained interest in the core gameplay loop. - Desire (weight 0): Players express a strong desire for improvements to the user interface, indicating that current UI design is a significant area for potential enhancement to improve the overall player experience.}