Reviews by dnoth

Project Highrise
 – 

Not Great*****

Despite its appearance as a potential successor to SimTower, it is not anywhere near the same caliber of game.

Project Highrise is marred by a lack of any sense of accomplishment or challenge. To make your tenants happy, you just need to ensure they have power, water, or whatever other utilities are required for that particular tenant, such as restaurants needing gas or apartments needing cable. You also need to ensure they have the required services; offices need courier and copy services (and many others as you build higher-tier offices), apartments need janitorial, dog walking, etc.

The problem is, there's no middle ground if you don't have the required services; your tenants simply throw you the bird as they walk out the door, in some cases it can be the very same day that you accepted them-e.g. if you forgot to lay a water line when placing a restaurant on a newly constructed floor.

Aside from this, there's no real "challenge" at hand. You simply go down the list of requirements for some entity, make sure you meet them all, then place the entity; unless they are a restaurant or store who rely on RNG foot traffic, they will basically stay happy forever.

The lack of gratifying success really pairs up with the lack of challenge to make for an exceedingly underwhelming experience. The only indication you receive for an upgrade to your prestige is some incredibly dull background fireworks, and blinking orange icons to signify new items are available to build.

It's not the worst game I've ever played, but it really wasn't very satisfying to build a successful tower. By the time I had 30 something prestige, I quit and never looked back.

by dnoth, USA - Jul 18th 2017 (updated Jul 16th 2017)
Craft The World
 – 

Squandered Potential*****

This game is special in its own right; a satisfying blend of RTS, tower defense, crafting sandbox, and godsim. However, it really could have been a lot more successful had it not employed some questionable design choices.

Mana is replenished at a glacial rate of 1 mana per 3 minutes - in the mid to late game you have 200+ mana, meaning it takes 10+ hours to refill it all. The crafting grid obnoxiously requires you to drag each material to one of nine slots on the "table", the first time you craft anything. Progressing through the crafting tier requirements often means making a bunch of garbage you'll never use, just to unlock the next tier (looking at you, clay and clay pots). Standard co-op gameplay on a fresh new world doesn't exist unless you purchase the multiplayer DLC, Dig with Friends.

And the AI... boy is the AI dumb/simplistic. If you give your dwarves too many orders (like, more than 2 or 3 per dwarf), they get confused. If you have too many portals open, they get confused. If you order your dwarves to attack something, they *all* stop whatever they were doing, drop whatever they had in their backpack, and go RUNNING at whatever you targeted, even if they are halfway across the map and there are 10 other dwarves much closer than they were.

I have 300+ hours in the game, so it is far from terrible to play; it really could have just been so much more, and better, than what it is.

by dnoth, USA - Jul 18th 2017
Project Highrise: Las Vegas
 – 

Contains content that should have been in the base game*****

Project Highrise: Las Vegas adds things that really should have been in the base release of Project Highrise, including hotel accommodations, service elevators, and the ability to move tenants.

by dnoth, USA - Jul 18th 2017