I think its time I finally review this game since I've had it since November 4th, 2020 and I with no doubt in my mind would rate this game in my top ten. The game has gone through a lot of development, some things are not perfect mind you and the game can be quite hard to learn but my goodness its always a blast to enjoy with friends, which I believe is the optimal way to play. Watching one of my friends spike his population chart like he's playing jump rope around the rest of us is always funny to watch. Over the last 5ish years I've corrupted 10 friends into buying the game and gifted to another 2, which both of said players I gifted it to later argued over who had gotten it first with neither remembering I had bought it for them which makes sense they were quite drunk that night but was funny to listen to them argue before correcting them; amongst those 12 players only 4 of them have less than 100 hours in the game, I think that is a good showcase of how good this game is at the very least with friends. I think most negative reviews come from the fact that those people often play by themselves or with randoms which is never as fun as with friends. Heck I can't even play the game without at least inviting my GF since she considers it her favorite game, I get in trouble when the guys start a game without her now lol. At its core the game is a colony simulator where you have to manage your population, resources, food and land to survive; it can be really really chill at lower level difficulties, while the highest level of difficulty is still a challenge for me, but I also like testing new stuff and avoiding meta strats so that's on me. Each biome has its own bonuses, some better than others, but in the very least each of them makes the game new and interesting on new playthroughs. Add the fact that you can choose several nation types each with their own buildings and resources adding another depth of variety to the game; you could try Norse in jungle to become a mushroom king, Shogunate in tundra to get fishing bonus and become the sushi king, or just go any nation in savanna with ranching you'll quickly become a meat god this just listing a couple different strats you could possibly take all fun and interesting in their own way. They also recently added apocalyptic game mode which is interesting and so very hard recommend after you get the hang of the basic map food, fertility, and wood are scares plus you can't trade the normal way so you gotta either work with the other players or become super self efficient which is not easy to do. I mostly like trying to meld my city into a perfect level of beauty and efficiency so I'm quite happy about the recent update that added a lot of decorations. But that my favorite feature added a couple updates ago was the fact that you can just demolish you colony in multiplayer, so if your doing bad no stress don't got to restart the entire game for everyone; instead you can just demolish and choose a new location it'll just pause the game while you choose and the game can continue with the rest of the players just having a little break for the bathroom which I've not seen in many other colony games. Does it put you behind sure, but having seen several players catch up and even take top spot I think its a really cool feature that should be normalized in games like this. Before I get into the negatives I do wanna give props to the original developer as this did start as a solo project, the game has had me hooked since its early access launch which at the time Pun was the only dev, the team as far as I know though has increased over the years. Now for the bad starting with A.I they in no way are equal to an actual player or act anything like an actual player; I think this hurts the game most for folks that wanna play something like this single player, which completely understand. I don't think its the worst A.I I've ever dealt with but I do think in no way are they ever equal or real challenge for a experienced player. Higher Difficulties only a couple strats really work, I would like to see more strats become more viable at higher levels. Fishing is really bad at high difficulties unless you go Tundra or Boreal Forest to get the fishing bonus and even than its only good if you combine it with Rice for Sushi; it just does not compare to Mushrooms, Farming wheat to bread or Ranching as far as food production. Next issue children, they are the bane of existence, they don't work for the most part might help carry things from time to time but generally can get to food before adults which often leads to adult deaths from starvation and than the adults make more kids to feel the losses but that just means more children to parasite of the colony leading to a sometimes deadly cycle; this can be avoided but I have had this happen a lot even with my experience so no doubt could see a newer player tripping on this. Combat and war was added to the game and for folks that wanna fight I don't think this is the game for it; the combat is really secondary the games core mechanics and often could be ignored beyond a small garrison if dealing with a certain Nordic A.I random raids. Overall I love this game, I think its a gem for folks that love colony builders but like all things its not for everyone, I think most the negative reviews simply found the game not to be what they wanted and that is completely fair. Like art, games are good or bad only to the observer, for myself I find this game to be good; if you found any of my negatives to be real bad things for you, than don't buy the game, but if you think those things are minor and you love colony games I highly recommend the game. P.S quick note on the games development, it has been slow but again started as a one man project, the team as it grew no doubt had to redo some things and change the direction of other things leading to its decently long development time. But honestly as the game is right now I honestly would be content with, plus from what I've heard the plan is to release one more faction (Greek Inspired) and than 1.0 will be launching which means the game might finally come out of EA within the next year or so; no doubt some folks will scoff at that but oh well I'm content with it and for 20 dollars or less its well worth the price for me at least given the amount of time I've dumped into the game.