Zen World Reviews

It's not a "Awesome little ZEN QUICK game" like advertised. It's nothing like Dorfromantik It's a VERY COMPLEX game, took me 20+ hours of game play to clear the "training" levels, (Campaign 1 with 4 levels) and now at 100+ hours in I'm still stuck on Campaign # 2 at level 4 out of 10+ levels. It's very tedious and if you just quick/Zen play you will fail 100% of the time, you must look at each options for each tile to try to maximise their use for the most productive way to extend toward area's you need to reach while LUCK dictate if you will be able to do so or not. QUICK Conclusion : If you like a relaxing quick light Zen tiles placement game as advertised, this is NOT the game for you, each tiles placement must be done extremely strategically. It's more similar to games like FTL, Weird Worlds and Out There (that require a 100% strategics play, without any mistake), while luck can still break your "perfectly played" game. Also daily challenges with 2 attempt, reward memory and time invested over skills, requiring you to sink hours daily, I'll play Sid Meier's Civilization V and VI and Total War instead with that much time instead of this "quick" little game.

Pretty much unplayable, poor tutorial and lack of balance make this game frustrating instead of fun. Minimalist interface taken to the extreme to the point of lacking information. This was not very zen for me!

Currently feels very incomplete and has no real difficulty scale. Levels in the campaign go from the tutorial to hellishly hard immediately, and the [b]second non-tutorial level[/b] in the campaign requires nigh perfect RNG to even get CLOSE to finishing it.

Might only be in alpha, but it's still very playable. It's a quick little game, fun to pick up and then drop again for a quick 30min round. Engaging without addicting, and relaxing without being mindless. Only the RNG and some slightly confusing mechanics (how to bridges work exactly?) can make it frustrating. It reminds me a lot of Islanders in being a minimalist builder game, but with an extra layer of strategy. The basic premise is very similar to Dorfomatic, but this game is actually fun. It's also similar to mini-metro and mini-motorways in being a puzzle game where you have to cope with what the environment throws at you. As it's an alpha, I'll also throw out some recommendations: 1) Make bridges slightly longer distance, at the moment they're rather useless IMO. 2) Add a toggable grid to show where the edges of the hexes are. It's very hard to see if a patch of grass is the centre of a hex where I can actually build something or if its a useless edge (same thing when looking for an appropriate spot for a coastal town on a new landmass) 3) The ability to flood a region (opposite of land reclamation) would be fun and in theme. Or a canal that acts as the opposite of a bridge. 4) Rewards for reaching score thresholds should be bigger. At the moment they're less worthwhile than most boxes on the map. It's a shame, because it rewards spidery expansion over making a complete and pretty world. 5) The roads on the map and the ships moving around look really cool. I think it would be nice to make them more functional too. If you could build a market on a tile with roads, and get points for every town connected to that road network. Something similar on the sea could give points for every town in range of it. 6) There's a serious shortage of tools available compared to flags for new towns. Either make tools easier to find, or give the player the ability to "pause" flags so that tools can be conserved for when they're really needed. 7) Universal tiles are rather weak, because they're so random. Giving the player the choice for whether the centre of the tile should be grass, forest or sea would make them useful. At the moment they're just a very weak version of the reveal neighbours marker. 8) I'd be tempted to say that scouts should have reduced range on land an increased range on sea. Make more sense from a "realism" point of view, and would also be more balanced. Apologies for being a back-seat-designer, just my two cents!

Very fun to play. It's like Settlers of Catain, but more relaxing. Very simple to start but is has complexes that make it a mini strategy game.

There are a lot of problems I have personally found with this game that hold it back from being anything other than annoying to sit through. To start with, if you're playing in the zen mode with infinite tiles you will find that you do not get nearly enough camps to deal with how frequently barbarians spawn in. There's no way to prioritize which towns get built which makes it unnecessarily hard to achieve the goals on levels where you have to build towns in certain spots because you just don't have enough tools. In all, the resources you get are far too limited and if you could actually have infinite camps and other tools within the zen mode that would improve that game mode a lot, also, maybe add an undo button.

Zen World is a fun chill puzzle game in the vein of Dorfromantik and Mini Metro / Motorways. At its core its a game where you expand the map with tiles, get boxes with upgrades and resources to expand more, and in the end you get a highscore. It feels like a very basic version of Civilization that's drizzled down to its most essential elements (that being said I haven't played a lot of Civilization. This is NOT a 4X game, this is a puzzle game). The developer has stated that in time there will be full controller support, more tile types, a mid-game save/load system, multiplayer (coop and versus), custom game mode with modifiers, better visual & effects and a lot more. All in all I feel there's already enough game and fun here for the price, and it will only get better with time and updates, that's a solid recommend from me.

not a bad game, and has potential. tho, it misses out on the two features it sells itself as (relaxing and strategic) for the same reason RNG. there is not foretelling what your next tile will be, as such it isnt very strategic. even tetris gives you a little heads up. pulling several useless tiles in a row quickly detracts from the zen aspect and leaves you just saying f-it and exiting the game. even the town markers your meeples decide to build at are random. like, no... i NEEDED you to build this town, but you went n built one at the most useless marker.i think it could be good, but at this point, id hold off.

After seeing a streamer play this and him reviewing it as a fun little game I thought I would give it a crack, I played many hours on Islanders and other games in the same kind of genera so thought why not its cheap enough. Sadly this game is not for me, its call Zen World.... however frustration simulator is probably more accurate. I spent 2 hours on a tutorial level because the tiles were wrong and then flew through the next 2 maps in about 4 mins.... This game is between completely skill-less and sheer dumb luck.. just Random number generated heavy, honestly it feels like the kind of game that should just have “auto play” on a mobile phone as it requires little/no real input or planning or skill. The noise when you pick up a box doesn't fit the game and is irritating, The only song on the game seems to be on a 5 min loop and isn't good enough really for that level of repeat, The challenges are not challenging they are simply time consuming until luck rolls in, Its a cute simple little game and if you had a long day of work and are not bothered about a game being completely mindless then this is ok... but with no skill cap involved personally I would advise Islanders... better game that involves some level of thought.

Sadly, despite paying for the game with money, they expect you to pay again by forcing you to agree to them gathering data. You can´t play otherwise, not even exit the game without alt-f4, because the only button they deign to put under their notice of this is "I agree"