Mission Control: NanoMech Reviews

Like most sales pitch videos on Steam, Mission Control: NanoMech's avoids showing much gameplay. The tags indicate it is an action RPG. It has some RPG aspects, but it's really closer to a tower defense game. Specifically, it is an active tower defense game, where you play a character that runs around the map placing towers and can be killed by the waves of enemies you have to destroy before moving on. The educational aspect of the game is very poorly integrated with the gameplay. The experience is similar to going to a university class on nanotechnology, and half paying attention while playing games on your cell phone. The tower defense portion of the game is almost completely independent of the nanotech-related content. The nanotech portion of the game is handled much like a presentation, with some minimal interactivity. Completing some task in the tower defense portion starts the nanotech portion, then completing that gives you something new to use in the tower defense portion (e.g. a new tower, armor, or direct attack). Performing well in the game does not require you to understand anything about nanotech. From a game design standpoint, this is a bad choice. A puzzle game like [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/213390/]Atooms to Moolecules[/url], [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/290260/]Sokobond[/url], or [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/92800/]SpaceChem[/url] would have been a much more natural fit for the subject matter. Ignoring the educational aspect and evaluating it purely as an active tower defense game, it's bad. There are so few places you can place towers, and so few towers to choose from, that there is usually only one way to complete an area, and it is usually obvious (typically filling all slots with the most powerful tower you have, starting near the enemy spawn points). The RPG aspects are very shallow, with no significant choice in your build. Other bad design decisions abound, like the inclusion of walls that take time to disable, while providing no challenge, only increasing the time it takes to complete the game, and the amount of boredom and frustration. Currently (November 2015) there is less than 3 hours of content. That's counting the time taken by being required to rifle through lots of crates and wait for the timer on lots of walls to tick down to zero. I'm not sure how NASA, the NSF, and Serious Play feel about having their names associated with this product, but if I were them, I'd be concerned. There has been no news on or updates to this game since I purchased it almost a year ago, in December 2014, despite it being in Early Access. It would appear the author has taken the money and run; not just the gamers' money, but the NSF's as well. Please do not purchase this game.