The Next World Reviews

I liked the characters and the story, but no matter what my game kept ending due to lack of resources. It's engaging at first how the game leaves you on a razors edge of balancing resoures, supplies & colonist lives, but eventually I couldn't scavenge much from the crash or find anything with my rovers. Slow inevitable death creeped in turn after turn as supplies and resources went to zero. I get that I must be doing something wrong but the game doesn't offer any help or seem to care. I want to like this game but I'm tired of banging my head against it.

(Edit. played without the expansion) An nice sci-fi story with realistic details, decent dialogue and some tense moments. 5ish hour to play through it. It's let down slightly by the management side of the game, which felt promising but could have been balanced better and fleshed-out more. If you make the wrong decision early, you will have to reset. Once you figure out the formula and get a few buildings, managing stats like supplies become redundant. (Edit. I just noticed that they have a 5 dollar expansion that reworks colony management and no doubt addresses the concerns I brought up... It's good that they fixed this stuff, but I don't think its right for them to charge for it, considering that colony management was touted as a core part of the base game, but was very threadbare. Since I know how the storyline goes, I don't feel like shelling out more money to play a more polished version...shame).

Can't recommend it as achievements no longer seem to be working, which was the only reason I went BACK to the game after finishing it a few years ago.

It bills itself as a colony management sort of game, and while there is some of that early on, and a considerable hurdle to overcome initially. It quickly becomes clear that this game is primarily a visual novel. A visual novel with a lot of ways to die mind you, but a visual novel nonetheless. Which is not to say it is not more fun than that genre deserves to be, the story is interesting and I already want to go back and explore certain other options associated with the end game. For the price you get a fun and intriguing sci-fi story with some sadly underutilized characters.

I can describe most of the features of this game with the word 'solid', from the writing, to the gameplay, to the characters and coding. None of these things truly stand out as exceptional, but together they produce a game that I found both addictive and memorable. While it lasted at least, be aware that this game is 'very' short. While that time is lengthened a far bit by the game being pretty hard (in a good way), the story lasts about four hours. Those hours are certainly good ones however, and the art and moral choices both stand out as being a cut above most offerings at this price. Together, this game is very easy to recommend.

Here is a game that throws you into a hostile environment, where your choices alone will dictate whether or not you and your people live to see another day. If you think that sounds unforgiving, you'd be right. The mantle of leadership will quickly wear heavy on your shoulders, as the gravity of your situation becomes clear. Can you make the decisions no one else will? Can you lie to people, telling them everything will be alright, knowing fully well it will not. Can you send dozens of people to their deaths so that many more may have a chance at life? In the end, what is more important to you? Their survival or your humanity? Aside from a thoroughly enjoyable game, this product gets a high recommendation from me because of the dev's outstanding willingness to see their product succeed. Going so far as to contact me and personally assist in resolving a major, in-game issue I experienced.

I like the concept but the game is filled with bugs, one of which prevents me from finishing the story so can't recommend. Too bad.

The base building/management sections of the game are serviceable and the decent story disguises the simplicity of the game mechanics fairly well at first. But after a while you start to notice that how well you do in the management/base building section doesn't really affect the story. Also the story kind of lost momentum in the third act. Was hoping for a game that captured the beauty of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but replaced war/diplomacy with exploration and discovery and an intrigueing narrative. Instead it's a (very good) visual novel with a minigame. Would still recommend as I enjoyed myself though.

This game plays like a early access title. Much of the game feels unfinished or needs more balancing. Fear the RNG because it doesn't take much in the first week of the game for a single disaster to force a roll back. Additionally the mechanics of the game such as health or morale are completly hidden, you have no idea how much harm reduced rations will cause or what direction your popularity is going. The popularity is especially important to know if you decided to allow elections, I had good morale but had no idea if this meant that I would be elected over my rival. Overall, don't buy now. There is a lot of potential but the game needs to be finished first.

Let me start by saying there is a lot to like about this game. I like how challengin it is early on and how careful you have to be in how you manage your colony. And the story is very interesting, unfortunately you have basically no say in how it really unfolds. I didn't think this was the case at first. Many of the descisions you make clearly effect things like morale, the health of your colony, and so on. But for me part of the fun of a game like this is seeing what happens when you go back and make different choices. My first game I lost pretty early on. The second time, I make it to the end and won. So I went back to play a third game, to see what paths the different choices led me down. And this is where the game let me down. As a heads up there are some spoilers for the early game here. One of the early decisions in the game is wether or not to risk getting a reactor, which you need to power your base, but is damaged and leaking radiation. Having won the game once, I wanted to challenge myself, and see how long I could keep the base going without getting the reactor. I was enjoying the challange, until a story event happened. An explosion in the reactor I didn't have. The worse part is the mechanic of the game was clearly going to force me to either go get the reactor, or loose. But having a scripted event happen, that didn't reflect the current state of my base. And suddenly it was no longer fun. All the decision I had made on my first play through no longer felt like they mattered. The game presents you with several moral choices, ask you to decide wether you will turn your security force into a secret police that crushes any dissent, or try and retain a semblance of law and order. And although you often see your choices reflected in the systems of the game, the moral level for instance, if it's not reflected in the actual story you are told, what's the point? The characters are intereseting, and the early game seems to promise the chance to learn more about them. When I won the first time I assumed that I had just missed opportunities to learn more about their past, and to trigger other story lines. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But I can't say I'm interested in going back anymore because now I'm spending lots of time clicking through lots of text I've already read, in hopes of find another story line. It's a wordy game, and that's not a bad thing. But if you're going to ask your player to read that much and offer all these choices, then they need to be able to effect the narative. Otherwise, you should just make a graphic novel, and not bother trying to make it a game.