Colony Prospector Reviews

While this is a very simple game, if you remember and enjoy some of the old go and explore, find things and get a reward games, this you will enjoy. Basic, simple and easy to play.

It starts out very nice and interesting, but after a while it becomes a bick of a grinding click-fest, as you just go from planet to planet hoping to find statues for the church mission, or traders to get more advanced colonies. Still, for this price, and especially when it's on sale, worth a few hours of casual fun.

General: Rating: E Price: $4.99 Genre: Strategy, Simulation Time played: 12.1 hours You’re job is to find planets that can be colonized. There’s super beings and aliens and AI to contend with and good ol’ hostile environments. Gameplay: 6 You’re one of the few, the elite a Colony Prospector! In this glamorous job you travel around, look at planets, scan the sectors of the planet and then if you can send down a colony pod, more on those later. The chances of your colony prospering vary per planet, but at the time of this writing I had managed to colonize 100+ planets, it doesn’t tell you how many times you failed though. You have to buy claims to prospect areas from planet Earth. The prices and amounts change also the chances of habitable planets, gaia worlds and a bunch of other factors. Then you can jump through a wormhole provided at a small (or large) fee from Earth. The only free wormhole jumps are to Earth. The jump costs vary each time you jump so have to figure the cost of the jumps into how much money you currently have. There is 1 area that has 10 free claims but it is a very hostile area; lots of aliens and people trying to rob you. But once you actually get to a planet your ship will do an initial scan, it will reveal some basic info on the planet, the type, if it has an atmosphere things of that nature. Then you can zoom into the planet and there are 12 sectors and it will give you a break down of Gravity, Climate, and Atmosphere. There’s also Food, Water and Tech Level, these will change depending on what your sector scans reveal. Once you scan the sectors you’ll get a description of what the drone has found. Sometimes food, water or resources (tech level) other times there’s extra payments from earth or other colonies for various things. You have to scan all 12 sectors, there sometimes can be a sector on the moon as well, and then you can decide to try to colonize the planet. Your ship will send down the selected colony pod and you enter hyper sleep (i think the ship supplies the colony power for 50 years or something) and wake up later to see if the colony succeeded, if so you get your payment if not nothing. Depending on the type of colony they will give you extra money and possibly an item to help you in further colonizing. At the time of this writing, I have unlocked all but 2 types of colony pods. The AI pod and Church pods. I won’t tell you how to get the rest, that’s part of the game. Also there’s plenty of ways to make a “detrimental” planet “habitable”, I won’t tell you those either. Part of this game is figuring things out. There’s not much of a tutorial or playing instructions. Story: N/A You are working off some debt or something by finding new planets to colonize. Graphics: 4 They are there, it’s not super exciting, but they aren’t bad either? They fit the game and don’t make it bad or good. Controls: N/A Everything is done through mouse/keyboard. Actually Mouse by itself will work, but you can use the space bar for lots of stuff to, for instance scanning sectors, click on the sector with the mouse, then press spacebar to confirm your selection. That’s really it. Repeatability: 3 At first it was interesting reading the various things that happen when you scan a sector, but then after about 2 hours they start repeating. So by that time i’m just pressing space or clicking the mouse to hurry up and see if i get things I need to colonize the planet. 12 hours in I’ve almost finished finding all the various colony pods and after I finish that not sure if i’ll keep playing. The game is basically a time vampire, though it can be relaxing. Music: 10 The music blends well with the game, I barely noticed it was there and when I did pay attention to me it fit the game very well. Difficulty: 3 Maybe a little bit difficult at the beginning, once you start figuring things out (also not difficult) it becomes easier. Once you’re far enough that you have the money, you can colonize just about any planet using the various items you can find/buy/craft. Multiplayer: N/A Single player game. I suppose someone could watch over your shoulder? Initial Thoughts: 4.99? That’s not bad, I’ll pick it up seems as though it could be fun. Hey i’m starting to get the hang of this and i’ve unlocked some new colony pods, I’m the greatest! Wait it’s been 4 hours? Hmm. Soma Says: This is a.. .decent game. I mean I recommend playing it, but only to people who enjoy repetitive tasks. There’s almost no tutorial, no info online due to the game coming out only a few weeks ago. There are a few bugs, none are game breaking but they are a little annoying. And after a while I did get annoyed with clicking then spacebar over and over. Sometimes when jumping to a new planet you’ll get attacked by aliens or AI or even humans. At first I couldn’t even damage them and realized that all you have to do is just jump away. A few will block wormhole travel and you have to attack them until you can jump away or destroy them. Here’s where it gets wonky, I thought for sure i would die, my shields are gone they attack again and now i’m at -61% of Hull. Wait. -61? Is.. is that possible? Apparently so. I let them continue attacking me got several of my sections (Hull, Engines, Drone Launcher) to a negative number. Finally jumped away. I’m still not dead? Okay… Then used repair kits. Yup have to repair -61 to get to 0, then 100 more to full repair them. Again not game breaking flaws/bugs but just odd. Also let’s say you use a 10% repair to fix something at 50%. After it’s done i’m at 67%, I’m not genius but that doesn’t add up. Oh and sometimes you’ll find things through scanning like extra food or an extra payment from earth and it will lower the total payment or Food readout. All in all, it’s a good time waster, but very, very repetitive. Some might even call it tedious. If you enjoyed the review please check out my curator page ---> https://store.steampowered.com/curator/28849369/ Update: Recently tried to play this again. It looks like they have added a tutorial which explains how the system works and such. However the game is still very very repetitive. Still worth checking out and trying if you're into that type of thing.

A cool little concept of a game, excellent graphics given the resources used to create it. A challenging but not complicated one. Though most would see every planet design within 3 hours of gameplay. Only knock I have against it is simply could add more random events like asteroid fields. Rating: 7/10

It is playable, but like others mentioned, it is a clicking fest. Improvement to the interface is required to reduce the amount of clicking and increase the amount of playing. For example, instead of buring engineering items, why not also include a "repair all" button on earth? Your ship should automatically equip a colony module if it has none when it reaches Earth. It would save at least one click... and in this game, every less clicks is a plus. I would remove the random hostile encounters or at least give use several ways to avoid the encounter or it becoming hostile (with no randomness on success please). It is also shallow. There is not much to do other than clicking. The designer needs to add more muscle to his game. There are tons of English mistakes and OBVIOUS typos. The designer/tranductor needs to reread himself. I have played better games that were free on Kongregate, so seeing this at its current price is something I would not recommand paying. Until the game has more muscle, the linguistic mistakes corrected and the interface improved, I cannot recommand this game.

This game is soooo cool. I absolutely love the concept and its very more-ish....just going to finish this batch of claims, then I'll go to sleep, for real this time..... As I work through the discoveries and quests, I find myself wanting more. More of this, more pods more civilizations more planet things...more, please. Basically, you find planets, and scan them, and if suitable, fix them up and plonk colonists on it, and are rewarded with monies to buy things - things that improve your ship, make fixing up planets easier, or allow you to craft various things...so you can go colonize more planets. The click click click does get a bit of repetitive after you've made your first 50 colonies or so, perhaps a suggestion to discover tech to upgrade scanning drones that can do multiple sectors at once is an idea ...earn your convenience! Same thing with the using many 5-10% kits to repair really damaged infrastructure, a way to do this in build would be a nice quality of life feature. I'd like to see more bookmarks too, perhaps a way to rename planets (though the names some of them come up with are hilarious). So yeah, some convenience things aren't there, but its still really fun. I'd absolutely buy a sequel or expansion to this. Please make more.

Relaxing, easy game. Good idea, but gets repetitive fast. Basically visit a planet, scan, decide if it is worthwhile to colonise, if so, terraform and colonise. Somewhat challenge to obtain different colony types, nothing to see after that. Recommendable for the price.

For the price, this is pretty cool! The UI leaves something to be desired in spots. Like for some reason you have to hit enter on the keyboard to confirm engineering when everything else can be done with the mouse. And there's some typos here and there. And the tutorial doesn't really explain everything, like that you have to unlock the other colony pods, I only stumbled across that in the quests screen. It feels a little early-access-ish, but it just came out and maybe there will be some polishing patches. BUT, for 5 bucks (three on sale right now), it's a really chill little "wander around the universe" game where you scan planets and maybe terraform them a little, and put down colonies to make more money to buy more stuff. And then occasionally you can like, use something called THE WORLDTAKER to basically a kill a sentinet planet and use its neuro network to build a really good colony and that kind of makes me feel like a monster, and that's fun. And I guess I could bomb the colonies that the other alien races set up if I ever find the stuff to do that? If this was priced higher, it would be hard to recommend, to be honest, but there's a lot there for cheap and so far it's been a really relaxing little game to chill out with while I watch tv or listen to a podcast. So, thumbs up.

[h1]A fun game, not without flaws though[/h1] Colony Prospector is a game that just popped into my discovery cue today. Completely unexpected, but given the low price and frankly because the premise intrigued me, I bought it. With 2+ hours on the clock, I reckon I can give some impression of what it is and why you should buy it, or not. Emphasis on this choice, since you'll either love the game or loathe it. The premise in a nutshell is that you are a titular colony prospector, aka a guy/girl who visits unexplored worlds, terraforms them and then plunks down a colony module. 50 years of hypersleep later, you'll either have a functional colony, or a smoking hole in the planet. Note that you only get paid if the colony is successful, and that the amount of pay that you get is dependent on a number of factors as explained later on. Sometimes you need to deal with unfriendly natives, sometimes with alien AI's or space pirates. Kind of random, though the further away you stray from earth, the more likely they will appear. [h1]Terraforming and on-planet discoveries[/h1] Every planet you visit can be a Gas Giant (uninhabitable), Rock world (hard to make hospitable) or an Atmospheric planet (Yay colonies). When you get to one, your ship will scan it and give you an indication of how (in)hospitable the world is, if some specific hazard is present and so on. A grid with several locations (Gas clouds for Gas Giants) will show and you need to send a drone to each (only for habitable worlds) to explore them. Sometimes you'll find needed things such as water, food and resources, sometimes nothing. Sometimes you will discover a hazard, or a boon that directly affects how habitable the world is. Sometimes you'll find ruins of lost civilizations and get sellable artifacts, a free terraforming unit or useable items. Sometimes you'll find an ancient being who may or may not help you (some find colonists tasty) or a rival colonising the world. AI colonists need to be hacked or nuked fyi, and the hacking is difficult. After checking all locations (moons optional, need to select them), you can get a good idea of how habitable a world is, as is. Then you need to decide if its worth chancing it (higher is better), or if you need to expend some items to boost the living conditions. These can be climate-changing items (2 grades), items that beget water from the atmosphere (plural), gravity adjusting ones and so on. My advice is to go for 95%, don't waste items after that. Then choose which type of colony to place. Regular colonies and some others allow you to purchase resources after while Prison colonies just give you a bit more money and an injunction to skedaddle. Rince and repeat. [h1]The engine, graphics and sounds[/h1] Okay, colour me impressed. Thoroughly. You'd hardly notice, but Colony Prospector runs on RPGMaker MV apparently, The save system, some sound effects and parts of the graphics are unmistakably RPGM material, but the game plays like a '90's space/exploration game with mouse functionality. The planets are custom graphics, as is the ship's bridge. But the locations and later colonies on worlds are largely (modified) town/castle/etc. sprites. And the colony leader heads definitely were made in MV. If you've ever fiddled with any RPGM engine you'll spot it too. Still, the game doesn't feel like a standard jrpg/scifi. Rather, the closest I can come is a mix between Utopia and Uncharted Waters 2: You have graphics, resources and the lot, but most of action and such is in the descriptions. Yes, text based, thus requiring you to use your imagination when the giant eyeball monster asks to be left alone. Aside from slow animations when using an item, the game runs smoothly and the music is nice. Also, you can save a number of colonies for revisiting them later. [h1]Is it great then?[/h1] Can't end the review without addressing the less fun aspects, as this game does have them. Frankly, I reckon most of these could be fixed, if the team makes the effort. But I can get why they'd turn some folks off, so here you have them: Frankly, the medieval and weird stock materials in MV do not lend themselves well to the scifi setting and should be replaced. As mentioned, some soundeffects are stock as well and don't fit either. The game is pushing the engine hard, I'm not sure how much more can be added in terms of plugins. While there is a good number of planetary backdrops, you will see them all in 2 hours.A lot of events/locations are repeated across several dozen worlds and it was by blind luck that I figured out the little orb meant a clickable moon can be explored. A manual is definitely missing with this game, making it a bit hard on new players to grasp everything. Again, the moons. Not a clue till I clicked it. Lastly, there's a ton of textual errors present. Ben instead of been, hyperslep and so on. [h1]Final Verdict[/h1] [b]Pro's[/b] [list] [*]Nearly unrecognisable as an RPGMaker MV game [*]Unique planets to explore [*]Nice music [*]1990's charm [*]Definitely prods the imagination [*]Great potential [/list] [b]Cons[/b] [list] [*]Stock materials don't mesh with the rest [*]Repeated scenes [*]Textual errors [*]Needs a manual, pronto! [*]Some parts of the UI are very, very small. I may need glasses, but gimme a break plz. [/list] [b]Verdict[/b] In a nutshell, I'll have to call this a gem in the rough. It shows what can be done with RPGM MV and ingenuity and it definitely ticks the LIKE box with me. It will need some polishing though, as some aspects detract from what it otherwise a great game. No, it's not Elite: Dangerous, it doesn't pretend to be. It just is a very enjoyable little game and definitely worth the asking price. As is. If they polish it, who knows?

- Fly to a new planet - Click through all 12 fields on the planet. You can choose to ignore that but I can't find any reason for that except to avoid clicking which you have to do a lot (and I see no justification for so much clicking). - If you really want this planet you can throw in a few tech items to terraform it to good conditions and try to colonize it. - Gather your reward after colonization and move on to the next planet. - Occasionally be attacked by space pirates which you can't defeat, just retreat after taking much damage. - Add tons of clicking in all windows on top of that. That's basically the whole game. I really like the idea and I'd really love to play it more but it's too repetitive and I have too little influence on what happens during the game. Very nice event descriptions but I quickly became bored to read them. Ok-ish but definitely not the best UI on top of that.