Adapt or Perish Reviews

"Oh hey, what if I tried doing this" rinse and repeat and now have a list of units to chose from because I kept finding holes in my current catalogue, thousands of wasted resources, and several hours clocked in on the first day I got this game. Seriously though, the ability to go from huge, cheap swarms, to weird flower towers that explode huge sections of the map is a joy

Needs a bit of polish visually and in the UI, but, otherwise, this game's mechanics are frickin' golden. Feels amazing to play, got trapped in it for 6 hours today. Awesome spin on an RTS.

I’m not very good at RTS games, so I don’t spend a lot of time on them. But I love the dev’s other games so I gave this a go. First, it seems like a new twist as there are no fixed units to start with. You create your units, balancing various types of attack an defense as well as movement. Do you make a lot of cheap, fast attackers, or a few slow, impregnable tanks? Why not some of both, and specialty units to round out your army? (Spoiler: it kicked my a**). One thing I want to point out is that I played this in VR and this added a lot to the experience. It’s very visceral when you are embedded in a translucent game field, watching enemies attack from your units’ POV. I loved some of the details the dev lavished on the VR experience. If you are an RTS fan definitely check this title out!

Adapt or Perish has that addictive game play that people also find in games like Factorio for the same reason. I've already put in over 50 hours and i'm still learning new things i can do............then fix them to make them better......then fix them. This game lets you be strategic not just on the field but in the DNA engineering department as well. Other RTS games have a fixed set of assets to use that use attributes others have decided for you are useful but not in Adapt or Perish. This game lets you really get into the true strategy of war and tactics by letting you create units, buildings and more real time in game match so you can design dynamically if you lack something you need. You can push your designs to their limits and see if they have what it takes to keep you alive and searching for Overseers. The farther you push out the harder it gets so using tactics come into play constantly and pushes your abilities to hone a better faction. Playing the game it feels a lot like back in the day playing Total Annihilation (that may be due to how i'm building the current faction i'm using, i also plan on making a mobile command style faction like Kane etc. to see how it works out) although its not really an early game "rush" type of game, it can be if your good enough. Overseers don't like it and usually better to have defenses going up in the early game or your going to get crushed once you make them mad. The AI is better than a lot of games that have been around for a while now and has a style of its own. Sometimes the AI almost has character, it will make you laugh, surprise you, it WILL tick you off with their dynamic tactics and designs, they can be challenging and make you think as well as wish....as in "i wish i did that before....." and "i wish i didn't ...." There is a turn-based tactical game quality to the game when pushing outward in search of prey. The unique maps you generate hold their own topographical challenges and once again your tactics need to Adapt or Perish. Multiplayer and more DNA options would be EPIC, more list and namespace supports would be sweet also and a few other things but over all this is a solid classic RTS style game that will get endless playtime and a must for RTS fan libraries.

My 20+ hours are mostly on a single map, which I only stopped playing after I successfully hit a unit cap. Well, not literally a unit cap, but at some point, even this clever little game can't handle the sheer number of units I produced, and I managed to crash it. I asked for it, though. No question. I was basically ONLY using units that convert enemies into drones, so my unit count was a bit... exponential. I'm not even mad. :) There are a number of viable strategies, so there's probably some replay value, but you'll have to try not to fall into the same paths you'd used earlier, as there is very little to force you to do anything a particular way. If you need a game to encourage you, and reward you for following a specific path to "victory", this ain't it. If, however, you like a good sandbox game with thousands of units (as I do), then it's a good time. It's indie as hell, and I love it.

This game is awsome, but super hard. I have been into RTS sense starcraft 1 was released. I have no hope of "winning". It feels like the first proper RTS + Sandbox in that you can build anything you want in unites. Not to mention everything is funner in VR.

Interesting thought provoking game. It really demands creativity before any level of success can be had. Definitely pushing the rts genre in a new direction. Will write more once I have more hours into it.

So far i have really enjoyed Adapt or Perish. Its a unique style of RTS i wish there was more of, the only thing i could compare it to is warzone2100. The ability to design your units and adapt them to the situation as needed is great, the AI seems to utilize this well. I have found several times if i spam a lot of one unit, the AI will employ a counter to that, forcing you to think on your feet. Out of all of Phr00t's games, i would say this is quickly becoming my favourite.

Finally, a good RTS for VR! The ability to create custom units is a fresh idea that has been implemented perfectly in this game. It adds an enjoyable new twist to the usual RTS play style. It also ticks all the boxes for a good RTS like, challenging adaptive AI and the ability to create huge armies ( No build cap !!! ) , Endless maps and small side missions like saving a captured friendly unit from behind enemy lines. Being able to quit at any time and come back exactly where you left things is great and you can also pause the action in game if you feel the need. All in all i would say this is an amazing RTS game that ticks all the boxes and more. At this price point it's a must have.

Adapt or Perish: create your very own unique units to progress in an endless strategic battle against procedurally generated AI. Learn, adapt, evolve or perish. As much as I want to love this game, it is - despite all the features - very shallow. Yes you can select between literally thousands of possibilities for your units, but in the end only a few selections actually matter. I.E. not going for maximum range will always put you as a disadvantage, because out-ranging the enemy is always guaranteeing success. Several options sound great, but are destroyed by the adapting AI. While it is on the one hand great to see that the AI is not stupidly repeating the same mistake over and over, this also renders certain features completely useless. Cloaking is one of the best examples: the enemy will just equip detectors rendering your cloak useless. Turrets are another example: no matter how many you build and how you build them, eventually they will always be overrun by the endless AI units. In the end having mobile high-range, high-damage units that turn shredded enemies into resources is the absolute mandatory choice. If those boxes are checked, the game suddenly becomes surprisingly easy, because everything just dies. At this point you realize that the game is a very simplistic "Kill the next boss" system, that contains two forms of enemies: those that die instantaneously and those that you cannot kill because they have damage reflection. Fun game, but in it's current state there is zero replay value.