INSOMNIA: The Ark

Here's the rub, this game is really interesting, the premise is interesting, the combat is difficult and the art design is appealing. However, I simply can't recommend this game in it's current form: Pros: - combat is difficult, if you go off on your own with the basic armor you're going to be trying again and again. It's just really really hard because your defenses are paper thin, the resources you can use to heal don't heal for much, especially at the start because you don't get anything - guns jamming and repairing can potentially feel immersive - art style - sound design - story is interesting Cons: - combat is too difficult. You barely do damage to the enemies and they rip through you like you're made of paper. - no cover system. crouch behind some chest high barrels? *gets shot in the head by the enemies because your head pokes out* NEAT - guns jamming and repairing is too tedious, in reality. I'll take less immersion over the current system. Some weapons you can't repair. - buggy, this is version 1.7, it's been in development for 8+ years by a team that has never made a videogame before this, and it shows. Sure, lots of hard work has been put in, but at the end of the day it's the end result of a product that matters, not the blood sweat and tears put in it. - what kind of bugs? So far, nothing "showstopping" but for example, at the beginning of the game where you pick your class, you get an achievement. This achievement doesn't pop in steam, but it shows up in the game. There is another achievement to the left of it, whatever it is, that shows up. However, it tells you you have a new achievement on your HUD. You can't dismiss it. If you relaunch the game to forcibly clear it, there is a missing achievement marker in that spot now, with a blank tooltip icon, and it acts like it's a skill point slot, but it's not, and you can't interact with it. But at least the HUD notification is gone! 🤷‍♂️ - other various bugs, there's a scene where the game's titlecard/cutscene is going to play, but it loads in and shows the character suddenly somewhere else without an appropriate transition between the two elements, and after a few seconds plays the title card - Loads of loading screens, install this to an SSD or NVME drive - subtitles above npcs are too small at 1440p - quests are unclear, there is two quests that instead of fixing the quests or improving them, the devs provided a PDF file with pictures on how to complete it. Excuse me, but no. That effort...

Why did I give it 4* if I don't recommend it? I really like the concept. The story is well written and interesting, the core gameplay is serviceable, and the graphics are good enough. Everything is there to make a great game. The only issue I have with the gameplay itself is that equipment wears out WAY too fast, armor (especially shields) can end up broken after a single fight and weapons aren't too much more durable. Unfortunately there are gamebreaking bugs. Most notably quests and even entire areas regularly glitch out including vanishing NPCs. If an area glitches and you don't notice it then it's permanently broken and you will need to reload from an earlier save and redo everything from between when it glitched to when you noticed it. To put it in perspective I did not even know there were companion characters because after I did their quests they glitched out and disappeared. The devs have stated they plan on fixing it if they can but so far nothing has surfaced on that front. Probably worth it if you can pick it up for like $1.

fun and challenging isometric rpg soulsish cool story

Great Game, Has some issues but a unique game Ideas and grand story. Enjoyed it a lot even if the progession is sometimes off and you are hadned very hard missions folowing the story.

Aweful terrible UI and Movement systmes Lovely enviroments and models

Good idea, bad implementation. Outdated graphics feels like from 2010. Extremely inconvenient shooting control.Everything is linear. There are much better games than suffering in this game.

Didn't get a chance to play it yet, but I was told I can win a prize for writing a review.

The game could have been great, but bugs and some questionable design decisions kind of ruin it. Still, there is fun to be had and for 1€ it's hard to go wrong.