I've been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don't mind so much the fact that it's different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I'm bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
You looking into Paralives? I've enjoyed it in early access.
Weird, I got Paralives on launch and asked for a refund after 45min because it was nearly unplayable with bugs for me. It took ages to load, I couldn't edit my para because the sliders were covered by something, and I couldn't edit the buildings without the editor just deleting random stuff. My para also refused to do anything because she had low fun, but a bug was keeping her from filling her fun needs.
I might check it out again if it ever leaves early access, but I don't typically have high hopes for early access games.
Yeah I mean, they were pretty clear that there were gonna be bugs, but I can understand the frustration. For me it's about building houses, and playing as your character is just a minor annoyance needed to get more money. XD
I also had bugs on launch, but only a few and they were minor. Software is weird.
Yeah, they were pretty clear about having bugs, but at that price point, I was expecting a game I could actually play with some bugs on the side, and not a game that was broken at every turn. It seriously soured me on the whole thing.
I couldn't even build houses because the editor kept randomly deleting stuff, so I tried reloading an earlier save, but the roof and some walls vanished and parts of the house were no longer "inside" the house somehow?
Gave up on Sims too, I don't even care enough to pirate it no matter how trivial it is at this point.
I got Paralives. It's still very early, but it could get somewhere.
For now my main problem with it is it's very light on autonomous simulation. And though I like the idea of storytellers, at this point they barely do anything. I want freaking chaos in my game, and it should be more varied than just "Hey, what if sudden crush on that random person?".
The cards and progression system are good ideas though. Again, they need nore variety.