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City 20 is the new title to come across my desk and plausibly one I have the most mixed feelings about in a while . While my experience with this Early Access title left something to be want , I can see that it has a lot of clear potential and a bright future tense for a corner audience as it raise throughout its Early Access development .
City 20 is an undetermined - world survival of the fittest secret plan urge on by Kenshi and Rimworld . The former intelligibly toy a huge persona in the secret plan ’s inspiration , and the law of similarity are now seeable as you start the game .
After a inadequate , very stylistic cutscene explaining where you are , the game spread out up into an candid - world , top - down survival biz without direction . I really mean without management . There are no pursuance pointing you towards any landmarks , no real object collapse to you by the starting NPC , and really no restrictions preserve you from heading out into the world . You are told that any food you eat in your irregular client lodgement must be replaced and that you have three mean solar day to bide there before getting kicked out .
What you do next is establish utterly on your own priorities , with the presumption that not thirst to death , becoming dehydrated or losing a seat to sleep will be at the forefront of your mind as you head out into the nuclear ruins of City 20 .
While the gameplay is incredibly similar to Kenshi , down to the free - flesh gameplay , the crafting and basebuilding , City 20 stands out in a few ways . Namely , gathering plays a much bombastic role in this plot than in Kenshi , with trees and other natural resources dotting the landscape painting compared to the barren wasteland that is Kenshi . In fact , the game even allows you to deconstruct most of the props around the mathematical function , acquiring even more resources than before . It is secure to say that an industrious histrion will have a little base and farm up and campaign far sooner in City 20 than they would in Kenshi , should they get the hang of the ropes ahead of time on ; a passably hard challenge but one I ’ll go into more point about afterward .
The second gravid difference , obviously , is the scope . While both are revelatory , the desert setting of Kenshi is swap out for the laying waste of a atomic disaster somewhere in Eastern Europe . The circumstance is a singular one for the genre and one that fans of game like Stalker and Tarkov will immediately feel at dwelling house in .
The plot also arguably focuses more on interact with Nonproliferation Center than Kenshi does , with more unique dialog across the game ’s inhabitants . Since City 20 is a comparatively small shoes , you are not going to find NPCs who are unknown or generic , with each one instead experience unique choice morsel about the traditional knowledge or their lives to share with you when you talk to them .
I specifically really like the secret plan ’s court system . When you commit a criminal offence in any of the tight - pucker communities of City 20 , you will be reported and expected to pay a fine at the courthouse of the respective sect that reported you . It ’s a small system now , but I ’m excited to see how this flourish as the game progresses .
City 20 , in its current state of matter , suffers from an even worse version of an “ issue ” ( arguably a lineament by some , include myself ) that Kenshi also suffer from ; the complete lack of direction that comes with the secret plan ’s open nature can also be a supreme hurt to new players attempting to learn the secret plan .
It took me a longsighted clock time to realize that I could , in fact , craft items from my inventory , which I only discovered thanks to the ready to hand review guide provided by the developer . It took me even longer to image out how to assemble all of the miscellaneous material need to craft my start recipe , with plant fibre / sess being the hardest of all to picture out .
This issue is partially due to my own incompetence , but I can perfectly see City 20 being a frustrating game to start for many histrion , especially those fresh to the genre .
While I do n’t think a rigorous , hand - holding tutorial is really necessary to address this job , I opine stride can certainly be make to make succeeding versions of the game more approachable .
An easy first step would be meliorate the game ’s UI , which is , frankly , not very good in its current state . The developers were clearly going for a sort of gritty , grungy , low - technical school coming to the UI to match the secret plan ’s setting , but I frankly just find it hard to navigate and even hard to read . I ’m not a graphic designer , though , so if you asked me why it did n’t appeal to my middle , I could n’t tell you . I struggled to realise what the ikon for the crafting carte was , even though , in hindsight , a hand holding a twist should have been obvious to me . In the moment , it but failed to jump out at me .
I think the map could also use some serious improvement . Despite the game using a naturalistic , co-ordinate - base map piloting system and even providing you with a HUD that exhibit your current coordinate , I come up myself getting lost frequently . A big part of this is due to the fact that you ca n’t navigate the function HUD beyond your immediate environment , which I merely do n’t understand . When you look at a newspaper map , which is what the map screen is plan to be , you are n’t force to fight the paper up against your face and only drag it along as you travel .
Beyond approachability , City 20 suffers from a lack of polish that could jolly be have a bun in the oven from any game figure Early Access . I occasionally encountered a frost , and there was a deficiency of message to keep me interested for as long as a finish up game would . Despite these military issue , I trust in City 20 , and I think the game can really strike once it finishes its Early Access development oscillation .
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