Recent reviews by Chade

I love the early game. I like the nation building, scheming. I'm going to go on a limb and say that I even enjoy the first missions and bases out into the solar system. Then, the game loses focus on Earth, and I suddenly don't like the game anymore. Brick wall and game over. Do it again as a couple of factions, same kind of result.

Why is earth so nation/federation based, but space is suddenly just your faction? Shouldn't that moon base be owned by the country that boosted it up there? Why is our covert earth faction(s) the only real presence in space?

Suddenly all the building and hard work for the planet is not very important. Fine, I'll build some magical space hab/lab that seems to compare with, if not surpass, national level output back on earth.

The spaceship combat is uninteresting for me. The theory of fighting the aliens back across the solar system is cool. The execution, not so much. It doesn't look fun and it doesn't play fun. I understand it is under development now, but I don't think it is going to ever develop into fun. I feel like it is a failed system.

Why am I abstracting the entirety of earth's military, but personally designing ships? Sure, Master of Orion did that too, technically, but it worked in their system. It doesn't seem to work in this one.

Maybe it is the genre shift. The game starts as a good geopolitical sim and takes a left turn to a poor 4x. Spore was similar to me. Early game was really interesting and then it got weird.

The game is fine, I got my money out of it. Got my 'money' out of Long War as well (thanks developers!). Again, I enjoyed it quite a bit and still think of the early game machinations more often than I would care to admit.

Do I want a Paradox game? Maybe, but I don't think so. In my mind, the geoscape could have been expanded out into space, bidding/fighting for space regions just like you were doing back on earth. I'm not going to think too hard on a system that would involve scrapping all the hard work the devs have put into their current space 4x portion.

I hope the designers can figure it out.

The best team-based realistic FPS out there. Highly competitive. Ultimate twitch FPS.

Update 2: Still going strong on this game at 1392 hours. This game is excellent for being able to instantly walk away when you have something to take care of. Been using it as my side game while exploring in Elite Dangerous. The developer has slowed down on the updates, probably working on his next game. Ended up buying a copy for a friend who likes retro-styled indie games. He thanks you for Linux support!

Update: Still a good game at the 200 hour mark. New major updates were released since my review was written. More content and added an asynchronous multiplayer combat mode. You take your team and fight other teams out there. No player-to-player interaction except composing the teams, but I wouldn't want more than that in this kind of game. The meat of the game is still in advancing incrementally through the realms, gathering loot, unlocking achievements (which increase the loot rate), and so forth. Still an awesome game.

Siralim 3 is a mash up of games like Disgaea, Pokemon, 16 bit JRPGs and older western CRPGs. The meat of the game is in exploring realms, using your party to defeat other parties. Between these realm adventures, you enhance/change your party through breeding, equipment, spells, and the usual tactical RPG stuff. Just dial it all up to 11.

You like job systems in old rpgs? This has hundreds in the form of creature traits. You like capturing/breeding monsters? That is the core of this game's progression system. You like creating builds, optimizing your party? This is the best game out there, period. This is Path of Exile in depth when the competition is still like Diablo 1 (this game is not an action RPG though!). There is a LOT of tactical/strategic content to dig into. The game has content to last a lot of hours. This is a great buy solely on the price to hour of quality content ratio.

The graphics and music are nostalgic. The game mechanics and quality of life features are very modern and advanced. It is like playing a retro game brought up to modern production/content standards. From a guy who has played a lot of games for a lot of years, Siralim 3 is one to buy and try if you are into the genres at all. If you want to play a short, heavily narrative RPG, this is not the game you are looking for. Think more Disgaea and less "To the Moon".

The combat plays like a classic JRPG (attack, cast, defend, etc.), with the mechanical depth of a modern tactical RPG. You don't have a grid or need to be concerned about facing/movement. The depth is on the interplay between the many creatures you can choose from (each has a unique trait and there are like 700 creatures to choose from), the item you equip them with, and the spells to assign to them, plus several other minor layers. You are represented in the game as a mage, but you don't fight directly. Your mage 'class' gives some important benefits and generally drives how you construct your party.

It is not a narrative or story-driven game. Most of the content is contained in the post game after the main story is completely finished. The story is more of a tutorial and introduction to the many features and locations you'll be working through.

The music is good, if you like the 16 bit retro electronic style - not something I'm going to put on my playlist, but I'm also not going to turn off the music either, even after 50 hours. Sound production quality is acceptable. Mostly the standard beeps and boops of classic RPGs. The graphics are what you see in the screenshots. This is a sprite-based 2D RPG with frontview battles. You won't be seeing Cloud doing a 45-second animation for his materia cast in this game.

This is the third installation of the Siralim series. You do NOT need to play Siralim 1 or 2 before this one. The improvements are largely mechanical. You aren't missing any important story or character development information. Content-wise, Siralim 3 contains all of Siralim 1 and 2's content plus a lot more. The good features have moved forward while some of the weaker ones have been dropped. Siralim 3 is a straight upgrade.

Siralim 3 is developed by a single developer. He uses the standard tricks for low manpower content (sprite recolorations, procedurally generated levels). On the other hand, he also has written lores FOR EVERY SINGLE CREATURE (700?) in the game. Being a solo developer, he has immense agility to implement features and fix bugs. He has released 70 patches in the 3 weeks or so since early access has started. I'll report a bug/request a feature and I'll get a developer comment and a good chance to see it in game in a few days. He is industrious and more importantly, he understands game balance. He has created a good game and didn't get greedy with pricing.

Do I recommend this game? If you are a long-term gamer over 30, absolutely. If you are under 30 and like games like Disgaea, Pokemon, JRPGs or retro gaming, then absolutely. If you are on the fence, then yes, go for it.

I do NOT recommend this game to people who are looking for an action RPG. This isn't God of War, Zelda or Dynasty Warriors. This game involves a lot of oldschool-style RPG battles, so if you want to see some hot girl killing things in VR, this is not your game. This is not a good game if you are looking for a cinematic RPG experience. This is not a good game if you like to complete your games -- the content will outlast you. It is designed to be functionally infinite.

This is a gem. It is a great game, amazingly made by a single developer through hard work and good game design. Give it a shot.

+ Gameplay
+ Replayability
+ Building/Office Design
+ Realism
+ Developer
+ Stability
+ Peer Game Comparison
+ Procedurally Generated Worlds
+/- Learning Curve
+/- Graphics
+/- Sound
+/- Difficulty
+/- Interface
+/- Modability
+/- Optimization
- Music
- Campaign

I will mark whether I like something +, dislike something -, or am neutral +/- as I write the review.

You start as the founder of a software company in a standard sandbox enviroment +/-. You can choose the difficulty, speed of gameplay, starting funds, starting time period, traits, and skills of your founder +. You are able to set a basic appearance for the founder, but this is clearly not a focus of the game +/-.

You cannot customize the size/capabilities of the competition outside of the basic difficulty selector -. This games does not simulate real companies and products, but it does realistic simulate technical progress +/-. That means you won't find Microsoft or Valve in the game. On the plus side, this means the market is unique to each playthrough, vastly improving replayability +.

Once you set up your world, the game will simulate a number of years before your start date. This creates a background market (operating systems and some other various basic programs are already on the market) in the game...the software industry does not spring out of nowhere +.

You start off by designing your office which can be a challenge in your first game +/-. The building interface is reminiscent of the Sims and is very intuitive and the interface flags things that you might have forgotten (temperature control, for instance). The office is fully 3D, and you can make very impressive multi-level structures +. Because of the time dilation, office optimization is much more important in this game than in real life (takes a lot longer for an employee to get somewhere than in real life) -, but that is par for the entire tycoon genre +/-.

You make profit generally by releasing software or doing contract work for other companies. The game accounts for personnel management and some basic asset handling (insurance, your stocks, pension, investment in other companies, and your distribution vector). This kind of stuff is information heavy and marks it as a more serious management game compared to a casual simulation (which is a + for me).

The nuts and bolts of the game is in balancing your cash flow so that you can produce software in a timely manner but also somehow pay for your employees in the mean time. This appears to be an accurate portrayal of the industry from an outsider's perspective (I am a banker, not a tech company developer in real life) +.

Personnel management is well developed. Employees are individualized with looks, traits and compatability. They can be assigned to teams, request raises, get sick, come in late and go to training/education +, There is an HR level in the game that can be automated which means hiring/firing/assignment/raises etc can be delegated to in-game employees. The same exists for project leads which allows you to scale your business to the dozens or potentially hundreds of employees and not be -as- bogged down in micromanagement +.

There is a basic R&D component in the game, centering around patents +/-. The implementation at this point is not very good -, but it is a new feature at the time of this review. Otherwise, tech progress is a function the game year and not otherwise controllable. At this time, research is not a major part of the gameplay -.

There is a large selection of software types and the 'features' that make them up. The more features, the more powerful the product, but the more time it takes to develop. Software Inc. does a very good job in tying together the various kinds of software you develop together +. For example, you use your visual and audio editors (or license another company's) as well as a game engine to produce a game. This is quite natural and lets you enjoy intermediate products (editors, for instance) as well as the more well-known end-user ones (games, etc.) +.

Marketing exists in Software Inc., but only in a basic fashion. You can choose your vector (internet, radio, etc.) and simply pour money and manpower into it +/-. This is being fleshed out to include timing releases with marketing in the next update +. There is a similar gameplay depth in running servers and your own (abstracted) store. In the next update, physical distribution (printing your software onto media to be shipped out) is also being added to the game.

The difficulty curve is inverted. It is quite difficult in the beginning and becomes easier +/-. While this is similar to reality, games tend to avoid this. It is too cheap to scale your company -. After your breakthrough release, the game is easy -. The other gameplay scales fairly well and plays interestingly at both the one-person company level to the I don't know the names of all of my employees level +.

The structural and world graphics are nice enough for this level of game +/-, but are not comparable to larger budget sims (Planet Coaster for instance). In particular, character models and animation are still quite weak -, but they've improved significantly recently +. There is a feature to save layouts for buildings in game, which is a massive + for replayability (if you don't want a unique office in every game), and there is a function for copying individual rooms if you want to copy/paste standardized designs in your structure(s).

Software Inc. supports mods and the workshop +. Because the gameplay design is in flux, gameplay mods are usually broken and the community is small -. Most 'mods' are office designs -.

Sound quality in the game is not memorable +/-. If there is music (and I don't think there is), I can't remember it at all, even after a lot of hours -. Audio production is clearly not a goal for this game which is reasonable for the genre +/-.

It is very bug-free for an EA title, but bugs do exist. Stability is no concern in this game +. Because it is developed on Unity, it is not ever going to be greatly optimized -, but the current state of optimization is sufficient for its scope +/-. It is too heavy for its weight, but that doesn't make it a heavyweight game, so to speak +/-.

There is no tutorial/campaign mode -. It is pure sandbox, so if you are expecting a narrative or progressive objectives (do this, do that!), this is not the game for you. I never play the campaigns in tycoon type games myself, so this isn't a concern +/-. No campaign means you are thrust into the thick of it, relying on the interface to teach you the game -. It wasn't a big problem for me, but for players who are not genre-savvy, it could be a concern +/-.

This is an EA game run by a single developer made on Unity. Be aware of this if you buy this game +/-. That said, the developer is both industrious and transparent (has a public development Trello). In other words, you don't need to trust the developer. You can check on his progress at any time and make your own judgment. Because of these traits, I have great faith in the developer +. Just Google Trello and Software Inc. if you want to check it.

At this point, the developer could release the game and abandon it and would be a decent game that I would recommend +, and in its current state can give many players a good cost/hour ratio. This is a safe purchase in that sense +.

Software Inc. is a good game. It shines as an example of a successful single-dev EA game. However, the genre has weak competition and is not well developed. There are some game development simulators out there, and I enjoyed Mad Games Tycoon, but it is a different class of game. Software Inc. feels and plays like a PC game. The other ones feel and play like console/mobile games, if you understand my comparison. If you want a more streamlined, casual/arcadey simulator, this may not be the game for you. Software Inc. is more akin to Football Manager in a genre full of FIFAs (+ for me).

This is the best indie game I've tried on Steam so far. Good stuff!