I wouldn't like to rinse out games like this, it's a way for newcomers to set foot and gain first experience. Pick any legendary developer and judge their first releases from about 30 years ago, you'll be amazed at how much crap they shoved out the door until they created something worthwhile.

Maybe some tag to indicate a new developer's maiden product could help, but I think a massive platform like steam should be open enough to allow small and experimental titles, even from inexperienced studios and individuals.

There is junk in almost every store. Yesterday I bought a box of sushi from a supermarket and it contained small wooden sticks. Too blunt to be used as toothpicks, too small to be used as chop sticks. But every single one of them had two thirds of them stuck in a plastic cap and then they were wrapped in a plastic bag in pairs. WTF, I don't want that garbage. But the sushi itself was worth the price. And the quality of the product doesn't hint at the quality of the shop and the other products they offer.

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It's a special for Lara's 20th birthday.

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In addition to the info soulsource provided: you also have to manage your territory and its traits. Moving through grass (unexplored tiles) is more costly, in effect reducing the range your creatures can travel. Tall grass also covers the movement of other critters, so it is beneficial to invest food into discovering tiles.

I'd say nests can be regarded resources as well. Your livestock can mate anywhere on the map, but the females need a nest to give birth on the next turn and the newborn needs the nest during infancy. So you'll plan your reproduction a few turns ahead by queuing up pairs of animals near nests while juggling food, lifespan and actions on each one.

Speaking of limited actions: each individual may perform up to three actions per turn.

For the breeding part with the different genes the parents provide: you select genes to have a higher chance of being present in the child. You might want to focus on two traits that help specialize your tribe for example, by preferring long ears for better environmental perception and berry gathering paws to increase income per action spent on a food source. As long as those traits are present in at least one parent, it's pretty sure those selected perks carry over. You might also want to keep negative effects out of your breeding strategy, so you might not want a blind creature mate with one that is prone to catch diseases.

All in all this does not resemble Spore at all in my eyes.

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I liked the looks and navigating the in-game menus by typing the options was a nice touch. The dictionary in use fits the environment and is vast enough to not seem repetitive, at least during the time span of the demo. But on the other hand the demo is too short to let you play with some of your skills/perks/stats and I am still not sure if there will be ones later on that improve on hidden, overlapping or otherwise unreadable text. Sometimes words lock you in typing mode while they are off screen, other times they are hard to make up through the blur.

I remember a strange choice at the end of the demo, but cannot remember which option I chose. Will at least keep it on my wish list for a sale if I am not lucky enough to win a copy.

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Quoting: robvvWhilst I am very excited about the possibly of a Linux release of this game, there are some interesting comments on the DE:MD Steam forum about one-shot microtransactions!

Reviews are turning into an outrage: DLC, regardless if bought after release or as a preorder bonus, only work for the play-through they are activated on, not on other play-throughs. There is an in-game shop to buy items like praxis kits and to enable two otherwise inaccessible augmentations. Those purchases are of course limited to your current game as well, not new games you start afterwards or have started otherwise.

Mouse acceleration cannot be turned off in the game, just as motion blur cannot be disabled (but you can at least turn it down). There are also reports that there are gfx options that make the game crash on cards with less than 6GB RAM. And while Square Enix recommends playing in windowed mode to lessen the chance of crashes in the train station, they contradict this advise by telling everyone to play in 1980x1080 resolution at full screen to counter performance issues.

So I guess we should hope that some of those issues get sorted by porting. Or that some features (like the shop for example ;) ) prove impossible to port, so they are cut from the Linux release. Or we should wait for the GOTY version to give them time to fix the most broken parts first.

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Hm, in that case I might have to stop watching those let's play videos of the privileged pre release gamers.

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I wanted to download the demo but all I get is a message telling me that the product is not available for my platform. Did they pull it again? Specs for Linux are still visible as well as the SteamOS icon.

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The german stream only TV channel Rocketbeans.tv [External Link] are featuring the game right now with one of the developers on the show for the next 90 minutes on and off.

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More Portal? Shut up and take my... oh, even better :)

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I really like the winning entry. Had it set as my background for the last three weeks and it still makes me smile when I see the desktop. Definitely a keeper.

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