Volcanoids $3.65 (PC Digital Download; After 18% SD Cashback via Extension)

Didn't want to play this game due to the many poor reviews concerning the clunkiness of combat until now and this is actually much better and pleasant than I thought.

Commandeer a drilling/boring machine and upgrade it tiny bits by tiny bits to unlock different tier zones on the map while very simply automatizing your production, all this to understand what is happening to this island that gets wiped by an eruption every 25 minutes.

The game revolves around those three parts:

1/Explore either by foot or underground to gather resources
This exploration over the island is quite under used in the game as, even if you can find shelters and mines to weather the eruption while sending your machine underground, there's no good reason to do it. Soon you can explore with your machine underground and literally gather resources by running over it on the map.
The underground exploration is kinda like a web game, a color code tells you where you can bore or not and where it's too hot or not to pass.
The story is more a set of simple objectives than a true deep story but it's fine.

2/ Assault IA commanded boring machines to retrieve rare upgrade resources
There are many other machines on the island that resurface here and there with different tier levels. They are pretty hard to attack as you are alone (unless in multi) and the machines respawn every minute or so which leaves you just enough time to breach it and attempt destroying all the spawn modules. Combats are a bit clunky, yes, but as soon as you get better weapons, it kinda helps a lot even though it feels your character is pretty weak despite the best armor in the game. So yeah, assaults are quite hard but there are many tools to help you make them quick and without too much pain. Especially as some new units appear along the game with a noticeable difficulty increase, like the tanks.

3/ Manage your machine and make it like home
This is the best part of the game where the machine really feels like home.
There are many devices you can put everywhere to help you, from displays, automated production, group actions, dive/resurface, object dispensers, armor repair etc.
Defend it well with different turrets while automatizing ammo production.
It's incredibly fun to be in the machine while it squirms underground or resurfaces and to have all those modules deploy around it at the surface, it helps a lot for the immersion into the game. Really good job on that.

The upgrading part is a bit confusing at first as there are always two steps : the research and then modules to produce and install but overall the construction and setup is extremely easy inside the machine.

Volcanoids is by all means an interesting concept of a game with survival, crafting, customization, mod support, interesting theme and story.

Overall the game isn't bad, but I can't recommend the game either, he's why.
> The UX of the game is really bad. (not be confused with UI) There are tons of quality of life things that are NEEDED to make this game actually playable instead of players just dealing with the faults.
- Items sorting and ordering is almost random at times
- categories are sometimes to broad and sometimes too refined. The research table is great but the sracpper? oh boy....
- choices of icons and their color are very similar and easy to mix up which on top of the UX issue mentioned above makes navigating the menus a chore to say the least.

> every 25 min in game the volcano erupts and you can to get back to your ship and go underground. that time is short as you end up spending a good 3-5 mins waiting for animations as you go in and out of the ground, you then spend 5 ish mins fighting off any cogs that spawns right where you came up at (even if you didn't move location) you spend between 5-10 mins traveling to locations or fighting off cogs as you travel, so every 25 mins you get about 10 or less mins of actual progress. After hours of gameplay i got better at this and could squeeze out more time by making it back with like 30 secs to spare but my progress was still a slow grind.

> Combat: oh boy... So combat happens nearly all the time. As you get past the first tier area the cogs attack you every few minutes and since to progress you have to attack them and take parts from their ships and it's a constant struggle. Now on it's own it's like any good base battler which this game sorta is, but the problem comes in that unless you are playing with friends, you get out-gunned quickly. The armor you get isnt strong enough to hold, it takes several seconds to recharge your armor, and there is largely no cover/bad cover around the ship spawns. So you need a lot of gear and a lot of time to slug through the cogs, get to the ship and destroy it, oh and did i mention you still only have the 25 mins mentioned earlier to do it? or like 10 mins really. ALSO if you dont disable their drill they can at ANY TIME just leave. pack up and go. you can prevent that by getting inside their ship but if you are inside the ship then you already broke their line and are somehow winning. Which also requires a lot of ammo and tools to do, which brings me to my next issue...

> Inventory size, you do not have enough space in your inventory to carry all the gear you need AND loot the cogs, you end up leaving most of it behind and once again making little to no progress every 25 mins.

> Glitches / Hit boxes :
- Getting stuck in rocks
- shots hitting the empty space around object instead of the cogs
- Cogs become immune to shots after being stunned
- Tanks being immune to damage after they kinda clip into the floor and get stuck
- Cogs not taking hits when in the bends of the ship

Is this collection of issues if why I cannot currently reccomend this game in it's current state. As it is early access I hope most if not all of these get ironed out.