Developer: Mothership Entertainment LLC
Publisher: Team 17 Digital Ltd
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Aven Colony – Preview
Because Aven Colony’s all about that base, about that base, even with trouble. Just so you can bring the looty back. The SimCity-esque game is currently a beta and is slated for a July 25th release. The current build of the game doesn’t allow the player to explore the campaign or the sandbox mode. All the more reason to look forward to the release of the game to see if the remainder of the content holds up to snuff.
Humanity’s sick of Earth and turns itself to the reaches of space. They find a planet and dub it: Aven Prime. Next order of business is colonization, so they set out to terraform the planet, with harsh deserts, lush jungles and frozen tundras and everything in between, basically doing to Aven Prime what they are currently doing to Earth. Of course someone has to take control over these actions and that special one is you. It’s as barebones a story as they come, but it sets the premise and it works well enough. Aven Colony in it’s current state doesn’t feel like a very story based SimCity lookalike.
When you start up a session and you are taught the ropes, the game immediately sucks you in. The voice-acting in the game is very pleasant to listen to and the music isn’t bothersome, if only the music didn’t halt when you put the game on pause. This is probably done to aware player that the game is on hold and not continuing. Once paused, which is done by pressing 1, you have to press a number from 2-5 to continue the cycle. 2 being normal speed, 5 being eight times the speed.
Graphically, Aven Colony isn’t necessarily a bad looking game, however it won’t hold up to someone who expects the highest graphical fidelity. This is because most simulation games are about overall view, which means you’ll be zooming out once your city starts growing and the little details will be missed out upon. It also looks quite gritty when zoomed out.
Aven Colony is a colonisation simulator. What starts out as a small base soon becomes a massive sprawling colony. The continuous growth in your creation is quite addictive. It’s even more so when you add in the constant management that builds up and flows naturally until you are in full swing when micromanaging the commute routes of the inhabitants or macro managing energy routing and resources management.
The tutorial is the first mission of the build. It is straightforward and covers the basics quite well. You can opt out of it if you pick the third mission instead of the first, which is something a hardcore simulation player might do, and they’ll manage quite well without it. If you are new to it, it’s best to sit through it though, as it’s not overly long and it’s clear. The voice giving the instructions is also quite nice to listen to, so it can’t harm to play through it. The controls are quite easy.
Your mouse will be doing most of the work. Clicking and holding the left mouse button will make it possible for you to move the map around. The scrolling wheel zooms the map in or out when you scroll, clicking the same wheel and holding it spins the map, so you can look at your base from another angle. It’s also possible to do with the keyboard, but with most of the other inputs being done with the mouse, moving the map around also feels a lot more fluid without the keyboard.
Even on easier difficulties the game doesn’t baby you, as there are still threats that will damage your base. On Earth we have thunderstorms, no different on Aven Prime. One of the major differences are the ‘shard storms’ they have on Aven Prime. These are basically meteor showers that actually hit the planet and damage your properties. Once you get to grips with this and manage to finish the mission, tackling it on a higher difficulty adds replay value. It can lead to some frustration though if your base gets mauled by a thunder storm or other natural disasters.
Conclusion
Aven Colony, even in Beta will give you quite a lot of content to test the game with. It works quite well and if the main game is on the same level, it’s worth looking into, especially if you are into city simulation. The price might seem like a deterrent, there is however a 10% discount before its release in two weeks. Both graphically and soundwise the beta holds up and this shows the respect the developers have for their paying ‘beta testers’.
Aven Colony - Preview,
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[…] Aven Colony has been released recently and was, surprisingly not a PC exclusive, but also visits the PlayStation 4. Even now it’s somewhat strange to see consoles dabble with the management/simulation genre. It’s not impossible, but with all the different buttons, and what with controllers being counter intuitive when it comes to this kind of gameplay, it would seem only natural for Aven Colony to only be released on PC. In the current case more players can adopt it into their gaming libraries, and the more the merrier, as the saying goes, this includes colonies on alien planets. The preview of the game can be read here. […]