Recent reviews by Binary Dragon

This is exactly what an early access game should be. The developers have been extremely communicative with their work, and regularly release new features. Despite being in early access, the game feels complete. Yes, there are things that can be continued to be fleshed out - a handful of QoL features, more maps, maybe another tribe, etc. - but all of those are the "become more good" type of thing, rather than the "wait for them before it's playable" type. If something happened to cause the devs to stop work on this game right now, I'd naturally be disappointed, but I wouldn't feel at all like I didn't get my money's worth with this game, or that it was left in an unfinished state.

When new features are added, they're on beta branches, meaning that the game will continue to be stable for most players while allowing others to try out the new features right away. These new features then go through a few weeks of refinements based on player feedback before being added to the main branch. This really lets you tune your early access experience. Do you want the bleeding edge that might now be balanced or bug free? Do you want to play something that feels "finished" but is updated with new features every few months? Something in between? The choice is yours, and as such, you're bound to have a great time with the game.

This is one of those games that, after playing, will stick with me forever. In particular (but without spoilers) I had found myself at a point where I was at a dead end. Everyone I talked to seemed to be as unhelpful as possible, and I was out of leads. In a moment of desperation, I went and tried something that I didn't have a very good chance of succeeding at (my skills were such that it wasn't a strength of mine). I managed to get lucky and succeed the skill check. That skill check gave me a clue that then caused a domino effect as I was able to quickly piece together thing after thing and everything suddenly started making sense. Few games have ever elicited such excitement in me as this game did in that moment.

I really wanted to love this game. The core idea of trying to learn about the solar system through exploration, where your progress is really just what you have or haven't learned, really appealed to me. Unfortunately, after a while, you stop being able to just go somewhere and find something new, but instead further progress requires to do go to specific places and do/or do specific things. This wouldn't be a problem, except that it's really easy to fail these things (either getting yourself killed or just wasting more time than you can spare). Granted, you can try again, but the end result is that it starts to create stress and frustration, a marked difference from the free exploration of the early game. Ultimately, I found myself no longer having a good time, and just put the game down and pulled up the wiki to learn the last few bits I didn't get to.

It's amazing how much the developers have put into this game, it's polished to an absurd degree. It's also the most fun I've had in a sandbox sim style game, as it has the perfect mix of problems to solve and tasks to strive for. The work the devs put into every pixel of this game shows.

Pure fun. Period.

Originally I had written what was the only negative review of this game, not for the gameplay but rather for some bugs/omissions in the porting process. I developer though has been working very hard on improving the game since then, and these issues have now been resolved, so I am able to finally recommend this game to everyone. That said, there are some things worth noting about it.

This is very clearly a port of the original game. What this means for you, the player, is that it will not play exactly like the Chip's Challenge you love and remember. I will, however, play very close. The game is well animated, mimicing the old Lynx version a little more closely than the Windows version, though with the recent addition of support for mulitple skins and the ability to toggle movement animation, you can bring the experience closer to the Windows 3.1 style if you so wish.

These minor differences, however, do not detract much from a wonderful game, and will likely only be noted by people like me who poured thousands of hours into the originals as a kid. Whether you are new to Chip's Challenge or looking to reexperience one of your childhood favorites, this is a wonderful way to do so.

Amazing story, and a game whose mechanics add so much to what is being told. This isn't just a game, it's a work of art. Everything about this game is, in a word, beautiful. The graphics, the music, the story, everything.