by Well, recently I’ve taken to playing Astero INC , an indie created by the Spanish studio LamaGlama Games and published by Pixboy Studio . The title was released on the 15th of October 2021 on Steam and it seems that it did not have a very successful launch.
And this is the reality of many indie games… in terms of the market, the supply is colossal, much greater than the demand (which is also huge, but much less large) and among so much supply, unfortunately, there will always be indies like this one case: Indies who deserved to have their little spot, but didn’t get it. And easier for it to happen being such a niche game.
The thing is that the game has ended up being in my hands and with this analysis I intend to give it a bit of visibility, because yes, the game is fine and the truth is that it is a shame that it has gone a bit unnoticed. The case, which I roll up as always, let’s go with the analysis!
WHAT IS ASTERO INC ABOUT?
In general terms it is a planet mining simulation game. We will take the role of a person who decides to buy a small mining business that was sold by the current owner for a tiny amount of money since it basically went bankrupt and we will have to succeed where he failed.
Why did the previous owner fail? Well, because there is a company called Black Corp. that it has a monopoly on that business and through quite mafia techniques it does not let other companies grow to remain the king and only viable business in that market niche.
Getting your planetary mining business to be profitable is not going to be easy as they will constantly be pestering us with clearly fraudulent fees and fines to hinder the growth of our small business.
HOW DOES OUR PLANETARY MINING BUSINESS WORK?
We will have our computer, in which we will have the typical mail applications, WhatsApp (they will even make phone calls to us), online stores where we can buy improvements, a folder with the tutorials (you will have to do them to start), the website of the town hall where we will receive the happy fines and the Planetary Mining application (it is supposed to be an advanced technology that allows us from our computer to control our mining machines on the planets and visualize the planet we are on).
Focusing on what Space Mining would be, we will have to carry out certain tasks there in order to extract the ore, starting with locating the ores with a sonar and then starting to build the entire set of elements so that the mining is effective. main features are as follows:
- Silo : What would be the base and where we will store our money (the mined material translates into money that we can spend on constructions and others). Before placing it, it has the already mentioned sonar function that will be essential to use to locate the ores.
- Mine : What will extract the ore. We will have to manually put the suction tube right where there is an ore (this has a cost) and we will have to do it well or we will have a disastrous start (watch out because there are stones on the planets that will make it difficult for us to access the ores). Be careful because the mine has a storage capacity and as it fills up we will begin to waste the product and they will fine us for it.
- Drones : Those that will do all the work passively. The drones will be in charge of collecting the ore from the Mine to take it to the other sites (they already know what they have to do). This would be the Collector Drones, we also have the Repair Drones that will repair our structures (because yes, the structures will break down and if you don’t fix them they will stop working or acquire negative passive traits that are very annoying).
- Power Generators : Surely the most complex part to understand. Most structures require electricity and we will have to build electric generators that generate it for them to work properly. We will have to be very careful that our structures have all the energy they need and we will also have to watch out for energy overloads (one thing is the maximum energy that your magnetic field tolerates and another very different thing is the amount of energy produced by the generators in relation to that consumed by the structures). In the first case there will be an overload, in the second you will lose energy until you run out and therefore everything will stop working for a good handful of time. The key is in balance.
- Tesla sticks : They do not generate energy, they transmit it; that is, they act as transmitters of the electric field generated by the Generators.
- Rockets : They consist of two parts, first the storage station; here the Drones will put the mined material and from there everything will passively move to the Rocket itself. When it is full, it will launch to send the material, and that is when you will finally get money (but of course, you will not amortize the costs so quickly). Something to keep in mind is that we have 2 routes to send our Rocket, Customs (which will taste like taxes) and Contraband (which has no taxes but will depend a lot on luck and the shot can go wrong); That’s where you decide… but the good thing is that we have improvements in the rocket that will allow us to have some secret caches so that we are less affected by Customs taxes.
- Repair Station : A station where the drones can go to be repaired and that will allow us to improve our Repair Drones.
Keep in mind that we will have time to mine the planet, so speed is the priority and you will have to choose wisely what you invest your resources in. Do not be surprised to lose money in some raid. We will not always be on the same planet, we will change from one to another.
And in addition to this, the planet in question will have a kind of health meter that will decrease as we mine and add structures (which prevents us from being able to put everything we want without thinking it through). The more this drops, the greater the probability of annoying natural phenomena such as earthquakes or solar storms. Oh, and yes, we can destroy the entire planet if we freak out too much.
But there is another thing that we have to mention, and that is that the planets can have certain negative or positive traits and depending on which one touches you, you can make gold or lose a lot of money… What is the problem if we can totally choose? Well, you see, we won’t always be able to know these traits unless we have the pertinent improvement and we will also compete with other people who also want to mine and if they arrive on the planet before us… they take it away from us and bad luck, to throw for another.
ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT
Something tells me he’s ripping us off…
This is one of the pillars of the game since, after all, we have a business to carry out and where the difficulty really lies in Astero INC.
Our mining incursions require a large investment. Just for wanting to go to a planet they will already know enough about us and creating our structures for mining also has a cost; if you do it right you can make a lot of money, but you will inevitably have failed raids .
Black Corp will fine us and make us pay a lot of fees to make it difficult for us to grow (improvements cost money, of course). And apart from this, be careful because we will receive emails in which they will try to scam us and the truth is that they are very funny (it is very obvious that it is a scam, but I wanted to see what happened, and yes, it was indeed a scam ; there is an achievement for this so you know).
ANALYSIS OF THE TYPICAL ASPECTS OF A VIDEO GAME
Now that we have seen in broad strokes how the game works, let’s analyze the typical aspects that are analyzed in Video Games:
- Artistic Section : The game is quite beautiful. In what would be the mining part, I quite like the artistic design and I also really like what the interface of our computer would be.
- Music : Very much in the background, it is not something that is given importance in the title. In terms of sound effects quite well, yes.
- Gameplay : Typical of a simulation/strategy game (click here, click there). Quite fun (I really like these types of games despite not being frantic, not everything is action in this life) and addictive. It’s a bit hard to get the point of the interface (in mining), but when you get it the truth is that it’s pretty good.
- Duration : It will depend on you, in the story mode you already have a few hours and then you also have a free mode to take as many as you want.
In general, it seems to me that it works well in all aspects, which does not mean that I think there are some things that could be improved.
THINGS THAT COULD BE IMPROVED
These are the points where I see a possible improvement, in the end it is my opinion, without further ado:
- complex of understanding: I think it’s the biggest problem with the game… there are many things that are difficult to understand and I don’t think it’s because the mechanics of the game are so complex, but because the mechanics in my opinion are not explained right. You have a rather messy tutorial at the beginning in which more or less some things are clear to you, but it is not really until you advance on your own when you learn better how each thing works. If I had to change something in this game the first thing I would change is that tutorial. It’s boring, it doesn’t feel organic and I think it doesn’t explain things well. In addition to this, I think it would be good to add a kind of “information” section in each structure that explains a little about its basic or even detailed operation. In this type of game, the feeling of being in control of the situation is very cool and in that sense I think the game does not help in this regard. Add “something” that helps us better visualize how the energy on our planet is working at a glance, as well as being able to see the state of health of our structures without having to click one by one… things like that. Something similar to what Oxygen not Included does (which has several display options in which we enter a mode where we only see one specific thing, such as gases or electrical structures and cables… etc). as well as being able to see the state of health of our structures without having to click one by one… things like that. Something similar to what Oxygen not Included does (which has several display options in which we enter a mode where we only see one specific thing, such as gases or electrical structures and cables… etc). as well as being able to see the state of health of our structures without having to click one by one… things like that. Something similar to what Oxygen not Included does (which has several display options in which we enter a mode where we only see one specific thing, such as gases or electrical structures and cables… etc).
- More events : After mining we will often find certain events such as someone calling us or receiving an email. When this doesn’t happen, the game feels a bit boring, I understand that it doesn’t always have to have an event, but these things greatly enrich the experience and the more there are, the better (without going too far, of course).
And really it would only be this, making special mention of the theme of “Complex of Understanding”. I personally felt like I wasn’t taught how to play the game properly and really had to learn through trial and error myself; In my case it is not so much a problem because I like to discover things for myself, but I understand that this could be quite frustrating for some players. But leaving aside, I think that the tutorial has a lot of room for improvement in its application despite the fact that it is very well integrated into the plot and that certain facilities could be added in order to understand the mechanics of the game that would avoid many frustrations.
And that’s it! Did you know Astero INC? What do you think of the analysis of this Indie Video Game ? Has it caught your attention? Leave your comment!
