Manage a colony and pay taxes.

Don't let the the cutesy graphics fool you. This game is about survival. And on normal difficulty it is quite hardcore. It's a mix between Against the Storm, Timberborn and Frostpunk. It has the verticality of Timberborn, the heat managment of Frostpunk and resource gathering and shipping of AtS. The entire plot is - you are sent to establish a colony and pay taxes. There are 3 scenarios currently, each changing what kind of difficulty you will face. One has the tax collector show up less frequent, but pirates more often, another - the inverse. Apart from these scenarios the difficulty can also be customized. To what extent the ''cozy'' difficulty removes taxes and pirates I have not actually tested. ;( My main gripe with the game, surprisingly, is it's slow pacing. I'm into the second game year and I'm making progress at a snails pace. Instead of smelting copper into bars and making logs into planks so that I can advance into the tech-tree I have to stockpile those resources because the cats don't accept refined resources as payment... Essentially ~33% of what I make I have to return as payment for ''having granted me the privilige to establish this colony in the first place''. Apart from paying taxes there are also pirates that come by every now and then to extort you... It's a harsh life. You're still making progress, but it's just slowed down because of the entire aspect of giving away your resources. There are remedies. You can only send 25-50% of the taxes requested of you at the cost of worsening relationships with the cats. But this also has the drawback that - if you send 100% or even 150% or 200% of the requested taxes - the cats actually grant you some hard to come by resources for free; and maybe even a technology or two. Also... there's only so much they will tolerate this postponement. Every now and then they also give you optional quests that either lower the taxes or give you something in return. ''A cats love is harsh, but fair'' as they say. You may also trade some refined materials to smugglers. Essentially... what all of this does is - give you a challange, but also makes your progress real slow and tedious. It is a good game. Still in EA, so I'm surprised how it will turn out. The devs have acknowledged the difficulty is a little on the harsh side. Just a few examples of things that were changed in the few days since it appeared: *Reduced production tax by 33% across all difficulties. *Reduce Admin tax by 8 per day. *Nerf pollution generated by all heaters by half. *Speed up stone mining by 40% *Increase the capacity of all warehouses by about 60% It is, very much, a work still in progress. Playable & enjoyable though but difficult - and what the ''cozy'' difficulty does I cannot tell, but it is there.