Game:

Aven Colony (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 37:05

8,429 views

75

I'm playing Aven Colony, a space colony building simulation by Mothership Entertainment and Team17 Digital. The game features nine scenarios with numerous specific, helpful objectives to complete on the way towards ultimate victory; the same nine areas are used for the sandbox mode, as there are no randomized maps. The interface has a lot of information to display, and it does so through its plentiful overlays and data tables (with keyboard shortcuts to access specific screens). It can be difficult to tell the difference between minable resource locations and simple decorations. The basic resources to gather are food (grown at farms), water (extracted from the ground), electricity (made at power plants), and nanites (used to build stuff, converted from mined minerals). You’ll also have to keep an eye on the air quality (improved by placing filters), storage space, housing, and citizen happiness (place bars to get them drunk!). Structures must be placed within the range of a construction drone (other drones can fight alien infections or provide police protection), and tunnels connect all the buildings. Excess resources can be traded, additional technologies can be researched, and elections occur every so often (so you must keep happiness up). You can also explore the area outside the colony, although it’s simply ordering a ship on a static map to different waypoints. Aven Colony strikes a pleasing balance of difficulty, providing the user with enough tasks to keep busy and requiring constant supervision to maintain the delicate balance of the colony. The result is a compelling management game that only needs additional maps to further replay value.