“What what what so I placed the Tier 1 Schematic in the Production Module upgrade slot but I also need to put all my Sulfur in the Main Storage’s Drillship tab and I need to craft some things at the Production Table, not at the Production Module so please put the destroyed Module thing in the Worktable Port and get the Coal from the Ship Storage and put it in the Worktable slot and…”
“…”
“…”
“Should we just give up?”
“Yes please.”
In my opinion, no other hobby makes you delve into existentialism as deeply as video games do. Every gamer has the occasional “what am I doing with my life” moments. Analysing whether spending so much of your free time with a silly game was worth the effort is part of the hobby. There is just something about sitting silently and clicking on virtual items for virtual feedback that our primal brain does not agree with.
You get used to it, and install safety thoughts like “time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time“, etc. However, even with all that mental preparation, every once in a while, you come upon a game that really embodies this rock bottom notion of brainlessly wasting away your life. You can’t really describe that feeling, you sure as hell can’t predict it, but when it suddenly engulfs you, you can’t ignore it either.
And now, after that bit of foreshadowing, let’s see Volcanoids!
According to the story, you are stranded on an island with a) a volcano that regularly erupts and b) an endless horde of robot soldiers that constantly attack you. Whether or not there is any relation between the two threats is anyone’s guess. You command a drillship – a giant drill with wheels that can travel underground, thus providing you with shelter against the eruptions. This drillship is also your moving base. You start with a tiny cabin, and you can gradually improve it by adding production and defence facilities to it.
Volcanoids is basically an endless cycle of these steps:
- set up base somewhere;
- mine the local resources;
- turn the aforementioned resources into different resources or things on your ship that can help you create more stuff or things faster;
- in the meantime, defend your base against the robots, either with crafted weapons like pistols and shotguns or with the drillship’s turrets;
- once the volcano is about to erupt (every 20 minutes or so), dig your way underground.
The goal of the game is (presumably) to stop the volcano eruptions and bring peace to the island. I don’t know. We never got that far in the story.
As for the crafting part, well. The most unique aspect of Volcanoids is how mind-bogglingly complicated and unintuitive the crafting system is. Having played a good number of games I assumed we know the drill (pun intended), but man I was wrong. It’s really hard to explain what was so weird about it, it doesn’t help that I mostly forgot and have no intention of going back / reading up on the game again. But it. Was. Weird.
The Good
The base idea is good, and the setting is unique. It could be an interesting steampunky world, were there anything noteworthy to explore…
The Bad
Looks aren’t everything, but come on…
First of all, I would like to point out that I’m not a shallow person and truly believe that graphics are not important when it comes to a video game. But there is a limit, for crying out loud.
Volcanoids is the least attractive game I have played in a looong time. It’s not even about the low poly models or the low-resolution textures: all that can be really aesthetic if done artfully. It’s mostly the inside of the ship that makes me puke. Just look at all those jarring fonts and unreasonably bright colours and ugly monitors on all the machines. It really destroys every chance of immersion, they look so out-of-place, so… Excely. Basically, whenever you see a text or number, it’s very clearly not part of the game world, and that is really weird if said text is supposed to be on a monitor in-game.
And the map, especially when you need to navigate on it, looks straight outta a last century free Flash (R.I.P.) browser game. There are like three different visual styles clashing at all times, it’s really hard on the eyes!
I don’t like feeling stupid
The crafting system of Volcanoids is as needlessly overcomplicated as ever. I have played a lot of similar games recently, and the system is unlike anything I have ever seen before. And remember kids: just because you are unique that doesn’t mean you’re valuable!
You have your worktables and production places and modules and stations and schematics to place in upgrade slots and inventory that is somewhat shared but not really. Interestingly, the tutorial never stops (well, at least not in the first four hours of the game that we suffered through), but it never really helps either. Instead of saying something like “craft a production module and place it anywhere on the wall, here is the recipe to craft it”, it tries to lead you step by step and refuses to progress if you miss any.
For example, if it wants you to produce something at a given module or worktable (which work differently), it will start by instructing you to place your ores in an unrelated storage somewhere. And then to create an ingot from it, pick it up, move it somewhere else, put it back, no, take it back, and it is just a relentless list of dry inventory management quests.
Home is where the heart is, somewhere far away
The base building element is completely bare-bone, there is no soul.
In these games, the fun comes either from finding creative ways of using the building blocks the game provides, or, to a lesser extent, from silly decoration options. The problem is that neither works in Volcanoids:
- You don’t have to worry about optimal placement, the available place is so small that it does not matter where you put your tables and storage units and turrets. Well, I guess you need turrets on both sides, maybe, but that’s the only strategic decision you need to make. You don’t build outside of your ship.
- There is no cutsie decoration here, this is a serious adult game, thank you very much. No silly pictures or furniture or rags or paints. Forget silly costumes of course. And, as mentioned before, the stuff that you do have looks atrocious.
Pointless fighting
There is one type of enemies, clunky robots. They are surprisingly good shots and can kill you pretty fast. Which means you respawn at the base and have to run to get your backpack. Sounds like high tension, right?
If you manage to avoid that, you kill them, robot after robot after robot, they come and respawn endlessly. Sounds like fun, right?
Lack of atmoshpere
Volcanoids is ugly, boring, and soulless. The world is not really believable – is there really a volcano eruption every 20 minutes on this island? How catastrophic can it be, if all the houses survive and there is no change to the landscape?
Oh, and there is no music. I hardly ever meet a game that can pull this off, and Volcanoids is certainly not one of them. (For a great example of using silence, see the masterful The Forest.)
The access is too early
I’m going to play devil’s advocate a bit and mention that the game is in early access, and we played it in 2020 December. It is possible that every issue will be fixed with the game as it develops. Possible, yes. Probable? No.
Once again, I have played my fair share of early access games, we recently reviewed Raft, a similar early access game, which means they add more islands and building options. And it still works just fine, and I am intrigued enough that when the next chapter comes out, I will log back in and sail once more with our vast trash collector raft.
But in the case of Volcanoids, there is nothing to grasp on, I like literally nothing about it, and have no faith in the future changes based on what I’ve seen so far.
The Co-Op
No. This is the classic bad example of how to NOT make a co-op crafting game. Basically, if I don’t see where / how / why a production facility is made, I simply won’t understand its purpose. As a result, you are really taking opportunities away from each other, rather than working together.
The quest system is also atrocious if you share the resources that are necessary to complete it.
The Recommendation
Huhh. Can’t stress enough how much I disliked Volcanoids. It was really like hitting rock bottom. Like a wake-up call. Man, I need to pay more attention to what I pick up, there seems to be a lot of trash on Steam. And the interesting part is that the rating is Very Positive on this one.
Well, that’s why we have this awesome site, so someone can finally tell it as it is!
Seriously though, if you want a base building game where your base is also mobile: Raft is charming, satisfying, and there is actually some strategy to building.
If you want good fights, threats, tension, look no further than The Forest.
Info
| Release Year | 2019 |
| Genre | Base Building, Crafting, First-Person Shooter |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | Who knows? Took us 4 hours to give it up. |
Rating
| Overall | Terrible |
| Story | Bad |
| Co-Operation | Terrible |