Maia
Version: Alpha Update 0.42 (7/5/14)
Machine Studios
For the uninitiated: ‘Dungeon Keeper meets Dwarf Fortress on a primordial alien world’, says creator Simon Roth. Maia puts you into the role of a team of colonists dropped onto a toxic dangerous world and given the task of setting up a established base. Taking refuge in a nearby mountain, you can begin building workshops, research stations and crew quarters to try and make your mark on this world and hope that you don’t wind up being eaten by the plants wildlife.
Current Playability: There appears to a foundation for what could end up being a decent game but currently there isn’t a lot more than that and what it does currently have shows some serious flaws. Right from the start, the tutorial barely gives you any chance to try out what it suggesting before it pops up with your next task. It gives you a brief run-down of moving the camera, building a room and adding things into the room, but then just buggers off and leaves you to figure out the rest for yourself. I wouldn’t have minded if the game offered up information elsewhere, but Maia feels designed to infuriate you. For example, since Maia is a colony building sim, you would expect the game to have a decent system for building.. Wrong! Building consists of selecting either the room or object button in the UI and then using 0-9 on the keyboard to select the room type or V+B to cycle through the objects. Once you have added your objects, it becomes a waiting game as to when your colonists will build it. In the screenshot above I added that work light (the green dotted stand) early on in my game and over an hour of real time later, it still wasn’t built, and I have no idea why as it was building other rooms and equipment.
Graphically, the game is looking pretty nice, and looks suitably sci-fi but there are a few texture glitches here and there (check out the green door in the above screenshot). The UI design is a really good choice and with a few tweaks (like perhaps a radial build menu on a right click after selecting hand, room, or equipment) could be outstanding
Maia doesn’t really appear to be any resource management included yet. You can dig tunnels and harvest the stone, but there doesn’t really be any reason why you should. Building rooms and equipment doesn’t seem to use any resources either so with a little forward planning, you could build everything up in less than an hour and be done with the game. It may just be me being stupid (or possibly just Maia not wanting to show me) but there doesn’t appear to be any tech progression either.
Worth Purchasing? As the game stands right now, I’m really not sure that it is buying unless you actively want to support its development. Maia lacks game feedback of any kind and leaves you scratching your head wondering why things aren’t being done. The developer roadmap to version 0.50 doesn’t show that overlays will be added any time soon with the focus being on creature AI, pet interaction, lava, plants and the beginnings of a campaign at the 0.50 mark. Perhaps after that, they can begin working on the actual game.
Next Game Update: The Maia steam page lists updates being weekly, but the last few updates have been monthly. The developers have announced that a new update will be released on 10th June
