Seneste anmeldelser af Gareth48

Regardless of this review I still believe the potential held by the ideas of this engine is nearly unlimited. I love Neos and through it I've made many of my closest friends and without it I never would have discovered my passion for material art and game development. It was my sole social lifeline during the pandemic and has positively impacted me in more ways than I can count. Neos is a weird oddity in social VR games. It is not well documented and takes a lot of time to learn and as a result all those who do are in for the "long haul" so to speak. Almost everyone I've met knows this and is willing to help and it creates a very tight-knit supportive small town vibe. Where everyone just wants to help their neighbors out and make cool things. All of this to say, despite its many technical hurdles and other things I love what Neos stands for. Which is why writing this review is not something I've looked forward too.

This game has been in a death spiral the past year and a half. It all started with the revelations that, despite the millions of dollars being generated by NCR (Neos Credits, an in-game cryptocurrency) the CEO, Karel, was not paying the developers whatsoever and instead pocketing it all. Once this news hit the community it exploded as one might expect. Frooxius, the lead developer was someone we all knew, someone who, since inception, had been working like a dog (literally) producing updates week after week tirelessly to add whole hosts of new features to the game. Karel, was someone who had played the game every once in a while and just handled the crypto and financial side, and not particularly well, mind you. Either way when this news hit the core community exploded and rallied behind Frooxius, with only the most crypto supporting people of the bunch ever saying anything in support of Karel. This also led to a complete stop in updates, a freeze which has continued for over a year. Regardless, and this is a testament to the strength of the community, the playerbase has barely budged. No new content didn't change how we all felt about the idea. So you may find yourself asking, why write the review now? The answer is because Karel dug the hole deeper.

Recently Karel published a "trailer" of sorts for an upcoming suite of features. Produced entirely in Unreal Engine with the exception of a few seconds of Neos gameplay at the end it was a dishonest, tone-deaf presentation that promised some terrible things. The first being a personal UI you could no longer customize (though I think this issue is because Karel didn't even realize you could do this in the first place). The second, and the more egregious, being the implementation of "stake-to-earn" game play (his words not mine). Where users could mine fallen meteors to get progress towards receiving monthly crypto currency bonuses. This was how he chose to break a year of silence after he literally abused the lead developer of this game.

Actually, no. Crypto isn’t even supported on the steam version due to the rules of the platform, it requires a separate version. I say this because I don't want to give the wrong idea as to what the game is. However, it is clear by Karel's actions that he feels absolutely no remorse and in no way wishes to progress forward with what the community wants and instead wishes to turn the game in this direction. I say wishes because it took him a year and a half to produce a windows movie maker quality trailer that's not even in the Neos engine for a vast majority of its runtime. If you want to go watch it, have fun, it stinks. The Video

One more note about Karel. He runs a telegram group primarily dedicated to discussing NCR (Neos Credits). There he allows members to make death threats against other developers. The ones that stopped working because of a lack of pay, mind you. He also bans anyone who even slightly disagrees with him and turns it into an echo chamber. Make of this what you will but I believe it explains in a large part the tone-deafness of his announcement.

Since this is the direction Karel intends to take Neos I no longer wish to contribute my time and energy to this platform, though I love it so. I do not have any desire for Karel to use the things I created to shill a version of this platform which seems to be on a crash course into mutating into a dystopia. While I doubt he will ever actually get there, I'm drawing my line in the sand here and taking my stance. I refuse to ignore this any further.

If you haven't before I would recommend giving Neos a look with a group of friends. You won't be benefiting Karel in any meaningful way if you're on the steam version (or on the other version, just on the steam version you don't have to see crypto), and the community who has made beautiful things deserves nothing but support. I just wouldn't stick around, get into it and make a ton of cool things like I and many others did. The things that are created here lend the platform a sense of legitimacy that remains unearned by its CEO.

P.S.
It is worth noting that the developers of the game (not Karel) have recently created a studio called http://yellowdogman.com, for now I will remain in stasis eagerly awaiting whatever their next project is.

Absolutely incredible romp through deep space. If you love well designed unique environments, puzzles and expert world building this is the game for you. Go in as blind as possible if you can, and enjoy!

There was a puzzle involving two weighted platforms, controlled by two spokes you could manually rotate. I took the lid off a trash can and crammed the bin between the two spokes to steady the platform. It worked and I was able to complete the puzzle in 30 seconds. 10/10 for letting me cheese stuff.

Right also its an inventive and groundbreaking physics sandbox or something.