Genre: Colony simulation
Developer: Angoo Inc., SUNSOFT
Publisher: SUNSOFT
Release Date: July 9th, 2024
Edited by AlexKnight2005
The world tree has withered, and the darkness has spread, drawing forth all manner of evil creatures to wipe out all that is good in the world; all that remains, the last hope for life, is a new sapling of the word tree. Welcome to the world of Ark of Charon, an early access 2-D colony sim by Angoo Inc. and Sunsoft, where you build your base upon the moving, beast-like world tree sapling. Upon selecting “new game,” you are presented with three options: one for an idyllic world without the rush of being chased by the storm, one with normal game settings, and another that has not been implemented yet. The goal of Ark of Charon seems to be a common one among colony sim games: keep your colonists alive. The colonists in this game take the form of cute little golems, and you begin your adventure with three of them.
I’ll go ahead and get my complaints out of the way before anything else: this game’s UI and “tutorial” are rather frustrating. After doing a little research, I discovered that the game’s creators are non-native English speakers, which abates my frustration a little, but still does not change the fact that some are combing through and revisions need to be done. It would be significantly better if all of the tutorial tips and hints were put into a guidebook or at least a tips menu option, but as of right now, there is no way to re-access the tutorial prompts after being read through. The game’s mechanics aren’t so entirely different from other colony sims that it’s unplayable without the tutorial prompts, but they are helpful. Zoning was one of the things that I struggled to understand for quite some time, as there is not too much information about it in the tutorial prompts. My recommendation for those who decide to play this game is to begin your first save on the idyllic world, even if you are a colony sim pro, just to grasp all of the basic mechanics.
At the time of my writing of this review, the game has only been out for a little less than a month, so all of the tutorial complaints that I have are relatively understandable, and I do hope that as more updates come out, the gameplay gets easier for beginners to understand. Another complaint I have about the UI is that the game claims that you can just build structures over one another in order to prevent you from having to tear down your whole base to upgrade from one material to the next, but none of the sizes of the buildings match the next tier. Perhaps way down the tech tree line, there are some overlaps, but I was never able to “upgrade” my buildings without having to tear the whole thing down. Speaking of the tech tree, I am brought to my final and most important complaint: the technology tree pacing. This game LITERALLY goes from coal power and electricity to a small shield generator (yes, like a forcefield), and whilst I understand that the technology of the game world does not have to mirror that of the real world, it’s just not very seamless. Most of the other tech tree branches have leaps in technology as well, just none as startling as the energy portion. But as I said previously, this game is new, so hopefully, this will all be ironed out in coming updates. Also, this may just be me, but having rocket launchers and force field generators surrounding my world tree sapling seems a little off-brand, and I was honestly expecting more magical and fantasy elements, considering our colonists are magical golems.
When it comes to gameplay, this game follows a relatively common pace of instructing your golems to mine and gather resources, then build structures and things to help make the mining and gathering of resources easier for them. Where this game differs from most colony sims is the unique nature of the base you build. The area designated for you to build upon is a simple stone plateau in the middle of your first map. In a normal game setting, after so many days pass, the dark storm will come and damage all of your golems and buildings until destruction. This necessitates the most interesting part of this game: the ability to pick your base up and walk it over to another area on the world map. Everything on your stone plateau (that just so happens to reside upon the back of the world tree sapling) will be hoisted up and walked to the next destination. But things are not as easy as they seem, for flying red monsters will come to attack during your transitional journey, and let me tell you, these things are not exactly pushovers. My first save’s base was almost completely destroyed due to my lack of preparation for the enemies on my first journey, and when the stronger enemies came on the next journey, I had no choice but to throw in the towel and start a new save. My biggest recommendation is to not worry so much about how your base looks in the beginning and mostly just to focus on keeping your defenses and your storage stock up.
Visually, I am absolutely in love with this game. The art style of the golems, their animations, the ark itself, the enemies, and the cool zoomed-out view of the buildings that add detail are all incredible, and for right now, I feel that that is one of the game’s main selling points. It’s a fun colony sim with a fairly fresh feeling perspective on base building (how many other games allow you to strip mine an area of its resources then just pick up and leave with your base?), and I feel that this game has incredible potential. Still, it’s quite rough around the edges, and my honest recommendation for anyone who thinks this game is worth their time is for them to first try the demo, and if you don’t absolutely love it, give the developers some time to release a few updates and polish things out some more. I honestly can’t wait for this game to get out of early access so that I can return to it, and I hope that my complaints get ironed out.
