This is a summary of my thoughts after playing the Lightyear Frontier Demo. I’ll have a companion video of unedited gameplay if you want to form your own opinion.
I am a survival crafting fan, especially when you can build a massive base as well as sprawling production lines. I was drawn to this game because of the colorful aesthetic and the mech! I love mechs and I love survival crafting, combining the two would be a no brainer for me.
So how did the Lightyear Frontier demo pan out? It’s a little rough to be honest. There were things I liked and things that definitely annoyed me.
To start with the positives, the game looks great. I love the colorful art style. The way you control the mech feels pretty good too. There are some interesting and well thought out design choices like combining the pickaxe and axe into one tool. This is a pretty efficient way to do it in my opinion. You just hit left click or right click on the mouse to do a mining action or chopping action.
They take traditional weapon attachments and turn them into farming tools. The seed gun can lock on and fire multiple seeds at the same time once upgraded. The hose feels sort of like a flamethrower and you can water almost an entire plot in one go after an upgrade. Aside from these neat mechanics, the game kind of takes a turn for the worse.
While using the mech is enjoyable, you do get a few portions of the game where you have to leave and walk on foot. My main complaint about this mechanic is that there is really no point to ever getting out of the mech. There has to be a trade off for doing so, a reason to get out or get back in.
You should gain some benefits when out of the mech while also losing some. In this game, you lose access to way too many mechanics while the only thing you gain is being able to fit through small entrances. I don’t think it’s well designed in that I never want to get out and having to do so is an annoyance. Thankfully you won’t have to spend too much time out of the mech so this didn’t detract from the overall experience.
Another minor complaint is the frequency at which the AI companion speaks. It’s way too much. I only want to hear the voice at important narrative milestones, not every time I decide to cut a tree down. It gets grating since it’s overly positive and the dialogue feels contrived. If you want to go full on positive or negative you need to full send it like Warhammer 40K. The good news is that you can completely turn off the voice but then it doesn’t feel as immersive when I do hit an important narrative milestone. It’s only a minor complaint since turning it off is possible but it’s not ideal.
The main thing about Lightyear Frontier that decreased my excitement about the game was the shallowness of the survival crafting mechanics and the inconsistency of the design of the systems in the game. The main bread and butter of every survival crafting game is resource acquisition, mainly by punching rocks and trees. In this game, while punching rocks and trees feels great, inventory management does not.
For some reason I cannot even begin to fathom, storage chests are limited by weight. Yes, you read that correctly. I can only put in sixty six rocks into one chest before having to build another and you can easily exceed that number in a short time. Inventory management is necessary and with this puny constraint, you will have to build so many chests.
This is by far, the worst inventory management system I have ever seen in a modern survival crafting game. Now by some chance, if the inventory space upgrade on the mech also applies to chests, this is a nightmare since you will have to re-sort your entire storage system every time you upgrade. The chests should have a limit based on item slots so you can sort things in a way that is convenient to you.
This complaint only applies to OCD rock punchers and tree choppers so if by some means you can play these games like a sane person then this won’t be much of a negative for you. For me it drives me crazy. There is also over encumbrance in the game but thankfully the only penalties are that you can’t sprint or jump.
The other complaint is about the inconsistencies of the systems in the game. For example, the Oil Presser can only manufacture one item at a time and has a maximum queue of five items not including the currently active item. Meanwhile, the Fodder Oven and the Assembler can produce as many items as you have the resources to do so and do it instantaneously.
This creates inconsistencies in the flow of the crafting. There’s no inherent design here. It just feels like arbitrary mechanics were slapped together. This is always a concern for me when playing any game because a lack of intentional design and coherent vision usually leads to the game feeling mediocre in terms of mechanics and overall direction.
What it boils down to, is that Lightyear Frontier is primarily a guided narrative experience focusing more on exploration rather than a free sandbox with deep mechanics. It’s a very polished and pretty experience for sure, but it just lacks the complexity and depth for me. I’m sure many people will enjoy the game, but if you’re looking for a game that’s going to scratch that OCD itch to build things, this game won’t have enough to satisfy that desire, at least judging from the demo.
That’s going to be it. Thank you so much for dropping by and reading. As always, hope you guys are staying safe and sane out there, and catch you guys next time.
►Steam Store Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677110/Lightyear_Frontier/
Ducky Obrien 