izigame.me

I really want to enjoy my time here, and I think there might even be an okay game underneath, but the UI/UX makes the experience an uninspired (compared to FP1) slog.
- Selecting *any* district, overworld map pip, or research forcibly moves the camera.
-- As the UI moves with the camera as well, you have to constantly "chase" buttons on the UI. IE, turning on overdrive on the generator requires you to select the district with the generator, then chase the element to actually click the tiny overclock button. Anytime you want to interact with *any* buildable, you have to chase the buttons you want to click, which has resulted in me miss-clicking things.
--- In one instance, because of the UI drift, I enacted emergency shifts, causing trust to plummet unnecessarily. Why this decision was made baffles me and continues to degrade the experience every time I play.
- Pausing the game brightens the screen and opens up the view area, while unpausing darkens the borders and narrows the view.
-- Typically, I would associate a darkening of the screen and narrowing of view to be associated with a paused state. There are many split seconds during play where I second guess whether it's paused or not, which adds unnecessary friction.
- Cannot see what you're currently researching in the research tree.
- District Output and Demands are placed at the *bottom* of the UI, instead showing extra details like special buildings and modifiers first
- Faction disposition meters pop-open an info panel that blocks view of the faction stats, often leading to it being difficult to see what the faction stats are unless you know to hover *only* over the top half of the faction portrait.
- When a faction wants to replace a law with another, there is no way to see what the effects of the current law they are replacing is in the council view.
- Research costs Heat Stamps, but in the research window, there is no way to see how many heat stamps you currently have.
- Mousing over the Research button shows the current sub-research description, rather than the broad topic. In conjunction with not showing what you're currently researching, if you mouse over the buttons and see "Heat Recycling" is being researched and want to stop or change it, you need to just *know* this is part of "Waste Heat Conversion" in the research screen, or spend minutes clicking around to find it.
- When placing unique buildings in districts, the menu at the bottom has tabs to select the types of districts things can be built in. Since different buildings can be built in different districts, you often have repeating buildings across each tab, which makes the tabs feel meaningless and confusingly organized.
-- When placing a Deep Drill, you have to place it on an infinite node. Nowhere in the description does it say this, nor show the "infinite node" symbol in its requirements, leading me to constantly try to build it but not be allowed, with no indication as to why.
- Trails are unintuitive to build, requiring you to understand to click little grey dots between on-map "pitons", instead of just clicking on what appear to be the obviously telegraphed "pitons."
- Special (and heartfelt sad) note to the loss of unique design and SFX in the UI from FP1. In the prior entry, opening panels clicked and whirred, with accompanying sounds. Panels were dark and icy, with elements of filligree, fitting the theme while being unique, and snappy. FP2's UI goes for a slick, modern and corporate feeling UI, with little to no variation in their interaction sounds or design. In a game focusing on oil and ice, aside from the research screen, the UI feels its influence little. Instead we have a confused, sterilized, and "clean" UI that fails to provide information nor interesting design.
-- I can still hear the sound of clicking on that giant temperature button in FP1 and seeing the city light up in that infrared view with associated gear chunking and whirring. There's nothing to that effect here. My SFX/VFX autism is extremely disappointed.
There are also many issues with performance, narrative, design focus (many mechanics that don't necessarily have meaningful interaction with you, or with each other), and player expression(there's little opportunity to create a city that is satisfyingly laid out and "beautiful" as the buildings and roads are, often confusingly, autogenerated) but the UI/UX is the absolute killer. Every interaction is marred by it.