Kentum

I have a weakness for games where the tech tree tells the whole story, and Kentum hit that nerve hard. You start with literally a stick, and the entire 30-plus-hour arc is about turning that pathetic starting position into a self-sustaining industrial operation in the year 10,000. That framing alone is enough to make a strategy brain sit up straight. The label "craftervania" is accurate in the most useful way possible. The Metroidvania half means the sprawling interconnected map is gated by capability: you do not crack open a new biome by grinding levels, you crack it open by building better tools, unlocking traversal gadgets like a hoverboard, hang glider, and grappling hook, then using them to reach areas that were physically inaccessible before. That gear-gates-geography loop is a core Metroidvania design virtue, and Tlön Industries applies it cleanly. The survival half means you are managing hunger through farming and cooking recipes, tracking seasons that materially affect flora and fauna availability, and watching your resource production chains like a hawk. Early game you are manually converting bone and wood into coal; mid-game you are running conveyor belts and programming refineries; late game you are operating something that would not embarrass a Satisfactory player. The automation depth is real, and it is the reason this game earns any serious sim-fan attention. The cloning system is the permadeath dial turned way down. Death is a setback, not a wipe: you respawn, retrieve your items from the previous body, and continue. It keeps the tension without punishing curiosity, which is the right call for a game this layered. Death still stings because of the time lost, so survival pressure stays genuine. Three modes ship with the game. Story Mode is the designed experience, with ORB, your robot companion, feeding you narrative drip and genuinely funny dry-humour commentary tied to a mysterious monolith signal. Creative Mode removes all friction for pure base-builders. Sandbox Mode strips narrative and amps up the hostile environment, throwing giant spiders, carnivorous plants, and aggressive weather shifts at you. The modes are not gimmicks; each changes the actual priority calculus of what you are doing. The cracks are real but specific. Reviewers who came in expecting Terraria-tier combat variety left unsatisfied: ranged options are thin, and combat is not the point. The opening hours ask significant patience from players unfamiliar with slow-burn survival loops. The automation system, which is the game's crown jewel, can feel genuinely overwhelming to newcomers before the logic of the production chains clicks. Those are legitimate friction points, not bugs. The art direction helps smooth the on-ramp: a brushstroke cartoon style with layered 2D depth, season-reactive character visuals, and a day-night lighting system that one critic compared favourably to Herge illustration. After a post-launch update added local co-op with drop-in/drop-out support, the case for newcomers got a little stronger since having a second Kent eases the early resource pinch. The game also picked up Best Game and Best Design at the EVA 2025 awards, which is worth noting as independent signal beyond the Steam review aggregate. For strategy and sim players specifically: the decision-making depth is front-loaded in the exploration and production-chain phases, not in combat. If your idea of fun is optimizing a farming-to-factory loop while a sarcastic robot narrates your probable extinction, Kentum is tuned exactly for you. Approach Story Mode first, treat the early stick-and-campfire phase as tutorial rather than tedium, and the payoff compounds steadily.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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