The current build of Nom Nom Galaxy has several planets the player can play on. The finished game is supposed to have a multi-planet campaign and some kind of endless mode, but for now players can just choose any old planet and try to build a small soup empire on its surface. Each planet begins with a space ship crashing and leaving a single worker on the surface. The player must work quickly, finding the matter needed to build the core component of their base, or die of lack of oxygen. That core is the single most important part of the base, providing power to anything attached to it (directly or indirectly); if it's destroyed, the operation fails immediately. The base can be expanded with things like soup creation modules, soup rockets that will ship the player's soups off-world, storage for extra ingredients and vertical and horizontal corridors. Robot helpers can be purchased to automate operations and defenses can be purchased as well.
Soup ingredients must be obtained from the plants and monsters living on the planet. The things found on the surface differ from things found in the water or in caves beneath the ground. Plants all have multiple stages of growth, and harvesting them at the height of their growth yields multiple ingredient globes instead of just one. Any plant ingredient globe can be replanted to make a new baby plant, so harvesting fully grown ones allows for increasing the number of plants available by replanting all globes or just sustaining the plant life the player has available. Monsters may drop matter and research, which is used to unlock upgrades, but they also drop ingredient globes. Unlike plants, however, those ingredient globes can't be "planted" to create one of the hives where the monsters spawn, even if the monsters are reminiscent of vegetables such as corn and tomatoes.
It's worth talking about getting around in the game. There is fall damage, though it would take a considerable fall to kill a player at full health. Within the base, vertical corridors make traveling up and down for long distances a breeze. Outside, the player can carve out staircases, but as I mentioned above it's possible to cut out all the support on the earth above oneself and get crushed (and accidentally removing the supporting earth from underneath the base can cause it to collapse). There are also ladders, which must be started on the ground but can be built up as high as the player wants to go, and girders, which are way more fun and useful than ladders but can't be built just anywhere.
At the end of the day, though, it's all about making soup. Tunneling, harvesting, building, and exploring are all done in the service of the continued growth of the base/soup factory and its profitability. The game is divided into days and at the end of the day the game shows the player's soup profits vs. the soup profits of their rival before letting them purchase upgrades. Early in the morning of a new day, soup trends will pop up in one corner, telling the player which ingredients are in vogue so they can tailor the soup they ship out and try to bolster their market share. The opposite corner shows the player their market share at all times and even lets the player see both their own and their rival's soup in transit and the reaction of the masses upon its arrival. Earning 100% market share on a planet is how to beat the stage, essentially. Even the tower defense parts of the game, in which aliens attack the base from above, play into that because the base needs to be operational in order to keep from losing market share. That soup tycoon emphasis is really what makes Nom Nom Galaxy different from your usual survival sandbox game.
I'm very optimistic about the game being good when it comes out, but I would be lying if I said I wholeheartedly recommend getting it now. There are definitely people who would enjoy it in its present state; there's plenty to do and it's easy to lose track of time in the quest for soup supremacy. Learning to manage and defend a soup factory while dealing with the particular conditions on a given planet has proven to be a great deal of fun, and there's a 2 player local co-op mode that I haven't talked about because I have been unable to test it (a result of my living conditions, not anything wrong with the game). People looking for a more traditional survival sandbox game, however, should probably wait for endless mode to be added and see what players have to say about it.
Nom Nom Galaxy is scheduled for full release on Windows in early 2015. People interested in getting it now can get it for $19.99 via Steam or directly from Q-Games at a variety of prices with a variety of extras starting as low as $19.00.
from IndieGames.com http://ift.tt/1tNP7Nr
