Simulation Review: Earth 

Platform: Consciousness | Genre: Survival RPG / Open World | Players: \~8 Billion (Forced Multiplayer)

**⭐☆☆☆☆ — 1.2 / 5 Stars**

*Verified Purchase. Cannot return.*

**OVERVIEW**

Let me start by saying I have put in a lot of hours on this one. Not by choice. You are dropped in with zero tutorial, no save points, no respawn, and a character build you had absolutely no input on. The developers apparently thought that was charming. It is not charming.

**CHARACTER CREATION: 0/5**

You don’t. That’s the feature. You wake up mid-playthrough in a random body, random map location, random difficulty setting, and the game has already been running for several eons without you. By the time you’re cognitively aware enough to even assess your character stats, you’ve already taken damage you can’t reverse.

Hit points start degrading from literally day one. There is no leveling mechanic to compensate. Your character does not get stronger. They get *nostalgic*.

**THE GRIND: 0/5**

There is a mandatory side quest that runs approximately 40-50 years of real time. It is called a Career. You must complete it repeatedly, every single week, or your main character loses access to food, shelter, and the ability to keep the other characters you’ve made the mistake of loving.

The Career quest offers no XP. No skill trees unlock. The rewards are a number in a database and the vague psychological comfort of not dying *yet.*

Most players report hating it. The developers responded by adding a mechanic called a Mortgage.

**COMBAT & DAMAGE SYSTEM: 1/5**

The body, your only available hardware,  is a marvel of unnecessary complexity. Thousands of systems running in parallel, most of which you have zero access to, and every single one of them is trying to kill you eventually.

Stub your toe and the pain system responds as though a minor war has been declared. Pulled muscle? Weeks of debuff. Eaten the wrong thing? The game locks you in a bathroom for six hours with no fast travel.

You will spend a non-trivial portion of your playthrough visiting a class of Players called Doctors, who will explain to you what is broken while billing you for the information.

Side effects of simply existing include: cancer, inflammation, herniated discs, seasonal mood crashes, and something called Restless Leg Syndrome which is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

**THE NPC PROBLEM: 2/5**

Other players are your greatest asset and your greatest liability. The game procedurally generates people you will love, and then, and this is the central mechanic: ***they die****.* Every one of them. Without exception.

The developers have described this as “thematic.”

It is not thematic. It is a design flaw wrapped in a philosophy.

You will also encounter Players who seem to exist solely to take your resources, undermine your stats, and clip through your personal boundaries. There is no block function in the base game. You have to do that manually over many years of painful social XP grinding.

**DIFFICULTY SETTINGS: BROKEN**

Hard mode and easy mode are assigned at birth based on variables including but not limited to: geography, economics, genetics, and what the developers apparently describe as “narrative balance.” Some players spawn in with max resources and stable stats. Others spawn directly into a boss fight with no equipment.

There is no patch scheduled for this.

**THE FOOD MECHANIC: Ethically Suspect / 5**

You must consume other living things to survive. This is non-negotiable. The developers have made no comment.

**THE TIME MECHANIC: 0/5**

Cannot be paused. Cannot be reversed. Moves at the same speed regardless of whether you are having the best moment of your life or are trapped in a four-hour team meeting. Time does not care. Time has never cared.

**CONCLUSION**

Every other game I’ve played, every single one, has a progression arc. You get better. Your character grows. The difficulty scales with your increasing mastery until eventually you’ve conquered the thing and you set it down.

This simulation runs the mechanic in reverse. You peak somewhere in the middle, then spend the back half watching your stats decline while the game keeps adding new quests you didn’t ask for.

One star. Would not recommend. Cannot refund.

**The graphics are phenomenal though.** Legitimately unmatched. Whoever did the sunsets deserves a raise. Despite the absolutely abysmal game mechanics, the graphics department did go off. Every single playthrough. Completely unearned beauty dropped into an otherwise punishing experience.

The simulation is broken, rigged and mandatory and yet occasionally you're standing outside at dusk with your horses and the sky does something that makes zero sense given everything else on the changelog.

*— Submitted by: Elias L., Eastern Canada Server* *Playtime: Ongoing (no choice)*