I absolutely loved my time with this very difficult and intense management of the Tiqqun Station. A lot of folks have been complaining about the grid of a sector in which you build your station's necessities. I will admit that I had 4 runs through the game before I fully understood how to manage the Tiqqun the limits of the station and the terrifying threats of space.

Before I go into depth here, I absolutely loved this game. It has been quite enjoyable to play a game that instills genuine fear and terror within you, without cheap jumpscares or reliance of other run of mill psychological horror.

If you are up for a challenge and the terrifying threat of space, this game is for you. Very much brought me back to playing Frostpunk for the first time and having the same feelings of love/terror.

"Space is a far less forgiving and fanciful environment, than science fiction would have us believe"
This quote from the prologue chapter sums up the difficulty of the game nicely. As I mentioned, you are working with sectors (6 to be exact) of a space station to meet the needs of your workers, non-workers, and later colonists. Each Sectors grid is 56 x 30. Which at first struck me as quite odd. But that's where the creative vision comes in. I cracked my knuckles and went at my first run and by the time I had reached Chapter 2 of this great story. I realized that I had not worked properly with placements, wasn't investing enough back into the station's development which resulted into a death spiral of starvation. It was a total failure, so retry right?

My second run I took too much time developing myself in the prologue and chapter 1 that I ran out of science points and could not research the black box which is vital to proceeding to the next chapter. So I could either restart or wait 1200ish cycles to gather enough science points from the Tech labs pitiful generation of science points to finish the box research. Unfortunately, I decided to wait it out and drained the solar system of all raw deposits of everything. It could not sustain me long enough unfortunately and I fell to Hull drain due to no more alloys on the station and no more Iron deposits to exploit....the station broke apart on cycle 1128, I was 80% done with the research. But all the time within the Tiqqun gave me more understanding of my population, grid layouts, and how to prevent the seemingly random accidents that occur anywhere and everywhere all the time every few cycles. Back to the drawing board....

Run 3 I was ready for, I learned from my mistakes. I grew a giant complex of alloy development early as well as specializing both sector 6 in industry, and sector 2 in food. I would not fall to internal factors. Not this time. I was also far more aware of my science points and how many I had to hold on to in order to prevent my previous fatal mistake. I made it to Chapter 4 before the problem started. I won't spoil the threat that awaits you there, but it is a terrifying entity that still brings genuine fear to my heart. Unfortunately I spent my time in the sector running from this threat and my batteries weren't able to keep up with my constant traveling (when the Tiqqun needs to move throughout space it soaks all your power and while moving your sectors are powered by batteries that you have built. Each sector needs its own batteries and supplies). My hull broke apart and we were left with a hulk of metal floating in space with cyrofrozen crew surrounding us.....it was terrifying, and it was my fault. I was not ready for this threat.....

Run 4 I had learned from all my experiences. I took my time, ripped up everything I could from everywhere. Sector one was my logistics center (Tech Lab, 2 Cryo Centers, 2 Probe Launchers, 2 EVA airlocks, a Docking Bay, A Colonist training facility, and by the end enough storage for 1700 frozen human Popsicles), Sector 2 was the food hub (3 Crop Farms all boasting 9 fields each, 2 Water plants, and over 3000 storage for food to be distributed to all the other sectors and we were constantly overproducing and full. Even when my station had over 5000 crew aboard), Sector 3 was the "I no work and therefore I am useless" Sector I puked out all the population buildings I could into this district with 6 mess halls to keep them all feed They watched Mechs fight in the Mech dome while the real crew members worked in other sectors, unbothered by their presence. Non-workers outnumbered the workers (by the end of this run) 750ish to 4250ish So those useless crew stayed in this sector til they were trained to be colonists. Sector 4 became later on the hydrogen power plant to keep the station alive long after we out paced the fully upgraded solar panels of the Tiqqun while also holding an EVA airlock and 2 docking bays for distributions and to hold science ships, 4 Hydrogen plants operated here, Sector 5 was the Recycling center/Polymer production hub (5 Mushroom walls, 4 Waste Recycling Centers, 4 Polymer Factories, with plenty of storage for all), and finally Sector 6 was the industry district sporting 3 steel mills, 2 electronics factories and 2 additional docking bays for more ships

The brief from all that is that I was damn ready, I learned from my mistakes, I set myself up for everything I had every upgrade I was king of this small floating metal disc suspended in the unforgiving vacuum of space. This is the run that I beat the game and I was so floored that all my trial and error had lead me here.

To the folks complaining about grid placement, difficulty, how certain events/effects stack up and are unfair. You just need to read up on those tutorials after a failure, understand more completely, and look to the future for new buildings that quickly become essential. I feel as though the negative reviews of this great city builder are coming from folks who had one or two runs and gave up not understanding that the failure is normally from your own incompetence.

I loved this game, I loved the story that had took place, I loved the art, I loved the music. I could not recommend this enough to city builder fans, or gamers that just enjoy a true and honest challenge. But you may have to give it a few runs before you truly know what you're doing.

All Failures were my fault, and through that I learned how to be a great Administrator within the Tiqqun Station.

Also I truly love that this game is titled "IXION" after the great greek mythos. The Tiqqun station is cursed to forever float in space just as the god Ixion was binded to a fiery wheel that was in constant rotation endlessly wandering the skies