Early Access Review

Stay away from this game. Simply put, the development team (FreeJam) is utterly incompetent. There have been so many points in time where the game could have become significantly better with a few minor changes here and there (primarily related to rebalancing weapons/components or various quality of life changes). Instead, FreeJam ignores those high-impact low-hanging fruit, and instead decides to flip the entire game on its head and release major updates that change everything in a big way. This accomplishes nothing other than introducing a multitude of new problems, while rarely addressing those issues that could have been easily fixed. Sure, during the course of the coming weeks and months, FreeJam will slowly but surely resolve some of the screw-ups they made during their last update, until the game once again gets to that point where it could be great with just a few small changes...but then the cycle repeats itself and as expected, just on the horizon is another game breaking update.



Other major issues with the game:



1) Building/engineering used to be a major component of the game, and high level players used to take pride in their building skills. Nowadays, building skill is hardly worth anything anymore. Any new player can slap something together in 5 minutes and compete toe-to-toe against a bot that took hours to complete. In fact, don't even bother building anything, because within weeks, FreeJam will render your bot utterly useless by breaking it. Either they'll nerf your movement or make various components 10 times heavier, etc. Regardless of how they break it, just be ready to say goodbye to your favorite bots, as they won't be able to perform nearly as well as they once did "because FreeJam said so."



2) Significant weapon imbalances and easy-mode weapons. Simply put, FreeJam rarely gets weapon balance 100% right, or even close to it. In the current state of the game, there are weapons that are grossly overpowered, and there are weapons that are grossly underpowered. There are also weapons that take little to no skill to use, and yet have been high-impact weapons previously (a new patch attempted to address some of these issues, but the jury is still out).



3) FreeJam doesn't care about players who have been around for years, players with thousands of hours in the game, players who have been active and have helped spread the word about the game. They won't listen to your feedback, no matter how good it is or how well-written it is. Instead, FreeJam does its own thing, with a bias towards catering to new players. Basic things that the competitive/veteran community has been requesting for years...still not here. Things like clans have been "on FreeJam's radar" since mid-2014 or earlier - and guess what? Still not implemented, and it is almost mid-2016. The sad part is, by the time FreeJam actually decides to implement clans, all of the top clans in the game will be dead, as all of their veteran members will find better things to do with their time than to play this.



4) Minimal skill required. If you were looking for a game where putting in tons of hours would give you a significant skill advantage over new players, please look elsewhere. FreeJam has stated that they want the game to be more accessible to new players. This might be good for new players, but for anyone who has invested a significant amount of time into the game, it is just a slap in the face.



FreeJam: One step forward, two steps back. Always.