Before We Leave vs Meeple Station
Before We Leave
Before We Leave is a strategic city-builder that sees the descendants of the survivors emerge from safety to reclaim the world, like their predecessors, after years of huddling in underground bunkers no thanks to a galactic disaster. In this game, you’ll need to manage your colony of Peeps by making sure their needs are being met and producing enough resources for them to explore the planet and exploit the resources present.Besides exploring and keeping your Peeps happy, the gameplay also consists of optimizing production lines, unlocking new technologies and upgrades, and trying to offset challenges that will buffet your production systems, sometimes reducing productivity to almost zero. Eventually, as you progress, you can even colonize other planets!
All in all, Before You Leave is simply a brilliant and strategic village builder that is a whole lot deeper than it looks. You can spend hours building and rebuilding your villages just so you can hit that sweet spot of being completely optimized, and then to do it all over again once you’ve unlocked something new.
Meeple Station
Meeple Station is a space-themed, sandbox simulation game that focuses a lot on exploration, trading and team management. In this game, you’ll need to build your starter space station and then venture out into the galaxy to find a place to set up shop, so to speak. Mine nearby resources and refine them into valuable bars and other alloys, and trade the resources you have with passing spaceships for resources that you don’t. Don’t forget to assign your meeples with tasks that suit their respective personalities, and give them everything they need to be content despite being cooped up in a tightly-packed space station.The game doesn't have a multiplayer mode (yet), but I can see the potential of having the game mode added in the future where players will be able to trade with each other and even raid other player’s stations to plunder resources. It’ll probably be somewhat similar to Minecraft’s multiplayer mode.
Overall, Meeple Station is definitely an early access game with plenty of potential. Despite the bugs and game issues, it is a rather fun sandbox game to play where you can build your own space station, explore the galaxy, mine and trade for resources, and manage your team of adorable meeples. If you’re interested, Meeple Station is currently available for purchase on Steam. Check it out!