Silica Early Access - The Good Bad And Ugly 

Your initial “Good” footage should be used to pitch the game, the night time tracer fire and bugs creeping over the brow of dunes is luscious. You clearly have a good eye!

You can use the harvester as a player. 1. The commander must have it stopped. 2. Walk under it and a staircase should appear. 3. Walk up the flight of stairs until you're inside. 4. Walk up more stairs to the top. 5. Look for the entrance into the harvesters cockpit. Within those 5 steps you can enter the harvester. Another thing, when mining look down until you see blue glowing veins, that's what you are actually mining, not the crystals.

I feel like the map spawn issues will mostly be fixed by having space separation based on the team. Aliens should start in a rocky/cliff area systematically and not open space so that they can’t get rushed or sniped as much. While humans should always be in a flat land far from rocky formation.

The dev needs to look at Executive Assault. The human buildings should all be linked together with tunnels (letting all buildings be on the same Z height), so the base is a big sprawling mass. Would fix the 'can't build here' issue. Or have a better red/green grid to highlight build areas. Additionally, the harvester is just abysmal. It's clearly inspired by dune. So take more from dune. Have a drone or something that uses the landing pad to actually deliver the resources. Can make these balloons or something that are slow and drift, but won't have pathing issues. [Would also make them vulnerable to ranged aliens and force you to defend logistic paths and prevent Buggy Rushes]

I hope the early access helps improve and speed up development. I’m really interested to see this game go further.

This is a very good review, kinda surprised you have so little subs cause this video has great quality. In regards to Silica, the game looks pretty fun and like a very solid foundation for a solo dev game. The problems you've stated seem to be pretty common complaints so hopefully the dev is paying good attention and listening well to feedback. Hopefully the game does well enough that he can expand his team and push updates out faster.

It feels like the DRG fans are gonna like this one. Can't wait to see my fellow dwarves on the field. Rock and Stone!

Looks really incredibly tempting. I wish the game the best with polishing, adding stuff and support. Now with similar release of Starship Troopers Extermination, this should be a great year :) Good review, thanks!

As someone who loved C&C Renegade and Nuclear Dawn, but never could get in Natural Selection, I honestly hope they let you play Human Vs Human or release a 2nd human faction. I love how this game is looking, It’s just I can already see myself stuck server hopping around because everyone wants to play humans.

I love how you touched on music. Sound design in video games is so under appreciated.

Awesome background music choice. Thank you

The structure placement thing could be fixed, perhaps by auto flattening the area around the spot you want to place in. Also I want all vehicles to have seats, so that other player's can catch rides to places.

I got it too and played some games and absoloutly fall in love with that potential and setting of that Game! Sure it has still a way to go to be quite nicer but its still amazing to play with friends. Just an nice outcoming game! The Devs need our support. Great Video with good productive critics to make the game even better. Thanks Dtox *love*

I watched your live stream on this. Came away very impressed.

Looking forward to more of these videos!

Solid review, hope they make some of those changes. o7

Great work with the video!

It seems to me that this game had a great chance of fulfilling the concept that failed several times, the player commander in multiplayer. When the commander gives orders in the RTS, and other players follow orders in an action shooter. And given that it is empty and it is not difficult to create a map, it is not resource-intensive, it was possible to make something like an MMO, similar to PlanetSide 2.

If you found this video useful, please considering liking and subscribing for future high quality RTS/FPS/Team based gaming content! I'm gettin' close to that sweet 1000 and you could be part of that. Thank you!

Great video, you should have more subs. Hoping the performance issues in this game are resolved because right now it's tearing any would-be player base apart.

Game looks AWESOME, can't wait to see it grow!

you can expand at the start maps have bunkers that the humans can enter and capture that you can build around and for the crabs you can take command as there shrimp to help get recourses

having played a bit today, a couple things came to mind: 1) having the ability to select your spawn point, so if your commander makes a forward operating base or nest you can pick where to spawn in 2) the Human faction needs access to a way to get across the map faster without waiting on the quads to be built. Something akin to the Mongoose or razorback from halo-an unarmored vehicle that they are exposed while on but still gets them somewhere faster-would be ideal for this 3) I feel like a tunnel network for the bugs would be really handy, kinda like Starcraft's nydus networks? the moving speed of most bugs is decent enough to get them mobile but walking all the way across the map is a slog 4) An APC for both sides would be great. An armored box to carry troops for the humans and then some kind of big bug that carries smaller bugs inside or on top of itself for the aliens all in all, all these things kinda relate to the same thing: player mobility. the vast maps are fantastic, but other games with large scale like Battlefield or Planetside 2 compensate the large size with ways to facilitate transportation. I think this game needs similar things, to keep the action flowing and so the gameplay loop isn't so... "fight for 30 seconds, die, spend 5 minutes walking, repeat" BUT once it has that....we are looking at the foundations of something really special

Maps are controversial, but I would hate having random maps be replaced by symmetrical, predone ones, yes, hate. Thing is, that maps make it way more "organic" to play, and random hills, just makes this 'cinematic' feel to it. It doesn't have to be fair all the time, terrain should remain a big thing. However, something HAS to be done about building, yes. Making the area simply flatter would only sadden the early game to the same habits (Place this here, then that, done, now we can play...). It would not entirely resolve the issue, but at least decent building placement would do. I've had Harvesters get stuck because my refinery was built on sand dunes that poked through it, making the harvester completely stuck. Why not just remove the sand in this case ?? Same when sometimes you can't even build somewhere even though it is completely flat, like "whyyyy do you not want me to place this here?!?" For your needing of 'fairness', do note that air units are planned to arrive, so cliffs will have something to counter them, even though I've never had a problem as big as, Oh they're on the cliff, the game is lost- Because in this case, just intercept them before the cliff, or nuke the heck out of it with rocket launchers. Really, I've not seen either faction just completely destroy another one if the Commander is at least useful, fairness is quite well handled in my opinion. But again, terrain should remain a big part of this. This game is indeed a diamond in the rough, only the future will tell what awaits

Great vid and good feedback for the dev. Love it that one-man band operations are still a thing. Also love the hover thank.

As someone who is a fan of both first person shooters and RTS styled games, Silica looked really promising. Can't wait to see how it turns out in a couple of years when it's more polished and also thanks for the detailed review! Out of curiosity, what's the name of the first soundtrack in the video? The first part of it is just stuck in my head

Im buying this now holy dang

tonnes of fun !!

Love it! praying for it! to make it! To consoles!

Thanks for the review was in doubt about this game at this time will have to wait till the developers fix the problems.

I read that the balance in combat is really off right now, refineries are death for humans too. I really hope they make cool fob type mechanics for it too.

Really really loving playing this with everyone, however the AI has a long way to go. I was looking forward to some solo games verses AI too but they really are weak. Time will tell though I suppose. Thanks again for the great content, really good video as always!

I really hope they nail this. It looks like an awesome idea and while it certainly lacks polish and quality of life improvements the basic gameplay loop looks solid. Sure early game feels slow and might need to be sped up a bit and especially at night there needs to be something to help recognize smaller units when you are controlling something bigger. Maybe a red and green outline. Might be slightly immersion breaking but for humans it could be explained as a holographic helmet interface and for the bugs as some thermal or pheromone detection or similar. And yes basic rts features like double click etc need to be fleshed out and path finding and maps need improvement. It may be a mistake to allow the bugs to climb almost all terain as that is a huge advantage that humans don't have and is really hard to balance. Maybe give them an advantage the bugs don't have. Maybe make their sight shorter or when flying units come give only basic ones to the bugs and let humans have an edge in the air while the bugs are more versatile on the ground. Or add water and make human vehicles amphibious while the bugs don't like water for example. That would give both sides ways to cross the map that the others lack.

On the cliff problem. . I think air units might take care of that before remaking the maps. . They are already in the game.

I'd like to see this done with the Halo genre and assets within halo!

how the hell you have so little subs? we'll need more, your voice is nice

From the alien side of things. The goliath mobility, cost and effectiveness don't seem to weigh each other out. I would also like to see some small changes to the alien units that can burrow as of right now there is no way for the alien commander to make use of those burrowing units via the UI. The RTS UI could use a hotkey or the ability to bind the buildings to a control group to be able to build units quickly while not visibly in the area. Thanks for the content.

seems like a fun game, might grab it

The description of this game reminds me of C&C: Renegade. I'm tempted to buy it solely for that.

love to see more races like warhammer40k :) robots borg terminators & protos tauw predators & so on

I think there should be more defensive structures of which the smaller ones can even be placed by players and multi-person vehicles like 2-4 man tanks

Great looking game... Hopefully it'll improve.

Very excited for what this could become

You know, the Homeworld series would be bloody fun withe a cross rts / fps. See the massive fleet battles in first person and fly a fighter to battleship. Play the rest like the glorius RTS it is.

- Who are your foster parents? - Harvester drivers. - [calling the parents] Hi, how did your day go? - Oh! It was great. We quickly collected full stack of ore and delivered it to the refinery by shortest route. [ending call] - Your foster parents are dead.

My main gripes so far are that the second human faction is a blatant 1:1 copy of the first one and, as you said, the travel times. Because even if yoh have a vehicle, anything but the buggy moves so slowly and if still takes ages for you to go anywhere, especially with vehicles like the rocket launcher truck or the hover tank. I guess one solution to human players being out of things to do would be to give us the ability to call in vehicles ourselves without the Commander building them, like Executive Assault 2 does. Because even if it's just a basic buggy we would call in, it would still offer players more mobility than using the teleport and hoping thag there is a vehicle at your destination. And for the Aliens, you could give players the ability to take control of Shrimps to gather reasources.

I just asked on their steam forum two questions, and someone replied saying the game is NOT single player so I guess I'll pass on this game. No solo play then no point in paying out a ton of money. Thanks for the video. Liked, and shared.

The biggest takeaway for this game is how to try and balance a gun in the hands of a commander Something pretty hard to balance but considered very wanted by games such as carrier command 2

Silica will have to be extremely careful with those crawling armored-tank bugs (I assume they're called Goliaths) as they look extremely close to Hellbugs from a different intellectual property, and NBC/Universal (after all, they own the property in question) are notorious for lashing out at people they think infringe on their IPs.

Ty

The game has potential, thx for the video

Another thing to note, I feel like the Aliens are a bit under powered in the late game. Once the human players gets high tech units it becomes a roll over, even if the aliens have terrain on their side it's not perfect. Example being scorpions and other units getting stuck on cliffs and what not, The bugs either needs more powerful ranged units or buffs/fixes to their current ones, maybe via genetic modification or something as they "adapt" to their enemy as the match progresses to the later segments so they aren't just left in the dust by OP rail gun tank convoys or getting blown up from across the map by missile trucks.

The harvester, No base near cliff and the engineer idea are great. Not a fan at all of that "Soldier Visual" idea though, I like how realistic it looks by adding a giant healthbar you make it look cheap. If you were going to do that add a visual degradation system as damage is taken more cracks are formed and when building finally dies give big explosion that kills humanoids in a certain range and small aliens.

6:00 Just need a human unit with a bazooka.

the genera who never really got a real look at and very few wanted anything to do with it its still one of my favorite concepts as a lover of RTS games but most of my friends prefere more fps or action like gameplay as its a lot less complicated most of the time i really do hope this game turns out great tho not much of a PVP player but hear its PVE aswell for those who wish it.

KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABBBSSSS everywhere ..

My first first-person playthrough had me wondering what to do and where to go. Switched to commander and played like that for the rest of my time because first-person was such a chore of navigating and fighting

Id like to see commander marks for infantry reward players in some small way like bonus ammo for every 50m they cross to get to the marker.

What is the name of the music in segment 05:31 of video?

This game needs more eyes on it.

I truely enjoy trolling the humans as a crab saboteur. Riding their harvesters, picking off lone infantry, burrowing down next to their barracks.. And then watch as they go into a rage induced flamewar and start teamkilling each other xD

Can you change between infantry and commander in game? If no, then I wish there will be a feature where you can seamlessly switch between commander and infantry.

This game runs pretty well on relatively older hardware. Hosting and playing on a 6700k/16GB/1080Ti is very playable until you get an absurd number of bugs in game.

I can honestly see this game being quite good for both casual AND competitive play once it's been ironed out. I can genuinely see it being put on a large stage too. The only problem is funding for those events but I don't think that'd be hard to get from sponsors especially seeing as this is a game that's not human on human violence.

I desperately need a warhammer40K RTS and shooter game just like this.

The developer of this game should try Renegade X. It is an FPS/RTS from the Command & Conquer Tiberum Dawn era. If he could bring some of the mechanics to this game, it would definitely improve the gameplay.

God, I love games like this, Gates of hell is one I've been addicted to for a while

Reminds me of Battlezone, a really cool game!

honestly the problems it has are quite simple and easy to fix, i was expecting foundational problems that would cripple development but nope, it seems its foundations are quite solid. and thats good for the games future development and expansion.

A C&C Tiberian Sun Game like this would be 🔥

Valid points. Game still looks good but yah from what I've seen the human harvesters definitely like to get stuck

Tested it for 10 hours straight and I must say I had a good blast with it. Issues in 1st Person: 9-25 fps with 4070TI and Ryzen 9 3900X, 40 GB Ram, Ram is always capped? But playing in commander I get around 120 fps, so this definitely needs some work.. Issues late game balance: currently aliens have no chance to beat the human late game, tanks and rockets will blow them away before they can think about getting close.

This feels like it could become the spiritual successor to Planetside if the problems mentioned are resolved swiftly.

anyone know the game Natural selection 2?

Planetside 3 is looking great!

How did you set units to hotkeys ?????

Anyone know how to go to FPS

Please, I hope the developer gets some 2100 Warzone inspiration on the strategy side xb

These guys need to revisit Star Hawk. Silica looks cool though not gunna lie.

minimap ping for stuff that needs attention (similar to SC/SC2, and the ability to zoom the minimap window a little bit would be perfect.

I see a Tiberum Sun Mod Bro ^^

a Dawn of War reboot with this tech would be amazing.

To think about the e fps gameplay experience they need transport vehicles or some form of human only teleporter to a FOB or something.

The biggest problem at the moment, and one you didn't mention is trolling. Right now, there is no way to kick a player from the game, and no option to turn off friendly fire. That's obviously a recipe for disaster and I've had several matches ruined by TKers. The worst part is that there's no name tags so you can't even tell who the TKer is until they start shooting you

I prefer asymmetric map design, but base resources absolutely need to be equal. You can make a cool looking map without screwing one team

I hope they add air vehicles, with how bugs can just walk to the other sides of buikdings and deatroy them you need air vehicles to effectively fight them.

Surely the unbalance is part of what makes the game special. Figuring out how to compensate for the pros and cons

I think its because of the upcoming aerial updaye that the map is the way it is.

Yea man those harvesters are a headache. It's even difficult for the fps players to take control of them.

It looks cool, but something isn't quite right. I can't place my finger on it though. Rts games generally are pretty slow paced initially, with a dramatic climax. That's not great for fps. So there's some interesting things to consider. The bugs (creeps) give some patrol objectives to pass the time while building up, but it's still strange to command people in fps games. One thing that excites me is the idea of immersive vehicles. Piloting a vehicle in first person makes a lot more sense than switching to third person. It makes the vehicles seem more engaging and balanced better to play with/against. Otherwise, the godlike situational awareness makes it overpowered. Respawn tickets like Battlefield are an objective of their own, and reward smart tactics and strategic play. The resource system actually would have a purpose other than simply building the base/army. It also is the supply/soldier count. I feel like in the early game, the commander is focusing on base building, and the other players are basically scouting/revealing terrain and potentially looting or acquiring abandoned tech/structures. I also think it would be fun to have outposts that are already built, that can basically be defended, and are run by ai commanders, if that makes sense. Basically, the constant winning and losing keeps things interesting, and you could have varying levels of scale to the conflicts. From large tank conflicts to small infantry based ones. Rts usually have multiple stages to the tech tree availability, and it would be interesting to see that in action as well. I always felt like low tech stages were underwhelming, but they wouldn't be in fps. It would be interesting if the attackers had an advantage, and basically started the game before the defenders. So the defenders start the game while under attack, but by attackers with a less developed base. You could even give the attackers have better forces initially, but no base yet, so they have to leverage their superior firepower in order to develop their base, while the defenders have to manage their defenses as long as possible for reinforcements or further base building. I also like the idea of the vehicles being the same for both sides, because it makes the balance simpler, but I also think a well balanced asymmetrical design is more interesting. I'm thinking missile trucks with 2-4 large missiles, vs Salvo missile tanks, with like 20 smaller missiles. It's a little bit too USA vs Russia, but it's not a bad idea to have differentiation, and honestly what other things could you even do? I'm pretty excited about the possibilities of this genre.

Good

Something i havent really understood yet is if this game works like: Theres an RTS player that acts as a "commander" for each faction and the units are actual players or if its all AI, and if its both how much of it can be changed to fit the real player count vs the AI count. Like, could i play this with a large group of people where one or more people who are good at RTS play as the RTS and ones who are better at FPS play as FPS?

how do i join the testing? ;)

The global teleportation for humans really needs to be nerfed, or be behind a paywall tech upgrade. All it takes is to have some player get into a cheeky cliff top right next to an alien hive, and you got your self a instant backdoor spawn for humans to spawn as special op units to whittle down alien eco, pick off units 1 at a time, and whittle down hive buildings. So many games as alien commander has happened to me where I cant possibly do anything about it when it occurs early game without greater tier aliens.

What surprises me is that a bunch of guys through the concept of an incubator for small indie developers is managing to outdone what most of the AAA studios have done for the last 5-7 years with a budget that more likely didn't reach even 1% of what said studios waste in the crap they have been delivering for years.

The game defines is clunky now but it’s still enjoyable, I can’t wait until the issues are sorted out and it has that beautiful RTS/FPS gameplay we all want

Have the harvesters been fixed yet? That seemed to be the biggest problem I kept hearing about.

Does anyone have any phrases they'd like used in the game's voiceover work? Im asking for a "friend" cough cough.

Command & Conquer: Renegade Vibes...

Is there an ability for private lobbies?? Like can me and my 2 buddies play by ourselves?