Rare that I would play and even more so to recommend a game in early access, but I think this might be one of very few kinds of games that might have no greater negatives to adopt early.
So this is a “roguelite” city builder. Which sounds like a weird combo of genres, but it really works very well. The game play loop is that you set up colonies and play those through to a certain level of completeness by achieving goals set out, finish randomly assigned missions and hazards on the map. Once you’ve fulfilled enough of these tasks the colony is considered established and you will be allowed back to the overworld map to pick a spot for another colony, earning experience and materials for unlocking new buildings and other stuff with.
After a certain number of turns / years spent building the world up, Armageddon comes and wipes the world clean and you start all over again.
What is the point of it then? Well you ever start a game of civilization, Anno, cities: skylines or something like that and 3h into it you’re just not that into whatever it was you managed to build anymore? Just want to start over, but also not really?
That’s what this game does wonderfully, it’s a brilliantly bite sized city builder, colony management type experience that comes to a satisfying end.
I played the demo for almost 18h and that took me well past the point where I couldn’t unlock anything new and just played several maps only engaging with the basics of what the game has on offer and found the game in itself engaging enough to play without needing any progression treadmill stuff to trick my brain into enjoying itself. Which is why I feel like I can recommend the game even at this early access stage. What is already here is great, what they might add in the future is not likely to change the basic game play loop, but of course there are no guarantees.
Strongly recommend having a go at the demo at the very least.