Dead in Vinland

I have mixed feelings about Dead In Vinland. It's a management survival game about a family who ends up on an island, forced to start living from scratch, all while dealing with a tyrant to whom they have to pay tribute. It's supposedly an improvement over their previous "Dead In" game of a similar nature, but neither have glowing reviews overall. Personally, I think it does a lot of things right, but just fails to hit a sweet spot to really make it enjoyable.

I think Dead In Vinland nails the survival aspect well. Survival isn't just something you do on the side, but concretely the main focus. Every day is a struggle to keep everyone fed and alive while also putting a little effort on the side to progressing to earn back the initial supplies and keeping up with the ever-increasing tribute. It's definitely not too easy, and while I wouldn't say it's too difficult either, the constant promise of loss looming above you doesn't really make you feel good about the experience. Maybe you're not supposed to. Maybe you're supposed to feel the same despair your characters do, and the game accomplishes that well, but I don't find it enjoyable.
I think the main aspect contributing to my displeasure was the positive feedback loop (not so positive at all, despite the name), where if my characters got tired, injured, hungry, etc., then they lost performance and/or had to take some time off to recover, which in turn gave less resources, and less progress, furthering the doom that perhaps caused this in the first place. I will praise the balance, that this feedback loop did not spiral into actually losing nor the game becoming a walk in the park, but despite constantly improving, getting new people, and supposedly becoming better, I never felt like things started looking up. Progression wasn't satisfying.
The other aspect was the micromanagement being a bit too extensive. Too much time spent looking at statuses and numbers, telling characters what to do, and too little gameplay in the sense of stuff happening.

Overall, opposite to the story the game seemingly followed, I started Dead In Vinland with a good amount of hope in the first hours. There was a promise of building a great village, finding new people, and overthrowing the tyrant of the island. However, as I got closer to that goal in the game, my hope in reality disappeared. Seeing my efforts not make a difference to my well-being made me lose hope until I eventually gave up. Which was a shame, because I was looking forward to seeing how the story would unfold.
I can't really recommend this, as I didn't have the fortitude to see it through to the end. However, it's not a bad game, and I had a solid 8+ hours of fun with it. Perhaps you'll like it if the survival aspect is really up your alley, and you don't think the frustration of the constant impending doom will get to you, but I have my doubts.