Nauticrawl

Nauticrawl is an interesting idea. I was lured in by the promise of having to figure out an alien machine, and navigating a world only visible through some sensors. This emanated the kind of discovery and learning that I hoped would be most enjoyable.

The initial impressions were fairly good as well. Sure, my first run ended with the battery dying before I had managed to start the engine, because I was fiddling with all the buttons and levers, but I had gained some insight from doing so. My second run went better, as I actually got the machine moving, even though I didn't know what everything did. It did end not too long after, as I ran out of fuel looking around my surroundings.
Every run had to be started from the beginning, which had so far not been a big deal, since my newfound knowledge very quickly let me skip the fumbling about I had done the previous runs. But on the third try, I already got reasonably far. Less because of my inexperience piloting the machine, and more due to lack of knowledge of the systems of the world outside, that run, too, ended in failure. That was the first time I felt that I did not really want to replay everything up to this point, because it was no longer difficult, but just a chore to demonstrate my mastery.

Embark on that fourth run I did, and due to my familiarity with the systems this time around, I started to notice flaws in them. A bit of background information first. Nauticrawl is mostly turn-based. Without spoiling too much, resources are only consumed when you perform some action. However, some things do occur in realtime, and a patient and wise operator will abuse them. Example: Your monitors may deplete energy, but are not necessary to perform any "turn" actions. You may conserve energy by turning them on, getting the required information, then turning them off to perform your action. As you can imagine, this is tedious. Another example: It is more efficient to inject fuel slowly. This has no other effect than making you wait longer, possibly as long as 5 seconds, to move again. Final example: For some bizarre reason, enemies act in real time, at least until their actions would begin to influence you. You have an infinite amount of time until something attacks you once they have planned to do so. So, uncloaked, all enemies will eventually gather around you and obliterate you if you don't cloak. If you're already cloaked, you can sit and wait for everyone to get away from you so you could uncloak and move without using energy. This waiting can take an incredible amount of time, but you'd be playing suboptimally if you didn't wait.
But even besides all that nonsense, the difficult-to-control machine very quickly stops being interesting as you figure it out, and starts being a nuisance to operate. I've already proved I can work this thing, yet I have to do it over and over and over again.

So, no. Nauticrawl is most definitely not something I'd recommend. While it has a great premise, it makes some very questionable design decisions and does not respect your time. The initial sense of discovery fades to tedium as you realize the machine is not difficult to operate because it's alien to you - it's difficult to operate because it's terribly designed. There's a story unfolding as you explore the world, which I was mildly interested in, but that was far from enough to keep me going. Gameplay, beyond basic operation that would be trivial with a good control scheme, was basically nonexistent as well, not leaving anything interesting to do if you knew how to pilot the machine.