Volcanoids

It's hard to overstate the amount of potential this game has. It's been a lot of fun even in it's current, rather raw, state. If they keep working on it, it could become a real gem.
The shooter parts stood out as something that could use the most improvement:
- AI: There's only one tactic the enemies have: run towards you, and shoot. And there's only one tactic you can use to counter them: shoot back, duck, reload, repeat. And it's not very clear whether you're safe behind cover or not
- Enemy variety. They differ only in color and strength. Difference in weapons, abilities, or behavior would make things a lot more interesting
That said, the base building and raiding is very satisfying. Not sure if everybody will find it worth it's price at it's current state, but I'm not regretting my purchase,

I think this game is a great time. I'd compare it to games like Subnautica, though Volcanoids is much more focused on combat and crafting, and less on survival. I adore the steampunk/dieselpunk aesthetic and sound design, and the idea of having an "eruption cycle" rather than a "day cycle" is really cool. The new crafting automation stuff is particularly satisfying to use, as is the entire drill ship customization system. I felt a bit like I was living in the world of Boneshaker (steampunk novel by Cherie Priest).
I have very few and very small complaints: The enemies seem to have hit-scan ranged attacks (bullets have no travel time, and thus cannot be dodged), with a random chance to miss. It works fine, but maybe strafing around should increase their chance to miss? Other than that, better in-game documentation or tutorialization would be very useful, though the information you need is easily enough found in the forums or guides, and it is early access after all. I also hope that the finished game has a bit more story/lore sprinkled in to help with 'muh immersion'.
Overall, if you like games like Subnautica, No Man's Sky, Astroneer, Slime Rancher, and the like, you'll probably like this a lot. Especially if you like steampunk stuff.

As a much older gamer, and veteran of many survival games, I am always wary of early access titles. I watched this one and waited for the Co-Op update. The developers Trello roadmap looks exciting, so a friend and I took the plunge. After 24 odd hours we are having a total blast! This really is a tremendous amount of fun. The learning curve is very steep, but perseverance is well rewarded. the crafting and upgrade system is deliciously complex and rewarding, as you gradually upgrade the drill's various components and modules to face tougher environments and enemies. The maps are huge, and the travel system suits the game very well. The combat system is simplistic, but oddly satisfying, as you blow angry robots into chunks with a variety of weapons (The handheld mortar is hilarious) and loot their smouldering corpses. I would say we are about one third through the game, and have slowed our progress on purpose to keep the fun going as long as we can. If you enjoyed Ark:Survival, The Forest, 7 Days etc you will love this one.
TL;DR STEAMPUNK ROBOT SLAUGHTER IN A GIANT DRILL/TANK. PLAY IT.

This game is in early access, sure, but it is probably one of the best steampunk/survival games I have ever seen and played in my entire life, and that is saying a lot.
It has a decent grinding curve, beautiful graphics, and very active developers which are ironing out the bugs.
P.S. Someone named Tiereian or something said that you can’t dig with the drillship, on a map or anything. However, since the travel update, that has been proven untrue. So if ya see this, just know that you can in fact use the drillship.

It's an interesting game. Design your own drill ship and go hide from a volcanic explosion. Eliminate some robots while destroying their drill ships for parts.
+ Designing your own drill ship is fun. How you design it has impact on how easy it is to do things and gives you some nice personalization to your drill ship.
+ Combat can be fun and hectic.
+ 3 tiers of stuff to go through gives a decent amount of content.
- Quests are nothing more than tutorials.
- Balance is off badly. Some weapons feel useless and you can get a ton of easy resources by just mining through the safe underground. This is likely to change.
- The game can get pretty repetitive, pretty quickly. Some fun new activities on the horizon though.
- The inventory system is pretty bad. You require quite a bit of ammo and healing items to invade an enemy ship and most enemy ships have so much loot that even gathering only the useful stuff can generally lead to a full inventory extremely quickly.
- Waiting around for an explosion when you don't have much to do can be annoying.

Only reviewing for single player because I'm not a multiplayer kind of gamer.
Story is basic and mostly there to help you figure out and progress through the mechanics.
It's not going to make you think too hard, and there isn't really any lore that explains the world/setting.
I'm was really here for the drillship bases!
Building the ship is fun, but figuring out how pieces fit around in the beginning was difficult. I somehow missed that things could go on the ceiling for a few hours and things were getting crowded.
I beat the game on easy in about 10 hours.
I do recommend this game even just for the single player mode!
It was enjoyable for the cost/time that I got from it, and if you play co-op I'm sure you'll get double that.
The game shows some original mechanics that I'd to see where the developer goes with it in the future.

I recommend if you're into a Dieselpunk aesthetic with building. If you're looking for a good shooter, strategic combat or an interesting narrative, then this won't be for you. If you want a gorgeous ship you piece together, get shot up, rebuild, then rip apart yourself and layout from scratch given your current idea of optimal, then this is pretty good, not great, but good.
First the negative. Bear with me. All the guns are bound to the same key, including a mortar that can kill you if you happen to switch to it pressing the 3 key while trying to get your shotgun. Said mortar is highly lethal to yourself point-blank, and shoot wayyyy off to the right, likely clipping the wall and killing you.
Enemy bots, despite the clear colour coding and recognising what type they are, and noting the in archive that they have decent stats, function exactly the same. Except for thinking the blank soldier types take more of a beating, I can't tell you that they functionally hit you from different distances, miss more often, hurt less. In terms of gaming experience they feel the same. Same patterns you use to fight them. There's not much in the fighting them - headshots, if they do anything at all, don't seem to matter, and they simply blind-rush forward and fire as they approach. There's little sound to their approach, and they spawn from the cog spawners inside the ship you're boarding, frequently stacking inside one another as they run into your room. That and with the present build they can't fire through boulders, but they can move into them and fire out while you can't see nor shoot them and need to waste explosives to defeat them.
Between the layout of the drillships and rocky terrain you'll frequently find "looks clear" turns into a bloodbath with little to be done from your side. You'd think that taking the high ground would prevent such ambushes, but since your guns pretty much don't outrange them, you're just getting guaranteed hit by all of them.
Combat is not a small part of it, and plays out very samy in most encounters regardless of terrain, ship type you're facing and your layout. Only running out of ammo really affects anything.
As at time of writing, just after the Optimisation update, the game worked 98% without glitches, but the tutorial/guide still needs work. Some of it like needing a tier 1 module currently installed to be able to produce a tier 2 you've just researched isn't quite as intuitive, but that should improve.
Now, the positive - building is satisfying, mining isn't annoying. Your drillship starts feeling like home and like a beast. When you get the resources play around with all those gauges and crazy controllers you can install.
There is some polish to this already, like losing your only production facility has the sub still parked in the bay where you can reconstruct that ability. If your ship took a beating driving through too thick a portion of lava or you neglected it too lightly turreted, you can cruise around underground collecting resources as the mining vessel you are, then find a secluded cavern to repair and retool.
Other than the guns having barebones animation for shooting/reloading, the sounds of the ship itself and the visuals while it does what is does, including the internal corridors snaking as it descends underground are great.
By extension, I'm looking for Volcanoids in 2 years time, or Volcanoids 2. Where you get multiplayer running off the same ship you build together, get to interact with systems from the outside as well as inside and more varied enemy encounters, if combat remains as prominent.