Brilliant concept and engaging mechanics.

Absolutely horrific UI.

"Make sure that the system communicates what’s happening. Always inform your users of location, actions, changes in state, or errors. The use of various UI elements to communicate status and, if necessary, next steps can reduce frustration for your user. " There isn't even any indication you saved. For that matter there is no keybinding available.

"Use typography to create hierarchy and clarity. Carefully consider how you use typeface. Different sizes, fonts, and arrangement of the text to help increase scanability, legibility and readability."
Needing to hover over somethign for 30 seconds to read the tooltip is not okay.


Let's use the basics:
"
1. Does this interface tell me what I need to know right now?
2. Is it easy to find the information I'm looking for, or do I have to look around for it? (Are the menus nested so deep that they hide information from the player?)
3. Can I use this interface without having to read instructions elsewhere?
4. Are the things I can do on this screen obvious?
5. Do I ever need to wait for the interface to load or play an animation?
6. Are there any tedious or repetitive tasks that I can shorten (with a shortcut key, for example) or remove entirely?
" Maia fails to pass any of these test except for number 6, and even that is only half passed as you need to search the internet just to find the keybindings.

Great game, with an unplayable UI/UX.
But, hey, it is early access.

I have to say, this is a game I want to like. Its a great concept, but the execution is very poor.

I've been patronizing this game's early access since it was available for early access, and while some bugs have been fixed, numerous game-breaking bugs still remain. Its pretty-much unplayable still, despite several months development since its initial release.

Glitches in character AI get them stuck in routines that eventually lead to their deaths. For example, eating and sleeping, repeat et infinitum, while not working on the hyroponics bay. The AI seems to get deadlocked quite a lot. Since the characters start running to the food and then eating, I assume that the value for hunger isn't being reset properly.

There are also animation problems that seem to somehow reflect character position. Character position in the world should not be a function of the 3D engine. The location of objects should be purely data, which is then rendered. The reason why I suspect this isn't the case in Maia is because characters "jump" back, particularly after a collision with a wall. Yes - they walk into walls and then teleport back a few steps. So the pathfinding is bad too. I think this is because the objects in the world are not on a real "grid" system. While rooms might be, everything else seems to be kinda "free-floating" and placable anywhere in the room / outside. While this would be cool, it doesn't work right, so its not cool.

Also the object rotation system is very annoying. It would be much better if there were a "spin by increment" key prior to object placement. And objects can intersect eachother, which makes no sense.

Additionally 6 mo after launch there's still no save / load system. The game still starts with invalid start conditions (breaches in the base start point to the outside world makes colonists unable to move around in the cavern without space suits, and the airlock is on the other side of the base). There is no way to make a new game without exiting to desktop and starting the game over. The settings are very minimal, and there are enormous problems with resolution. You click and it changes, in a cycle, rather than selecting from a menu. This is terrible because it saves the last setting, and there's no "does this resolution work for you?" dialog. This means you can get yourself into unusable settings and be unable to get out.

Also the game performance is really quite bad.

Meanwhile the creators are adding content while there are still problems with the fundamental mechanics of the game. I wonder if they understand how unusable the game is right now....

Even though I recommend this game its merely for the fact that it is still in Alpha and that it is harsh to give it a negative opinion for the long run. However in its current state this game is NOT playable in the least bit. However it shows great promise and its concept is very intriguing. My current suggestion is to wait till Beta testing comes so that there is a better AI, unless you enjoy watching your crew run to your food stores and do nothing but eat until they suffocate from not trying to build their oxygen processor.

I backed Maia on Kickstarter and I feel that now is a good time for people to buy it on Greenlight. Personally, I think that Maia went to Greenlight too early, while there were still too many bugs and issues. But with 0.46 the game is stable and playable for many people and the future promise is just starting to show through. For new players there's probably a solid afternoon of playtime here, plus some replay value. There's no combat yet, but it's planned for the next build (0.47) and I imagine that this will boost re-playability a great deal.

I was initially drawn to Maia by the atmospheric trailers and the potential shown in the very first alpha builds. The aesthetic and design of Maia is fantastic. The art and music combine to create a slightly unsettling, suspenseful atmosphere that's lifted by the numerous little touches of wry humour and observation; many of which are genuinely clever. Hitchhiker's meets Alien.

If Simon and team manage to wrap their unique design around a enjoyable and challenging colony builder then this will definitely be a stand-out title for the future.

As a guide to what's coming next, here's a link to the 'rough' feature roadmap - Rough roadmap

If you still aren't sure then hold back for a month or two until the game is more fleshed out, but definitely keep an eye on Maia.

Very promising management game, but beware still very early access
Note: This game is in healthy financial condition http://www.maiagame.com/viewentry.php?id=25

I love the idea of this game... it also looks really great. The weather effects are awesome. That being said, I have purchase several games in alpha and beta stages. I have been in invite-only beta tests also. I know what to expect and what not to expect from games in early stages, and this one is terrible. The developer clearly has little idea of what he's doing from a procedural point of view. In the time i've owned this game here's what's happened: several patches have been released, but the big problems haven't been resolved... neat new little content has been added, but with the game unplayable it makes little difference. This game is sure to disappoint over and over again. I waited so long to write this review because I wanted to see if some progress would be made, but it hasn't. The worst part of it is that the developer has had to go off steam (on kickstarter) to continue to raise money. Please save yourself the headache of downloading this game. If you do try to play, here are a few tips.
1) Save often. F5 saves and F9 loads... the icons at the top right also save and load, i'll let you try to figure out which is which
2) The AI is always getting stuck in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loops or just shutting down. This happens every few minutes like clockwork... you must save, exit the game, and restart it to continue playing.
3) Things don't update like they should... if you mine ore but can't figure out why it isn't being moved to storage... it's probably AI to blame again... another reload should help.
4) Sometimes things stop working inexplicably, If the airlock breaks and cannot be repaired, you must start a new game. some things can be repaired though, so who knows.
5) Always place two doors on rooms... if the door breaks and needs repair, but your people are inside of the room, and the guys outside the room are too tired to do it and the door that's broken leads to the sleeping area... they might decide not to repair it and instead die from lack of sleep... leaving the others trapped inside to starve
6) Just get in the habit of restarting the game every few minutes
7) Don't bother with research, it causes bugs which basically cause the game to crash beyond a certain point... meaning you'll never get past that point without starting yet another new game.
8) Use windows 7 or vista, and make sure you have the latest drivers for your graphics card (and by that I mean have a graphics card that uses newer drivers) The dev doesn't like helping with bugfixing if your computer doesn't use the latest drivers, despite the fact that some older cards (like the ones in my windows 7 machine) have old drivers (even if they are the "most up to date" they are still like 2 years old) and that still others (like on my windows 8 acer machine) require the use of special drivers provided by the OEM which may not be the "latest and greatest".
9) Don't expect too much, this way you won't be disappointed.

I do not recommend this game in its current state. Its more or less an tech demo then an actual game. It has some nice ideas but the time between updates are far too long. Maybe in the future this will become a game instead of a techdemo.

Seems to be a very very promising and fun game ive had the alpha for a while
unfortunatly i havent been able to get ten minutes of gameplay befor a crash in at least seven months
Its an alpha so be warned
i just wish they would focus on stability before adding more features

Just another tech demo. I have been keeping tabs on this since it was kick started back in the fall of 2012. So far in the 2 years since the game has progressed at a snails pace. I expected it to be in beta by now, not just the same tech demo from 2 years ago with a few extra features and whole bunch of bugs.

This game COULD be great. But what lets it down most of all is the AI (A CORE MECHANIC OF THE GAME). For a game that has been in Alpha for almost a year now the AI is STILL SHOCKING to the point where the game is virtually still unplayable.

People and the IMP get "stuck" and dont move leaving you to restard or watch them die.
The people don't build certain things even when they should be able to (For example I have NEVER been able to build a hopper, it just sits there unbuilt for countless amounts of time)
I've had people die from exhaustion because they refuse to build a bed.....

I have only played 4.4hrs of the game and watched tutorials on how to get people to do things but nothing ever works. this game needs a serious overhal becuase as it stands, I WARN YOU NOT TO BUY IT

Bought this game a while ago, like the market sale spiel, space versionof dungeon keeper, but with colonists, and a robot instead of imps. Oh and space chickens. Well I have played this twice and the game needs much more development. The tutorial is lax and needs more input, maybe hints of what to build first liek...oh I dont know and atmosphere generator (Will come back to this point). It took a few goes before I figured out that the robot is accessible, you dont click on it. you click on rock formations and he digs bits of the rock face out and you can then build your colony. No tutorial on how to use him though. Colonists are unuseable, they do what they want to do.

I have played this a number of times and each time my colonists died of asphyxiation. Every time, even when I build atmosphere generators. This game is currently a no go without a decent tutorial. Its not a game per sae currently, its really a large project in futility and how to kill space colonists off the quickest.

Thumbs down, I bought this knowing it was an early access game and they are stillworking on it, but this ... is embarrassing, It does not hold a candle to Dungeon Keeper. And yes my hours played looks low. Trust me if you have a Vista or earlier made computer this game will crash badly. My hours are lower than what it says above, its included crashes and time i tried tofigure out how to fix it.

In my humble opinion, wait 6 months then have a look at reviews on here. See if some of the issues have been fixed but there are better things to waste money on than this. Free to plays are plentiful, this kind of half made game is far to commomn on Steam. They need to look at these and decide whats worth keeping on steam and what needs to be taken off and developed a bit more.

Ok rant over 2/10

As of right now, this game is unplayable. It'll crash about 5-10 minutes into gameplay for no reason.

This game has a lot of potential but is unplayable in its current state. You will play for 10 - 20 mins before the AI will stop building new items all together. Don't get me wrong this is a early access and if completed it will be a great game.

A game with promise, but it needs to be developed more. Its going to stay on the shelf awaiting the update's to make it playable.

Still early days for Maia though their is alot of potential it still feels lacking of polish though a cool concept.

I bought this game and I was fully aware that it was early access. It NEVER worked. Till today I "played" 41 minutes of starting the game and crashing. No wireframes no nothing. The support help bottom line is that I didn't checked my hardware well. I cheked all my hardware before buying it. It fit the written specifications.

I'm very dissapointed. I wanted to try the Early Access thing because I was very interested in the game and its development. I didn't mind heavy bugs, but I can't stand the ultimate bug: I can't start the game.

I can't play and the support is nil. It's very frustrating. I'm not going into Early Access again.

In its current build, the game is completely unplayable. Its list of faults is longer than a bad year, so I won't even try to name them all.

That said, it shows a lot of promise. I am looking forward to the finished product, when it is released. Judging by the rate of improvement thus far, that should be in the summer of 2029, or thereabouts.

I'd like to recommend it, but I can't. Currently it is simply not an enjoyable experience. In fact, one could argue it is not even a game yet, merely a concept demo. I can't say I regret paying for it, though, as I consider it money well spent in support of the game's development.

I really do want this to be a good game. Or, failing that, at least a finished game.

- Slow update
- Bug Ridden
- Very little to do

Could had some good potetial yet because of the reason above i dont recommend this game

Bare in mind this game is extremly early access, and as such it has its problems. However if you remember that this game is truely amazing.

Maia really pushes the limits of what's acceptable to release as an Early Access game. There is a minimum bar of quality I expect even among paid alphas, and I don't think Maia meets it.

As of this updated review, you're still paying for an extremely limited demo sandbox where you can place objects and watch animations happen. The setting can't decide whether it wants to be a realistic simulator (vital statistics on each colonist, food/water/atmosphere required for survival) or a complete joke (giant fuzzy extraterrestrial life).

User interface design is not good, and it's difficult to tell what each control does. The current main controls for Maia are a series of badly documented hotkeys. One of the few really awesome new features: you can skip the tutorial now.

But if you take one thing away from this review: the bugs are show-stoppingly bad. I've experienced sudden framerate slowdowns on both Mac and PC, as well as crashes-to-desktop for no discernable reason. The colonist and robot AI will get stuck in walls or stand next to piles of rubble on no notice. There appears to be very little QA before each release, and minimal progress in fixing the crash bugs since I wrote my last review in December.

As I said on Dec 6 - Maia isn't worth paying for yet. Something good might come of it eventually, but new buyers should wait.