TL;DR: SoL is one of the best Sandbox games out there if you are willing to put the time into it, and I can not recommend it more if you are into that genre.

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Signs of Life is a breath of fresh air (for me, at least) in the survival-sandbox genre. Most games in said genre tend to visually resemble eachother, or play identically (i.e. make a crafting table, then furnace, etc...).
SoL manages to differentiate itself from the lot, mostly thanks to it's (although minor) storyline and lore.
Sure, it has pickaxes, mining, 2D voxel worlds and the likes, but it offers much more than the run-of-the-mill sandbox game.

Having played for a good couple of hours now, I've made it to the point where I've acquired the Level 2 Access Card, and have explored the 4 structures that I've found (I'm certain there are more that I've yet to discover), and am starting to get a nice collection of gadgets, and technologically advanced items.

However, at multiple points during my current playthrough, I started getting afraid that I might have gone through all of the content, due to the fact that I had no new recipes that seemed interesting, nor could find anything of interest that I had access to either. Though, I will admit that when I 'did' discover new recipes and the likes, I couldn't help but pull a massive smile, knowing that my playthrough wouldn't be done anytime soon.

In it's current state, the game has huge amounts of content (most of which I haven't even discovered yet), and quite a bit of potential. I'm hoping that the content shown on the trailer will be soon added -if not already-, as I'd love to find larger bases, ruins, and more content to explore.

SoL is by far one of my favourite games in the sandbox genre, and could easily compete with, or even surpass games like Edge of Space, Starbound or Terraria, if enough work is put into it in the coming months of it's development.

A spectacular game so far with plenty of content despite it's early access status.
I only have a few minor issues, in which I will state them in the questions I have for the developer(s) in hopes of having them answered
1. Will there be more diverse terrain generation in the future? Such as curved/diagonal blocks for easy terrain navigation, as it's tedious to continuously place blocks to get to higher spots.
2. Will there be character wipes in the future to make room for updates?
3. Will the game eventually have an "ending" or do you intend to make it free-roam for as long as the player wants?

That's all I have, TL;DR this game is worth it's 10$ price tag.
My rating is at least a 9/10

I resorted to cannibalism faster than I thought.

Fantastic game with intuitive and original mechanics and lots of neat ideas. Deserves a lot more attention from fans

At first glance, Signs of Life looks like another shameless "blocky sandbox pickaxe terrria/minecraft ripoff" to be tossed on top of the ever growing pile of said games. Yet, while only being single player, it does a lot more than other titles trying to cash in on this theme.
This game does a fine job standing on its own in this theme, though like everything in beta, it has its own share of problems

While the game does a lot right, I feel like the game doesn't know what its doing with itself, as if its trying to be a comedy, and yet take itself seriously. I can't help but feel like the developers were trying to achieve that quirky balance borderlands 2 does so very well. The game unfortunately the game never captures this balance, and instead falls flat on its face with its story.
It however does do an outstanding job with the crafting system, and the many gadgets you can make with it.

The game has you start off landing on an unknown planet with minimal survival equipment, the clothes on your back, and an AI partner with terrible dialog. You then set off to explore the planet, looking for equipment, useful materials and as the name of the game suggests, signs of life.
The top of the world looks like Willy Wonka exploded, painting everything in bright colors: its cheery, safe, and it counteracts the rest of the game in terms of atmosphere.
Dig down, or explore one of the abandoned stations at night, and the atmosphere does a complete 180 degree turn. The atmosphere is dark, dank, empty, and devoid of all human life. As you explore deeper, the atmosphere of the game gets even more creepy, with alien tentacles raining acid on you, floating sacks of puss that explode, and large vicious looking aliens with scythes for legs. The further you go down, the more dangerous it feels, the atmosphere does a very good job of this.

Unfortunately the storyline can't seem to latch onto what the atmosphere does, and write a compelling narrative to motivate the player into finding out what happened on this planet.
Instead the storyline tries to play it silly, inside of a dark, unlit station, with human corpses strung about.

You find E-readers in these stations, with some of the articales writen in them hint at where items of interest to you can be found. However, you will mostly be reading about some doctor acting erratically (the game tells you he is afflicted with "Space Madness") and as a result, everyone around him, including his CO's, are implenting EXTREME measures to keep the space madness doctor from rifing through their property.

(minor spoiler here) One such example was the leader of the installation, She finds good doctor madness combing through her pantie drawer. Instead of sticking the guy behind bars until they can send him into the place with padded walls, she demotes his access, then processes to bury the device that promotes keycard access, several hundred meters underground, just for the hell of it.
(end of spoiler)

Your only form of story content besides the e-readers, is your partner AI, AGIS.
AGIS is suppose to be malfunctioning, and yet, he says nothing you'd think an AI would actually say. He constantly makes useless comments that help in no way, and when he does actually say something somewhat useful, you've already tuned him out. He's basically a watered down, forgettable version of claptrap attached to your wrist. Hes annoying, but you can forget about him, so that makes him slightly better than claptrap?

Where the game actually shines is the use of the M.E.G. your wrist mounted multi tool. This thing is sweet, and actually puts all the other multitools you see in other games of this theme to shame. It functions as your map, your scanner used for updating your map, an autolooter, and of course, placing and breaking objects and blocks. All of these functions can be upgraded to improve them even further, everything besides AGIS that is... Honestly, all this thing needs is a blade attachment and it'd put the omni-tool in Mass Effect to shame.

The crafting is very strong here, making use of resources constantly. In Terraria, theres a point where you stop gathering copper, because you have no more use for copper, unless you maded to make a copper castle, using copper blocks. Here, copper and most everything else constantly has a use, so your always gathering for everything.

Guns felt kind of lack luster, the game makes you jump through hoops to get your first real gun besides the 9mm pistol, and most later on enemies are resistant to your bullets. The Laser gun was my go to weapon, as it could kill anything, although waiting on your energy to recharge was a ♥♥♥♥♥, but you never truly ran dry, where as bullets actually use materials.

All in all, I enjoyed the game, even though when I played it, there was no final boss fight, or at least I couldn't find one. My only worry is that they keep rolling with the shallow storyline, and make the final events of the game lackluster, making you feel like you wasted your time, as a bad ending has that effect.

Conclusion:

Pros:
- Strong crafting system.
- Lots of interesting materials to scavange.
- The M.E.G. Tool does an outstanding job for its intended use, as a multi-tool.
- Enemies look interesting, and later ones look imposing.
- Loads of weapons to choose from.
- Certain areas of the game deliver an erie atmosphere, supporting the actual title of the game.
- Graphics, while looking the part of a flash game, actually do a pretty good job.
- The inventory system is reminiscent of the old Ultima games, which I love. The autosort works very well.
- Retrieveable arrows and bolts.

Cons:
- No Multiplayer
- Weak storyline (its a bigger deal, brought by the fact of the first con, no multiplayer.)
- Gunplay doesn't feel very rewarding, since you need to scavange for both the materials to make the gun itself, and its ammo. You are more likely to use ranged weapons with retrievable ammo such as bows and crossbows, or weapons that use your energy.
- AGIS has to be some sort of spawn from claptrap
- Lack of boss fights (though it is still in beta)
- Lack of tutorial on how your M.E.G. is upgraded.

Final verdict: Would recommend, but only to those who can't get enough sandbox, blockfest, diamond pickaxe goodness.
If you are tired of these games being perpetually in beta such as *cough* Starbound *cough*, then stay away until 1.0.

Metroid meets Minecraft.

It's all about discovery and enjoying the enviroment.

The crafting system is very intellegent.

It's a got a hard science fiction tone.

The game is constantly being updated.

The develepor listens to the players and responds right away to any issues or suggestions.

It has a giant mechanical chicken for no reason.

Don't recommend. Maybe it will get better as the EA progresses, but so far I found myself binge playing this game once then putting it down and never picking it back up again.

Why? Is it a bad game? No. But neither is a very engrossing game. There really isn't much here that's new and unique. It features a few small touches that are intriguing (such as the wearable holographic mini-map that must be filled in by manual scanning), but largely none of these made me really feel all that engaged.

The art and presentation is fine, if bland. Only real complaint I had was that the high-rez, high-saturation pixel art made it hard to figure out what is an actual user interface element and what are just little visual doodads that serve no purpose. But you learn quickly enough what is clickable and what isn't, so it's not like it prevents you from playing the game. It's just a style I don't particularly care for in a game. (Starbound had the same issue, though it featured low-rez pixel art.)

The trailer showed all kinds of nifty items, such as lasers, flying ships, etc. But after seven hours of play, I had nothing to show for my time save the same standard progression of items that you find in these games. I had yet to craft anything that was cool and exciting; All I saw in my future was an ever-progressing grind. Replacing my copper items with iron, and so on. I'm sure I'd get flying laser ships eventually but the incentive isn't there for me to try, particularly when you die very far away from your spawn and must back-track quite a long way to recover your items -- Without even a marker to indicate where you died. A lot of work for too little reward, IMHO.

Crafting is okay, and like that it's implemented via a list. (Though it's annoying that you cannot mass open or close categories.)

I think this has signs of life (pun!) but for now I would recommend you wait.

Bought this game over other's like it, and its an amazing game so far. Definitely worth every dollar!

At first I didn't think much of it. I was slightly confused but also happy that there was no tutorial to the game, but after 2 minutes I totally got it - PURE SURVIVAL.

The game doesn't hold your hand all the way (not sure if intentional) which in my opinion is a nice change. The game mechanice are as follow:
-The crafting is nice and straightforward.
-Melee Combat has no downsides.
-The first bow has a dodgy accuracy thing going on (not sure if same for all bows) so I'm not sure about ranged combat.
-Loads of little menus to make smelting (for example) more sexy and nice to use.
-The inventory has to be sorted which shows you how much of a mess you would make IRL.
-The toolbar is very intuitive and action-ready.
-Didn't really try to build anything grand yet so I can't really comment on building :(

The design is nice (couldn't think of a better word).
-The graphics feel warm and polished
-The animations are mostly smooth (some transitions from walking and ducking are sudden)
-The effects (fire. lasers etc.) are very out-there and well made.

From what I played so far I already had loads of fun. For the future I would love to see more crafting and of course the common-♥♥♥♥ request of Multiplayer games maybe?... pls :P

I would totally reccomend this game to anyone out there cause I had a lot of fun with it so far and I don't see myself getting bored of this anytime soon.

I'm looking forward to further updates :)

This game is AWESOME! the physics are not too good, but it is a 2d terraria type game. now,when i say that, i mean it's a 2d voxel based game about building and not getting your butt kicked. pros: amasing gameplay, dungeons and (a) boss character custumosation, and sheep that you can peg with fruits. cons: small world. thats about it. yeahhhhh. not a bad game.

This game will naturally (and rightfully so) be compared to Terraria and Starbound. I have all 3 and I think that SoL will be my favorite of them. I havent devoted enough time into SoL to say that with certainity yet, but the inital impressioins were very differnt from those I got with Terraria and SB.

This game is more intentional it feels. Its slowed down a bit. Everything looks a bit different than what we are used to . Everything seems to have a bit more "weight" to it. I didn't drop in the world and craft full sets of stuff, construct a house, and run across the map laying waste to everything i saw within 1-2 hours.

The best way to compare it really is to say... Imagine another football game came out. Something other than Madden. We would all naturally campre said game to madden. But when we played it we would all likely say "its a football game, but its not madden". Its a 2D sandbox resource mining survival game... but its not SB or Terraria.

Also, Its 9.99. Go buy it. Even if the DEVS packed up shop today and we never saw another update. There is alread 10 bucks worth of content.

Should you buy it? Did you like Terraria? Did you like Starbound? Then yes.... buy this 2. Even if you bought all 3 you've still spent less than any big studio release =)

Hell yeah this is a good game. Played it during an Indie-Game-Saturday event, and really enjoyed figuring out the interaface and how stuff works. Things appear complicated at first glance, but we quickly found it to be intuitive and well-laid out. The game sets the bar for how hot-bars should be done. Music is good, graphics are fine enough. What really sets this apart from others like it in the genre, is tech depth. I mean after 4 hours we felt that we barely scratched the surface here. Cool thing is that it is not simply a sandbox - there are actual storyline goals (as far as I could tell it is to rebuild the ship and get off the planet). Developers seem like cool people too.

I think I got this in a bundle, but I would have guessed it should cost around $20. And for the current $9.99 price tag, its a steal.

Great game so far, i can't wait for them to go on with the story. I've finished most of the game throught creative. I would recommend this.

This feels like its going to be an amazing game out of early access. I have to say, I enjoy the graphics, and seems to have plenty to do. Very fun, good graphics for a side scroll game. Music is well chosen, keeps you immersed in the game. I find the game very similar to starbound, but with graphic improvements. There are obvious differences, but has a similar feel.

The game is awesome and worth the money, but there is not too much content left. At my point in the game, all that is left to do is maybe get a few more wrist watch upgrades and maybe blow some stuff up. But this game is definetly worth $10 right now becuase I did get a good 9 hours out of it so far. It is not buggy, I almost couldn't find one. So this game will be awesome in future updates I hope!!!

Amazing game... I am not that into sandbox games and game mechanics may be a challenge at first glance, but definately worth the money...

A very great and realisticly unique in a way! I love playing this game, its step by step, fighting for survival to thrive, though it would be more challenging to add hunger or atleast the option... and water... ok off topic here, we gotta understand that it's still in EARLY ACCESS, sorry. I personally enjoy playing this game everyday... Seeing myself progress... finding more and more discoveries "Ive seen things...creepy things...", still on the planet. Those things though... the spitter killed me once. Progress might be slow but you'll feel so succesful and proud once you have improved. Ate a human, killed an alien (kind of) and took a ♥♥♥♥ twice in my pants and in the toilet... and still don't know how to go to space yet. Adventure awaits you space :P 10/10 for an Early Acces Game.

To start off, I have to say that games that are similar to Terraria are my favorite types of games. I've been looking for a similar game for a while, but I haven't had much luck.

That being said, I really like this game. It's not too hard, and it's not too easy. It requires patience, there are TONS of things to craft. There's a lot of unique features that Terraria type games lack. But there still isn't much of a building prospect yet, or at least in my opinion.

I see a lot of potential for this game. I would love for worlds to be bigger, to see a dungeon aspect, with more monsters, and more bosses.

So far, I like the game, it's more enjoyable to play than a few other Early Access games.

Awesome game! I would definitely recomend this game to anyone who loves sandbox games. I've become addicted! I also find that I have not had real buggy experiences with the game, and it has never crashed. I expect some issues as it grows, but so far it has been cool to play! It has the right amount of everything, I am looking forward to new updates!

This game is why us mortals continue our disgusting lives, each day hoping to play Signs Of Life.

9/10