Slitherine

Graphics - Great! I like the intro and the game tiles/units are outstanding
Sound - There is some crackling in the music/sound. The sound effects and music choice are very good, though
Gameplay - If you have played Civ. or some other similar game than a lot of this is intuitive. However this is still new with some new wrinkles. The workshop kind of threw me at first but I figured it out. The manual/help screen doesn't seem to be deep enough in the explanation, however after I logged on to the forums I see that the manual is still under work so I gave this a pass. I am hoping that it will explain the different items one may encounter a bit better as I just attacked pretty much anything that looked like it may give my city trouble.
Overall after 1 hour of play - Still enjoying!!!

First impression for me was - the game looks good, but what do I do now? If you haven't played games like that before you don't really know what to do. There could be some more information from different advisors about priorities. Should I build an army and send them to explore or rather should I build a new city right away? I haven't tried the easiest level so don't know if you get more tips like that there?

Also if you played latest Civilization game you'd expect some more from the game like this. When you encounter other faction it would be nice to hear some dialogue, the same when they contact you later so you get the idea what they want from the first reaction. The music is ok, but would be cool to hear more different sounds (from creatures, troops, etc.) to "feel" the game.

I wasn't going to play for long but before I realized i spent about two hours playing... just one more turn... I wasn't paying too much attention to the research tree, picking the techs a bit randomly as they kept coming pretty quickly anyway and I only wanted to get the 'feel' for the game.

When I built a ship I straight away looked for a button 'Explore' so I could focus on my land units and let it reveal the map. I think a 'scout' unit/action is needed.

But overall I like the game (even though it is missing 'something')

Installer: Easy to set up, would appreciate more information on what it is currently downloading "0/4" does not tell me much on what is going on. Appreciate the display of download size so far but would appreciate more info like how much more of the file left to go.

Initial game impression: Wow, beautiful! Intuitive interface (for a player who plays the likes of Civilization often), easy and smooth to navigate. Research tree does not allow me to choose more than 1 tech at a time: I can not select a future tech and let the game determine what techs are required to obtain the final tech.

Note: This is the first 5 minutes of play. Will post more impressions once I get further into it but thought I'd post my impressions before I forget them.

I notice a spelling mistake for one of the buildings: "Wendo Appartments". Shouldn't it be "Apartments" instead?

1 hour game impression: Figuring out how to whack the local populace back, they've gotten aggressive! Love the Workshop though, oh gosh so many customizations!

Got a bug, I think, in the city screen when I press the "<--" button to view the previous city, it only switches between City #1 and City #2 but never ever displaying City #3. After a while, it switches to City #3 and all looks normal...until clicking on "<--" no longer does anything. I'm guessing that the "<--" button only cycles how you historically viewed your city up to that point in game and not cycling the cities in the opposite direction of "-->".
For example, if throughout the game I viewed the following: City #1, City #3, City #2, City #3, City #3, pressing the "<--" button only lets me view in the following manner: City #3, City #3, City #2, City #3, City #1.
It should be "-->" shows me City #1, City #2, City #3, City #1, City #2, City #3, ... (which is correct in-game), and
"<--" will show me City #3, City #2, City #1, City #3, City #2, City #1, ... (which is not working in-game).

First Impressions: I'm about an hour in playing as the science based race (I can't recall their name) and it defiantly has a civ 5 feel. I'm about 66 turns in and I'm still in my starting city. The local hostile aliens are strong compared to my units and I'm having trouble expanding. The tech tree seems pretty random as far as the progression and rewards. The workshop is a neat component, reminds me of the mechanics from endless space (civ in space game), but the unit modifier in this game is much better, IMO. Can't speak for diplomacy since I'm still boxed in my starting city. Graphics are good, but I'm still getting fairly low framerates on medium/medium graphics.

Yes, I am learning as I go - again a pass because the manual is not yet completed. Lost my second city after 1 turn as I couldn't get a unit to defend it fast enough (it was one step behind) so that was chalked up to experience LOL! Getting ready for the weekend to spend some big time with the game.

The first thing you notice is that in high resolution the game looks gorgeous!
This game is on the same vein as Alpha Centauri.
Dropping into a new planet with little knowledge of it and encountering the native creatures, in an attempt to expand your colonization and increase your holdings.
The Windowed tips are useful. The research tree well made.
I found a nice feature that before turns end it shows you if your research is idle, production ques empty or units unmoved.
My first test game ended up somewhat a disaster, but did learn the interface, and a bit of unit making and exploration.

So I am going in to try a second time, maybe this time I will manage my colonial expansion better and do get to do a bit of tinkering with the diplomacy screen.

Loving the game so far....
Beanwarrior

I am playing version 0.20.1.

installer: the update was slow, especially since it was not clear that if the units on the meter were megabytes or kilobytes or even the number of updates to download. (from 0.18.1, first update).

faction selection screen: at first it may seem that the faction that is displayed (the first in the list) is the one selected by the random setting.

first five minutes: really appealing and easy to get into. The tooltips are really helpful. I especially like the fact that I can design my own vehicles and I am hoping that the array of devices I will eventually be able to use are not simply stats modifiers. The UI is not very exciting but it is functional. It seemed a bit sluggish in my netbook though (sporting a AMD E-450). One thing that was a bit confusing was that when encountering other units it is not clear at the beginning whether they are NPCs or other factions.

The game is very much in the same vein as Alpha centauri, which is a good thing. Looking forward to spend some real time with the game.

So far I love this game. It still has a little ways to go before it become great, but I see so much potential in it. Some issues I had are mentioned below.

First - I had a terrible time convincing the game to update (kept taking forever and then failing), but all is good now.

Second - I noticed when first starting the game that the panning was a little choppy, but turned down the sensitivity and played a bit and haven't noticed it.

Third - Could use better differentiation between units. It's hard to tell at a glance between different units and definitely what upgrades they might have (Doesn't need to be as obvious as Alpha Centauri, but I'd like to be able to see every unit and tell what it is quickly).

Fourth - I'd like to know what my unit's power is when it is being transported and understand why my transported units have the power given.

Fifth - bombarding gets confusing and should have a separate button or at least show up different from the movement line.

Game version: 0.20.1

When I finally was able to get into the game, I thought the main new/load game screen was very nice and tidy. The size of the buttons to the rest of the screen looked quite good. So I then proceeded to click on the new game button and a smallish dialog appeared. Running the game on 1920*1200, I thought the new game dialog was a little on the small side (and there wasn't even a drag handle to resize it). It got a little annoying needing to scroll up and down across each of the categories when I had so much screen space to spare. With that aside, I got my stuff together and started a new game. Then the transition into the video felt epic. The music in the video was epic but I couldn't help but notice the video was a little choppy which ruined the experience a little.

After re-gaining control I found myself taken away by the environments and actual in game interface. The terrain looked convincingly alien enough that it is an habitable alien planet. I thought the in-game tutorial was great. The help information came at a steady rate and I didn't feel overwhelmed with too much information all at once.

Progressing through my first play through in the first 30 minutes, I thought the movement of units was done very nicely. I liked how the unit movement path is shown if you commanded the unit to move a long distance away. After researching my first unit technology, I was presented with the unit customisation workshop screen. I thought that was an awesome feature. Seeing all the alien creatures moving around I thought was awesome.

In the first hour I wasn't really sure what was going on but I kept at it because I thought it was fun. Was I winning? Would be nice to be able to see some progression stats somewhere.

Looking through the Compendium, I noticed that the picture remained the same for all entries. Would be nice to have a different piece of art relevant to each entry.

This pretty much concludes my experience with the game so far.