THIS LOW SCORE IS REDICULOUS.
This game is creative and interesting.
Low ratings are NOT making sense for this. Just because you can't POUND YOUR EMPTY HEAD to try the game more than once doesn't mean this deserves a low rating.
Reviews for "Geneva Convection"
1. Turn off the monitors. They mostly distract you.
2. Run the cooling units a little hot. The capacitor and generator can never be too cool
3. Turn off the research lab, command center, and launch pad unless you are using them.
4. Spend at least half your money improving capacity and launching satellites until you have plenty of targets.
5. Once you have launched all three satellites, break the launch pad.
6. DO NOT increase power until you have bought all the valves you need.
IF THE GENERATOR/CAPACITOR BREAKS:
1. Fix the capacitor
2. Turn the capacitor cooling way up
3. Fix the generator
4. Turn the generator cooling way up
5. Stabilize the cooling units
Very cool graphics, but tough to manage, and not very rewarding. After you get the hang of the controls, most of the game is just waiting for your laser to load. A lot.
There NEEDS to be a tutorial! A flow chart! SOMETHING for heaven's sake! It's EXTREMELY unintuitive how you keep rooms cool, and I still haven't figured out how to stop the Capacitor Chamber from overheating and starting the "GAME OVER MAN!" section of the game. A picture showing which valves do what would be EXTREMELY appreciated.
I'm giving this a 2/5.
As others have said, there is no tutorial, very unforgiving play at first. But the instructions helped me figure it out, and I played the game. Except, there truly isn't anything more to this game than turning the wrench, trying to get the rooms to the right temperature. Once you do that, the rest of the game is simply maintaining the temperature, and then waiting while capacitor charges.
"But what about the upgrades?" some may ask. Well, I upgraded every single thing to the max. The steam still affected the valves, but it did seem much easier to make things "stay put", since the whole point of the game is to do that, I was golden. Upgrades were o.k. Main problem with the upgrades was related to the capacitor and power generation - once they are upgraded to the max, it takes quite a long time (probably 30-60s) to fill the capacitor. This is a waste when you are destroying "tiny" cities as compared with the larger cities.
Lastly, and the main reason I'm giving this a low rating is that there is no end game. I destroyed all the largest cities. And the next largest, and the next largest. All the cities remaining were <= $70k, but nothing changed. I was just charging the laser and that was it. There really should be a "win" condition, maybe after you destroy all of the $200k cities.
At this point, I decided to see what happened when I let rooms get maximally cold, or maximally hot. When they were cold, they just weren't doing anything, no problems there. When they got too hot, kaboom, whoopsie. Then you have to repair. I was able to repair any of the places that got destroyed, except for the capactor. Well, there's a story with that --> you *can* fix the capacitor room when it blows. The problem is, all the other rooms are freezing, including the room which is supposed to cool it down. So within 2 seconds of you fixing the capacitor room, it blows again, and you pretty much have no chance of fixing it. I suppose that is reasonable, but then there shouldn't be any of this "its getting hotter!!" stuff. That should be happening if the capacitor room itself is getting hot, and the game should just end if you blow the capacitor room.
And then a little nitpicking, I wanted the animation of me blowing up bigger cities to be actually bigger cities.
Right now the game is virtually impossible to play due to its complete lack of a tutorial and an extremely steep learning curve. It's such a shame, as its premise seems to have a lot of potential but it is poorly implemented.