Steam Deck Playable!Welcome to my review of Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic which is brought to us by 3Division (Attack on Pearl Harbor, Air Conflicts). The game is developed and self-published by them on to the Steam platform on PC, it was originally launched on PC on 15th March 2019 and is part of the Early Access program on Steam.
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is a city-builder tycoon game that has a soviet theme, it sees the player build their own republic whilst transforming the poor country into a rich industrial superpower based between the 1960s and 1990s.
City-Building At Its Finest
So what did I think of this game? Continue reading to find out. You can also check out my previous review where I played Elden Ring on the PlayStation 5. Let us know in the comments if you’ve played, or plan to play Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic.
The Game
Let’s get this out of the way first. This game is very in-depth, at first you will feel inundated with the number of things you will have to build. Start with some civilian buildings as that’s what I did. From there I then worked on power, getting my power lines in place, etc whilst people started to move into the apartment blocks I had in place.
Sure that sounds confusing now, but when you’re playing the game it will make complete sense. There are lots of things to take in with Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, but man it’s worth it. This game is huge so it will definitely take a good few hours to get used to what is going on in the game. One thing I do like is when you start a new game, you’re given a ton of options so you can configure just how you want your in-game experience to be.
You will need to plan out your economy properly, ranging from investments, citizens, mining, and more. When creating industrial areas you will need to link buildings together not only with roads and footpaths but also delivery routes for forklift drivers to move goods from one area to another. The amount of work that’s been put into this game is unreal at times, it really gets you thinking about where to place your next building so you don’t block the potential route of another.
Not only do you need to worry about the routes, but you also have to plan ahead when building your living areas. You can add things like parks, taverns, shops, cinemas, and more for your citizens to enjoy their downtime when not working.
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic literally leaves it in your hands. Should you want to trade with local towns you can do that, or you could build an entirely self-sustainable city that does not depend on anything else other than their own industry. It’s pretty clever how it all works together when you get it right.
Another thing I like about this game is that you can aim towards a green energy-based city fairly early on, using wind turbines and solar power farms just to start. There are many more options for power, but I like this.
You can also get your citizens driving around town by building a car showroom. You then need to purchase cars for this for your citizens to buy and then drive around your city. It’s crazy how detailed this game gets if you want it to.
Look & Sound
Being a city-builder game, I usually go into these expecting some basic-looking 3D graphics. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of detail Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic provides us. Everything looks really good, especially when you zoom in. One thing I love seeing is when you’re in the early game, are the little civilians running around to go to their jobs, do some shopping, etc.
The textures are really nice too, again, once zoomed in you can fully appreciate these. When I first launched the game I did experience a rather nasty hit on performance. I was running the game around 18fps on medium settings. Bear in mind I am running a 2070 Super Max-Q with an i7 CPU so I thought this was strange.
Anyway, I restarted the game, and all was well. I can run the game maxed out on the graphical settings and still get 90+ fps. The good thing for those less fortunate, there are many options in the graphics settings. So you can literally configure the game to run perfectly on your machine. Of course, that’s as long as you meet the minimum spec of the game.
The sounds of the game are somewhat basic. But I feel that this doesn’t take away from the quality of the game. The music is quite catchy and you’ll find yourself humming along whilst building up your new republic.
I do believe that the sound effects don’t really matter too much in a game like this. They don’t need to be of the highest quality as long as the music is good. As mentioned, it is.
Length & Replayability
Now I know I say this a lot, but Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic can literally last you as long as you want. Let’s use Cities: Skylines as an example as Cities can last you forever. Just like that, Workers & Resources has that same principle. Not happy with how your republic is going? Restart the game. Ruined your income and can’t recover from it whatsoever? Again, restart the game.
That’s one of the best things about these styles of games is their replayability factor of them. This game at present does not have any achievements. However, it does have Steam Workshop integration so people can create new items for the game. The community can then download these new structures for the game!
Conclusions
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is a fantastic game that I can see myself sinking many hours into. If you’re a fan of games such as Cities: Skylines or SimCity then I recommend you check this out.
I give Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic an 8/10 due to a few littler smaller bugs that I came across which I am sure can be fixed via updates.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.
