betting on anyone with early childhood trauma basically guarantees a huge dip during the inevitable midlife crisis when all that ♥♥♥♥ catches up to them, easy bag if u can see the signs

Baby salesman:
*Slaps baby* This baby right here.

The sequel nobody asked for. I have a lot to say about this one. I'll try my best to condense it:

1) This game is 90% RNG. Only two choices matter; planet and baby. Each planet has "trends": Sequa Lux, Gooble Gibby peak early before crashing later, so on. Babies don't have any modifiers themselves (more on that in 2) rather they're a possible life on that planet.
- You can plan better with consultants... sometimes they'll lie to you (even ones with "high accuracy"!). Saw this streamer who hired a consultant that claimed the price would bottom out between 64 and 250. Not only did it never go below 250 the short button bugged so he couldn't short.
- Side bets are money sinks. Really only needed for Wengrave's gold ending.
- Shorting gimmick is meant to be the selling point but shorting can and will ruin your run. Even if you plan accordingly. The developers *claim* this isn't the case but it really is. Only few times it worked (constant downstream is reliable)
- The demo had a very inconsistent difficulty curve. Full game seems to fix this?
- Planet events help streamline the gameplay. Hard to play without it.

2) It does not tell a life story; there isn't a lot of logic/consistency.
- In the demo I had a baby marry his childhood sweetheart twice. There was no "divorce" event that happened between the marriages. The game doesn't keep track of any additional characters the baby interacts with (like family, friends, etc) so milestones like marriage and/or having kids is treated the same as gossiping in a grocery store or dancing in the rain.
- Age isn't taken into consideration in what events should and shouldn't happen. A baby can get promoted at his parent's company at age 8, or promoted at an older age where he should have inherited the company by then.
- Events that should have a bigger impact on someone's life don't. This is best demonstrated in a clip the developers posted on their social media (here[bsky.app]). The baby they're playing had a drug problem at 16 that was never brought up again. One pointed this out (1:19).
- For instance: Sequa Lux's description states that high net worth grants citizenship, except the game doesn't take status into consideration at all so it treats every baby the same way. A baby will be treated like a citizen one moment and a vagrant the next.
- To add onto this, babies have no stats beyond name and species (which doesn't affect anything). There's no real modifiers like sex/gender, background, family history, etc. So every baby plays exactly the same. In contrast SWOTS had five stats for organs; type, size, condition, blood type, and rarity. Some organs had special effects like changing the size and quality of other organs.
- Events that shouldn't be lethal can sometimes kill a baby. One baby died from hearing loss. Another died from getting sued.

3) Almost nonexistent story; not only fails to add onto SWOTS it ♥♥♥♥♥ all over the worldbuilding.
- In year 3478, FutureSee terminals propped up everywhere. Who made them? One guy, a company? Why? How? Who knows. The common man could now look into the future of current events with high accuracy; wars, star systems, the economy... for only 10 credits. This technology was so powerful it advanced medicine by hundreds of years, stabilized the organ trade, ended most wars. But as speculative markets became predictable they also became unprofitable. The FutureSee terminals can't predict a baby's life; it can only simulate it. That's because babies have nigh-infinite potential. How does it simulate a baby's life? Who knows. I can go on and on about how this entire set up doesn't make sense but it effectively makes whatever happened in SWOTS worthless.
- Pretty much every campaign is just a variation of "guy gets rich". I hoped this issue was limited to the first two campaigns. Nope every campaign is like this. The second campaign (Mr. Zip It) was originally going to involve Mr. Zip It shooting a minor god point blank to save a galaxy but it was scrapped as it was "too big a jump" from the first one. How come every campaign that follows his is equally as underwhelming?
- The little story you're given are through these news anchor bits that largely just talk about irrelevant events happening in the universe. Would not be a issue if there was an actual story but this is all you have for a story.
- Finale is underwhelming (like the game itself); you're thrown into this confrontation between Wengrave Shup and this scientist guy. There's no build up, it just happens. Didn't even bother putting in a credits roll.

4) The graphical style is competent, but not great.
- The aliens are samey, even with different faces they all share the same humanoid body. They're more like people wearing masks. Not saying they can't be humanoid. You can be creative with that restriction. But, they all share the same body regardless of species.
- The babies themselves are odd. Same problem with the aliens, they all look the same, just different heads. You'd imagine insectoid baby to be a grub or caterpillar or something. The only "out-there" option is the "Flatwing" which is a buff guy. That's meant to be funny I guess? Except they also look identical. They could've used other breakfast pastry like waffles, french toast, crossaints...
- Don't get the point of giving babies different models and sprite icons if no variants exist. Like color, shape, etc. The "Flatwing" I mentioned earlier can only be pancakes. None that have waffle, french toast, or crossaint heads.
- the new music is passable but nowhere near as good as organ sim's. Like the composer is trying to mimick RJ Lake best as he can but just can't.
- The art direction feels aimless. SWOTS limited the color palette to reds and greens (some purples); this changed to blue and red but also rendering the babies in color and the cutscenes are in this painted style. Older sprites (cartoony, silly) at odds with new sprites (more detailed, realistic).
(admittedly the robot baby is pretty funny)

5) Developer troubles...
- This game had some drama (both Discord and Twitter) pre-release. I won't delve into it too much. Scaffold had high hopes for this game and really didn't like hearing people say otherwise. Critics were met with passive aggression (both from devs and fans). The devs tried to say the game being unfair was the player's fault, not the heavy RNG.
- Feels unfinished. There were 8 campaigns in the demo, in the full game there are only 6. There's no end credits just abruptly ends after Wengrave. You can complete the game in 2 - 3 hours. They try to lampshade it by presenting it as "new content" for free updates, it's obvious there was meant to be 8 campaigns in the final game. Feels like a excuse to release a unfinished game. Leads into the next point...
- Scaffold has a bad habit of abandoning games way too early. Before this one they put out three other games which (iirc) were updated once or twice before being abandoned entirely. They'd get maybe one or two people talking about it before the channels died off. Expect this game to meet the same fate.

The positive reception this game is getting is... baffling. At best it's mediocre, at worst it's miserable. This is NOT worth 20$ and the fact they're trying to charge 35$ for both this and SWOTS? Just get SWOTS when it's on sale for 10$. Got this for free and still feel ripped off.

EDIT: so the developers permanently banned me from the forum yesterday (proof[i.postimg.cc])... I posted once, a month ago, nothing else. Can only assume this review (+ being top-rated) is what provoked it. Pretty scummy if so.