You know how some games are notebook games? Well, The Banished Vault is a manual game, no two ways about it. Sure, you could theoretically make meticulous notes about all the planetary symbols and construction costs of the various buildings you'll need to harvest and convert resources into fuel, alloys and elixirs as you hurtle through space trying to escape the terrifying Gloom based on its in-game manual. But when there's a physical paper booklet that replicates all that for you in a much more easily accessible format, with several gorgeous illustrations of its mysterious space monastery to boot, not to mention infinitely better explanations of what everything does than I could ever hope to describe, it's quickly become an essential part of my play experience.

I'm still working on my review for The Banished Vault (hopefully coming later this week), but as it launches on Steam today, I'd strongly recommend spending the extra £5/$5 to get one if you're at all interested in Lunar Division's space survival management 'em up. I don't think I could have survived in the game without it.

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