Recent reviews by memory31

This game kept me entertained for a solid month with what's already there. I don't know that it's worth $25 overall, but I feel like I've gotten my value already. I think it has real promise and look forward to its future development. FWIW I mostly played SP, but had some good times on multiplayer too.

[EDIT] Holy crap they released a patch Apr 2014 and are taking suggestions for v15. It's alive!

Objectively, the reviews below saying "not recommended" are correct. The game is really not finished, and given it has an development for many years, and has not seen an update in a while, and the developer statement that he is "burned out", I would not expect any more updates.

With that said, I still spent an enjoyable month or so playing this game. Coming from Dwarf Fortress and wanting something a little prettier, this game provides a nice twist on the genre, rather than mining you "dig too deep" by hiring heroes who explore dungeons.

It provides an interesting and detailed tech tree, one of the best workshop designs I have seen in any such game (you place zones for workshops and then crafting stations within zones).

That said, I am obsessed with this genre and desperate for other games in it. If you want to try something like this but with active development and far more polished, I highly recommend Gnomoria (and keeping an eye on Stonehearth and Clockwork Empires).

I would still recommend this game, although given it is unlikely to see any updates I would personally want to see the price knocked down a little given its incomplete state.

I really hope the new developer breathes new life into this game, but I feel like once the game gets into a negative feedback cycle developers have little incentive to do so -- when everyone is panning your game on Steam and no updates have been released for a year and a half, what is your incentive to continue working on it?

Even if you decide not to buy, I would keep an eye on this game just in case things change.This game has a tremendous amount of potential, and is farther long than many games in the genre.

Of all of the Dwarf Fortress inspired games, Gnomoria is without question the farthest along. It manages to bring much of what I loved from DF to a sensible, usable, but still powerful user interface, along with having a unique flavor of its own. in particular, this game has the best crafting system of any builder that I've ever seen, combining flexibility and ease-of-use.

The developer is extremely professional; every bug I have reported has been fixed within a week or two, and he frequently implements awesome suggestions from the forums when they agree with his vision of the game.

If you are not coming from a DF/city builder roguelike background, expect a steep learning curve. Well worth it in my opinion, that is not to say that the game is extremely challenging, in default difficulty the world is forgiving enough that you can probably get by.

The early and mid-game are extremely interesting and fun, but unfortunately late game variety is limited to training yet more powerful soldiers to curb stomp goblins, mining ore to train your blacksmiths and then smelting it down for better quality weapons, and building giant temples or awesome structures. While this is enjoyable, I do feel like a late game should be fleshed out. Given the developer's track record however, I have every confidence this will occur. I don't know how he will do it, but I do know it will be awesome.

Easily worth $20 in current form, $7.99 is a steal.

I am going to add a weak "not recommended" review, though I should be clear that that applies to the game's current state -- there is a ton of potential here, but due to some questionable design decisions I don't know if that potential will ever be realized. For reference, some of my favorite games are Gnomoria and Dwarf Fortress, though I did enjoy Terraria a lot.

First the good:
* Cute art and adorable dwarves.
* Detailed and interesting world design, though with very limited ecology.
* Deep and varied tech tree.
* Solid-seeming tech foundation for a builder/sim game.
* Ant farm full of dwarves!

The bad:
* Terrible user interface:
* tons of superfluous click-and-drag for crafting -- it gives you the recipe but you still have to click and drag into a grid. Maybe for the first time but subsequently producing an item should be easy. Few games make me long for DF's UI.
* generally lacking polish -- highlighting items won't tell you what they are, meaning you spend time guessing what an icon/sprite means. You cannot speedup time and the game proceeds at a glacial pace, a 2/4/8x bar would be nice, especially in early game.
* obnoxious leveling system -- this is by far the worst part of the game. You don't tech up by building structures, doing research, etc, nor is the entire tech tree available ala Banished -- you tech up in two ways. By crafting 10 ladders you don't need so you can make torches, etc, and by "unlocking" recipes that are "locked" by earning XP -- yes, a builder game with XP grinding, like some casual Facebook game. this mechanic might be able to be kept in if improved, but as it stands it just makes the early game a boring, frustrating clickfest. And the game pauses while crafting, which compounds the already slow speed.

I know these sound like minor complaints, but taken together they really ruin what could be an enjoyable experience. This game has solid technical design and ideas, but I'm not sure where the authors are going with it; the concerns I mention raise alarm bells, for me at least.

I still got some enjoyment out of the game (not done playing yet), and it might be worth picking up on sale, but I really can't advise paying $15 in the current state. Maybe once the dev gets further along or the price drops.