I've been through the desert on a horse with no legs

The vast majority of positive reviews come from the initial release; the game was playable and fun with a reasonable amount of jank as expected of an early access game.

Then in July of last year they re-branded, a foreshadow of things to come.
Two months later, they launched the 1.0 release with a large overhaul and additional content.

It had clearly not been tested prior to release and a large many things were broken: quests, inventories, fundamental game mechanics– a state worse than it had been introduced into early access with. It was unplayable.

The game was patched again recently, prompting me to revisit the world. I'll update my review depending on the state of things.

This game did not deserve the release it had.

This game died in the west.

Was looking for a multiplayer game to play with my boyfriend thats kinda survival but not gory survival cos I like the more cosy games and this one is literally that. Boyfriend goes off killing things and does quests while I can make our base super cute. For an early access game it's pretty good with plenty of things to do and stuff to explore, I'm super excited to play it when the finished game comes out.

Okay so yes I'm giving this game a thumbs up and that's because technically it does what it sets out to do.

Also it's hard to really fluff up it's negatives when it's still in early access and none of those negatives are game breaking.

So the game is fun, it's interesting and it's fairly well made especially if you think about how you and some friends can play it together.

But it has it's problems. The game is slow, and lacking direction. Everything seems to take longer than it should, some of the controls are awkward and annoying to use or navigate, and the lack of quest markers on your map when you're trying to progress and renovate everything is super annoying.

I end up spending my entire time playing searching this massive empty desert for one guy to teach me one thing and it was really frustrating. Give us quest markers please!

But for the most part everything is developed fairly well, with decent graphics, sounds, stability and potential. Which is why I'm giving this a thumbs up.

If you'd like a more in-depth look then please check out the video on my YouTube Channel (link below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fL5A2fa-SA

Otherwise thanks so much for reading and I hope I managed to help some of you out there spend your money wisely.

I wanted to like this game, a builder game in the wild west, something a bit different and fun.

In reality, it turned out this game should have been called Quest Completer, as you can do very little without first raising your reputation with various NPC's scattered around the map. And every NPC has a series of tedious quests for you to complete.

The building and development part feels very secondary to just completing quest after quest.

In addition, the user interface feels clunky (I know, not very clear, but it just feels like a pain to use, whereas in most other games I play, moving around and interacting with objects just feels natural), this is definitely not the case here. You have to move using WASD keys and you can't fine-tune your movements with your mouse. So if you need to travel diagonally (and you often do), you have to move in a step-wise fashion, left, up, left, up etc.

You cannot rotate the screen at all unless you are in building mode.

Interacting with objects is fiddly. An example is trying to harvest prickly pear fruit from a cactus. If you get too near, you can't harvest, if you face slightly in the wrong direction, you can't harvest and it is very easy to face in the wrong direction with even the slightest movement. Then you have to often reposition to harvest the other prickly pear on the same cactus...

I got this with a 50% discount, but feel robbed, even at that price. I should have tried the demo first, so don't make the same mistake I did.

I hate how frustratingly buggy this game is, and how poorly designed everything is, because this is a fun game when it's not making my blood vessels pop that I've been waiting for to come out of early access.

-Why do I clip through a bridge in the Rocky Falls area and plummet to my death?

-Why do bosses clip through the floor when I shoot them? At the very least bottomless pits aren't instant kill for the player, which is a solace for whenever I clip through the floor.

-Why can't these bosses be placed back on the map like what happens with some enemies (looking at you Grit Corp Drill Instructor) or me when I fall through the floor?

-Why can't I refight said bosses for their drops when something like this happens?

-Why can't I claim boss drops from their respective ledger INSTEAD of dealing with this ♥♥♥♥ if the devs aren't gonna do anything about the clipping issues?

-Why do I have to hold down the button for interactions like opening copper chests, or entering caves, or even PLACING DOWN CONSTRUCTABLES? This isn't a bug, this is poor design.

-Why the constant "Missing translation" and missing art in a FREAKING 1.0 RELEASE??

-Why is the prompt for entering caves so finnicky? I feel like I have to be in a specific spot in a specific distance to be allowed to hold down the button to enter the cave instead of being ANYWHERE NEAR THE CAVE FFS

-Why IN THE HELL do I have no invincibility frames when the screen fades to black as the game prepared the loading screen for the cave?

-On a related note, WHY CAN THE ENEMY THAT CHASED ME TO THE CAVE EXIT CAMP AT THAT CAVE EXIT?

-Even further, why can whatever's on the other side of the cave attack me right away IN THE LOADING SCREEN? I have to be thankful the game was stuck on a perpetual loading screen, because I can't imagine what would've happened if I was killed IN THE LOADING SCREEN. And thank ♥♥♥♥ this happened in a cave that had TWO entrances as opposed to just one.

-Why does the Tumbleville carpenter keep running away whenever approached?

-Why is quest progression so completely and utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥? Several characters act like I completed quest steps that I haven't gotten to yet, such as the game acting as if I returned Kasper to Belleville or returned Juan's ghost horse to him despite having done NEITHER of those things.

-Why does the the Belleville Suite ledger NOT do anything? I can't repair it from its decrepit state like I can the rest of this ghost town.

-WHY DID ANY OF THIS ♥♥♥♥ GET PAST QA TESTING BEFORE THE 1.0 RELEASE???

If THIS is what the "1.0" release is, I'd hate to see what the public beta testing (in other words, the beta within the beta) entailed.

I'm sorry, but I can't keep playing no matter how much I may want to, I don't wanna get an aneurysm, and until even HALF of this ♥♥♥♥ gets fixed, I can't recommend readers a product that'll take years out of their life from the heart palpitations and ruptured blood vessels they'd be dealing with if they were to play this game themselves. Absolutely disgraceful.

Love this concept and design of this game, but I can't recommend it in it's current state. It's needs more development and balancing. Wait for a sale or the complete release.

The visual design and tone of the game are spot on. I love the way it looks and sounds and the dialogue is is fun. However. . . .

The general game experience is extremely punishing right now when you start and you get attacked every five steps. I wish it was a little more chill in the early game with harder areas to explore the farther you get from the ranch homestead.

You level up your tool skills with use where you can increase the length of time it takes for tools to break down. This is great. But there is no option for the slingshot. You're stuck with a dinky weapon that can't be upgraded and will break every two minutes or so. Unless your quick bar is lined with multiple slingshots, you're going to die before you can craft a new one while a coyote is chewing on you. There's no way I can see to update it. The only up-gradable skills I saw were for bows and guns. I have not gone to learn the bow yet because I wanted to get my storage and home base set up first.

So you're stuck with a slingshot that does piddly damage to the numerous snakes and coyotes that re-spawn very quickly. By the time you've cleaned out an area, they start spawning in again. And if you encounter bandits with guns, you get one-shot. That's it. You have to re-spawn at the last bed or sleeping bag you slept in. On a positive note, while you lose most of your inventory, you retain your quick bar items upon death. I like this feature. I wish there was a difficulty option where you could choose what you drop on death with the option to retain everything if you just want to experience the story.

There is no storage. This is a massive fail. I'm a game hoarder and while I'll adapt to individual storage systems, this game just doesn't have one. You have to complete multiple objectives just to learn how to make a simple box that only has a few slots. You start out with one box and you have to carry everything else on your person. I have yet to be able to make boxes because going to Frank's place to learn how to build a chicken coop is too hard. I died ten times in quick succession to coyotes and snakes before I got there. On the last run, I got close and and I saw that there were multiple bandits at the gate. If they have guns, it doesn't even seem worth it to try again because I'll die from one bullet. There's a reason I don't play Souls-Like or Rogue-Like games. I like for my character to live for more than two minutes at a time.

Game play isn't fun right now because there are no real play options. You have to complete a linear list of to-do busy quests when you start and there is no option to stay at the ranch and putter around to gather resources and build up the farm/ranch at a basic level. You can't do small jobs for the town to build up your skills and strength.
You are forced to go out and follow the quests to do anything. That's not a sandbox. It's a big, mostly empty map with a small scattering of quests.

I'm not going to complain too hard about the health system. You can eat three things and can't eat more of an item until a cool down completes. This is fine. You have 25 base health that can be raised by each item you eat. You restart each day after sleeping with 25 health again, so you have to eat every day. But there are no healing options. While this may be more realistic, it's not fun. You can't outrun enemies even with boosting so you're going to die. A lot. I realize that's probably part of the concept of this game, but it needs to be better balanced between conceit and actual enjoyable game play.

There is no real learning curve here. I'm not getting better each time I play. It's mostly random. When you die, your enemies loiter around your corpse no matter how far they followed you across the map from their starting point. They just don't return to their spawn point, so picking up your lost items after death can be extremely difficult, let alone just getting back your body without dying again. I do appreciate that every corpse with dropped items is marked on the map. This is helpful.

There is currently no way to mark the map with points of interest and it doesn't have much details. Navigation isn't too difficult, so this would be more of a perk than requirement.

I don't think I can play this anymore right now until it's updated and better balanced. I don't regret buying it, but it's not currently for me.

They just released that they will be increasing the price to around $20 which is a laugh to me because this game feels so uncomplete. The conversations are redundant and dont update if you already have done certain things for an npc. The camera has no rotation or opacity for you moving behind things. The quests are sometimes non-descriptive and have no map markers. The graphics have no settings except resolution and v-sync. There seems to be not much more to do after about 2-3 hours of play except build random things. Farming consists of planting in planters, no tilling or anything except watering your planter, which holds one seed per planter. The town you rebuild and your ranch are a good distance away so you will be carrying back and forth resources that you use to build your ranch to the town as needed. There seems to be no sense of directive imo. When you ride your horse the frame skips and character jonkyness are unbearable which is weird considering how low the graphics look. I have seen no way to move stuff around in my inventory yet. There are so many different items to use for crafting and so little inventory space to carry them all around. Youll constantly be dropping random stuff just to be able to carry your MANY basic tools. Definitely not worth the upcoming price increase espescially at this stage in EA.

I've tried playing this game several times and there is always bugs that prevent me from completing quests, which is extremely frustrating. I do think this game has the guts to be good, but calling this a 1.0+ build of the game should just not be true. Please fix game breaking bugs so I can enjoy this game. I will uninstall for the 3rd time now and try again in a few months.

THIS IS MY UPDATED REVIEW Game been kinda in development hell, multiplayer broke for probably over a year, most of all updates are patches fixing the broken game, same issues remain. Quest lines still break, one linear quest line, ignores all reviews and one replied to one in 2023 saying to comment in their discord. Let me say this one more time, multiplayer AND the ONLY MAIN QUEST LINE is broken. There is no point in playing a broken game, I can't refund this game anymore, waiting for it to get "fixed". Waiting for the empty map to get more full. But it's all patches to things I've never seen because I've been soft locked too many times by OTHER BUGS. I've actively been reading the patches, I've talked in dev stream + made prior review. There was no fixes for the bugs I've mentioned, or even a response to my questions about the game.