When reading, keep in mind this is not a finished game! I am giving it a thumbs up based on the direction I see it heading and its potential. Never buy an early access game if you want a bug-free, totally polished experience.

That being said, Steam Bandits: Outpost has great potential. It plays a like a mix between Kingdom for Keflings/World of Keflings and Torchlight/TL2, but with a good old fashioned turn-based fighting system. I like real time fighting as much as the next gamer, but it's been a while since I played a game with turn-based fights so it's a fun change.

The art is lovely. The quests (past the tutorial) have a nice sense of humor. In fact, the whole game has a lighthearted feel that I enjoy. The writing, combat, and parts of the UI need some work, and sometimes it feels a little too much like a Zynga game (such as weird wait times for things to complete), but remember, this is still in beta.

For things that need improvement, the dev team is extremely responsive to suggestions and bug reports.

Do get this game if you like town-building and questing, and want to be part of the development process. Your feedback very literally will shape the direction of the game. That's pretty cool.

EDIT [2015-06-04]: This review is out-of-date. The developers contacted me to tell me they've greatly improved the game and ask me to play and review the game again which I just haven't gotten around to.

This game looks beautiful and I hardly ever encountered game breaking bugs, i.e. on average less then 1 in 10 hrs.
The game starts of nice and smooth, pacing feels good but soon turns into tedium. Around player level 10 you rarely get the feeling of progression. Still the game is quite addicting. It scrapes facebook-ishiness but manages to keep the player occupied, i.e. you don't have to wait for some stupid energy bonus to pop up every X minutes.
The reduction of player progress to a crawl is what makes me not recommend this game.

Fortunately this game is still in development (2014-11-04: version 0.3.1b.62) so you don't really need my partial venting below. However here are some pointers as to pros and cons for Steam Bandit Outpost. The wishlist at the end may also give more insights.

Pro:
* Nice graphics featuring multiple biomes and a multitude of NPCs and support characters
* Potential to be developed into a well-balanced game
* Good enough story
* Almost no game breaking bugs and only one so far a restart won't fix
* Highly addictive

Contra:
* No character development, only new characters and new equipment
* Combat disregards attack power and defensive capabilities
* Next to no rewards for grinding which is still essential to game progress
* Combat feels like stupendous clicking with unnecessary animation
* Bad management of Captain Missions
* Bad management of equipment (obvious tablet user interface structures)
* Bad crafting management
* Highly addictive
* Upgrades are expensive and their respective usefulness not well documented

About progress:
Outside the main story line which is bound to player level progress it gets pretty hard to acquire XP. For example, progress from level 13 to 14 needs 3,676 XP. The main story line provided something like 1K XP, don't really remember, let's say 2K. So you need over 1,5K XP to get to the next level. By that time I have occasional access to repeatable fights granting roughly about 8-15 XP. So in the unachievable best case that's 100 fights which you need to unlock as battle islands in repeatable captain missions - as opposed to player missions they need time to finish (10-20 minutes).

About fights:
Now, the actual bad thing here is that you need to go through fights and fights are boring. The standard attack does not develop yet, neither does defense - both are roughly fixed right now, i.e. a standard attack does around 10 damage except for misses or critical (x2). So you need to find weapons which have special attacks dealing triple, 10-fold, 14-fold damage. Those weapons are given to you at some predetermined points in the main story line and with them you have a good chance of winning a 15XP fight but the enemies may also just wipe the floor with your three fighters.
So, apart from a few boss fights, the "strategy" is hit enemies indiscriminately with your strongest attacks until one party is defeated. This alone calls for an autofight feature - right now your click and confirm each attack, targets are auto-selected and can be changed. The battle animations are unfuriatingly slow or rather feel that way after hundreds of fights. This calls for a skip animations feature.
Basic fights feel like obstacles rather than challenges. They require unending clicking and give almost no rewards - human enemies drop money (up to 8 gold; my next financial goal is 10K :( ) and the very rare random enemy may drop equipment. I almost want to request a throw dice option to just tell me if I win or lose simply in order to not have to sit through the fight.

About resources:
In order to progress you need resources of which there are 5 types which come in different qualities, e.g. Wood can be made into Planks which I guess can be made into Sturdy Planks. I know there are Sturdy Planks because I found them in a chest but I can not yet produce them. Why is this important? Because crawling progress. I can make Planks from Wood, i.e. 1 Plank from 28 Wood, a process which must be individually scheduled for each Plank and takes 10 seconds to complete without scheduling (which takes about 2 seconds). While a workshop produces nothing else can be scheduled.
The last level upgrade for my main building, I think to level 4, requires 96 Planks. So whatever amount of Planks I don't find I need to schedule in a workshop. I can have three workshops in parallel (actually more but then on different sites switching between those being to slow to be considered feasable). The upgrade also needs 96 Glass which can be produced from 28 Silica (sand) each - again in 10-second individually-scheduled production cycles.
This is fun for about 30 seconds.

Wishes:
* No Click-Through; clicking some UI elements also counts as a click on the terrain below deselecting buildings or resulting in unwanted movement
* Easier Captains Management; If there is a picture of a captain have access to load-out
* Easier Missions Management; Show all Captains with stats and all Missions as list
* When equiping captains make other captains easily available
* Have every time displayable on map, e.g. resource gathering buildings
** Display progress bars in interaction UI (bottom right), maybe along the circle, don't forget actual time
* Crafting queues
** In Engineering have a slider to order multiple productions of the same higher-level resource
* While equiping display in-battle skills (Heal, Smash, Poison etc.) with equipment
* It's bad design to have equipment that is a wrench not affect Engineering
* Have pets display required items before they are used
* Have building extensions show what they do (harvester 20->30;tavern 50->70->100)
* Have building show current stats, resources held vs max capacity
* Auto-fight/deactivate combat animations
* Remember starting settings
* Toggle animation of essential action aka less animation, more effect

12/22/2022: Nop!

Beta0: 0.4.0.171 - 11/17/2014
Time to really update this review!
After the update I still keep my note of 9/10 and, but looks of it, it's going to be a 10/10 in the future. Considering it’s a small team, it’s a bit normal for updates to be delayed.
Now, i keep all the pros from the old version, but I would like to add more to the list:
-combat speed increased, but it’s a bit to easy
-island development is faster; from 96 wood planks and 96 glass for the level 5 office it went to 15 planks and 15 glass (same with all other buildings, but the ratio varies)
-character progress is faster
-with these 3, it’s very easy for a new player to check the game’s content faster than before
-extra story to fill in the gap
-lowered phone requirements (~900 mb and a really cheap smartphone required)
-it’s steampunk :D

Alpha2: 0.3.1b.62:
All I can say that the oct reviews are up to date. Don't know how the game was in the early stages, but now it's great! It is pretty linear until you hit level 10 and get yourself a jet pack and start sending captains on explore missions; these things can be easily obtained if you follow the quest line.
Considering that it's an early version, I would give it 9/10!
Pros:
-lovely design
-city building in a basic, but wonderful form
-enough RPG elements to make you wonder what's next
-option to play on PC and mobile (the phone requirements are really low excepting the ~1.8 gb required)
-ingame button to send bugs which really speeds up the process
-repeatable quests even if some are bugged; it can get you an extra daily hour for nice rewards
-FF/Septerra Core combat style
-option to explore different island (combat for XP and loot, resources, creature)
-resources generate while your away; the bigger the level the more resources it can hold

Cons:
-bugs (what do you expect in this stage?)
-FIXED: combat speed, but it'll be changed with the next update
-unbalanced captain missions (don't do the diplomatic escort!)
-FIXED: lack of content after level 13 (except the few daily missions)
-FIXED: takes some time to realize it's full potential

With all this said, I would recommend the game without a second thought!

Normally I do not purchase early access games, but I had been following this game for quite some time. When I saw it included in a bundle it was a no brainer, so I got it. This game alone has changed my opinion of early access games completely! This is a fun, light hearted, casual city builder/RPG. You build a city and collect resources every so often, adventuring to other lands inbetween. The graphics are great and everything runs really smoothly.

Pros:
Charming graphics
Multitude of things to do
combines city builder/RPG really well
Resource collecting/crafting implemented very nicely

Cons:
Combat animations are to slow
No world map for the different islands you visit

As others have mentioned the combat can be agonizingly slow, especially against some enemies that heal every other turn and drag out the fight. So I would recommend some tweaking to the combat system overall! Also seems like no matter what weapon you choose, you do the same amount of damage. While combat is annoying, I am able to look past this for now.

The other major downfall of this game is there is no world map for the lands you visit. I constantly find myself wondering around trying to find a specific person for different quests. This can be really annoying when trying to progress through the game.

Overall it is a well polished game, and a steal for $15! In its current state I would rate it about a 7.5/10. I have faith that it will reach its full potential in the near future!

Steam Bandits is a mix of classic turn based RPG, and townbuilding, set in a steampunk universe. Did I mention everything is on floating islands? There are many ways to play the game and advance your town and characters. In the town you can craft weapons and armor, send other captains on missions, or go on missions yourself!

As a fan of steampunk games, I suggest giving Steam Bandits a try!

If you spend less than a few hours in this game, you may quickly draw the conclusion that this game belongs on Facebook among the likes of animated farming simulators and kitchen-cookeries. However, like I have found - - you will reach the conclusion that this game is geared to have vast content and that between daily tasks, leveling, gearing, and keeping a tie-down on whats going on in your village you will have more than enough to do. The game is still in development, and there are bugs; some of which can be a bit on the annoying side. Combat is bland for the time being, and looks like something out of a flash game; but that is quickly being fixed.

If you buy into this game you have to think of what it will be, not what it currently is; having said that i'm a few hours in and still having a good time.

Edit: I have since reported the game as broken and abandoned.

At this point i cannot recommend this game at all. While it looks charming it feels like a half finished (to be fair the version is at 0.5) browser game and at a 20$ price tag you can get either more value or more potential. Its supposed to be F2P without the campaign at some point, but what i can see so far that campaign is not going to be worth 20$. Looking for some charming small studio game to support? Check out Highlands here on Steam.

As a side note I paid less than 4$ for a key so i do not feel like i wasted too much money and if this game turns out to be awesome in the future i will buy a key at full value for a friend.

And dont be fooled by the 22h it says i have played. Most of the time i was waiting for the Jobs to finish(1-2h) while playing something else. The game does run while logged off (just like the hundreds of free browser games of the same type), but i found it too much hassle to exit and to keep logging back in.

This game is an inventive blend between questing and city building in a colorful world. Many of the issues lingering among older negative comments have already been addressed by the design team during the beta phase.

In it's current form, it is a no from me. It HOWEVER, is a GOOD game, but the lack of features and the issues it has make it not yet ready to be an outstanding game. Some issues include

-no music in background. (silence a lot)
-slow paced battles. (intentional? it is a turn based RPG.. but i thought it was rather sluggish)
-not everything yet has sound effects.
-point and clicking for movement (intentional) doesn't always go where you want to or correct interaction.
-missing various things that have buttons in game but do not function yet from lack of an update

but the game is an RPG and City Growth/Builder, and more things unlock as you go, like buildings that give you more objects, and moving to other planets for quests and exploration (collecting resources too!)

so when this updates a bit more, i would recommend it to people.

TLDR: Don't buy this game.

I don't normally write bad reviews but like so many Kickstarter games the development staff for this disappeared.
Keep in mind the estimated Delivery for this game was October 2012, yes you read that right, almost 5 YEARS ago.

Here was my Kickstarter question and answer from November 2016

Hello, it's been so long since the original launch can you tell us which of these people are still working on the game? Can you give us some background on the new people?
Jason Fader
Lindsey Laney
J.D. Cerince
Brianna Garcia
Liz Fiacco
Alexia Fedail
Matthew Yaeger

Sure thing! Most of those folks were hired back on by Obsidian within the first year after the kickstarter. Matthew Yaeger still helps out, but is mostly part-time. Here's the active crew:
- Jason Fader
- Kevin McCann: Senior designer from EQ2 and Planetside
- Michael Larue: Programmer
- Carissa Pedrosa: 2D artist
There's a few more that will be coming back in the upcoming months when we're ready for more content, but not from that original list.