Objectives and Playstyle

[Lisento]

Hi everyone. In its current state, I am struggling to decide if I should buy this game. The free-form placement and growth of towns that I'm seeing in Youtube videos is intriguing. I'm definitely getting a Settlers feel but sadly without the wonderful complexity.

What are the objectives of the game? What does it push you to accomplish?

More importantly - is it possible to lose? Can you fail?

[Frank Rakete]

Hi, its a very good game but not finished and balanced yet.

Free growing only concerns the villagers houses, you mark living-zones and the villagers build (and upgrade) their houses. There are other zones you have to set like where to cut wood or where to sow seeds for the farmer...

So you have to build economy and war buildings by yourself.

Objectives are like in other building games, you can fail by not provide food, houses and other things the villagers need.

I now had some ours of fun with the game until the point where I need to generate a lot of splendor points to unlock the news building (weapon smith).

Compared to other games which cost 30 $, this one is too unbalanced in this point.

[Lisento]

So there's no real way to lose?

[Minotorious]

You can lose if all your villagers leave due to unhappiness, but this isn't supposed to be a game where you lose easily it is a sandbox city builder

[andy]

It is a good game even in its current state. There are a few bugs but not excessively (I played for 6 hours with only two loads from autosave). It seems a few people are having trouble learning the game - there are transitions where you move up to the next tier of goods etc, and sometimes it is hard to juggle income / expenses at that point. If you are willing to fail and adjust your playstyle it is a good game.

[darrell999]

Are there any goals or "win conditions" or is it just a continuous sandbox that can go forever?

[ash]

There is no real way to lose and just two "goals" at the moment. One, grow the population of your city as large as possible and two, make the city as pretty as possible.

It's a pretty shallow game at present but it is early access so hopefully gameplay will be expanded over time. It's overpriced when compared with other ea games and the content they provided when entering ea.

It is a relaxing game but the lack of gameplay features can make it quite dull after a while.

For example your people have 'levels' (ie rpg style) but they are not implemented. All people remain at level 1 and do not advance in skills etc.
Most constructions require a (simple) chain of resources to build but walls have absolutely no resource cost and are built instantly.
There is a hunters hut to build but no animals in the game, you need to put it near a forest and use your imagination as to where meat comes from.
Also leather is produced but has no use in the game as yet.
You can produce soldiers and guards but there is no combat in game (and never will be). You just send them off map and they come back completely healthy with a reward some time later. This is a very average gameplay feature at present.

They have been releasing a lot of tiny stability patches of late which is a good thing, however they desperately need to start fleshing out gameplay and other features such as a map editor, generator etc.

So maybe look at the game again in 6 months. It will be very interesting to see how much the game changes in that time.

[darrell999]

ash, thank you so much for your informative reply!

[Ballsm]

Originally posted by ash:

There is no real way to lose and just two "goals" at the moment. One, grow the population of your city as large as possible and two, make the city as pretty as possible.

It's a pretty shallow game at present but it is early access so hopefully gameplay will be expanded over time. It's overpriced when compared with other ea games and the content they provided when entering ea.

It is a relaxing game but the lack of gameplay features can make it quite dull after a while.

For example your people have 'levels' (ie rpg style) but they are not implemented. All people remain at level 1 and do not advance in skills etc.
Most constructions require a (simple) chain of resources to build but walls have absolutely no resource cost and are built instantly.
There is a hunters hut to build but no animals in the game, you need to put it near a forest and use your imagination as to where meat comes from.
Also leather is produced but has no use in the game as yet.
You can produce soldiers and guards but there is no combat in game (and never will be). You just send them off map and they come back completely healthy with a reward some time later. This is a very average gameplay feature at present.

They have been releasing a lot of tiny stability patches of late which is a good thing, however they desperately need to start fleshing out gameplay and other features such as a map editor, generator etc.

So maybe look at the game again in 6 months. It will be very interesting to see how much the game changes in that time.

Exactly this. If your not buying the game to support the devs and help it grow I would say hold off until the game more fleshed out. It's a great game currently but there's allot of room for improvement.

[Herb]

Oh you can lose. Or at least get to a point were you cant go anywhere. My first game was trial and error.. Needless to say it ended in failure. I mean the game didnt say i failed but... All my villagers boycotted and left my village and I was stuck unable to do anything... FML... Here is to starting over lol