Charming City Building Puzzle Game. Annoying controls.

I wish they would have implemented proper mouse control. Controls are clunky and they made me quit after a while.
It's as if you are on a nice bike ride in a pretty environment and the chain falls out every 1 minute. You just dont want to go on anymore. Quite sad...

For more reviews from the pens of gamers and enthusiasts, stroll on over to SaveorQuit.[saveorquit.com]

These buildings might have feelings easily swayed and broken like humans do, but they certainly also have some serious control and UI issues, tend to overcomplicate things, are prone to sudden outbursts of poorly worded explanations and get lost in their thoughts often.

On the surface, it's a quaint, charming 2D city builder with anthropomorphic buildings and a rundown, old hotel as the main protagonist. But, take a shovel to it and it turns into a somewhat obtuse and fiddly puzzle game of micromanaging buildings and trying to satisfy their wants and needs in the form of upgrade requirements and appeal increases. A city builder in the traditional sense this really ain't.

The visuals are swanky. Stately even. Buildings look like detailed cardboard cutouts with stick arms and legs. They're beautifully animated and each one has quips and different conversations when talking to other buildings in their neighbourhood, depending what business occupies them. Backgrounds and foregrounds blend into the cutouts superbly and you can decorate the foreground where the stick people walk with different items, from park benches to bright red mailboxes. The soundtrack is a bit less chic, consisting of a monotone track that quickly loses its charm.

Form over function is, unfortunately, where Buildings excels. Puzzle game in a very light city builder seems like a novel idea at first and it would probably function well, if only the game explained its mechanics and gameplay better. Tutorial is kind of okish, but it's very easy to get lost and confused in menus and icons. There's no real overview of your neighbourhoods, building productions and appeals. You need to walk with your avatar so the buildings you want to check on are visible on screen. And even then, the information you get is kind of like a dilapidated building, neglected, boarded with badly organized planks and confusing to passersby.

Poor controls, even after 2 hotfixes, really don't help much. Placing or moving buildings is done by selecting a spot and that's occasionally harder than it looks because the selector flies all over. Good thing that you can click on any spot and then scroll. But only as far as you can see. Clicking around the Business Index that lists different buildings you've unlocked seems a bit unresponsive when using mouse and keyboard. Keybinds are not rebindable and seem slow and clunky in general, compared to a controller. Walking everywhere with your hotel also gets a bit tedious in the long run.

The gameplay loop consists of upgrading your buildings and satisfying their requests for cool neighbours. It gets complicated later as new buildings and new requirements are introduced. And those can get very confusing when you start balancing out more and more buildings with different requirements. Building and upgrading a bank requires tailors, mad hatters and gourmet restaurants which in turn requires posh coffee shops, accountant offices and whiskey distilleries which require sloppy pubs, greengrocers and unruly mobs that you can't get without family housing or dirt cheap rented rooms. Only slightly exaggerated, but you get the idea. There's also a mechanic with different bonus infrastructure cards that buildings can acquire, but that's really poorly explained as well.

Make a few mistakes in that balancing and swapping of neighbours and the buildings quickly start deteriorating and with fiddly controls, you'll have a hard time doing things quick enough so your businesses don't close and you're forced to remove them and build from scratch. Couple that with bricks earned from doing tasks and upgrading buildings as your only income and you can find yourself in a bricked up situation with no way out but restarting your game. No saves for you. Only a single quicksave.

I might not be the target audience here as I was drawn to this game by it's visuals and had expectations of a whimsical, no rush, eccentric light city builder with sassy buildings. I wasn't expecting a somewhat cold-hearted, methodical puzzle game with clunky controls, confusing menus and overly needy daisy chain buildings. Perhaps a few more fixes will improve the controls more, making all the other gameplay problems slightly more tolerable. But, these neighbourhoods are not something I'd really like to revisit. Unless my achievement hunting brain tricks me.

More off the beaten path games, wonders and failures at the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Charming, whimsical, and unique.
Hampered by clunky controls (KB/M or Controller)
Refunded - I really don't like to have to wrestle with basic controls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcD3FTrLtUg

A review copy was provided by the developer.

Follow my Curator page, Fruit N Doggie Reviews, so you can be updated whenever I post a new review.

I saw Buildings Have Feelings Too (BHF) as a possible game to review, and although I thought it looked kind of cute, it wasn't something I was actively looking for. However, out of the blue, someone associated with BHF sent me an email with a review key, before I even responded to show my potential interest. I'm not one to snub an offer like that, so I gave it try, but didn't love the experience. These buildings have feelings though, so I'll try to be tactful.


The goal of BHF is to check with the buildings of the neighborhood, find out what their desires are, and try to satisfy them. This usually revolves around getting enough buildings of a particular type and star level in place. Some of your effort will be spent on upgrading what's already in place, though you'll also have to establish a few buildings from scratch. The resource available for buying items is bricks, which you earn from completing specific requests and upgrading buildings. It doesn't take long to build up a decent stack, but if you aren't efficient and have to keep recycling structures to put in a new business, you can wind up in a downward spiral.

A simple problem I encountered was not knowing where to find the next item necessary for upgrading the building, such as whiskey barrels, which comes from distilleries. Until you unlock and level-up a building with that resource, it won't be displayed on the building that requires it, which isn't very useful for someone new to the game. One concern I'd have about BHF is how complicated it'd get with such requirements, considering that early on, it was already balancing the appeal of buildings on grounds such as being close to a pub, away from a factory, and near a distillery that has whiskey barrels. I'd hate having to do something like build a school, requiring paper, civil servants, and young people, which would need me to create a paper mill, offices, and new housing. All of which would have their own requirements, with the school being used to make something else, none of which could be near a pub, except the housing that would require it.


Although it's possible to play BHF with the mouse and keyboard, this seems to be even less ideal than playing with the controller. The main issue is how troublesome interacting with the game's UI, menus, and the buildings themselves is, no matter which control scheme you choose. Trying to navigate all of the possible areas of information, such as the ones that pop up when holding down the shoulder buttons, or when talking to a building directly, is cumbersome and unintuitive. Another simple issue is that buildings are moved around often, but moving them requires precise selection of a small icon. You'll inadvertently walk past the one you want and have to double-back to try again repeatedly.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2472686939
Things open up on a grim note, as the building you control observes an old, derelict building at the docks being demolished for not keeping up with its own repairs. It transitions away from this quite suddenly, as you're now in a different area, and in spite of being the newcomer, are going to be helping the current residents deal with their issues. For the little I played, the introduction didn't connect with what followed, since this part of town had nothing to do with the docks.


Without question, this is the area that will draw people's attention in the first place, with anthropomorphized buildings walking around. Although there's a certain charm to this, the downside is that these buildings aren't as human or detailed as they could be. Meaning that when you build the same buildings throughout the game, they'll always look the same. There's some distinguishing aspects that help you tell the nature of a building just from a glance, primarily the banner, but more could have been done to make them distinct.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2472686332
I tried looking for a soundtrack of BHF, but wasn't able to find anything on YouTube. When I intentionally listened to the music, I didn't notice more than one song playing on loop, so if there is more music, I'm not aware of it. It's a decent enough track, with a mellow tone to it, which seems suitable enough for a game like this. Without more variety though, it wouldn't be something to leave on in the background, as it'd wear out its welcome. There's a few sound effects, such as when constructing buildings or acquiring bricks, and they were good enough for the job.


🌟 The game's design is a great icebreaker, because it looks quite cute and charming. Plus, the buildings conversing with each other is also surprisingly sweet, to an extent.


❌ Having gotten past the tutorial, I wasn't sure of the mechanics I was working with in the area immediately afterwards. At one point, a series of buildings couldn't be moved whatsoever. Then suddenly the smaller ones could be moved around, though I didn't know why. However, the largest building was still immovable.
❌ What you can build inside the structures doesn't always fit the design well and makes it look like you're making a mistake or being inefficient. For instance, the small factory with an overly large chimney, or a tall, skinny office building with a pub or restaurant inside it.
❌ The game would function much better if you didn't have an avatar, and simply scrolled back and forth across the screen the way most city management games do.
❌ Nobody seems to like the controls.


🔍 Try learning the UI and how it works early on, because you'll be utilizing it repeatedly. Having the system down pat would be essential for making progress long-term.


Unfortunately, BHF is a great example of why you should never design something on the basis of form over function, as the up-close perspective is a large detriment to the functionality of the gameplay. Even if it did work much better, the gameplay isn't that satisfying for this sort of resource/city management game. Since you can move buildings around, it's built around this mechanic, so you'll establish a few buildings and improve upon them, just to shuffle things around to advance another group of buildings, before reorganizing them for the most appeal possible.

Instead of having more space and freedom to organize things as you see fit and establish city areas for the long-term, you're playing a shell game to exploit what the buildings want before dumping them in the corner. If this is a game I had purchased directly through Steam, I'd have refunded it shortly after getting past the tutorial section, as it's that unenjoyable and clunky. Unless there's a pretty major overhaul, spare these buildings their feelings, and don't play the game.

This game is pretty fun, but the controls are a bit awkward, and it's easy to get stuck in the Tutorial. It's a unique idea, and I've played enough games that I love unique ideas. So I would recommend this game, if you want something unique and interesting. But understand that a big part of the "game" is fighting the controls.

A big part of the problem stems from the fact that you can't go straight left-right when selecting a spot to build. If you go past the spot you are trying to select and turn around, you jump to the other side of your avatar, which is 4-5 building spots over. So selecting the right spot is tricky.

Then there is the fact that sometimes left mouse click can sub for space, an other times it can't. Which is confusing. And the first time they throw you into the tab menu in the tutorial (to look up 'Construction' and figure out how to construct a building) they haven't yet explained to you that 'Q' is the way to go back, so I got stuck there pressing escape and button mashing. HINT: If you are stuck in the tutorial try pressing "Q" not "ESCAPE".

Put all this together and it feels like a big part of the game right now is fighting the UI, and not solving the puzzles.

Another big one -- when I want to move a building just let me click drag a building, and not do that whole lead it somewhere thing, when selecting the place you want to put it is so hard (see above). Add to that that the buildings will move over if you accidentally place a new building in the wrong spot. The puzzle should be figuring out where to put the buildings not struggling to select the right spot to put teach one multiple times.

Cute and charming puzzle game with just absolutely terrible controls and hampered by a poorly designed tutorial.

The controls are keyboard focused, it's VERY fiddly to use WASD to move correctly and select specific objects or spaces, and the keys used in menus change from panel to panel. It's not intuitive or friendly at all. Just as an example: when you open up the game, there's a button next to "New Game" labelled "A". If you push the "A" key, because that's what you do when a button is on a menu and labelled with "A", the icon suddenly changes to a space bar, and that's what you actually have to press to start.

The tutorial didn't start for me until I'd begun testing keys to see what moved me around, and frequently the bread crumb trail was missing or hidden - it would often wait until I had opened a menu before popping up, but never indicated to open that menu, or would be indicated by a talk icon slightly larger than the normal talk icon.

If you're willing to slog along with it, or if hotfix for some level of mouse support they just dropped is any good, it seems like it's a good set of puzzles with very adorable buildings nattering on in the background. I'm not sure that I am.

This.....sucks. Really awesome art style, fantastic visuals. The controls -- are terrible, they dont even work sometimes. Practically nothing is explained i almost needed a walkthrough for the tutorial because I thought I was doing something wrong.
Worst of all, half an hour of that awful music loop. One thing I need from games is, at minimum, a tolerable soundtrack.

I wanted to like this, I really did. Ill give it another go and see if I can tolerate it.

I usually love these types of puzzle games but unfortunately I just couldn't get into it. The game feels really clunky, at least on pc and the playability was more exhausting then it was fun. I feel like most of the time I was just running back and forth, I wish I could have zoomed out a little but there is no option for this. It's a real shame because the art is gorgeous, the music cute and the overall theme of the game is great, unfortunately I just couldn't get into it. The explanation and the guides were a bit much too and the transition between levels needed more explanation/guidance. I play games to have fun, not to read, this games explanations felt like an ikea pamphlet.

This game is a lovely puzzle. It plays very similarly to Reus. You place can place different buildings along a limited number of horizontal spaces. Each kind of building can hold different kinds of businesses like apartments, cafes, and the like. Each building provides benefits (and sometimes costs) to their neighbors which when stacked properly allows you to upgrade them. Fully upgrading a building unlocks more advanced buildings as well. Unlike Reus, the missions are not timed, and a core mechanic is that you can pick up and shuffle building locations with a cute jogging animation. So, the game is much more forgiving in that sense.

This game also has a very easy UI, and I find it easy to gather necessary information. I can quickly see what each building gives to its neighbors and wants from them. If a building needs something (like vegetables), I can quickly see what possible neighbors could fill that need. The menu also has an easy to use encyclopedia of buildings unlocked and the next rung available to unlock. By comparison, I had to make a notebook full of combinations and upgrade paths when I play Reus.

I have played the first half dozen missions, and I quite like the game. The art, dialogue, and music is charming. The puzzle is engaging though not overly difficult. The only real challenge in a game is that you must keep buildings happy or they fall into disrepair and shut down. If you upgrade a building, it comes to expect certain benefits from its neighbors. So, swapping out that grocery store may cause the whole neighborhood to slowly collapse. This is easy enough to avoid with some foresight or a quick reshuffling. My only complaint about this mechanic is that there is no undo button. If I miscalculate and swap an fully upgraded building for something else, I may not be able to recreate that fully upgraded building fast enough to save the neighborhood.

I haven't had the same frustration with controls that other people have. I prefer to use the xbox controller over the keyboard, but both seem fine. It did take me a few missions to realize that I could shift buildings down rather than stress about placing them exactly where I wanted them - perhaps this is what frustrated other reviewers? The game seems bug-free.

I am not sure there is as much depth as Reus, but I also haven't gotten to the highest levels yet. It is also unclear if there is a sandbox mode. Perhaps there will be once I beat the game?


If you enjoy combo puzzles like Reus or Islanders, you'll enjoy this game.

At first the game and its ideas are nice. Once you come to the third neighbourhood, there is no way to go forward with the building permit and somehow remove the orphan homes and there is no help with it at all. After that the game keeps on crashing on steam proton and I can't enter it again. Not playable now, so not recommended.