Having reached the final stage of the game and wiping out all of the bad guy camps, and having built a massive village... I can not recommend this game at this time. Which does break my heart to say.

The combat system
This game is infuriating with is lack of dynamic mechanics, mostly around it's combat system.
While the game aims for realism in some areas, in others such as the combat, it's down right goofy to the point of absurd.
1) Horizontal hit box only.
- Your character does not bend at the waist, thus even with an overhead-downward chop, you can't hit enemies that are not on a level terrain with you when they are lower than that horizontal hit box.
2) There is no dodge mechanic, no shuffling quickly with your attacks- forwards or back... You just stand there and either guard or swing, or you can slowly move and swing or guard. Which doesn't end well if there are multiple opponents.
-The guard system does NOT cost stamina which is the only saving grace to the combat. HOWEVER, it does not save you from being blobbed/murder balled.
3) There is NO friendly fire, for you, OR the enemy... That murder ball blob I just mentioned... yeah, the enemy bunches up into a blob just shy of merging with each other, while 1 or 2 enemies will almost always block you, the rest are swinging on you from any direction that you are not blocking, and they WILL swing right through each other and hit you which is the biggest negative of this game.
4) You don't NEED to make any kind of armor for you or for the people you recruit, just shields, and weapons, and that's it. It will always come down to who has the bigger blob, so long as you aggro the enemy archers. That's it, that is the whole meta of this games' combat system. Just blob each other.

The Structures.
While it is very unfair of me to criticize the lack of certain building aspects and structures in this game as it did just get released, I do feel it necessary to point out, that there are quite a few things that are essential to defending a village or town that are not in this game, along with many other structures you would come to expect to have for simple quality of life and aesthetics for your village.
1) No walls
2) No gates
3) no lighting up your village at night, inside or outside of any kind.
4) no pathways, no roads of any kind.
5) NPC villages have all kinds of assets and structures that you cannot build or have in your village.
6) You can NOT build with stone. So there are no such structures related to stone at this time.
7) Doors are a lie, Doors in this game are only for looks.
8) When placing a blueprint down of a soon to be structure, YOU must clear the area first, and excavate it, NOT your NPCs. In addition to this, when you place a build site down (or blueprint or whatever you want to call it) if the ground has a bump in it, it will come right through the floor of the inside and prevent you from walking around, in addition to this, it will allow the entire inside of the building to be effected by the weather. So during winter for instance, the whole inside of your building will be covered in snow.
9) Many times when you go to place your BP down on the ground, it can only be placed if it's oriented a certain way. Which is COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the structure not being supported. This is during normal placement, on level ground. So if you have it in your head, that you can build and design this really great clean village all lined up nice, this isn't the game for your then.
10) This isn't really a negative as much as it is a disappointment in the game not having this. There are only 2 other games I can think of that are similar, but this game is pretty unique in it's features, which is really saying something. So I had hoped this would be a game where you can build up to be a king and eventually play this crazy long game filled with tedium and hardship so when you did finally accomplish this massive building, you could eventually evolve your village into more and more to the point of you being able to build your own castle. Sadly, this doesn't seem like the case given the fundamentals of this game.



1) Changing of the season is extremely strange to the point of it being very silly... Winter comes every 5 days or so, and it last for about 2 or 3 days. If it's not winter, it's something along the lines of spring.

2) (arguably a negative- but I'm putting it in neutral because I believe the dev did this on perhaps for the release of the game, undershooting it rather than over shooting it following the philosophy that it is better to add to the game, rather than take away.)
"Mining in this game is gross."
You can literally be pickaxing with the best possible pickaxe and be hitting an ore node for over a minute while holding the button down and only get a crude stone rather than ore. Needless to say, the mining in this game is very bad. Now, I will qualify that everything you want or need in this game SHOULD be passively attained through your NPCs, and have them do every thing, but there are too many bugs concerning the NPCs when they go away from your village. So YOU "HAVE TO" do the important things your self. Though I can see this being fixed by the dev over time; both the NPCs being bugged out, and the mining.

3) The NPC text to voice generated voices are better than not having voices, so ultimately I'm going to compliment the dev on having this in the game as it is something that can be upgraded later on. Good job on this feature. It's neutral however, because they are pretty lifeless voices that can be pretty robotic with emotions and articulation.


Um... There is a lot... Basically if I didn't mention it as a negative or a neutral, it's probably borderline positive given the nature of the game, or superbly positive. The graphics, the sound, the attention to detail, the atmosphere, the ambiance, and a BIG Emphasis on the storage system mechanics and the NPC travel paths within the village. You can really go to town on having a well oiled machine because of how wonderful the storage mechanics are in this game, especially with the built in filters you can apply to each storage structure.

There is clearly a lot of love put into this game, and it very clearly strives to be the best in the genre. So we shall see what changes and updates are made to the game over time.

Love the overall concept of the game and there are times where it is genuinely fun, but overall it's one of the most frustrating crafting survival games I've ever played not because of difficulty but because you spend most your time troubleshooting and juggling inventory.

The tasking and priority system is very convoluted, and one mistake somewhere will shoehorn your settlers into doing menial and worthless tasks for hours like intentionally wasting all your fuel or shuttling resources between two stockpiles. Resource balancing needs a lot of work, as you are always running out of crucial resources and you are never quite able to get a self-sustaining engine running with settlers because the system always breaks, they run out of food, wood, or whatever and the whole thing collapses immediately.

Combat is quite terrible...swinging is laggy and feels like you are fighting underwater. Enemies are generally overpowered in melee, but have no fear you can exploit them by simply standing on a rock and plinking them with a bow.

Lastly is the inventory management jenga game they have given us. It's terrible, and you will spend almost as much time juggling resources and tools as you do trying to figure out why your villager won't smelt bronze. In fact you'll spend so much time on those tasks you'll realize you aren't having fun or even playing the actual game, but rather just trying to troubleshoot a rudimentary engine. I'm eager to check back in a year to see if they have given us actual content vs a chore, until then back into the pile of survival games that were their own worst enemy.

An absolutely amazing game well worth the buy and time dedication, it is a great game to play with friends or even solo, it shows great potential and the devs are constantly improving upon it, i really cannot wait to see what the future holds for this game as it is a completely addictive game 10/10.

I hope to see dedicated severs in the near future as i think it would bring a whole new element of gameplay with large armies, full of players and npc's, even some pvp elements would be amazing. i have nothing but high hopes and expectations of what this game will become.

Bring me the siege warfare!!!