They could expectation manage with this game a bit moreso but it's solid for even if it were to be released today by modern release standards. If the game released today as-is, barring any game breaking bugs, I'd give it a 4.5/5 as they could expectation manage that the whiskers never fight back and if you don't bow down you get buildings that seem to be RNG destroyed. There's no seems to be no water physicals as addresseed by it placing wooden barriers to "keep" water from flooding into tunnels... you can expand into water by placing land but it does not seem like you can expand where water exists. I didn't expect Timberborn water mechanics, but considering this game has pipes at higher tiers and even in a game that had less to it years ago in Early Access could do (Going Medieval). The biggest thing to watch out for is choosing your starting difficulty as the game can be anywhere from opressive to casual and you have no way in the game itself to change the difficulty. Maybe someone can figure out something with save file editing but I'd not hold my breath hoping for that. The game seems to be heavily logistics focused with rail as being one of the items you clearly see at tier 1 that you cannot use/build until either tier 3 or 4, it's unclear. The game requires you to mine the land, there is no way to meaningfully progress unless you want to turtle and bet on being able to trade for the materials you want... but it'd be massively infefficient. There's a resolvable bug via backloading a save or saving (if a whisker is not in a starving state)... if one is hungry and stuck trying to enter/exit a building you can save and load to free it. It will die if it's in a starving state... This is a bug to keep an eye out for. Aside from that I've only made it to tier 2 tech and the rest are only minor bugs that benefits one (that I have experianced thus far). Campfires restock themselves to full HP/fuel if one saves and loads.
