TLDR: buy only if heavely dicoounted and you like survival games. Pros: - music. The soundtrack is really pleasant. - classic apocalypse survival with some new twists Cons: - verly unbalanced. You have reached the stock limit for water, there are no changes in water usage (no new survivors, no buildings using water etc.), you make no changes in water production (no new prodcution building, nor destroyed, nor have workers removed), next moment your storage is empty and people are dyuing out of thirst, even though your added new water source in the meantime. - bugged: explorations got stuck; people dying of starvation even though the stock is full (yes, it's the same district) - some building can be dismantled, some not, so often you got stuck on a big, already explored island, that you cannot make use of cause there's no buildable space. - big map, but you are limited to only one exploration team, unnecessarry prolonging the game
I have played for about 12 hours last week, game crashed few times, but in general it was working ok (it's normal that after release many games need hot fixes, so few crashes here and there are fully accpetable). After the hot fix today, it crashes right after logos, I cant even see the menu, so it's fullly unplayable. Regarding the game itself: very dissapointing. Frostpunk was a great city builder, mixed with survival, exploration, and elements of political management. Micromanagement of resource and workforce in early game stages was sometimes annoying, but that was what made the game demanding and simple at the same time, and also so versatile and addictive. Frostpunk 2 is closer to Anno series than to first Forstpunk, where you have your main city and manage the colonies and political relations between the parties. There is much less 'acting against all odds', less race against the clock, the overwhelming frost has lost its terryfing power... "Oh... 200 people froze to death... But 1600 people are joining your city...". In Frostpunk people were valued, even if you considered them just as a workforce or a resource you needed, they were very important. In Frostpunk 2 you don't care about them anymore, as every 'true' politician you want their votes but don't care about their lives... The UI is totally NOT intuitive (after 10 hours I still had to sometimes think twice where to click, I can't recall last time I had such issue with any game interface ...), there are multiple glitches (you want to read one thing, so you hover mouse over the icon, stats are showing up, but then a 'help' bubble pops up as well covering teh stats you wanted to read...). I hope for many more bug fixes... The only thing left from the first game is the name...
Regarding gameplay, Dawn of Man goes in line with titles like Banished, Foundation or Farthest Frontier, however, it has much less options, buldings, technologies, which makes it very repetitive. Basically, after you played it once, to get used to mechanics, you will play it for the second time, to build your settlement 'properly', and that's it. After that there's nothing new you can make differently. There are multiple features that have potential, but were apparently abandond during the development process, e. g. people and animals can get sick, but there's no way to cure them, no herbs, no medicines or technologies linked to 'medicine'; there are storms that slow down your gameplay speed as if something dangerous is approaching, but the only thing they can do is hit one of your people with lightning (killing them instantly), but there's nothing you can do against it... Neither order people to hide in their homes nor build lightning rods... You just speed the gampleay up and keep playing. From more technical point of view, you have flour in granaries, ovens filled with fuel and idle villagers, yet nobody is baking bread, and soon the villagers will be starving. I'm not sure if path settings are incorrect and a villager very far away is being chosen to bring the flour to the oven, or there's a cooldown in the oven... I had a feeling that 90% of the time the oven was out of use even when there was flour in the granary. I can recommend to buy it, chek, and return within 2 days (you're not gonna need more time than that), or buy on a sale for maximum of 5€, but there's no point of paying full price.
Pros: - I really like the idea of floating city and the way it has been implemented - wonderful music - graphics are a bit edgy, but overall are very pleasant - very chill amd relaxing but at the same time you can't leave the city on it's own - it needs your management Cons: - repetetive - once you get the idea which techniologies and building to prioritise, it becomes very easy
If you like time management sim games and you are a fan black, twisted, politically incorrect and slightly sadistic humor - Graveyard Keeper is a game for you :) There are few minor bugs, but with each update and / or DLC there are fewer and fewer. Generally, you're playing as graveyard keeper (what a surprise! :P ), so you have to take care of the bodies, do autopsies, bury them or burn or throw into a river - your choice ;) . You have to take care of your own church and cemetery by building benches and graves, and to do that you need to collect stone and wood, make planks and nails (or hiring zombies to do that for you) and so on... You can also develop your alchemy or kitchen skills, plant vegetables (btw. carrots are your "currency" to get new bodies, but The Donkey in the game will explain you the details) and sell the crops in the town. In the meantime, you will play as the detective, finding out who with whom did what and when - some of the townsfolk are really twisted, and finding your way home, as you are not where you belong... Nice graphics, pleasant music, easy to learn game mechanics but giving you a lot of options how to play, story full of twists and jokes. I really enjoyed both, the gameplay and the story. Please note, if you like inappropriate dark humor (like let say "Elvira: the mistress of darkness" or "Dracula: dead and loving it") you will enjoy the game; if you do not enjoy cutting off someones intestines an making it into powder so you can use it in your elixir, pick something else ;)
Don't make my mistake, and don't buy until the bugs won't get fixed. It's beta and you should get paid as testers... Just to give you some hints: - missing in game info/help/support, you need to figure out most of the game mechanics by yourself, internet is not very helpful either - provided help and info is often misguiding/incomplete - even buying resources took me some time to learn (left click here, but right here there) - game crashes randomly from time to time - bad pathfinding for NPC, including animals suddenly appearing on shelves or people inside of the wall - fighting arena blocked my whole income, because match got stuck and all guest were watching; I waited about 10 minutes, then tried to cancel the tournament - no effect, then deleted the fighting arena, but the fighters stayed in places as nothing happened... luckily guests got unstucked - could not delete an empty room nor merge it with the adjusting room - autosaves pile up (one per in-game day) so expect your hard drive space will run out soon... - no control over your employee's - prioritisation is ignored - I've build the cellar without knowing proper "technology", you just need to press PageDown - items repeat themselves on the world map, including the ones that you are supposed to unlock with "technologies" - also on the world map, you have no clear info where to buy each product, you need to look closely and search for the product icon, and then check city after city in the area for best price... - special promo are showing in the cities that are not yet unlocked nor even visible on the map - no proper sales or customers stats - quality of the products is mentioned multiple times in game, but there is no item quality in game
I was playing Pharaoh & Cleopatra just a sec before this game (probably that's why it popped up as "You may like"), so maybe I was too much expecting something more or less similar to Pharaoh or Children of the Nile... BUT... I know it's supposed to be demo only, but there are so many issues. Farmlands and fishing spots are extremely limited; you can build a shrine, but it's not working; bazaar needs to stand next to granary, or the carriers will never fill it up; workers are sent to workplaces in some odd way, so suddenly the well with 2 workers needed stops working, when granary plus bazaar with 5 workers each, both built next to well have full workforce... One extremely annoying thing: going back to the main menu means you need to see all producers intros, and when you want to see creators in main menu, you get a blank page... There's a lot of balancing and debugging needed for the producers :/
...and I still have fun! There are some issues with the control of the dwarves or they get stuck not able to move, but if it not an issue of the path (teleported to the closed chamber for example, or a ladder has been destroyed), always just a quick "exit+save, load again" solves the issue. Beside that: - the graphic is simple, funny and pleasure for the eye - he game mechanics are simple, but the further you get, the more important the economy of resources is becoming - you need to think not only about the resources (to build the fortress and forge equipment, so you need to plan mining and wood economy), but also about your dwarves (agriculture, fishery, cooking food, equipment, comfort) and preparing to fight (monster waves and monsters hidden in the mines), making the gameplay very interesting - some resources, totally unimportant at the beginning of the game, are getting more and more important with time (like sand and mana), and other important ones, are loosing their position (stone for example) - it forces the player to re-plan the strategy in the middle game - dwarves' skill are extremely important; each should know at least one fighting skill (archer, mage or fighter) and be equipped appropriately; for the skill "swimming" I recommend using oblivion potion. - more DLCs = more fun, each brings a bunch of new content and prices are reasonable. From my point of view 5/5 - there are some minor bugs (which game doesn't have any?), but these do not disturb the game too much, and re-load always solves these. Just learn the game's mechanics and some things that might look like a bug, are indeed a bad planned path or task...
