Skip to main content

Stonehearth Early Access

By

First a disclaimer. The tiny company developing this game is made up of friends and former coworkers, so I can't claim a total lack of bias.

That said, I have a very positive impression of what this game will be like when it's done.

At first blush it seems like a prettier, less intense version of Dwarf Fortress, and I think that's a fair comparison but not a fair accusation.

As the blurb I saw in the stream store mentions, there's less of an overarching story and a lot more room for personalization. Their main goal is that you can grow your own personalized town, with as distinctive a visual and mechanical identity as you want to put effort into.

In Dwarf Fortress there is a constant stream of events - attacks, natural disasters, the arrival of immigrants with special demands. You rarely have any time to just enjoy building your town.

In Stonehearth, even if you play in the normal mode instead of the sandbox one, the number and pacing of such things is much less of a distraction. The attacks, especially, are there to test the quality of your planning and decisions, not to create crises where your town might be destroyed despite your attempts to prepare.

Even with the limitations and problems of very early early access, I'm finding this game scratches my Builder itch in a really satisfying way.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This article didn't quite change my life, but it was the most worthwhile thing I've read in a while

By
I like the games I like, and I'm no longer in the business of making games, so in many ways this article is not to my address. But it was still really worth my time to read carefully. It never gets anywhere near the stupid misogynistic pseudo-editorial "defense of games" crap that I'm not naming to avoid the still-raging humans pretending to be flamebots, and it comes from the opposite, and very constructive direction. And it quotes Tim Gunn more than once, in a very on-topic way. Tim Gunn is an awesome individual, even though I doubt he's ever been in the same room as a videogame for long. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-11-07-video-games-are-boring
Post a Comment
Read more

Can't write, must play Pillars of Eternity

By
OMFG, I've barely started the game and I'm already hooked and feeling alt-oholic. I only looked at character generation and the first few minutes of play last night, as I can't afford to miss a day of work just for a new game any more. But I'm already sure that this game is living up to high expectations. It's not perfect, there are some flaws that Rock, Paper, Shotgun already did a good job describing, but this is better than many of the game I've paid $60 for over the years. Going to be hard to tear myself away long enough to keep my wife and toddler from getting upset at me this weekend.
Post a Comment
Read more

OK, Blogger is Moribund

By
Can't delete a spam comment, the UI for it is gone but the hell still says to look in the old place. Mobile UI is a mess, desktop UI doesn't work on Android. G+ seems to be on its way to shutting down. I loathe Facebook as a company and distrust giving them and chance to run code on my property. Google can't be trusted to leave a working product alone and working. Sigh.
Post a Comment
Read more