Still has some ways to go, but has some promise. I find my dwarves get bugged up alot (im just going to stand here, or i’m not going to build what you have asked me to build for the past 20 minutes), but it’s enjoyable. The worst part for me right now is that some of the elements are pretty counter-intuitive. Ok, build a shelter? WTF is that actually?
The only time my dwarves have stood around doing nothing is when they are low health and enemies are nearby, or they are dead tired but cannot sleep due to lack of a shelter with beds.
I agree, the shelter bit could be better explained, but the description in the goals defines it well enough to give you an idea. Basically, you need an area completely enclosed by walls and doors. You have to put the totem in there also. That what makes it a shelter I guess. Then you will be able to place beds that dwarves will actually use.
Underground areas work well for this. If you dig out an area and make sure the entrance has a hatch on it, and place the totem in it, you will have a shelter. Then you can expand by digging deeper.
Some other tips:
Took me a few games to realize you could put the earth chucks you’ve mined onto your bar and fill holes with them by placing a back and front piece.
You can also put spells on your bar to cast them. So it turns out the portal spell is really useful, especially early on to get to further trees, or to get past large water areas.
Once you build and place a table, you put food on it by having food in your bar, clicking on it, then clicking on the table. You can use pine cones and berries early on before you start cooking.
I picked this up today, even though I’ve been burned on so many Dwarf-Fortress-alikes.
After playing an hour, I’m extremely impressed. The UI is so damn shiny and inviting, the animations are great, and the whole thing comes together as an extremely solid package. Great mix of Terraria and Dungeon Keeper indeed.
Also, this is the most solid “early access” game I’ve played. It almost feels like a release.
Why do all of these types of games feel a need to be so crushingly difficult? Can I like, ON THE FIRST FUCKING MAP, maybe build my base and figure things out before dozens of skeletons and zombies come to murder everything? I want to like this game but I end up rage quitting every time because it expects me to defend against hordes of enemies but apparently I have to research buckets and leaf roofs before anything useful like a sword or a suit of armor. Lame.
What are the controls like? Rebindable keys? Resolution support? Scaling GUI?
There’s hardly any options in the game yet. Sound, Music and Language are all that are configurable right now. There’s not even options to adjust the resolution or go to windowed mode. And it doesn’t like to be minimized or utilize a mutli-monitor set up. I assume all of that is coming.
Alt+enter gets you windowed mode. Just like it has on like every full screen game ever. Or at least the proper ones. Newbs! :P
What resolution does it run at?
edit: Looking at the community screenshots on Steam, they are all 1920x1080 so I guess that is the game’s native res. Not too shabby. :)
Haha yeah, I guess it’s been a while since I’ve had to resort to such archaic methods.
I’m pretty sure it just sets the full screen resolution to whatever your desktop is.
I really doubt it’s locked at 1920x1080.
My daughter and I have been playing this a fair bit… there’s clearly some stuff missing, but it certainly has plenty of charm. It’s also pretty stable… I’ve only had one crash and seldom have problems with the dwarfs doing dumb things…
I’ve gotten pretty far with this build now. My clan is level 9 and can destroy all enemies that are thrown at them so far. I’m currently building silver armor and weapons and just got done building my first elevator. There’s quite a bit to this game. I wonder how much more they intend to add.
I’m about where you are at and I don’t like how “proscribed” the game is. I find myself spending most of my resources meeting the needs of the “quests” which make you unlock every single vase, gate,and shoe in order to get to the stuff you actually want to build. There has to be a better way to do a skill tree progression then this heavy handed approach. Also, to get any kind of real building going, you need an inordinate amount of natural resources. Building a rail system for transit is so cost prohibitive I usually just let the Dwarves wander and go do something else for a bit. Also, around level 8-9 you get severely constrained by the number of sheep in your level (I have one spawn). Lots of the game for me has been spent waiting on the sheep to spawn.
This sounds like I’m being negative of the experience as a whole. I did play the thing for hours to get this far down the tree. I just would like to see some changes:
- Make the craft tree gating… something else. I don’t want to have to craft every pot and vase in order to unlock the elevator.
- Balance the resources a bit more. More rock, less dirt…
- Adjust the cost of some of the recipes needed to make the game fun. I’m looking at walls and rails here.
- Revise the regaining of mana. by level 9 you are waiting literally 30 + minutes of real time to be able to cast one spell.
Lots of potential in this game though. Pretty neat so far.
Fozzle, you should let the devs know! All that sort of stuff is great feedback I imagine. I don’t own this but it looks mightily interesting and the graphics are lovely.
I have many of the same issues. Especially with sheep. It’s holding me back right now in game.
Have you tried the sandbox mode they just added in the last patch? I doesn’t have the quest driven system, and it doesn’t hold your hand. Your free to craft whatever you want as soon as you have the materials and tools needed. It will require you to know the recipe though, much like Minecraft.
I agree with geggis, you should share your criticisms with the developer. They all sound reasonable to me.
I did cross post all that on the Steam forum after I wrote it =) It’s the only place I see some feedback going on for this game I think. I haven’t had a chance to try out Sandbox mode yet, but I plan to.
Hmmmm, the free-form nature of these and similar games often overwhelm me when I just have an hour or so to play. I wonder if I just might like the hand holding of this.
I see this is up on flash sale. How is the early access going?
I’ve been watching this game, and it still looks interesting. However, I just dropped in for two copies of Starbound for the kids so I’m holding off. As the forums mentioned at one point “400 people playing Craft the World vs. 80000 playing Starbound”. I suspect that is a bit unfair though, as the trailer makes it look really quite nice.
Echo - anyone playing this?