I played it. In fact I “beat” the current build, by building everything on the craft list, and finishing all the quests. It ends at a hidden portal that once you build it, tells you the game is over for now.
It’s a very fun game if you like this genre. Updates seem to happen frequently enough. Several minor issues just got fixed, and they also tweaked the difficulty, so it may not be as easy as when I played it.
I would recommend it.
Just got this - it’s very polished and I am still learning the ins and outs, but I have to say for $10 this was a good buy. I see myself playing this for quite some time to come. Between this and Starbound I have my holidays covered.
I bought this on sale. I am on the fence a bit. It is a cute mix of Gnomoria and Minecraft and it is fun to see the little dwarves do their thing. But the pace is ponderous. It moves incredibly slow and at times it is like watching paint dry. Pathfinding is beyond poor. I am not sure how much more I can stand it.
I’ve only played an hour but it looks like it has potential.
You can use F1-F3 to control the game speed (1x,1.5x,2x), but maybe they need a couple more.
Regarding pathfinding, yeah it’s currently annoyingly rubbish but … game is clearly labelled “early access”. Let’s hope they finish it. :)
Wondering if anyone has played the last build or so. I still do not have it and was waiting for it to get a little further along. Not sure I can wait much longer. I still see posts regarding annoyances people are having on Steam, but I can’t tell how representative that is of the overall experience, of course.
I can easily sit down with this game and lose several hours. I’ve started over a few times to get a feel for the early game so now it’s all making sense. I focus less on the “quests” now and more on getting to the items I feel help with early survival (Armor, Bows, Doors, etc). Once those things are in place I can usually survive the first several waves which means I have a good 2 or 3 hours of game time to build up my resources and shelter. This is all based on the Small Campaign World so far.
Short answer, I’m having fun with it. This and Gnomoria scratch my sim itch.
I think I no longer have the patience or time for games as free form as Gnomoria and Towns. If I was younger, had a less demanding job, or no kids, I would probably relish diving into both of those. Craft the World and Starbound appear to have at least a limited quest structure to provide me with an outline of where to go and what to do. Otherwise, I quickly get analysis paralysis and can’t decide what to do and then decide it is all way too stressful and I go to something else. Plus, Craft the World reminds me of Diggles. I loved Diggles.
This is 50% off today. Have the verdicts above changed? Any major updates or rebalancing?
I was just going to ask about this. I saw it was one sale and wanted to get some recent impressions on it. How far is it from being done? In other words, is it still very alpha with lots of missing features or is it beta where it is just bugs and balancing?
I still play this quite regularly. It’s in a very playable state. I would have to guess it’s close to complete, but I don’t know if there’s any more content they’re working towards. The last two patches have been mostly art updates and tweaks. According to Steam, I’ve played 110 hours. I’ve not had a single crash or major bug.
This has been one of the better Early Access games I’ve bought in terms of frequent updates and progress towards completion.
As for the game play, I really enjoy it, but it may be too slow paced for some. You start with 1 dwarf and as you gain experience, you get more. You direct them to cut down trees or mine resources, while carving out tunnels and caves to find better resources like iron and silver. These resources are used to make various things, from better tools to weapons and armor to comfort items for their shelter. There is a day/night cycle, with the nighttime bringing undead creatures to your door. You have to fight these off and survive. If a dwarf dies, they will respawn in about 5 minutes. At certain time intervals, there are invasions of 2 different types of enemies. Once every so often, a goblin tribe will spawn nearby and raid your shelter. You need to kill all of them and destroy their camp. You are rewarded with a bunch of items and resources once you do. Lastly, there is a count down timer that starts at about 48 minutes. (there is a time delay before the first timer appears in a new game). Once that count down hits 0, a portal appears nearby with a ton of undead that attack your shelter. Again, you have to survive or lose (temporarily) your dwarves. Each portal that spawns gets harder and harder, so you do have to be progressing your dwarves along with better weapons and armor.
Ultimately, as you dig deeper, you have to find 5 “boss rooms” where you fight a really difficult boss to claim his portal piece. Once you have all 5, you can craft them and create an escape portal to a new and bigger land that is more challenging (second one has useless snow covering everything). You actually start over from step 1 in the new land, with 1 dwarf. No items, materials or craft recipies carry over.
You have to be willing to put some time into this game. It’s not a fast paced environment, and the game will not play out very quickly. For some, just finishing the first world may be enough. I have started the second world twice now, but have not seen it through to the third world. Even still, I really enjoy it when I have time to put into it. It’s worth the money, especially at the sale price of $7.49 now.
Thanks, Spect. Sounds like I won’t regret springing for it yesterday.
I love the slower pace. I love these types of games, but have not been very successful in getting into them. For better or worse, the early hand holding eases you right in and I love the indirect control of your growing colony of dwarves. And I agree, the Early Access appears very complete and stable.
At $7.50, if you like the genre, it is a no brainer in my book. I got it at the regular price and have not regretted it a bit even though I have not put in as much time as I would like.
My biggest gripe about this has been once you discover a crafting recipe, you still have to put up the mats into the recipe grid to make an item every time you want to build one. Seems like that can be easily automated. I have seen them get other complaints about this too. Have they/are they going to ‘fix’ this?
I had this on my Steam wishlist, and bought it yesterday at the discount. This is quite the little gem. Very polished for an early access, although a bit confusing in the beginning. The “tutorial” isn’t much of a tutorial. I am currently trying to Google what the definition of a shelter is, since my dwarfs seems to be exhausted, and I can’t get them to sleep without this shelter… I’m having fun, though
@LokeUtgaard I quoted myself from page 1 of this very thread to help with your query. No google needed!
Great tips, thanks. I still don’t understand doors. Seems like dwarves won’t go through them when they’re closed, but then when they’re open a space doesn’t qualify as a shelter. Am I missing something? Or am I wrong about them opening and closing doors?
Really enjoying this.
Doors count as shelter/wall regardless of them being opened or closed. I guess you’re missing something else. The most likely thing is you’re missing a background wall somewhere.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
One thing that tripped me up early on was hatches. They are not doors, so you can only put a hatch over a tunnel going down, and can only put a door on a open passageway going left or right.
My main stategy when making a shelter is to tunnel down right next to my stockpile, carve out an area for shelter (no need to worry about back walls, because the carved areas is already enclosed, then put a hatch over the tunnel entrance and add the totem. Shelter done. The stock pile does not need to be in the shelter. I can easily expand the underground shelter by going left and right, or digging further down. As long as you don’t tunnel into an open-ended area, it will keep updating as part of your shelter.
On doors, these can remain open at all times. There’s no need to manually close them, except for during Goblin raids. Even undead will not pass through an open door until the break it down. Goblins will walk right through though. If you want to contain your dwarves, there’s a button on the top right of the screen that stops them from leaving the shelter. So no need to manipulate the doors.
Okay, that makes doors make more sense.
The other question I had was whether I can move my stockpile. Is it permanently stuck there?
You can’t move the stockpile. Seems like with the Portal spell and fairly small worlds it’s not really necessary to migrate.
FYI, newest patche(s) enhance pathing and fix a few other frustrating bugs like dwarves chasing down enemies FOREVER with the crossed swords (ie targetted for slaughter).
Really enjoying this but it seems like the waves of monsters are too weak, even after a slight boost with the latest patch…
Also want to see FOOD production become more important. My dwarves never get hungry.