Okay, now you’re just making stuff up.
That said, you would have had a much easier time feeding your colonists in Clockwork Empires.
-Tom
Since when has corn not been a vegetable?
Since the Tuber Riots of '68.
I thought the creatures in this game considered us to be the vegetables. :)
Ich bin ein vegetable!
If you’re going all botanical-technical, all grains are really fruits. Sadly, that might be my only contribution to the discussion of a game that I paid for, way back when…
The game in the end it isn’t good, but imo that does’t mean it was just another cash grab in the EA space.
Games, even before the Early Access times, were sometimes good, sometimes bad. In case some people don’t remember those times.
Sometimes it just happens that the developers are too ambitious, the design goals change, some systems were good in paper but were unfun once finished or were much more difficult to implement than anyone guessed at first, staff leaves mid project, etc, one thousand things can happen in the development of a game.
But the idea that all games MUST BE good just if they were funded in part with Early Access or Kickstarter or otherwise they were cash grabs is hilarious. Developer can try but there will be always times where they fail, like any other company or artist who can fail at work. It was the case before EA, and it will be the case of EA.
If someone doesn’t like to take chances, he should wait for reviews and impressions; like always.
Yeah, I agree @TurinTur. I don’t see this as a cash-grab, just a game that didn’t come together into something enjoyable. It happens in Early Access and traditional release (see: No Man’s Sky or any number of games that fall flat).
While I wouldn’t dismiss it as a cash grab either – you only have to read these guys’ update notes to see their heart is in the right place – I agree with @Nesrie’s point that this gives early access a bad name. I honestly don’t understand how anyone can take a look at this game’s interface – never mind the issues with pacing, difficulty, and corn identification – and say, “Yep, the early access process has served us sufficiently that it’s good enough to move us into the threshold of final release!”
I mean, my god, just the contorted steps you have to go through to put modules (furniture) in any given building. Who thought that was acceptable?
-Tom
I don’t know why you think it’s hilarious. EA is about supporting the developer so they can make the game they want to. Are you trying to claim somewhere in there it’s not implied it is supposed to be a “good” game? but in this case, it doesn’t even sound like it’s a complete game. And don’t think for one minute there are those on this board that don’t remember when games were released and sitting unplayable on a store shelf in physical boxes. Hell one of the Neverwinter Nights was pretty much unplayable out of the box, as in would not even launch, until you got their patch… on dial-up, but they didn’t ask customers to support them while they did it “right” though, and they eventually fixed it. There were certainly plenty of times when you bought a game and just sort of hoped you could finish it or find a patch.
I think it’s disingenuous to ask players to support you at the beginning, during and throughout the development process and deliver something like what’s being described here as somehow a finished product. It hurts EA overall and that’s not good for anybody.
Its a complete game, just with a fiddly UI, and some bugs. I’m confident the most glaring bugs will be fixed within weeks from what I’ve read in the game’s bug forum.
I’ve been playing my first game and I’m on hour 14 or 15, and honestly, haven’t hit any of the death spiral problems Tom found (except the ones where everyone dies violently/strangely) - so your Mileage May Vary.
Food - you build a kitchen, put out the first cooking module…and if you look at the UI it greys out all the food options you can’t cook. So dunno about it being confusing - seemed pretty straightforward to me. Choice X is selectable, it turns 1 raw item into 4 cooked food- click it.
The toughest part to figure out is the manufacturing chain, and this is where the UI hits you hard. You can have a building with several crafting stations - but it has to be manned properly. So you notice you need to add another person after you add a crafting station…but you can’t do it from the building. You have to go to an “overseers” list, find the right overseer, then assign someone to that team. Guess its because workers are assigned to bosses, not buildings… but it takes a little while to get used to.
Tom and I disagree a lot on how he feels about various games. I read his reviews not so much for his overall opinion but because he’s pretty as to why he doesn’t like something and then I choose whether I care about his complaint or in some cases what he enjoys as much as he does. If he says the UI is a mess though, I’m going to believe him. He doesn’t shy away from games that have UI challenges… I mean Paradox games, especially the earlier ones, are like navigating a spreadsheet.
After 14 hours, you’re still playing the same city? That’s pretty good. What sort of population did you reach after that time?
Because of various death spirals, I don’t think I ever had a city last longer than a few hours, tops. And the best one I had going died out because of some weird bug with food production screeching to a halt.
As for figuring out the manufacturing chain and assigning labor, which you say is the toughest part, that wasn’t really an issue for me, because the necessary information is in there somewhere. There’s a lot of detail in Clockwork Empires, so the trick is knowing where to look. But the toughest part for me was all the multistep processes within multistep processes that couldn’t be queued. Just the simple act of making new housing, for instance. All the back-and-forth with building beds, and bric-a-brac, and clotheslines, and plinths, and windows, all requiring multiple steps at multiple different buildings with multiple components, and mucking around in that godawful modules menu, all the while with everything else going on. Ugh.
Have you had any sort of cool events happen? All I ran into was stuff that eventually just killed a dude or injured people or inflicted some sort of resource drain. Sure, there would be a few choices about a fish statue or a visiting dignitary or some such thing, but they all seemed to peter out after a few steps with some sort of mild resolution.
-Tom
Actually - now that I’m logged into steam, its twice that - 30 hours in that city. My population is around 40 - no Upper Class Aristocrats yet - but I have the complete line of production building going now, and I’m through the second tier of modules (requiring iron), and working to unlock the upper tier (steel, brass).
So - as for cool events… well - spoilers ahoy:
First off, I didn’t watch diplomacy, so ended up in several wars - the first of which literally wiped out all but 5 overseers. That’s when things got fun :) There was a cycle of despondency, and several went mad and joined cults. The population recovered - but then I was beset by mysterious sacrifices in the woods - which resulted in an otherworldly creature coming from beyond to Kill Us All. Another cultist turned into a Fish Person. A meteor shower came down and glowing slug things ate all my food before I killed them (then released glowing spores). That was the closest I came to starvation… fortunately I had a large supply of um… meat… saved over from the slaughter of my populace earlier - so that bridged that gap.
It seems the larger you develop your settlement, the more you disturb Mysterious Forces - which usually devolves into things trying to Destroy Your Colony.
I think one problem with Early Access is as a developer - you’re stuck with it if it’s a turd. You never know if Gaslamp would have dumped this game a year ago but because they took people’s money they needed to finish it.
I understand that. I think there was a list once of one of the studios that went belly-up of all the games they would have done or started but stopped. It was sort of large. I’m not in the industry, so i don’t know how often that happens. I
Clockwork Empires sounded awesome and like the perfect thing to me when they had MP on the map with all those other features. Medieval City seemed the same. As far as I know, the last one will never see the light of day and was not introduced to the public. This one sold very early one, took in money, went EA, took on money, stripped a bunch of features and released as a “finished” product. Maybe they would have scrapped it otherwise… but they always had the choice not to go the EA route and do just that.
Yeah, I’ve seen all that stuff and gotten populations into the 30s. Sounds like you stuck with games when I would have started over. Getting knocked down to a population of 5 is the point where I figure it’s easier to start a new settlement rather than spend the time it takes for the old one to repopulate.
You might not have noticed, but there’s a disturbance rating next to your provisions.
It’s basically your aggro on the map.
-Tom
Dude, I had the good sense to quit playing after 17 hours! You should be ha ha’ing at dtolman’s 30 hours!
-Tom
I was Ha Ha’ing because he apparently can avoid the death spirals you had. :)
Ha Ha! you stink at Clockwork Empires!