Original survival-production strategy. Early access.
The game is announced for the Windows platform.
An endless rotten storm is raging in the world, plunging everything into the abyss of destruction and madness. But hope arose. People, beavers and lizardmen, led by the queen of the Smoldering City, challenge the elements and begin to restore order in these lands.
The gameplay is an original strategy with survival and indirect control. There are elements of a global strategy.
The game is a sequence of locations that you need to “go through” to conquer the entire global map.
In fact, what happens is that each time we go further and further from the Smoldering City (the main settlement) and create something like outposts. To function successfully, they need to prove their resilience – complete a certain set of tasks (different each time), so as to fully become part of the kingdom and bring it pleasant and permanent bonuses. It sounds complicated, but in reality it is very simple and clear.
We can build and develop new settlements using special resources received for successfully completing past locations.
In the main city we can upgrade it (the city), for the experience gained during tasks, there is a global level set. Here we receive passive bonuses, discover new types of buildings (not the only way).
Smoldering City development tree.
As you level up, new playthroughs will give you pleasant additional passive bonuses, something like achievements with a reward.
During the next expansion, positive and negative properties of the area will be formed in the form of global modifiers, which should be taken into account during the development of the location.
We’ve more or less figured out the strategic part, let’s move on to the construction, development and survival of outposts, which will take up the lion’s share of the time in the game.
At the beginning of each location we are given a hearth – the main building, without which everyone will die and which must be protected at all costs. Residents stand around the fire. Nearby is a resource warehouse.
Our settlement finds itself in the center of a dense forest, in which there are clearings with randomly generated content. The base camp by no means contains resources sufficient to win, which means, inevitably, we will have to explore the forest.
We must also remember https://playdoitcasino.co.uk/ about the survival of hard workers – provide them with housing, food, and lift their spirits. If life gets hard, settlers will die or desert.
Clearings contain resources, small tasks, or even damaged buildings (rarely) that can be repaired. This is the main part of the game – space exploration. This is achieved by building sawmills and assigning them tasks to cut down the corresponding forest areas.
The game has a very interesting system for quickly moving buildings. This means that expansion proceeds quite quickly and maximum time is given to gameplay, rather than waiting for this or that building to be built, and allows you to minimize the number of key buildings. The settlements are small, but functional and neat.
There are, as usual, mining and manufacturing buildings. The variety is small compared to the best representatives of the genre, but there is enough of them for an interesting game. And in the leveling tree of the Smoldering City there are still a lot of unopened buildings.
Each of our mining buildings has a radius in which resources are collected. Workers can be assigned to almost all buildings, and different races perform different jobs with different quality.
Production chains are not particularly long, but there is interest, they will have to be planned – resources are not infinite.
There may also be dangers waiting in the forest, then the corresponding space is marked with a special sign.
In clearings with threats there are buildings that harm the settlement. They are very diverse and always unpleasant. Either a pestilence will attack the residents, or resources will begin to disappear.
Appropriate investment of resources and assignment of workers will help overcome adversity, as in any other building. The game is not about combat at all, there are only hard workers, urban development and resources, and therefore threats are eliminated with what we have.
Dangerous clearings are really dangerous, so it’s worth going to them after being thoroughly prepared.
The ultimate goal of every exploration of a location with an outpost is to prove its viability. This is achieved by filling the “reputation scale” of loyalty to the queen. In contrast to it there is a scale of forest madness, if it is filled, then there will be a loss.
You will be able to be good settlers if you carry out decrees/tasks (generated randomly, their number is limited) or send resources from random events from unlocked clearings to the crown (you can take them for yourself). When you manage to distinguish yourself, loyalty increases, and the destructive scale decreases.
For achieving certain successes in the service of the crown, we receive new building plans
Every “year” gifts are given in the form of resources, settlers or global (only for this outpost map) improvements. I haven’t quite calculated the frequency, maybe they send something randomly.
There is trade after the construction of the corresponding building.
ABOUT EARLY ACCESS
There is a road map for the development of the project.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of the game and summarize.
+ Excellent music and sound accompaniment. I especially want to note the atmospheric soundtrack.
+ Quite a lot of types of resources.
+ Quite a lot of types of mining and production buildings. Great trick with moving buildings.
+ Good generated locations.
+ There are negative weather effects and harmful buildings that provide some challenge.
+ Good Russian text localization.
– I would like more detail in the receipt of resources. Sometimes there is a misunderstanding: “Oh, I have this, but where from??"But maybe I’m a crook here, I didn’t read something, and it’s not a problem with the game.
– At some point, a scheme emerges – how to always win. But maybe I was just lucky. There are no difficulty levels, I played on the only one.
Extremely enjoyable and original game. There is both a good strategic part with general pumping and improvements, as well as an interesting exploration of locations and the creation of settlements. Despite its early access status, the project is extremely playable and has a sufficient amount of high-quality content.
PS: I probably didn’t cover all the aspects, I might have missed something. I will be glad to add/correct the review or answer questions along the way in the comments.
