I have played the game for several hours and I’ve come across some bugs, some glitches, and a little bit of personality. I did not come across fun gameplay or entertainment. I’ll begin right away because this might be a long post.
Tutorial
I know there’s no tutorial. There’s no keybind control settings anywhere either. So if I’m wrong about something, if I missed something obvious please let me know because it wasn’t obvious.
UI
Why is the UI “Mobile Friendly”? To me this is a big flag to be concerned about the future of the game. The worse part is the inability to move windows. Trying to build a simple house and having to close and reopen windows to compare my town inventory and the needed housing materials is very annoying. Or having multiple windows overlap because the windows cannot rearrange and the buttons need to be giant and unmissable because “mobile friendly”.
Building(construction)
If I blueprint a house, there is no way to delete some changes? Like if I put a bed or chair down, there is no way to move or remove that? I think the walls were the same too? Unless I missed something obvious, I think I did because I have seen several good pictures of creations people made. But if it is that way why hasn’t this been completed even before implementing farms?
Building(block placement)
When I began the game I accidentally made a bunch of small holes trying to harvest the stone. (who assumes you “Harvest” the stone and not “Mine” it.) The only way I found to fix it was to blueprint a building and place a single slab. This also costs 1 wood(or stone). This also is a terrible idea. Especially in a game designed to be about creations and buildings.
Crafting
Again, I have to play with several windows just to make sure I have enough materials. I’m sure the devs can give themselves infinite items, but playing through the game isn’t like that. I can’t (shouldn’t easily be able to) craft an object and wait long enough to realize the Blacksmith or whoever isn’t making it because I don’t have the materials. This sort of simple design flaw gives me a headache.
AI
AI is terrible. We all know that. And I know it’s a hard work to get them working properly. So I don’t have complaints about that per se. However, I am curious why there is no manual control? Why cannot I click on a hearthling and command him/her to “Go to here”? On a side note. At least in this Alpha mode game, why isn’t there an option to “Unstuck” a hearthling?
Camera
Camera movement is also terrible. I mean, the actual movement is mostly fine. WASD or mouse wheel is good, it does freak out sometimes though. But moving behind objects or the inablility to go past a certain degree of vertical inclination is a certainly something that should be worked upon.
Farming
As farming is the currently and kinda only the main food source, my suggestion is to have priorities on farms. An example would be: Priority 1 = get crops as soon as they are ready. Priority 4 = get crops only when the whole field is completely grown. This will help getting more pumpkins and other slower growing food, as opposed to getting a million carrots. Even a priority of “don’t collect” is better than destroying the whole plot of land. (This priority system works best when food doesn’t spoil and when weather isn’t implemented. But I doubt those systems are anytime soon)
Those are my current thoughts about the. I’m sure there is a few things I missed. And some others I glossed over. I guess I’m saying that I will come back and check on the game in 2 years and maybe there will be some progress.
