Hello all. I picked up the game a few days ago, and having played about 10-15 hours of it now, I thought I could maybe offer some coherent feedback to the Devs about the game.
Overall:
Pretty addictive! I really like the attention to detail in certain areas (for example, my little workers putting up scaffolding and tearing it down again when constructing buildings). The graphs are crisp, simple, yet still aesthetically pleasing. Game play is good, though very limited (understandably, given it’s current alpha development phase).
Bugs I Encountered (and probably so did everyone else):
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Crafters can’t do intermediate builds. By that I mean, if I tell my Carpenter to construct 10 Comfy Beds, there’d better be 10 Mean ones (and Cloth) somewhere in the inventory, or he’s stuck. Even if the Cloth is there and there’s only missing Mean Beds (which he himself could craft) he’s still stuck.
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Build errors - these sorts of games absolutely live and die by the intelligence of the indirectly controlled workers and happily Stonehearth does really well in this area, indeed exceptionally well given it’s development status. That said, I did notice a number of errors in my minions, and lacking direct control of them, most of them I couldn’t fix.
i) Building an item above another item - this particularly ruined (for a long time) a dining hall I made. One table (a fine one) got built on top of the default standard table, and try as I might I couldn’t get rid of it. I did eventually manage, after getting the workers to build a series of short ladders but it was pretty frustrating work. Another error is one of my 2 person cottages, where the front lantern hasn’t placed properly, resulting in a ladder (which I can’t remove) being permanently in front of the front door.
ii) Engine errors with a higher population - above 14 or 15 population I get occasional engine errors popping up.
iii) Slowdowns - above a dozen or so citizens the game seems to be struggling despite my system trouncing the specs in every category by a mile.
iv) Goblins gone neutral - I don’t quite know how, but the goblins never attack me any more - even when I was warned of goblin wolves. They did (eventually) arrive (days later) but merely ran through my village for a while and then ran off. I couldn’t get my footmen to attack them (or any indeed any other goblins) either.
v) Picket fence gates - they open up for animals to leave the farm, kinda defeating the purpose of constructing the picket fence around the farm in the first place.
vi) Wall design - I can seem only to make walls 6 blocks high.
vii) Left over materials - many of my houses have left over wood sitting on their roofs. Most of the time, constructing a ladder will encourage a worker to go collect them, but often not.
That’s about it for me - I hope I don’t sound too negative - I’m assuming there’s plenty of positive threads around to pump Dev-happy-meters (hehe), I figured the constructive feedback was more valuable.
I’m definitely enjoying the game - it’s much more stable than many of the other Alpha’s I’ve played (or tried to play), so it’s looking very good. I really like the detail in the development page, and I look forward to especially to multiplayer once it’s in.
PS: I’d reeeaallly like to see more pre-designed buildings. Particularly for a new player like myself, the idea of trying to build a castle using the building designer is pretty overwhelming.
Cheers.
