(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
I think I played this for about 30 minutes then became bored after I managed to craft the first "light towers". You are thrown in a dark random world full of dead trees and must progressively collect materials and craft buildings to proceed, most importantly the towers of light. You can gather stone, wood metal and most importantly lightshards.
Unfortunately, this game turns out to be too grindy: It seems the only way to get the important lightshards is by killing the bug creatures but you need to kill a LOT of them. It doesn't seem you can mine for lightshards. The fact this game also doesn't have an end or any sense of closure is unsatisfying. Sandbox games only make sense when you have a lot of things to do (like a large list of crafts). For smaller games like this one, adding some mission, goal or closure is key to success, I suppose.
More frustratingly, the bug creatures randomly destroy your structures, so say bye-bye to your furnace you have grinded 20 minutes to get. :-( I don't mind difficult games, but I mind games that are difficult by being annoying.
The bug creatures don't really behave well either: Their movement is not fluent at all.
Also, the game is lacking in atmosphere: No music, no sounds. And the landscape overall feels a bit too repetitive as well so it's unfortunately not immersive.
Conceptually, this could have become a nice game. The idea sounds very interesting on paper, but the excution is sadly not. If the grind was not so bad, it was more atmospheric and the core gameplay would be more focused towards an end.
As far as grinding goes, I didn't do any play testing, as I didn't have the time, so it was probably very unbalanced. That's something I'll be working on in future updates.
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
I think I played this for about 30 minutes then became bored after I managed to craft the first "light towers". You are thrown in a dark random world full of dead trees and must progressively collect materials and craft buildings to proceed, most importantly the towers of light. You can gather stone, wood metal and most importantly lightshards.
Unfortunately, this game turns out to be too grindy: It seems the only way to get the important lightshards is by killing the bug creatures but you need to kill a LOT of them. It doesn't seem you can mine for lightshards. The fact this game also doesn't have an end or any sense of closure is unsatisfying. Sandbox games only make sense when you have a lot of things to do (like a large list of crafts). For smaller games like this one, adding some mission, goal or closure is key to success, I suppose.
More frustratingly, the bug creatures randomly destroy your structures, so say bye-bye to your furnace you have grinded 20 minutes to get. :-( I don't mind difficult games, but I mind games that are difficult by being annoying.
The bug creatures don't really behave well either: Their movement is not fluent at all.
Also, the game is lacking in atmosphere: No music, no sounds. And the landscape overall feels a bit too repetitive as well so it's unfortunately not immersive.
Conceptually, this could have become a nice game. The idea sounds very interesting on paper, but the excution is sadly not. If the grind was not so bad, it was more atmospheric and the core gameplay would be more focused towards an end.
As far as grinding goes, I didn't do any play testing, as I didn't have the time, so it was probably very unbalanced. That's something I'll be working on in future updates.