Astral Terra

Completely unplayable! 1st Game : My cursor was locked to a small area of the character creation screen. I couldn't click on anything and had to kill the game in Task Manager. 2nd Game: Got past the character creation, but game locked up on loading. Had to kill it in TM again. 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th games: Spawned below the earth each time, couldn't move, couldn't do anything, but fall. Even though I was in window mode, cursor was locked to screen. Hit crtl-esc, tried to close the window, cursor got locked back to screen again. Had to kill it in TM. Also each time I went back into the game , I had to redo my settings, since nothing got saved. 9th Game: Took atleast 5 minutes to create the world. Once again I spawned under the world and couldn't do anything. Also learned that once you pull up the help menu you can't close it, and then you can't do anything but exit out of the game. 10th game: Same problem as 1st game. 11th game: Was able to play, but no sound. Was unable to havest any resources what so ever. Gave up at this point and requested a refund This game is way too EA to even be on Steam! It's just unplayable. Added Note: You're selling your game here on Steam. Therefore you get rated on how it currently is, not how you think it will be. Update: I was happy to get this game refunded. I had a lot of gammer mistakes, I was extremely annoyed at buying this game and finding it in this sorry state. Also removed my foul language.

As of May 22nd 2016, I would recommend on sale or bundle. Unless you are a true sandbox & survival fan that finds joy in all. As the store page says, it is alpha and if I had the chance to experience it before i owned it, I would probably wait at least 6 months. The developers are very active and always listening and pushing small updates with fixes and improvements. I think another 6 months would be a huge difference. [h1]At first...[/h1] When I first saw this game, it reminded me very much of Landmark and when I created my first character and saw the Drow, I immediately went back to memories of EverQuest. After selecting my race I was sad there was not any other options, but I read that character customization is planned. [h1]Creating worlds[/h1] Next was creating a world name and seed. No idea what to put in Seed but couldn't leave it blank. So went to the Steam Discussion and searched for 'seed' and used one of the suggestions. I wish there was some kind of info to tell you what you could use as a seed or maybe suggest seeds with biome descriptions like the thread had. But you can apparently enter any random number or words to generate a world. I created 3 with a random word, and 2 with a random 3 digit number, and then 1 with a ? and all worked except the last. That one got stuck at 90% and after 10 minutes I exited. Tried entering it and it did the same thing. [h1]Experiences[/h1] In two of the worlds I ran in one direction until my Hunger bar was empty and health drained causing my death. In both of them I saw only 2 biomes; Desert to Jungle in one and Snow to Jungle in the other. In both cases eventually ran into such a high mountain that I got tired of trying to jump up the slope since there would be a delay while stuck in a crouching position sometimes. I built a few bridges to span over large canyons. I did not have the patience to get the controls right and allow spanning a single row of blocks that expended across multiple columns. Basically couldn't build one layer of blocks from one side to the other. Instead I was building entire cubes that filled the whole gap from the top where I was, to the bottom of the canyon. I also spent some time digging up a plant only to realize I dug myself into a hole when I shifted the camera angle cause I couldn't move. And then spent much time playing with the terraforming feature. I absolutely love the idea that I can quickly flatten space before building, as in other building games I have spent hours to do this one block at a time. I only wish it could be controlled smoother to create flat ground. I did also try to fall out the bottom of the world, but I can tell you there is a bedrock layer to prevent that. :rose: [h1]Positives for me: [/h1] [olist] [*]Active developers who want to hear your input and seem to always be working behind the scene pushing many small updates from your feedback in a very quick fashion. [*]Gorgeous world & many building blocks right at the start pleases me. Honestly I get bored of looking at endless bland trees seen in other survival games and trying to make something appealing. Not in Astral Terra! The landscape has a vibrant colorful feel with absolutely wonderful textures. And right at the start you have access to at least 38 different block textures with 13 shapes to choose from. Stone walls, textured glass, woods, metals, cement maybe with shiny metal like details. I can't wait to see how this improves by full release! [*]Terraforming is awesome! I know I basically mentioned it earlier in my experience, but I really can't stress the happiness in having an option to flatten an area to build on so quickly. [*]Abilities in a survival game, WHAT! You can heal yourself! So even when hungry as your health ticks you can heal until you find/make food. Also to me its pretty fantastic you can summon a crafting station wherever you are. [*]Mouseover tool tips show resources in the distance and scale in size to reflect how far away they are. [*]+1 for no fall damage! Seems reasonable that will probably get changed later though. [/olist] [h1]Things [b]I[/b] wasn’t fond of:[/h1] [i]Also for the developers to consider since they do use player input and improve features. [/i] [olist] [*]Currently no way to hide the UI for screenshots and that makes me sad. [*]Loot system really pained me. I am not a fan of spending time to chop down a tree or demolish a rock only to have to manually pick up each of the bits that came from it. I also found my expectation was that if I clicked a log or piece of rock I wanted to automatically walk towards and loot it. Versus standing there being told its out of range. [*]ESC key isn't utilized. I suppose it is more expectation from other games. When I press ESC I think its going to exit whatever current window I am in, and if none are open I expect the main menu that will take me back to a character or world select screen. None of those things happen right now. You have to click the Gear icon in the bottom right toolbar. [*]Controls are frustrating to me when exploring. The A and D keys which I tap to move left/right instead cause me to turn and spin in a circle which is frustrating. But on the flip side,when terraforming being able to rotate to the left/right and keep the ground i was removing sort of straight/flat was helpful. Using mouse I can't get that kind of stability. Maybe an option to have the controls act different depending if in standard / Terraform / Build mode would help? Also the delay when I jump up a slope and sort of get stuck in a crouching position seemed to cause my patience to shoot out of the roof. I actually found I was yelling at my screen a couple times between looping in circles instead of running forward and getting stuck in a sloped mountain or while trying to terraform a path through a mountain. [*]Mini-map is currently black space [i](as is the Map)[/i] but I suspect its just a placeholder that will be fixed at a later stage of alpha or beta. On a side note, if its not been suggested i would love the option to re-size and even move the mini-map. Big fan of having control over my UI elements to move as I need. [*]Option slider for sound effect would be fantastic. There is one for Music versus Main volume so I suspect that will also get added later. When I first encountered water I thought I broke my eardrums. I moved the main slider to half way and then couldn't hear anything so I moved it back a fourth of the way or so to compromise for over all sound vs effects. Think the main volume might need some tweaking cause of this. [*]Many have expressed high system requirements being needed and having to play the game on its lowest settings, not being able to play, or not being able to load the game at all. It was smooth for me on Ultra with a 66-90 FPS on average. A few times I noticed it was even at 100. I will include my hardware to help others compare and decide. Just FYI even in Medium (the lowest setting) the world still looks wonderful. [/olist] [h1] [/h1] [b]Date: [/b]May 22, 2016 [b]Rating:[/b] 8/10 at this stage of early access. I can see the promise and personally love the fantasy idea. [h1]Hardware[/h1] [i]Included as others said they couldn't play or load the game.[/i] Mobo: Asus x99 Deluxe w/ usb 3.1 CPU: i7 5820K GPU: duel GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked RAM: 16x Corsair Vengeance LPX HDD: 4TB WD Black + 1TB WD Black Monitors: one 27", two 23" LED, 2ms Keyboard: G910 Orion Spark Mouse: Trackball (Kensington Orbit) [h1]Disclaimer:[/h1] [code]Key provided by TethysInteractiveLLC but does not influence my review.[/code]

[b]Review Written on Tuesday, May 17th, 2016[/b] [h1]Review[/h1] At the moment of writing this, Astral Terra is in Early Access and considered to be an Alpha build. I have taken this fact into account in my review. In its current state, Astral Terra is an exercise in frustration. First of all, the design choices for the game controls are very hard to get used to. Character movement have been relegated entirely to the keyboard while the mouse cursor is free floating at all time. You can however look around by pressing the right mouse button. The gathering of resources is tedious as it requires you to place the mouse cursor in the right spot (often needing you to move around) on the resource you're trying to gather, then picking up the elements you've extracted from the ground, also requiring awkward mouse cursor placements. The game is still in alpha stage so its expected to have loads of bugs, however when you can't even walk for a couple of minutes without falling through the ground and into oblivion, it's really difficult to get anything else done. I feel that, minimally, this should have been addressed before allowing the public to access the game. Even in its current buggy state, the game shows tons of potential. The graphics are gorgeous and the world is entirely editable with the terraforming / terrain editing tools. Building anything is awkward at the moment as placement of building blocks in the 3D wold is a bit sketchy, but one thing I really liked is the ability to do it in free mode, not requiring your character to climb and access the places where you want to build. The crafting system is simple enough and already has a good number of items. There's also all of the RPG elements which add an extra layer to the game, although I haven't been able to experience much in that area yet. In it's current state, I can only recommend purchasing this game if you want to help the developer out and are interested in being a part of hunting down bugs and shaping the game as it progresses. The developer is involved with the community so I'm confident that people who like those kind of sandbox/survival games will find an enjoyable product when it is closer to release. Unfortunately it's not quite there yet. [h1]Rating:[/h1] 5.0/10 [h1]Pros:[/h1] [olist] [*]Gorgeous graphics and visual effects [*]Completely editable voxel world. [*]Free movement when terraforming and building. No need to create scaffold for your character to be able to reach building spots. [*]Decent number of craftable items for a game this early in development. [*]Active developer who's in touch with the community. [/olist] [h1]Cons:[/h1] [olist] [*]Questionable control design choices. [*]Tedious harvesting of resources. [*]Building structures in the 3D space is a bit unintuitive. [*]Barren land with very little to do. [*]Too many major bugs, especially in regard of regularly falling through the ground. [/olist] [h1]Disclaimer:[/h1] [code]Source of consideration: Tethys Interactive LLC[/code]

Fun and unique Terraforming mode and friendly devs. Has some bugs but most basics seem stable and in place. PROS: Free Terraform mode and free building mode Endless procedural worlds to explore Interesting race choices Some RPG elements CONS Building tools can take some time to learn No other modes besides survival yet No character customization Needs more polish and more options, like key binds

[b]UPDATE: I liked the game initially for what it was but unfortunately the progress has been very slow. The game does not have nearly as much polish as I'd expect it to have at this point. Proceed with extreme caution. [/b] [b]Original review: [/b] [b]Astral Terra[/b] is a procedurally generated sandbox RPG game. “Morrowind meets Minecraft” (as mentioned on the store page) describes this game perfectly well. You will find everything that you would expect from a sandbox game: crafting, building, gathering resources. RPG part offers character progression: you will earn XP, level up, learn new spells, etc. The main distinctive feature of Astral Terra is “terraforming”. You can change the shape and textures of the environment or build anything from giant cave systems or floating islands. [h1]Pros:[/h1] [list] [*] Nice graphics and visual effects (a step away from blocky Minecraft clones). [*] Beautiful unique environments (from snowy mountains to tropical islands). [*] Terraforming (change the shape and look of the environment to your liking). [*] Classic RPG elements: different races, character progression, leveling system. [*] Farming (you gather seeds, plant them and eventually harvest crops). [*] Active developer. Regular updates. [*] It ran perfectly fine on my pc (80-90 FPS on average on ultra). [/list] [h1]Cons:[/h1] [list] [*] Lack of tutorial. It may take a while to figure things out on your own. Thankfully you can find some helpful YouTube videos. [*] Since it’s an alpha build, early access game: not a lot of content and some bugs are to be expected. [*]Rather annoying music and lack of sound effects. [/list] [b]After playing Astral Terra for about 10 hours, I can recommend it based on the current state of development, amount of content and promises of what is yet to come. Just keep in mind that as of right now the game is far away from being completed. [/b] [h1]PC Specs[/h1] [table] [tr] [th][u]Hardware[/u][/th] [th][u]Type[/u][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]CPU[/b][/td] [td]Intel Core i7 5820K 3.30GHz[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]GPU[/b][/td] [td]Nvidia GTX 970[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]RAM[/b][/td] [td]16GB DDR3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]OS[/b][/td] [td]Windows 10 PRO[/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1]Disclaimer:[/h1] [code]A copy of the game was provided for reviewing purposes. However, this did not influence my review in any way. Source of consideration: Tethys Interactive[/code]

Meh... I like it but I'm also easy to please. No crashes on my PC or laptop though the FPS on laptop is low(I expected this though). I like some of the building and RPG features but the game still lacks in the content area. Some controls are pretty standard while others take some time getting used to. There is a little tip UI on the tools so that helped. Get it on sale if interested, probably not enough game here for the full $15 but $10 might be fair. I wish they would take some of the mechanics from Creativerse - if they could make the control more smooth and add more content I think that would be good. I like the look of the game, hopefully they can spend some more time on the mechanics.

Game is lots of fun and is still in early access. What makes this game fun for me? A few features:: 1) I really love the environments you can explore. You can start with creating a female character(or a male if you choose), which is a plus for me. I like the 3 choices there are so far as most games have basic male models and having a custom character (+ being a female) makes me want to spend time and invest in my character. I found many different types of environments that are just beautiful and my fps is extremely smooth. There are lots of fun environmental tasks to do if you wish(harvesting resources, killing createres, etc) & great unique places to build. 2)I love the building and terraforming options. I prefer to spend my time building my own housing and there are tons of choices in shapes and materials all acessible without lame grinding. I can do what i want when i want and I like it ;p Looking forward to seeing this game get some additional content and seeing it progress <3 <3

EA. Jury is still out. Hard to place blocks in its current state but you can build right away. Doesnt seem to be any requirement for ingredients yet. The blocks all look really nice. Otherwise it seems to still be in alpha stage. It crashes frequently. Laggy as hell. I built a pond with the terra forming tools, it was pretty cool.

[h1]Should You Buy This Game?[/h1] Astral Terra is a survival crafting sandbox game that sets itself apart from others with its unique Terraforming mechanic. This great feature allows you to alter procedurally generated environments on a macro scale, allowing the generation of truly epic creations. Due to the game's current [b]alpha state[/b], I can only recommend this game (at this point in time) to fans of the crafting genre, especially those that want to take part in the developing process with continued feedback. For everyone else, I'd advise following this game until it reaches a point in development that you are comfortable with a purchase. In the following review, I will only be commenting on its first impressions and the current state of the game. [h1]First Impressions[/h1] ----05/12/2016---- When you first make a character (choose your race), you will then create a new world for you to explore. With a few varied and expansive environments around you, Terraforming and building is immediately available. The initial start is rather slow due to an absence of any tutorial or questline, but once you learn the controls and the desire to Terraform mountains materializes, the game becomes rather fun. On a more critical note, the quality of the textures and optimization leaves a bit of desire for improvement. There are lots of pop-in textures and animals, and running around/building is not as fluid as I hoped it would be. Bugs are pretty abundant in the current release state, but I only found a couple that warranted a game restart (permanantly locked cursor while Terraforming & infinite harvest animation from fast-clicking). [h1]Current State of the Game[/h1] As of this review, the developers have fixed multitudes of minor bugs and a few major bugs reported by users through Steam reviews and from their website/forums. A large patch was just released last week, and since then, another minor patch was also implemented. The developers have not only shown continued interest in improving this game and utilizing community feedback, they have also been transparent with their future plans and current content. The biggest takeaway points are listed below: [h1]Pros:[/h1] [list] [*]Terraforming [*]Diverse environments [*]RPG elements [*]Active developer team [/list] [h1]Cons:[/h1] [list] [*]Alpha state [*]Directx 11 GPU requirement [*]No progressive content atm [/list] [h1]Early Access[/h1] For those that are not aware of the Early Access concept, it is perfectly acceptable for bugs to be present and game mechanics to be missing (especially at the alpha stage of development). Be wary that users have reported difficulty in playing Astral Terra. It is possible that they do not meet hardware or GPU requirements, but in case it may help anyone, the hardware specifications used for this review is posted below. With that in mind, I can at least say that I have enjoyed what I've played so far, and hope to see more people get a jump on Astral Terra. [h1]Hardware Information[/h1] [table] [tr] [th][u]Hardware[/u][/th] [th][u]Type[/u][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]Monitor[/b][/td] [td]720p 32 LED TV[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]Controller[/b][/td] [td]DS3 (M&K used for this review)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]Motherboard[/b][/td] [td]ASRock Z97M Anniversary[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]CPU[/b][/td] [td]i5-4590[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]GPU[/b][/td] [td]Radeon R9 290X[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]RAM[/b][/td] [td]8 GB[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]OS[/b][/td] [td]Windows 7[/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1]Disclaimer[/h1] [code]A copy of this game was provided by the developer: Tethys Interactive LLC; however, this did not bias my review in any form.[/code]

Wow, amazing, I can't wait to see what the developer will do next. ... Because they cannot possibly do worse than what they've already done. I never thought I'd be saying this but (and I do believe Jim Sterling would agree with me on this) ... I would actually rather play a game by Digital Homicide than to play this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ piece of ♥♥♥♥. Astral Terra makes Forsaken Uprising look like a limitless budget, AAA title by Hideo Kojima, starring Brad Pitt. WARNING: DO NOT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BUY THIS GAME! If you already made the terrible choice of buying this "game," try to get a refund immediately. I thought the fluid simulation would be worth it, if you get the game, you will see that it is not (not that the fluid simulation itself doesn't function, it does even with minimum specs) ... if you can even get your ugly character to stop floating under the terrain to use its ridiculously clunky, non-standard controls in order to navigate to or create a water source, ... just before it crashes. Astral Terra could be thee single worst thing that mankind has ever produced, it had me looking for the "HELL NO" buttons under the question "Do you recommend this game?" but there wasn't one, there was only "No." with the closest available finger to what the game actually deserves being but a mere thumbs down instead of what I wanted to rate it. https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGame/?appid=266190