I almost gave this a thumbs up. It was fun to play through for the most part, challenging and rewarding in decent succession.
But it feels very much just AI-made in so many ways, that it appears hollow, contradictory and downright sloppy in many instances.
The general concept is great. A fresh independent story setting in the spirit of Frostpunk but a little less harsh. Resource managment and building stuff works great, but it doesn't stay true to its premise of having to build on limited platforms on the big tree. The only buildings I built on the tree were basicly houses, all the resource production and defense buildings need to be on the ground anyways (and those are the ones you need the most).
Sadly most buildings look extremely similar to each other, so it's hard to keep track of what is what (another indicator of AI slop).
Where buildings can be placed and where not don't seem to have any visual correlation with actual map features, but there's usually enough space at least.
The game doesn't hold your hand, so save often, because sometimes you get overwhelmed by monsters, a resource shortage, the Shroudsurge, ... with no explanation and you just have to load back and try something else.
The main story leaves you hanging a few times without any active quest so you're wondering, if it's a bug, if you missed something, or if the game's just messing with you. And then after a few ingame-days the story continues for no apparent reason.
All these issues could be ironed out by some good QoL, optimizing and balancing updates.
But what bothered me most, were the actual characters and their voice-overs of the main story. They appear relatable at first, but you never know, whether they speak in a weird accent, or cheap AI voice. And sometimes they just say something different, than the subtitle says.
And worst of all, they have no coherence, no character traits. Their decisions get downright contradictory, so you never know whom to relate to and then they sometimes don't even follow through with their decisions. The main protagonist in the main story just kinda drops out towards the end and you have no idea how he ended up.
Some of the cutscenes hint at story elements, that never appear at all too, worst of all the ending cutscene.
This is a strong indication that most of the dialogues and story is written by AI without an actual concept by a human author.
What put the final nail in the coffin is the fact that there is zero replay value. There's only this one map with that one big tree and the same resource locations.
Lots of kinks, bugs and issues could've been fixed, if they put more actual human brain and effort behind it, but as it is, it's just AI slop that would have great potential that is sadly wasted.
