FreeHolder

Thumb up because i like the concept. Thumb down because there is no difficulty setting : i had to start again 6 times and i finally gave up, as i guessed i would have to start again an infinite number of times, punitively learning the features.

Some bugs that can be annoying, but I'm willing to put up with it because it's made by a small team, the gameplay is pretty fun, and they're adding new content still (the game's still alive). All in all, I can't wait to see what it'll become

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I am really a fan of old school, low paced games, esp. if they have a good depth and are challenging, like this one definitely is. Also, I really don't need eye candy and I can cope with quirky UIs. So when FreeHolder was on sale for 4 Euros, I checked out the demo first and finally bought the full version. Man, was I dissapointed! It is not about the game mechanics - it is basically good and entertaining. It is not about the bad sound - you can switch it off. It is not about the terrible layout or UI - as I said, I can live with that. What makes me angry is, that this game feels as if the last 30 years of IT progress didn't happen! I wonder why it doesn't come on floppy disks - on bootable ones, since the developers would surely have been happy to code a small OS as well. What I mean is: If the devs would have used common up-to-date development techniques, they could have had the time to focus on the few points in the game mechanics that are really killing the fun or at least document them somehow. E.g. there are items you can craft using lots of actions and sparse resources, just to find out that you cannot sell it at the market. Congrats, you have a heap of leather armors, but your master wants to see money! Game over! Speaking of Game Over: They could also implement a hint, what was the reason for a sudden defeat. As at now, the player can only guess. Or the devs could instead take care of some more-than-basic issues, like making the game settings persistent. Yes, you can switch off the music, but you need to do it every freakin time you start the game!! Or the fact, that you cannot quit the game from the game over screen (need to kill it from the task manager). And hey, in a modern IT world they could use data binding. Guess what: If done correctly, the values displayed in tooltips are automatically the ones actually used in the game. They could also think about implementing a difficulty setting. In all details... They could think about improving the load game dialogue, e.g. by adding the timestamp of the saves. Or even implementing it as a list of saves instead of one save per "page". After all, in modern development there are re-usable components like listboxes... All this all will never happen. Why? Because the devs seem to code from scratch on every single pixel on the screen and every single mouse action possible. If at all, they will be busy with fixing the sporadic issues when text layers of old dialogues are not cleaned up correctly and are redrawn in every new dialogue. On top of the new one! They will spend time fixing the fact, that you cannot quit the game after a game-over. They will spend massive time for each small adjustment in the UI. And maybe - maybe - they will fix the issue that finally made me give it up: They might fix the issue in the market, that if you click the mouse button to buy/sell one item, you can't release the button quick enough, to prevent that from happening multiple times. In some constellations you can fiddle around until you finally have set the quantity you wanted, but in certain constellations there simply is no chance (e.g. you own 2 items and want to sell 1). This is something I really do not want to waste my time with in the year 2020, 25 years after I scrapped my last PC that still had a [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button]turbo button[/url]. ;-)

Game development seems to be on hold, maybe indefinently. Meaning that game more or less isn't going to reach the heights that it it seemed to be reaching upon. No hard feelings but that is what it is and so I cannot really recommend it. Even so it can offer 10-30 hours of decent gameplay with interesting mechanics for those who feel interested to try it out.

A promising game well worth the modest cost. It has been in development for a long time but frank communication in late 2019 gives me hope we will see completion so if you like the idea, this is an early access game worth grabbing.

A resource management game that is like a virtual version of a board game, kind of like Settlers of Catan or other games like that, a lot of different stats and options, very in depth. https://youtu.be/LBmGOLbQDEo

Brutally difficult. Not sure if I am playing it wrong but genuinely fun to play even if I am bad at it. I desperately want more turn based survival games

Imagine a less contrived 'Dead in Vinland' for the SNES I really like this game. Its still a work in progress, but there's still enough challenge and well thought out design to keep you busy for several playthrough before you run into any of the short comings. That said, developers are actively working on the game, and you can tell they want to do it right. Clearly a labor of love and vision.

What's there to say about Freeholder... I wouldn't recommend getting this game right now. Bugs don't come up TOO often, but when they do it usually takes you out of the game. As of writing this review, combat's busted. Every time I try I either get completely smoked or I win and lose all the gear I've crafted. Trying to smuggle things to the black market creates weird overlay issues and there's always an alpha wolf to hunt. But where it works? It works well. People keep saying they see promise in this game and it shows. There's systems set up that are still fun to mess with, learning how to best approach the game is half the fun and while not knowing how to actually do anything, there's a lack of decent tutorial right now but I'm certain they plan to add one, is a major drawback but once you figure it out and get it down there's a ton of fun to be had. I say again. Don't buy it now, but if you like games with a bit of management to them, keep an eye on this one and scoop it up once it's gotten a few more updates. I, at least, am fairly certain it'll only get better from here.