FRONTIERS

I'm an original Kickstarter backer and have been waiting patiently for this game to be finished. The backer alpha that you are able to buy here on Steam Early Access looks nothing like the game you will be getting when/if it ever is complete. The dev decided to, without even running it past the original Kickstarter backers to see what we thought, to change the graphical style of the game to super-low resolution textures and sprites instead of 3d objects. The fidelity of the game is now what Daggerfall is. Lars promised us a game that looked like Oblivion (even better in some cases) and has now arbitrarily downgraded to Daggerfall. I love Daggerfall, don't get me wrong, its a good game because of the massive amount of content in it. It was revolutionary when it was released in the mid-1990s. It is also painfully ugly (and was even when it was released). FRONTIERS will not be the content monster that Daggerfall was. The developer even spent the better part of a year porting the game over from Unity 4 to Unity 5, and touted VR support as a major benefit of the move to the new engine. But that's gotta be gone now too, because who would want to play Daggerfall in VR? Essentially, the game ran poorly in the Alpha version you can play here on Steam, so to try to cheer us up with move to nightmarishly awful visuals, the dev says that with the significantly reduced graphical fidelity, the game will run much better. Thanks for making it look like crap. It's true that gameplay is far more important than graphics, however in this case that philosophy is stretched to the point of breaking. It's been almost 5 whole years since I backed this project, and every year it gets worse. This actually isn't progress. The game is at a worse point that it was 3 years ago. All of the art assets that looked pretty good have all been thrown out, and replaced with sloppily made generic as can be pixel art. All of the textures in the game had to redone. The 3D models (already pretty low poly to begin with) have had their polys reduced. The dev needs to remove the deceptive screenshots before someone gets fooled and buys something that is this significantly different.

First the positive. This game captures that wonderful essence of games from days gone by - it has that sense of wonder and really makes you want to explore the world and see what is out there. The graphics fall somewhere between Morrowind and Skyrim - certainly serviceable. I read another review that said the game is unplayable on mid-level machines. My PC is the embodiment of mid-level and it ran fine, although the frame rates need to be improved a bit - other wise I had no problems. Now for the downside. I know that this is a survival game but if I eat a loaf of bread, a sausage and a banana, should I really be starting to get hungry less than five minutes later? Honestly, I don't mind foraging for food but in all these types of games, your character must be an insatiable, gluttonous hog-demon for all the food and water that they need. Also, by all appearances it seemed to be mild weather outside with people milling about, yet I am freezing to death in a matter of minutes and need to run to the fireplace to get warm again. There isn't a backpack or wheelbarrow big enough to get you a mile down the road for all of your "needs". I hope that this gets tweaked - I'd like to see a survival game that actually let you explore for five minutes without your dashboard flashing red for some trivial thing that you took care of three minutes previously. That said, I am enjoying exploring the initial town and hope to be able to get outfitted to explore further. I'd recommend this game highly to anyone who misses that good old fashioned game that doesn't hold you by the hand and doesn't feel the need to knock you over the head with contant tutorial style gameplay. I really hope this game succeeds and wish there were more like it.

Got this game in a Humble Bundle today. Looked pretty awesome. As soon as I finished the prologue, it became painfully obvious that the game is "broken". You cannot speak to any NPCs or interact with anything around you. According to the forums, this has been a problem for quite a LONG time. I have no clue about how the game is supposed to play or anything because I wasn't given the opportunity to find out. I am only dropping this review to warn others who may miss the chance to drop just a buck on it. Hopefully the game will be salvaged, but considering the history of Early Access, I will not hold my breath waiting for that to happen. It is sad because it really sounded like it has potential.

Lars. Lars.....Lars....LARS! Frontiers is dead....DEAD. Stop talking like there's ever going to be a functional game...because there isn't. Stop with the business plan and charts and graphs and lawyer goobledy-♥♥♥♥. When I see you writing about VR and see you in pictures with a VR set on your head....I know this game is dead. You've moved on already in your heart. I recommend you let the game go and remove it from Steam. It's actually been almost a year and you've done nothing major on it. It languishes. The game, and the excuses, make you look bad...even if your explanations are honestly given. The absolute right thing to do is take it down so that noone else spends any of their money on it. Chalk this one up to a learning experience, Amigo, and let it go at that. Now go forth and make better games!

Update: 1/22/2020 "The Final Update". This should still not be for sale on Steam. I have been trying to give it a fair go and experience the world the dev crafted over 6 years, but this version of the game seems to actually be WORSE than the version I played 3+ years ago. It looks bad, plays bad, runs bad, and is riddled with bugs. I've restarted the game from the beginning three times trying to get past bugs but it's becoming too much of a pain to be worth it. I really want to like this game and I am really sad how this all turned out. I think the dev entered the project with the best intentions but they clearly weren't up for the task. They should have passed the project to someone else. Giving up, stopping support, and still offering this "game" for sale at $15 is extremely poor taste. I'd give this two thumbs down if I could. Original 11/16/2016 review follows: This should not still be for sale on Steam. It's essentially a dead Early Access product. The dev is still working on it half-heartedly, seemingly just out of obligation, but at this rate it will never be finished. The idea for this game is so great, and the dev seems like a nice guy. It's a tragic situation, really. Buy if you want to vote with your dollar, but don't expect something playable or expect it to be completed.

tl;dr: Still buggy, but the feeling of exploration is definitely there already. Updates every day, the developer is serious, hard working and honest. Do not jump in right now if you expect a smooth ride since some of the mechanics are not reliable yet. One thing is bug-free: the peculiar mood, the intriguing and well-written story, the surprising landscapes, the feeling of exploration and discovery. As this is an early access review, I want to stress the fact that the game is not finished. Not all the features have been implemented, and some implemented features do now work quite well. I'm writing this on December 24th 2014, the game has been available in Early Access for about two weeks and open for beta testing for about a month. The game has been thoroughly tested since day one. A hundred of issues have been raised; some very minor (weird pixel on button texture), some critical (crashes); and all are being addressed by the one developer, Railboy, who's been working full time and releasing patches almost every day, often several times a day. The result is a game that is working better and better every day. From my point of view, it is already good. I keep jumping into the game with the goal of breaking it and reporting a new bug, but I end up each time walking down new paths for hours, exploring new lost villages and discovering strange events. What you can see in the trailer videos is all here already, and much more. I have put fifty hours into the game and still haven't explored half of the continent. I haven't finished the main quest either, and haven't tried 10 % of all these crafting recipes. I still haven't even cast a spell (even though I did find the dark luminite to do so)! The world is Big, in the sense that it will take you a lot of time to get to know it, and believe me, you will be lost. Even with the maps, there are places I saw once and have never found again. Frontiers has this sandbox feel to it: you set your goal yourself and just roll with it, or you follow the story. There is no pressure to finish the main quest. Actually, pretty much everything is optional in this game; there is even an option for disabling survival if you do not want to bother killing bears for their meat (a very hazardous activity, believe me). I like the main quest very much, though, because it isn't just about big epic things, it's about people, trust, friendship, vengeance, broken hopes, and what one is ready to sacrifice in order to be the first to accomplish the impossible. In addition to the main quest, there is something about the world itself that feels... weird. Abnormal. Out of place. It is subtle but you can tell something is wrong. I do not know yet whether it connects to the main quest, but I will definitely walk the paths of Frontiers until I find out.

A game that gets my enthusiasm juices running again. Fantastic what I have played so far (I walked out of the university building thingy lecturehall after the intro and fell into the unrendered village and got a bit...lost) Felt a pang of emotion having to tell characters they weren't cut out for the expedition, which instantly made me think that this game has huuuuuge potential. I love the RPG feel of the game without the spending numbers to invest in your anti-flame death to get screwed over by the pointy-spear death monster 2/3 of the way in and feel like you just wasted your life -_-. It captures the feeling of exploration in a kind of Jules-Verne Journey to the Centre of the Earth (or Atlantis' frankenstein amalgomation of the above and 20'000 leagues) kind of way and is very relaxing to wander the world and see what mysteries contront you. It's like the perfect blend of Morrowind meets Myst without the tedium of either. It is also refreshing to show off that games don't always have to be about maiming and slaughter. That is not to say there is no element of conflict or danger in the game, but it takes a very much backseat to emphesise the scope of the world and the people around you. It is a very vast project and I do have some reservations when it comes to early-access titles, that some devs bite off more than they can chew and end up releasing the game unfinished because of time, money or sheer boredom and begin working on a 4x Strategy instead. I can see there is a passion for the genre they are trying to encapsulate here and I am feeling enthusiastic about the project. As Darth Vader would say... it's a feeling I've not felt since.... Keep up the phenominal work guys and I cannot wait for as many people to play this that it becomes a household name to go down along with games like The Elder Scrolls, Myst, Baulder's Gate and Minecraft.

Well, the dev stuck with it and released a final version. It's "finished" and "playable" all the way through. It's also janky as hell and a buggy mess. But I guess it's technically playable? I appreciate that the dev stuck with it for years instead of abandoning the game, but it's still a buggy mess so it's still abandoned after this final update. Just in a better state than it was a few years ago. Some issues I noticed in a couple hours of play in the new version: Fighting is super janky and unbalanced. Most weapons are broken. Stone hammers work but none of the swords do. Rabbits take many hits to kill. Wolves go down super easy and don't fight back. Deer take twice the hits that wolves do and beat the snot out of you in seconds unless you keep them stunned with the hammer swings. Cows and sheep are similarly lethal if you get near them, even if you don't attack them first. I'm constantly having to exit and reload the game to get things like butchering animals or trading or talking with people to work. Or to get missions to update. If you accidentally put an item in a locked inventory slot (the ones that apparently unlock with better bags), it disappears. I haven't gotten a better back to see if it shows up once your inventory expands. And some very questionable design choices: You have to train in the Barter skill to even be able to trade with anyone. It's literally impossible to buy anything from any of the merchants until you learn a specialized skill from university. Paying a little money to "master" it makes trading 50% cheaper to buy things and 50% more to sell things. All food seems to do is give energy, which you can also get from water at a well, which also regenerates on its own over time. At the start there are food and energy bars, but they disappear after the tutorial. You can't examine items before you buy them. Some of the things I can't even tell what they are, let alone what they do, until I buy them and examine them. Combat requires that you hit E while standing near the animal, then select an attack from a menu - which forces you to stand still while you click it. Animals can beat you to death or simply run away while trying to click the button in the menu. If they move even slightly before you manage to click the attack, the attack does nothing. You can also attack as fast as you can click, so making a macro to hit E and click the attack button makes you a superman who can murder anything in a second. The graphics have been downgraded severely from what they were in earlier versions. Some of the world still has good textures, but most things now have pixel graphics which are horribly blurry and a huge eyesore. In short, the game got an update that fixed a lot of the earlier bugs - but the game is still in a lousy state. It's technically playable and might give some enjoyment if you get the game for free or something, but a price tag of $15 on this mess is laughable. If the dev ever decided to put a little more polish on it and fix the worst bugs it might be worth a play through, but as-is the latest update was marked as Final so I expect the game is as it's going to always be. -edit- Since I already have the game I decided to give it one more go. Found even more bugs. The base price for buying and selling is the same, so if you have master barter you can buy something worth 500 for 250 and sell it for 750. No matter what you craft it just makes the basic version of that item. Get all the extra mats for Elite armor? Nope, you just get basic armor still. So yeah, it's "released" and "finished" but still in a pre-release state. Happy New Year. I'm off to play games that don't suck.

I was scrolling though my older games that i havent playing in a while and saw this game. i had played it when it was pre alpha and it was a pretty decent rpg, that kinda looked like the older elderscrolls games. So figured i would play it again. unfortunately for me, the dev pulled a switcharoo on the final update and posted a minecraft ripoff with terria style menus and doom(the original) quality graphics. items are just 2d prites floating in the world, controls are left click to move, right click to jump, sensitivity is maxxed outso trying to look around just spins the camera wildly. oh and the contols are inverted by default. what a scam. I bought one game, a high quality open world rpg that looked amazing, and got a buggy asset pack filled minecraft modpack instead.

Started early access, and had some promise. Got re-hauled with a completely different look and gameplay (really just a major cut of gameplay/graphics so the dev could actually roll out something finished). Never really finished.