Hairy Little Buggers

Edit/Disclaimer: It's come to my attention that the dev has fixed the brain death bug and I've confirmed it myself! Also he's introduced a tutorial and made a number of changes to the game improving it and the UI has gotten more responsive. As well as some balance changes to dwarf needs along with a tech tree of unlocks so you don't get instantly overwhelmed by all the items and rooms in the menus which makes it alot easier to figure out. Still drag and drop everything though but it's not nearly as clunky now. I still can't justify the $30 pricetag however. We'll have to see what the end result of Early Access is like but he's showing no signs of slowing down content updates and bug fixes so this might one day be worth the price. Stories of Wasted Potential and Comas. I'm just going to straight up say it. I only got this game because I wound up getting the 30$ from a friend in real life. To me it was basically free at that point and it did honestly get my interest. It looked like it could be something. Something worthwhile even. I mean come on, dwarves, goblins, fortress digging, combat, crafting, fancy bits and bobs, and from the trailer promises of combat and tears when everything ends horribly. My dwarf fortress sense was tingling but I couldn't tell if it was good or bad yet. So let's get into the concept. You're to take a group of dwarves, diggy dig a hole, mine out valuable metal bits, make your place spiffy and keep your dwarves healthy, fed, rested, and working. While thats going on you have to deal with goblins who like to stab your little bald friends deader than dead. So you give them swords and other sharp, pointy objects of death to kill goblins and protect your little hole in the ground. You will probably not survive this. As a dwarf fortress player I loved the idea. All I needed was a screw pump and some magma! Then I got into the game. The game mechanics feel clunky in the worst ways possible, everything is more or less done with a click and drag interface, everything. To even get started you have a modest sum of gold, the ability to buy a variety of tools and dwarves (yes they cost money, 5 a pop) and after dragging the tools into the game world you have to open another menu (there's alot) you get your fresh dwarves to pick up the tools by dragging and dropping a dwarf with a job onto the game world. One of your minions will then walk over to the tool, pick it up and walk over to the shadow of the final stage where he just becomes what you wanted. That's right. Getting a dwarf with a profession is a three step affair of spawning one, buying his tool, and then making him actually get into his profession. The UI could be fixed, heck its EA thats the nature of things right? Well heres where you've probably noted I have less than an hour in total on playing this. Heres my reason. The AI. Is. Pants. On. Head. Stupid. I cannot stress this enough, they will for all intents and purposes work themselves to death when the AI is working but at random intervals your dwarf's brain will suddenly stop working. Period. I have not figured out a single way to fix this beyond simply killing the poor thing (yes the dev actually included a suicide keypress for this) and make a new one. The thing is, all the cost of making a skilled dwarf is there again. They won't drop tools on death. And they always ALWAYS eventually go braindead. My first attempt was grinded to a halt as I ran out of gold entirely and my last miner went into braindeath. As far as I can figure theres a glitch in the orders system that causes them to stop taking new orders as you put them down. It's odds increase as you stack on more jobs for them to do. And even better trying to make a building without it's required raw materials will almost always trigger a braindeath. The dev has NOT fixed this issue over multiple updates. Of what I could play is odd to say the least. Some of it follows a chain of logic, a forester chops down trees, the carpenter uses them at a sawhorse to make planks and you can make things from the planks. Then you get into other things like taking care of your dwarf needs. This is where things get weird. Dwarves under the mountain are lazy. They'll refuse to eat anything unless it's been set on a table by a butler in the dining hall room. Yes thats right you need butlers to feed them because they're too lazy to pickup the dang food themselves and even more troubling for you they'll refuse to eat anything unless its done like this. I couldn't progress much farther than that thanks to braindeath issues enraging me. I kept having to cycle through dwarves as they suddenly went into waking comas left and right. I've been poking the game each update but still no end to this issue in sight. And since its game breaking...yeah not a good sign. The game has a concept, a goal, and really really REALLY wants to meet it's and your expectations but falls flat on its face as your dwarves constantly stop doing a damn thing. Not only that bug the bugs slowly accrue with each update. So as you stare at the 30 dollar price tag and ask yourself is this worth it? Not by a long shot. Wait for it to drop to a more sane level or a lighting sale slashing the price down to 10 or so. In it's current state this is just not worth the money. My advice? Look up Gnomoria, Alot cheaper, and more importantly your gnomes only sit around doing nothing if you let them do nothing! Or if you're feeling hardcore download dwarf fortress and see if you can learn to strike the earth. TL;DR Gamebreaker bugs still under the mountain. Buyer Beware. Much funner stuff out there. It could be good if he gets his act together but he hasn't at this date of posting.