King under the Mountain

Had this game on itch.io for a long time before it came to Steam and sadly it seems that updates have slowed to a trickle since that was done. I'm not saying the game is abandoned, but with the dev focusing more on communicating via Discord and not here on his own store page, it certainly seems like it is. Some fun can be had in the game as it is, but we've all been there done that with a lot of games in this genre that were never completed - won't even go down that road right now lol. There is also the issue of price - you are essentially paying for what you [i]hope[/i] the game will be if/when it is finished and while this is expected because it is in Early Access, it still seems expensive. Normally, I'd leave this review space blank, play some more after a major update, and then decide on whether or not to leave a review. In this case, I'm gonna call it - not going to wait - and for one reason... With the announcement of Dwarf Fortress coming to Steam and likely launching into Early Access (or as complete as possible), why go with a lesser version that likely will still be unfinished. If you can't wait and want something incomplete, go for it, it's only money.

Lots of postive reviews for a reason, so here's a negative one for you. This is a city building supply chain management game. I found it interesting as usually you're building up, and with dwarves you build in. It's entertaining, lots of different things to build, variety of crops and professions keeps it interesting. The game is still in EA so a few bugs are acceptable. This has a temple of doom amount of bugs. From available resources (if you're building walls and materials have been moved to the site, if you require 201 blocks your whole supply chain stops until you manually update the object quantity). It takes several attempts to figure out these weird blockers. The supplies, settlers and crafting menus are poorly thought out and are difficult to understand. There are no outputs for supply and demand, you're left up to yourself trying to figure out what's going on by visual queues. These dwarves are idiots. They have difficulty not blocking themselves in. If you're lucky, they'll throw a tantrum, but usually you'll just be notified that someone is dead. So surprise to you, dead people. So now you have bodies, people won't always go and pick them up. Build a graveyard, and a plot, but people will still continue to ignore corpses. It becomes a problem because people will react very negatively to bodies on the floor. I also had one die while fishing and was in the middle of the water, so everyone freaked out as I was not able to retrieve the body. No point in time saves. The game progresses and autosaves every second or every time anything happens. So if anything catastrophic happens, which is frequently, you can't restore to any prior save point. You just have to start over. A lot of the profession systems aren't well flushed out. What do mushroom logs do? I have all of these fields of hemp, but it's difficult to make linen at the rate immigration happens. Why do we have gems? Tease of the future, but confusing for intent or meaning. At least make it so you can make mushroom soup or something. Gem tipped chisels? In a society of 150 dwarves, 80 of them are farmers, yet crops won't grow. You raise priority but the fields are half tended to or they're off doing other things. I have 15 hunters and arm them with bows. I instruct them to go and kill an elephant, and the 16th idiot goes out and fisticuffs with a herd of elephants and gets trampled to death. No kidding. Let's talk about end game. For me, about 30-40 dwarves would immigrate at the same time. It says you have enough beds but they all sleep where they stand for no apparent reason (something with reservations I think, I have beds, go sleep on a bed you stupid dwarf). I have food but people die of starvation, and then everyone dies. In the most recent game, I had 30 dwarves starve back to back, which is why I'm now writing this review. Lots of good things here, lots of positive reviews. I still think it's fun and will continue to enjoy where I can. The developers are constantly working and have actively addressed a lot of the bugs that have been out there for awhile (not being able to clear debris after a fire was a big one for me). Definitely give it a try if you're a fan of the genre, but it's 49/51 wouldn't suggest it in it's current state.

This game is moving towards abandonware. Despite promises of development there hasn't been a single update since early 2022. Massive potential but with no development and a ton of bugs I cannot recommend this game. I wish I could get a refund but I'm going to guess that all purchase refunds are going to be denied.

This is a bit too early access for my liking. Considering that I have been watching this game for years because I love dwarf fortress and Rimworld, I am not pleased with the amount of progress that has been made for a paid EA game. To all the reviews saying this game is like Rimworld, I scoff at the notion that one would utter this title in the same breath as something like Rimworld simply because the controls and simplicity of the game place it in an entirely different league. The game is simply too primitive to be anything close to Rimworld. It's like a tame Gnomoria that copies the 2d art style of Rimworld. Maybe one day in the distant future your dwarves will suffer under the fates of Randy Random or goblin raids, but until this game goes through major revision changes, which is more likely to never happen if we consider the high abandonment rate most games on steam suffer, I opted to pull my purchase and wait. So let's now concentrate on the differences as to why this title is inferior and not ready for public release. Out the gate, the menu system is different. You have no resource indicators, and the action options are concentrated on the bottom left and require adjusting to the left click advance, right click go back behavior. You must also remember where some items are located and where, and it's not entirely clear at first unless you read the wiki. So I already found myself hating the design decision and the organization of the UI. Gone also, are hotkeys that one would assume would open construction or build menus. This makes me believe the developers are new and just kind of fell into a system and haven't bothered making a key bindings system, yet. The result of this initial confusion force me to read more on just doing the basic things like building a workbench. Which leads to another issue, prioritization. The prioritization system works, however, out the gate, the workers seem to prioritize based off the prioritization and their job preferences. If we find a situation where anyone can do something, like hauling, then you have to painstakingly set the prioritization on the most minor things, like, hauling tools to the tool pile, then, hauling tools to be constructed at the workbench. In a game like Rimworld, building itself is prioritized and the items are grabbed from your stockpiles automatically without having to manually set hauling preferences. The system we have is a bit too much micro management for my tastes. In all, it took me about an hour to get used to the controls and build up a basic colony. Then I got really bored. After an hour, I just found the game empty and boring. I've played dwarf fortress and Rimworld a lot, and I don't play them to build colonies, but rather get stories. At present, this game tells no story and has no action. It's boring. So, I refunded the game because it's just a colony builder with janky controls and a bad UI.

This is frustrating for me because I actually do like this game, but I can't recommend it. The priority system is so out of whack that it's practically game breaking (you can literally have something marked "highest priority" and no one will even try to touch it for days), it's $25 dollars for a game that has maybe $10 worth of content in it, and it doesn't update nearly often enough for a game that costs that much in early access, and the AI is just bad. I'll probably update this review later but for now this is where I stand on it/.

Appears to be a dead/abandoned game.

The game looks promising, but there's currently no content. "Early access game" sign says "the game is already in a fun and playable state". This is a bit of a fib in that there's nothing to play yet. The price tag does not reflect current value. At the time of this post, you can grow some crops, place bedrooms and a few workshops. That's it. There's no events, raids, or threat. There doesn't seem to be anything to explore. You can hunt and fish (kind of) but the meat just sits there with seemingly no way to cook or consume them.

It will be a great game.... but needs quite a bit more work. Currently it's playable but missing a TON of basic controls that make it pretty "meh" and tedious to navigate if the thing you want to do is even possible yet. I HIGHLY recommend picking up the game.... when it's done.... and while I appreciate the dev team, it's coming along somewhat slowly. Personally I think the whole alpha release fad needs to just stop in general.