NOTE: This game was given to me by the developer for review purposes. This did not influence my review in any way.
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---------------------------------------OVERVIEW-------------------------------------
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Note: Medieval Playground is currently in Early Access.
Medieval Playground is not (yet) a game; at this point it's more of a world builder for an as-yet unimplemented game. But it's still very early in its Early Access life, and the developer has stated a number of goals that will turn it into a full game, which would be even better if it could be easily extensible by its players.
Picture a medieval world, raw and untouched by humanoids. Then picture it inhabited by a small group of people who have the ability to alter the terrain, create objects out of nothing, and even create animals and people to populate the world. And then picture becoming one of these people, fighting off invading goblinoid creatures to protect the world and people that you and your friends have created. That is the sort of grand vision that I imagine the developer has in mind, although details are as yet quite few and far between: only a few paragraphs in the Early Access description.
At the moment, however, all we have is a slightly clunky-to-use first-person-perspective terrain editor and pre-fabricated model placement tool. But if the developer can implement his plans, it will eventually be much more.
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----------------------------------------QUALITY-------------------------------------
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Graphics - The graphics so far implemented in Medieval Playground are a very mixed bunch. It's made with Unity, so we have the standard launch dialog box allowing selection of graphics quality and resolution, which is a good thing. There is a reasonably large selection of models, most of which look okay together, but there's no model or texture blending at all, so it's very easy to make areas that look like boxes placed on or slightly in other boxes, and quite hard to make them fit together seamlessly.
The quality of the models varies a fair bit. None are great, but most are acceptable. Most textures a blandly coloured -- lots of wood and stone, but hey, it is a medieval setting after all -- but they are reasonably nice and look okay at 1920x1080.Terrain looks nice at a distance, but not quite realistic up close. Animal model animations are quite nice looking, but not yet well blended with the world; for example, they walk horizontally up a hill, with some of their feet treading air. People look pretty awful so far, with low-poly models and poor texturing, but I expect they're mostly just placeholders at this point. The skyboxes are okay, but not great.
There are some depth and clipping problems, allowing you to see through solid objects, and the water looks nice from a distance, but not so nice up close, especially when you're in it and the surface of the water can't decide whether it should be visible or not. There are no reflections or fancy graphics features as yet, although you can place a large number of campfires (lights) without a noticeable performance degredation, which is nice. Speaking of performance, it mostly runs without any difficulty, but then occasionally, and seemingly at random, FPS will drop massively, only to recover a few seconds later. Thankfully this doesn't happen too often, though.
Sound - There are a number of thematic music tracks that play in the background while you create your areas. These are quite pleasant, ranging to good, and in the time I've played so far I've left them going the whole time. Sound effects so far are pretty limited: a growl of a bear, grunt of an ogre, or a swish of your sword.
Gameplay - Medieval Playground isn't really a game yet, so the gameplay as such involves walking around an area and creating something from the list of prefabricated models. It's familiar WASD first-person controls, with a few hotkeys for bringing up the object selection menus or editing objects that you've placed in the world. Terrain modification is very simple with the mouse, and quite fun when creating caves. Ultimately, though, I would expect this to be just part of the 'game', with those who want to building worlds for others to play in.
You place objects with the mouse, and can then edit them (position, rotation, and scale) using a simple mouse-driven menu as well. You can place some larger pre-combined assets (e.g. houses), but some of these act as multiple smaller models once they're placed, so if they're not exactly right to begin with then you have to manually adjust each part separately. You can also delete placed assets with the mouse, but again this doesn't work properly for some of the larger pre-combined assets, which you have to delete part by part and even then they leave invisible barriers behind.
So far the gameplay is quite clunky, but remember that it's only early days yet. Current menus are only limited placeholders, and I hope the same is true of the assets available for inclusion in your part of the world. There's basic combat mechanics (left click to swing your sword and right to raise your shield), but there's no point to them yet, because any enemies you create have basic AI to walk towards you and attack, but no way of actually damaging you, or you them.
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-------------------------------------PROS & CONS------------------------------------
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Pros:
+ Nice idea; should be a fun game if the developer reaches his goals.
+ Large world with many areas, although so far there are only a handful of separate terrains
+ Pleasant music
+ Simple controls; it's easy to start creating
+ Making caves is fun
Cons:
- Not much to do yet
- Clunky interface and a large number of little niggling bugs (but it is EARLY, Early Access!)
- Limited pre-fabricated models, many with low poly count and poor textures (especially people)
- Water is terrible!
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--------------------------------------CONCLUSION-----------------------------------
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Medieval Playground is in very, very Early Access. As a game, well ... it's not, yet. As a world builder, it's a good start, but the clunkiness and small range of options available limit its utility here, too. If it sounds like your sort of thing, then definitely add it to your wishlist and follow it, and if you want to support an indie developer and maybe have some say in what you want to see, then pick up Medieval Playground and have a play around with it yourself.
I'd love to be able to wholeheartedly recommend the game, but at this stage I just can't in good faith do so. There's not enough to the game yet, and not enough information presented by the developer to know in detail where it's going to go. I'll be watching it closely and will update this review as the game develops, though, and I hope to be able to change my recommendation before too long.
[h1]2/10[/h1]
