Odd Realm

I want to love this game, I really do, but in it's current state Odd Realm is a mess of random errors and bugs that will leave you scratching your head for hours trying to figure out why your villagers aren't pathing to areas that are accessible, repeatedly picking up entire inventories of rocks and dropping them at their feet, idling when they have assigned tasks when all their needs are fulfilled, amidst a myriad of other problems- all until you throw your hands up in frustration and either start a new world from scratch for some other game breaking problem to happen or give up altogether! Every new large update features a different reformat of the User Interface causing you to need to spend several hours trying to relearn where all the buttons are currently located all while your villagers are complaining that they're thirsty when there are wells and bodies of water right next to the village! Why doesn't the "Drink From Water Source" command work? Why is it when you go to Shift + Left click to use an Odd's equipped utility item (water food etc) it just opens the village inventory instead of consuming the item despite the tooltip saying that is the key command to do so??? I understand, the game is a WIP and I commend the developer for working on Odd Realm on their own, but this game is way too overcomplicated to the point where it feels like more of a debugging chore than a video game. tl;dr the game has bugs and needs work!

I very much enjoy this game. The level of complexity feels manageable for someone like myself who is a fairly casual gamer. The core mechanics of this game can be learned in an afternoon, but there are plenty of different ways to play the game once the mechanics are understood. My recommendation to the game developer would be to allow some degree of customization for how difficult and frequent the raids are. I feel there should be some way to control how many events occur, and how hostile or friendly the world and environment are towards the player.

I... Have no idea where to start. I loved this game from the moment I found it years back. The way z-index works is very nice. I wont say unique, because other games obviously do that, but somehow it works so well in Odd Realm. It is, in my opinion, the best part of the game. In fact, I like it so much I only play the game nowadays to experience its z-index. When I first started playing I had an issue with how we equipped our little settlers. That was my only issue with the game. You had to equip weapons and tools and stuff manually 1 by 1. When the developer announced an upcoming "uniform" system I was really looking forward to it (for a loong time). Along with that came giant trees and a complete overhaul of the UI. It all sounded really cool in paper but the truth, which I tried to hide from myself, was that the complete overhaul of the UI made it a LOT more complicated than it ever was, giant trees made the game infinitely easy by giving you virtually infinite wood, and the highly anticipated uniform system didn't really improve the "equip" mechanic at all. The uniforms make the little guys equip tools and whatnot, and change what they are allowed to do ... I had typed a long rant here but let's keep it short. Suffice to say in my opinion uniforms, and Professions, were not really great additions to the game. Giant trees! Sounded so cool in theory but when the update dropped I quickly realised the humongous plants not only gave you infinite wood, but also clogged the entire map REAL FAST with junk. You chop 1 tree and you get piles of wood every .. where. Also, that infinite wood thing makes the other parts of the game uneeded. Why dig my base in the mountains? I can just use wood to build. Why use stone to make my furniture and stuff? Just use wood. When I realised that, I quit the game. Many months later, maybe years, I tried getting back into the game, I love that z-index! But the UI now is just so convoluted, so complicated. You need to click several buttons to reach the 1 tiny thing you need, like setting what stuff a farm produces, for example. There's all sorts of stuff in the window, like order for dig, order for plow, order for seed, then ~finally~, which seed to plant? Then order for water, order for this, order for that... The farm configuration window could just have 1 thing: which seed! Which seed to plant. That's all it needs. Worse part is all windows are like that now, in the entire game. The uniform/profession thing is so hard to find, you need to click a settler, then click on their uniform button, oh no wait, not here. Ok close this settler window, let's hover the mouse on the buttons at the bottom of screen. One of them ought to be a Uniform or Profession button...... Nope, not a single uniform or profession button. Where in the world is it, for crying out loud!? How/where to find what my little dudes are allowed to work on??? And their priorities? This kind of stuff completely broke the game for me. Nevermind the giant trees with their never ending supply of wood. Nevermind the fact that the game doesn't want Miners to wield swords. But the UI keeps me away. It was SO much better the way it was before, pre Lost Legends. Oh then there's the water... If you are digging and you happen to reach water you may as well scrape your save file and start over. Water is a huge pain in this game. The game doesn't warn you if there's water nearby and you can't plug the hole with dirt, pick the water up and move it away. No, once you dig into water that is it. Good bye save file. I loved when the developer added animated tiny clouds in the overworld! TLDR: Over the last few years, major updates (mainly UI) broke the game. I am truthfully sorry, but can't recommend it right now.

Truly a treasure. I do not normally write reviews unless the game is amazing ... or terrible. The steam review system does a poor job of allowing us to accurately gage the quality of a game. Take the mixed reviews. They are all a result of the sole developer not having the tutorial revamped at 1.0 There is a heck of a learning curve like other games it resembles. Do not come into the game expecting Dwarf Fortress, instead enter with an open mind seeking something different but deep. You can easily get a few hundred hours out of this over the life of ownership. If you like that added depth and complexity, you will love the management approach of oddrealm.

I bought Odd Realm because I enjoy colony sims and city builders. Unfortunately, I noped out pretty quickly. The biggest issue is the presentation. The graphics are incredibly difficult to read. Everything looks like a wall of tiny pixels, muddy colors, and visual noise. I never felt like I could glance at the screen and immediately understand what was happening. The UI doesn't help. Menus feel clunky, information isn't presented clearly, and learning the game feels like work. Combined with limited onboarding, I found myself fighting the interface instead of enjoying the simulation. What surprised me most is that I recently played Dwarf Fortress and found it significantly more readable and approachable. Dwarf Fortress may be more complex, but at least I can tell what I'm looking at. I'm sure there's a deep game here for people who can get past the visuals and interface. I couldn't. The graphics, readability, and UI were enough to make me quit before the gameplay ever had a chance to hook me. Not recommended.

First run: had bad housing and people stopped having children. Led to very low birth rates. Everyone died of old age. Second run: figured out optimal housing, doubled down on many people with good defenses, but not enough food. Led to a malthusian catastrophe. So many people that food ran out in autumn. Everyone died of starvation. 10/10

Not beginner friendly, I bought this years ago, didn't get far, forgot about it, tried again now (years later), same result. I don't think you should have to research a game to understand the fundamentals when there are in-game tips that are supposed to be helpful.

This is a good and nice game, created by indie developers. The game contains several groups, each group has its own style of play, if things are special for each group. There are still bugs but they are being addressed. There is a chance that some of your people will not work properly, but this is a less common bug, and it usually happens that there is a task that they cannot do. But there is help on Discord if something happened. Highly recommended.

我非常喜欢这款游戏，我希望游戏作者可以在游戏里加入中文！！！ I really like this game, and I hope the author can add Chinese language support to it!!!

As far as colony sims go, this one has been my most favorite! Comparing it to games such as Rimworld would be unfair considering that they occupy different subsections of the genre. Rimworld is a narrative generator while OddRealm is a straight-up colony sim, and one with a fantasy atmosphere at that! It's simple. It's fun. It's cheap. Give it a try!!