This game was a real disappointment. I'm sad to say that I would not recommend it, my friends.
What worked:
+This is a city builder and management game, and you do that
+ graphics look nice
What didn't work:
-There is no tutorial, menus, the hover over popups on stuff is so sparse, and some are even configured poorly, so that the text breaks off. There is no way to look at a building's information more closely, or more in depth
-This is a math game, but there is very little "known" variables. I suppose if I wanted to dedicate a lot of time and effort I could understand it better, but I don't think that's fun.
-The economy is broken
--Very quickly the price of buildings ramped up so that I could not afford them. Quests went unfinished, their rewards paltry compared to the cost of building
--I was buying things for .04 Octillion dollars. I am POSITIVE that there's a better number for that information
-- I just hate thinking of things being in nonillion, just no. A game where things are essentially free or cost so much God couldn't buy them
-The Policies is underdeveloped, and broken
--Policies are gained at, idk, what sort of rate? I was earning so many nonillion wisdom a second, but I had one policy and was at 0% progress towards the next one for hours. So I suppose the exponential, wacky ass growth is a part of every metric? No clue.
--The policies unlock a building through the tree.... and it COSTS A POLICY TO BUY IT. So much time waiting to make this happen, and for what? I built the watchtower and its footprint was one square, then I placed it and it took up a 3X3 grid. Holy crap! When I demolished it, the ground was still sacred and I couldn't build anything new on it. I saw that this bug was reported in 2024, and it is still in the game.
-Last but not least, abandoned by the developer.
--I checked the community page and the posts are all from 2024. The dev said they were working on including more instructions, or fixing bugs, in 2024. It will never be any more than it is now. The sad fact is, this game feels unpolished. There is no menu to see your buildings, no way to view the radius of effect of buildings other than to click on each one, to be placing one. It's just not there. And for $10?
-This game fails as both an idler and a management game
--There is work to do for the first hour or so. There is a moment when you realize that you were so overwhelmed with the no information and learning the game that you didn't properly evaluate where you built stuff. You cannot pick up and rearrange buildings. They must be destroyed. Cool. So you can either destroy everything and start over, start a new map, or soldier on.
--I left this game open overnight to see if I woke up to fat stacks, and I can't build any more houses. The cost more than my nonillions of dollars, somehow. I have one policy. IDK how long you'd have to leave this game open to get the achievements. I'd suggest multiple runs, if you can stand it.
--The astronomical costs of the buildings makes it so that you have very little design power, as it were. This game is measuring "efficiency" but doesn't give you the variables it's pulling from. How can you manage that?
--There is no way to see the food. I want to know the food auras, okay? How can someone be STARVING, but have a house full of all foods but trout? Sorry, babe, you live on the other side of the world from a rover, and IDK how to get that all the way over here. Literally, people standing around IDLE and hungry. Go freaking eat something, dang! Bringing down my happiness :'(
-The trains are not very helpful, and take up a huge footprint. I think this is the answer to trout, but I already had a whole dang city built before I figured that out on my own
-The bridge only builds across two lands one water apart. There was a second, decent sized island, on my map. I could not get to it. What a middle finger to me, I guess. The maps should not spawn useless, laughs at you, Neener Neener Islands. Just no, thanks!
-How can you get 10,000 population on this tiny island?? I tried deleting everything that wasn't a house, built one, then I couldn't afford another. WTF
Imagine you are playing a Rubik's cube- there's a trick to it, where you turn it this way and that in a pattern and you'll solve it without looking, but if you don't know the trick it'll be lots of fumbling. That's what it's like playing Orrstead. I had super high hopes for a minimalistic city builder, and it is that, but so minimal as to be frustrating and boring, in the end.
Thank you to the Dev for their effort. I wish they would work on it more, for I think Orrstead could be improved. The state it is in now is unfortunate, and I wouldn't suggest it at this time.
