Roots of Harmony

Alright. Let's chat about [i]Roots of Harmony[/i], which is a text-based RPG that relies heavily on RNG and features a fairly detailed set of systems that center around building up your village into a town and beyond, allying with or attempting to conquer neighboring tribes, general exploration, and so on. You know, way back in 1985, a young and bright-eyed robilar5500 was sitting in his 8th grade Computer Science class in Lake Elsinore, California wondering what Basic programming skills he would learn today. >10 print "hello" >30 goto 10 >20 print "world" >list 10 PRINT "hello" But on this day, his teacher, a self-proclaimed hacker, had something else in mind. Instead of coding, he had decided to load Zork onto all the lab computers, and today's assignment was to get as far as you could. [i]robilar5000 finds a grotto "Hey Danny (the kid one computer over), what's a grotto?" "I don't know. Maybe it's a weapon." "Totally tubular!" Pick up grotto -You can not pick up grotto Ummm Eat grotto -You can not eat grotto Hmmm Attack grotto -You can not attack grotto.[/i] Video game growing pains, lol. Anyway, it would be tempting to think of this game as something akin to the greats of old such as Zork. But in reality, although it definitely is inspired by that era of gaming, this game actually has a lot more in common with [i]play by mail[/i] games in my opinion. It certainly has that feel more than anything else. And I can't really say there is a lot of that on Steam. This and the developer's other game, Warsim, are likely the only games on Steam that touch on that experience. Obviously, you aren't actually playing by mail, waiting for the next turn in the scenario to reach your mailbox, but it has that vibe. I think where I will start here is by saying that using the tutorial as your tribe starter is the way to go. Starting this game by skipping the tutorial is going to put you at a disadvantage immediately. Most games default assume that if you skip the tutorial, your character or tribe or what have you has already accomplished those basic things and will give you them to start out with. At least where the tutorial isn't a completely different scenario being presented, anyway. Not so much here. Not playing through the tutorial to start the game, in my opinion, added another layer of difficulty to a game that is already quite challenging. I saw mention of this in the forum, and in my brief experience, that complaint was valid. So, my recommendation is that, unless you feel like you have mastered the systems in this game, always start with the tutorial even though that repetition can get kind of boring. I mention this because, you likely will need to restart the game several times. Due to resource mismanagement, disputes with other tribes, being attacked by werewolves, and so on. It is easy to go from thriving to dying very quickly. So, your core goal as I see it in this game, is to build up your tribe, from a village to a town and beyond. This is represented by phases. In order to do so, you will need to build up your town with craftsman, temples, etc...and proper planning of what to build, what buildings are next to each other, how much skill your tribe has to produce goods, and how many disciples you have; is paramount. In order to build, you need free plots of land. There is a nice variety of building types. Some are focused on resource production such as building furniture, farming, hunting. Others are focused on health, such as having a lavatory, for example. Certain buildings only function properly when placed next to other specific types of structures. So, planning how your plots are developed is important. Your tribe will have Disciples. These are functionally your specialists. Such as Knights, Scouts, Militia, Vindicators, and so on. These are the characters who will explore, find and make trade agreements with other tribes or alternatively create strife with other tribes. They will also fight all the battles in the game. Disciples can earn buffs in the form of essences, which are consumed. When they aren't actively travelling, they can be set to 'defensive mode', which basically means they are defending your tribe. If you don't do so, or they've reached their destination and finished exploring an area, they will sit idle until you give them their next command. As mentioned, Disciples are the ones fighting for your tribe. Whether that's fighting with other tribes, with creatures found while traveling, or what have you. This is actually the part of the game I liked the least. For one thing, the game encourages you to try to outnumber your opponent. But in practice, I didn't find this to be the end all be all. In my experience, you are going to lose somebody in almost every battle. And disciples are pricey to recruit and replace. I felt the cost of combat was too high overall. And this was made worse because, while combat is turn-based, it's also text-based and you aren't really making substantive decisions. All of the enemies I encountered were OP in my opinion. And I didn't find that my disciples were always auto consuming healing elixirs, something the game says they do. Additionally, there is an auto-resolve, but that is even more unforgiving. The results were always less favorable when using auto-resolve, but since I didn't particularly enjoy the combat system anyway, I really wanted to only use auto-resolve. Creating a bit of a conundrum for me. Throughout your time in-game, you will be trying to build up various tribe statistics such as benevolence, greed, health, wealth, communication, skill, and so on. Building up skill is paramount. Just an FYI there. Without skill, your production will be limited at best, which impacts your ability to trade with other communities, recruit new disciples, and so on. As much as possible, skill needs to be prioritized in my opinion. Which will put you in a better position to increase your other stats. Exploration itself will earn items which either can be used by you or gifted to other tribes to improve your relationship with them, making them more willing trade partners. A couple negatives outside of combat, which I already mentioned. I thought the interface was too clunky. I would have preferred there to be hotkeys for the primary menu categories, because as it is now, you have to back out of everything to get to your main selection menu, which although not difficult, absolutely feels tedious. And this game does not support Steam's screenshot functionality at all. Which always seems like an odd decision or oversight. So, there is actually a lot more depth to the game than what I've mentioned above. It's also very much a trial-and-error experience, and I think it takes a very specific type of gamer to really invest themselves fully into the game and the systems within in order to really dial in and be fully invested in said experience. I am actually not that type of player, much as I'd like to be, and so for me, this wasn't a particularly fun game, but if you think you fall into the niche audience that can truly appreciate this ASCII based gameplay with a higher degree of challenge and greater reliance on RNG than is typical of gaming in the modern era, it's probably a game you should look into. The price is favorable at four bucks retail, so I'd say the risk is nominal. [b]I received this license via our IndieGems Curator program.[/b] [code]If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/]Robilar's Reviews[/url], it would be appreciated. Cheers.[/code] [code]Also follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]IndieGems[/url] for more reviews like this one.[/code]

Makes Warsim look like a stale fart I had it on my wishlist to get inspiration game development ideas and a friend got it for me; it isn't as inspirational for my idea as I would have hoped but it's still surprisingly well designed -- there's a lot more here than I was expecting. I found an edge-case bug that caused the game to consistently crash and the dev patched it overnight.

9/10 Really solid 4x game without a "map" somehow. Not super easy, once you restart a few times you can come up with some ideas that can carry you further. My one gripe is the dedication to text-only means that basic actions feel like they take a lot more clicks/button presses than they would in other games.

A fun text-based empire conquest and management game. There is quite a bit of complexity to the mechanics. It will probably take two or three attempts and learning from mistakes to complete a full campaign, which is a fun process. There are also many different ways to build your empire and play through the game. There are different combat perks to focus on, different strategies for resource production and war management, and different play styles that are viable. There is quite a bit of replay value due to this and the randomized victory milestones. Of course the game would benefit from a proper map screen and such, but within the scope of being fully text-based, I'd say it works well enough. I've long been a fan of the developer's previous work and this is no exception. It's also nice to see how receptive to feedback and suggestions they have been. Each big update also brings quite a lot of new features and content. Keep up the good work!

The perfect little dystopia management game. Since your colony is based on Cruelty. Put the playground next to the well so that kids drown and you increase your Cruelty stat.... And put a Laboratory on the other side of the well for extra irony. Anyway, cruel joke aside, I really enjoyed this tough little colony manager and I think you will too.

This game is so good! Praise be to the Warsim-like post on warsim!! i love these games.

Really enjoy this game, it's perfect to play in bed with a laptop; will be leaving a detailed review once I get more hours but so far it's a solid loop with the resource production and mangement

"It costs about the same as your morning coffee, with only one of those two options allowing me to rip the horn off a unicorn or encounter a cosplaying fairy. [url=https://medium.com/@ThatOneAJ/roots-of-harmony-review-text-plore-text-pand-text-erminate-7646e67179e2]My full review here[/url]

Don't be intimidated by text mode. This in no way hinders immersion and allows the game to bring to a 4X an interesting reflection on our relationships with others. The little graphic effect adds a nice retro touch. It will delight those who have experienced text games on their cathode ray screens :) The music is also very nice and catchy. I haven't reached the end of the discoveries that the game offers, I still have many lands to conquer, I'm going back straight away. Congratulations to the dev!

It knows what it is, it knows what it wants, and it does it right. Great game