Sapiens

Abandonware. Do NOT buy. It's incomplete, and the developer lied to players for 12 months before finally admitting, “Oh, actually, I was working on side projects the whole time.” Now that Steam itself is displaying a warning that the game hasn't been updated for 12 months straight, the developer magically returns from his year-long disappearance to announce that he's become “unmotivated.” What a joke.

Development stopped due to the dev losing interest, with an apology along the lines of "Sorry if you expected more, but maybe I'll come back to this game some point in the future". Also acting as if the roadmap was purely a rough guide rubs me the wrong way.

post from developer copy pasted below. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME AS HE HAS FKD IT OFF AND TRIED TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE ITS A BREAK. Hi everyone, For the past few months, I haven’t been working on Sapiens, and the time has come to talk about that. Sapiens development is now on hold temporarily. I will return some time next year. I still very much intend to release 1.0, and then continue to add to Sapiens for the rest of my life. You’ve all seen the roadmap, we know what is planned in the game, and none of that has changed. The game is not abandoned, it’s a solid early access title. It just has a very long development timeframe. OK, but why the pause? For context, I have been working on Sapiens as my main full time project for around 11 years now. I was working on the conflict update last year, and it was coming together, you can play the current state of it on the unstable branch. But I hit a wall when I realized how fun conflict will actually be when it is complete. Yes you did read that right, it is shaping up to be a really fun update, but I can sense how much it is teasing at what’s coming next. It isn’t done, I can’t release it without finishing it properly. And rather than get excited about that, I felt dread. I couldn’t do it. I saw 4-6 months of hard work to get conflict where I wanted, and I didn’t have the energy to do it. This is not a new thing, I have hit motivation issues just like this in the past. So I did what I always do, I worked on a few side projects, took some time out. And I’m good now, I’m working as hard as ever, making great progress. But I got distracted while working on my side projects, one of them became my new main project. It’s not all bad news though. My new project is Blockheads 2. This will be very exciting for Blockheads players, but it should also provide hope for Sapiens players. I have returned to The Blockheads, and I will return to Sapiens. I am sorry to anyone who has bought Sapiens expecting something beyond what they have got so far. But I am also sorry to the hundreds of Blockheads players who have emailed me over the years begging for an update. This is the right thing to do. Apple will do something to break backwards compatibility soon and The Blockheads will be lost. That can’t happen. I need to rebuild Blockheads on a new platform to keep it alive, before returning again to carry on with Sapiens and The Blockheads together. At the end of the day, Sapiens and The Blockheads are made by one man on his laptop in rural New Zealand. I don’t do this for money or fame, I do it because it brings me pleasure to make other people happy. Right now I can make a lot more people happy by working on Blockheads, and that will make me happier too. So it makes sense for me to do that. I love Sapiens. It is far from done, and I have a solid plan to keep adding to it for years. Thank you again for your support, I will be back. Dave ♥♥♥♥ off dave you scammer

Spiel ist tot. Der Entwickler macht seit einem Jahr nichts mehr. Finger weg!

I genuinely wanted this game to succeed and bought the early access but unfortunately the developer clearly abandoned this game and last community update was not really affirming. If you want to play %30 finished colony sim game be my guest but I would not recommend anything from this developer.

[b]Is it fun?[/b] Could be better. The main mechanic is researching tech by interacting with things in-game. For example, the Sapiens bang rocks together to discover rock knapping. This unlocks progressively more advanced techs. Cool. But it's so... slooooow. My pet peeve with gaming is waiting around for something to happen so I can actually make a decision or take the next action. Fun should always take precedence over realism. I've played this thing for 70+ hours now, and I've never even gotten to the mid-game, never mind the late game. I just get sick of waiting around for something to happen, and quit. When I come back, I start again from scratch. There should be a difficultly slider for research. Easy makes it happen almost instantly, with various levels all the way up to hard, for those who want to micromanage their play experience. [b]Does it run well?[/b] Yes. Never had a crash. Didn't find any major glitches. The people and animals jump around a bit, rubber banding to new locations now and then instead of smoothly walking, probably due to lag. But this usually only happens with distant actors. It's not game-breaking or anything. [b]Will it get better?[/b] Probably not. majicDave has taken a break, apparently. He's moved on to work on other projects. He's a solo indie dev, married with kids. I don't hold it against him. But people did pay for this game, and it should be completed before other projects are tackled. The question is, do you trust him to eventually slap a 1.0 on this project someday? We can only hope. [b]Is it worth the money?[/b] This entirely depends on how patient you are. If you're the kind of person who gets zinged by realism and has no trouble waiting out the progress bars, then yes. It's an interesting and well-thought out game. It takes a look at actual world history and how humans got to the technologies they did. But if you're the kind of person who needs a fast-pace, constant action, excitement, and development, maybe pass on this one. If it's on sale at some point, definitely grab it, if you're a history buff, or slow methodical game player. This just barely passes a recommendation for me. It would definitely be a thumbs up, if it was less than $20. But it's $32(CAD). I'm giving a grudging thumbs up to support a solo indie dev. Hopefully, things get fixed/finished.

Pretu fun and interactive and non peacefull sandbox