The Wagadu Chronicles

Gathering is slow. Crafting is slow. Combat is slow. Healing after combat is slow. Quests are weird. Music started to be grating an hour in. The other gamesounds are immediately to be turned off once you reach a bigger village with animals. [Edit: And they already have 'micro' transactions of about 30 Eur of ingame Items, no cosmetics, in their store. I do not know if you can buy them several times, as I didn't want to waste money on it. Pay to skip.] Had a quest given by Guy A to deliver stuff to Guy B Also had a quest by Guy C to deliver stuff to Guy A. I could not deliver Guy Cs stuff to Guy A before delivering Guy As stuff to Guy B and telling Guy A about it. The game has some bear bone tutorial which is just tell don't show and then has an ancestor quest it doesn't tell you about which is the real tutorial. And even then it's "Craft this thing. Won't tell you how to. Enjoy." On the second Island you can't and can craft stuff you have the stuff for randomly whenever the ancestor quest decides to, which is good, in theory, but it is not good if they don't communicate it. For example the ancestor quest wanted me to craft a sickle. So I did. It being a quest I assumed I would turn in the sickle so I wanted to craft two sickles. Got the materials again, crafted the raw mats into processed mats aaand it was greyed out. Couldn't craft it. Looked at my inventory, still had the first one so I just shrugged it off. By now the quest wants me to craft a better weapon. After searching the entire Island for the next crafting station I took the boat to the next Island. I was confused which Island I was on. On the new Island I found the crafting stations I needed. Now I need to get good sandstone slabs, not common sandstone slabs. My mistake those are obviously way different. For that I need good sandstone. Every node I touch gives me common sandstone. Apparently I need to find a bigger deposit of sandstone to receive good sandstone. The game never told me that, some player on their discord did. The combat is neither fun nor tactical. At least in the early game I am at. Turns are slow. End of turn is slow. A single enemy takes 8 Turns to kill and takes me down to 1/3 HP. The reward for combat is laughable and not worth the time invested. Nearly died, spent 10 Minutes to kill one enemy. Got 3 currency and two bark. Nice. At this point I am wholeheartedly uninterested and bored. Let's hope I still get my refund.

This game is billed as being a place to role play in an African setting loosely inspired by the ancient West African kingdom of Wagadou (c100-300 to mid 1200s). I'm left with the impression however, from over 20 hours in the game so far, that while Art and Culture are readily apparent - the actual 'Game' part of the game is sorely lacking. Generally, when one plays something labelled 'Massively Multiplayer', you expect a certain focus on social interaction - from local public chatting to guild and private chatting. In TWC so far I have discovered an anaemic local chat that you can only use when you are doing absolutely nothing else (here's looking at you locked coffee break crafting screen...), and that's it. No Society(guild) chat, no private chats, nada (to be fair there may be a party chat but I had no people about to test that). They do however have an email function, but yeah - this area needs a lot of work. TWC seems to have this thing about the 'Progress Bar'. Sometimes it tries to hide it as a 'Progress Circle' or a 'Progress Hexagon' - but what they are really saying is its time for you to wait. Wait while gathering, wait while fighting, wait while crafting. Of the 20+ hours I have spent in the game so far, over 50% of it was me waiting - literally sitting there with nothing to do while the Progress Bar went from 0 to 100. That to me sounds more like a trip to an Art Gallery, a movie, or some other form of passive entertainment. When playing an MMO I'd prefer for something more interactive - why can't I chat to others while I craft? or look at my inventory while mindlessly swinging my sledgehammer. As far as MMO game systems go, TWC is very bare bones at the moment - you can gather a resource, craft from a tiny set of preset recipes (and I stress tiny), play snipe the 'boar-maybe-warthog' while you run around the map just out of its reach, some fetch and craft quests (similar to kill 10 rats - minus the killing and the rats) and you can form a Society (3 plus person guild) and attempt to claim various campsites, which any one can use anyway, and you have to pay upkeep for (admittedly you can advance the individual buildings but until I see someone do that I cannot comment on that). They say they have been working on this for the last 4 years, I suspect a lot of that time was spent waiting for the Progress Bar to let them back into their screens so they could continue working...

Was so desperate for a new mmo I thought I'd give this a go. What a waste of time. This is more of a proof of concept than a game. Animations are terrible, character rubberbanding regularly (no idea where the servers are but you've got no choice anyway) and the gameplay is so tedious you'd enjoy yourself more just doing chores around your house.

Loving the crafting and questing on this, plus gorgeous art. Just from the character selection I can see I'm going to enjoy getting into the deep lore. All that and it looks, sounds (magical music) and plays well on my Steam Deck. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

This game just released in early access and is of course still rough around the edges. But you can already feel the passion in the work of the people who are behind it. The worldly setting is cozy, and the African flair is evident in the gorgeous soundtrack. There are craft trees, quest series, combat, and skill systems in place. I'm looking forward to seeing how the society and trading system evolve and how the team can implement their vision of the game in the future.

For all the good intention, values and ideas behind this project, the dev team really have to hear this: you did not make a good product. It's.... B A D. Im an early backer and welcomed the idea of an afro themed woke title but it feels like a missed shot and that the team doesn't have much experience in gamedev sadly. the game feels generalistic af in its gameplay (braindead gathering and combat) and like its 15 year old - apart from the theme i dont see any hint of innovation, and worse, neither imitation of what it works in the genre. after 3 years of being developed and with quite a lot of funding, its unpolished and unpromising, a bit of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the bugs and people getting stuck in the tutorial. did they test this? after 2 hours im stuck needing an item that i cant find on my island and i cant leave it. this feels alpha. but ofc they didnt forget the shop button being the most catchy piece of UI lol. still they have an army of discord groupies that act as their yesman will say yes no matter what because any graphical aid to their discord roleplay is welcome, with the added bonus that they are rejecting newcomers from their already pre-formed circlejerk groups. realistically i dont think this is even a 5 out of 10 for an outsider and the avg gamer. credit where its due, the thematic attempt, the concept art, and the music. I hope this gets a DRASTIC OVERALL in the near future for its own sake. meanwhile, its an _embriotic_ disappointment without much promise that will fall into oblivion. TIL never buy games from kickstarter

This game encourages to actually role play your character instead of being a cookie cutter mmorpg experience. The vibe I'm getting is a cozy feeling where I can proceed at my own pace while immersing myself in the world around me. It is in a playable state, it's not finished of course and TwinDrums states this plainly. So I don't know what people were expecting if they believe a certain feature is unpolished or buggy. I'm looking forward to the future of this game.

At the current state of the game I can not recommend this. Immediate cash shop, poor animations, you can only choose between preset names, and you can't even change if you play as a male or female. Not to mention I played for over an hour and only ever saw 1 other player, and they never moved. Combat is probably the coolest idea, but it's poorly implemented. Can not rotate the camera, the UI looks terrible, the movement is super slow, and the phases take so long to transition. Even a small 1v1 fight where you 1 shot the enemy takes a full 30 seconds...