Under The Yoke

A Unicorn. Built well enough to be playable, Differnt enough to make you think. Of all the money I have pissed away on half baked pathic ea? I wish I could dump half of it here. Pllayable, fun, EA single developer. Three thums. up.

First of all, I genuinely like Under the Yoke. I have played almost 22 hours so far, and I would rate it around 7.5/10 in its current state. The core idea is excellent. A medieval peasant-life simulator, focused not on kings, knights or grand strategy, but on ordinary people trying to survive under social and economic pressure, is genuinely interesting. The art style also has a lot of charm, and the atmosphere is one of the game’s strongest points. On a personal level, the subject matter makes the game even more engaging for me. My ancestors lived in a country where serfdom existed until relatively recently — 1861 in the Russian Empire. Although my own ancestors were free peasants, partly because Ukrainian lands often had a somewhat different and less fully serf-bound social history, this background makes the theme feel especially meaningful. I also lived in England for a year in 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, so playing a game about medieval English rural life has an extra layer of interest for me. I love history, medieval studies and computer games, and Under the Yoke sits right at the intersection of those interests. That said, the game really needs a quality-of-life update. After around 20 hours, it becomes harder to continue playing in its current form because of some odd mechanics, unclear systems and small bugs. The inventory and food-priority logic in particular can be frustrating. For example: if I have wheat bread in my inventory, why is my character eating oats that I need for my chickens? It would be much better to have clearer control over what the character eats and a more practical inventory system overall. So, my verdict is positive, but with reservations. The concept is brilliant, the art style is appealing, and the game has a lot of potential. At the same time, it still feels somewhat unfinished and rough around the edges. I understand that the developer may now be working on a new game, but I really hope that, in the future, there will be time to return to Under the Yoke and polish it properly. Good luck to the developer — this is a very interesting project, and I would genuinely like to see it improved further

Awesome Management Game, Well Worth the Money For as many hours as I've been playing, it always feels like I'm engaged in figuring out how to manage my little family the best way possible. You get to a point where you have a surplus of goods, but then you have to consider how to not just live, but thrive, how to get an elected position, marrying off your children, etc. I like the RPG aspect, because it makes me feel like there's still a purpose to playing after you've met those basic needs, and there's little story breaks every now and then. My one major complaint is to do with the UI. If you have three or more family members sitting on the church, their pictures overlap with the town in a way where you can't click on the left-most picture. It makes it hard for me to meet all of my families mood needs at once, as I like to do things in batches.

Thumbs up or down was a hard choice in this case. It does have a lot of potential. In its current state it is next to unplayable. While apparently some stuff has been fixed before I downloaded it, it is still way too fast paced and there are some areas in which you have to make choices you can't really estimate the outcome of. Such as in the kitchen. You cook stuff that is supposed to last for months or even years, and then you run out of food, and have no idea why. Due to the game speed being so high even on normal speed you don't really get to balance out your character's stats without hitting the pause button all the time. So there still is a lot work to be put into this game in order for it to be playable.

While I think there is definitely still things that could be done to improve the game, mostly things like inventory management, character needs management, and providing more explanation of skills and how to improve them. This game has been so much fun! This is the exact sort of game I've been wanting to play and is so much fun! With some more balancing I expect Under The Yoke to only get better! The main improvements I can think of would be the ability to set aside an amount of crops that can be eaten like oats/legumes or baked like rye for replanting after you harvest them, preventing accidentally baking more of your rye into bread than you meant too and now you don't have enough to replant. Or despite having other vegetables your characters eat all of the legumes before replanting season and you can't afford to buy enough to fully plant the field.

Well, the game idea is great. Simple and nice. I love it. BUT It crashes. 1,6hours played and already crashed 2 times. Theres plenty of tiny bugs too that can be easly repaired, like f.e. durning character creation infobox is alway down from cursor, so you cant even see what bonuses "groomed" gives, cause infobox is outside the screen. Thats literally 2 lines of code. If such thing is in a game thats year old, that means dev is lazy. Character/Animals/Inventory/Lifestyle tabs sometimes overlaps their content, sometimes "actions" of your peasants freeze (even when you have resources/axes etc). No notifications at f.e. such action is unavalible. You can only see it at schedule, and game always pauses there, so you need to check it over and over. As I've said, tons of tiny, easy to repair bugs that makes game unplayable + random crashes. That looks like lazy dev, so unless they repair it its no,no. @edit 2.9 hours ingame and around 20 crashes already. I try to load one of my character schedule: crashes every time. Sometimes i dont even touch anything and let the time flow, and it crashes anyway (maybe durning autosave? dunno).

Komplexní indie simulátor prostého života ve středověku. Připomíná mi sérii The Guild. Od nevolníka se postupně vypracujete až na váženého hospodáře. Pěstujete, vyrábíte, prodáváte a budujete si vliv v místní komunitě. Založíte rodinu a potomci pokračují ve vaší práci. Na pohled jednoduchá hra, která je ve skutečnosti propracovaným projektem jednoho sólo vývojáře.

Great game, it is a pity that it is no longer developed.. if I knew that you wouldn't allow to develop char. to get nobility in time in your WOKEness (they can never be elected as a boss).. then I would never buy your game! BTW. Where is the empire??:-)

Early on I had written something else, but after subsequent updates the issue I was having was taken care of! The game now runs reliably without crashing, which is great news because I love playing it! I think it's really rewarding that the game has mechanics for rewarding your friendship with villagers and such. Thank you, devs, for making it work again! :-)

such an addicting game and the creator is genuinely so lovely