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[h2]Undomestic Review[/h2]
[h1]Medieval Times[/h1]
After getting saved by Uncle Roger from the shipwreck, for the past few weeks he’s taken care of you, and now you want to return the appreciation and be of use to the village.
This is now where your journey begins: build your home, craft your tools and gear, and explore the island to see what lies ahead and what sort of help you can provide yours and surrounding villages.
[h1]The Game of The Play[/h1]
Undomestic is a Sandbox, Adventure RPG medieval-themed game. Where the player can either build, battle, or unravel the enigma.
Undomestic is currently in an Early Access state and is missing a few puzzle bits, so to speak. Meaning that the game and visual experience are not completely completed. For example, some animation objects and small fixes here and there. But it is still a very enjoyable game with high potential for becoming something even greater.
The game starts with the character spawning in and getting their first quest to seek out and find “Uncle Roger” inside the village. Once finding Uncle Roger, the player can start a dialog with him to proceed in the story and obtain the next quests, as well as learn some backstory about how we ended up here.
The main quest will be to teach the player how to cook, gather resources, craft, build, fight, and simply survive, like a small tutorial. After the player has learned all this, they will get a quest from the village leader to go and take down some bandit camps.
After that, he wants the player to take down their leader in their main camp. The player is unbearably undergeared to face the bandit leader and his men. So the player will need to remember what they’ve learned and gather material to craft better gear and continue with the main quest.
The player can choose between continuing the main quest after the “Tutorial” quest, where they learn the basics, or exploring the island and doing available side quests. In the compass, the player will see notification icons showing available quests the player can acquire.
The game truly has the potential to become something big, but in its current early access state, it has some of its faults but still some of its pros. For example, the visuals are beautiful, but some animations are a bit rough with items, and other animations missing items.
But I’m excited to see what is going to happen to this game. It would be amazing if co-op were added some day.
[b]Menu Tabs[/b]
[u]Inventory[/u]
The inventory has a weight system, allowing the player to only carry as much as the bag can hold. But the current weight system is a bit too high, taking up only a little weight from items that usually should weigh more in theory.
Inside the inventory, the items are categorized with small tabs. It gets a bit annoying since the player cannot easily equip tools or consume edibles; they need to right-click on the item and then click on equip or consume.
[u]Crafting[/u]
The on-hand crafting and crafting in general in shops and such will have one tab that folds out to multiple smaller tabs that can be folded out to those tab items.
It gets annoying to need to open each tab every time when crafting. Or, instead of having the big main tab [u]“Items”[/u] just have the followed tabs from below as normal tabs, making it more simple and easy to access.
[u]Skills[/u]
In the skill tab, the player can see two categories: “Gathering” and “Crafting & Refining”.
The leveling system might be a bit high; for example, my logging skill is at level 226 after cutting down less than ten trees.
In most games, it is at least a bit harder to reach levels ten, twenty, thirty, and so on. But this game makes it quite easy to level up, but some things may require a much higher level, which is why leveling up is quicker.
[u]Knowledge[/u]
The knowledge tab shows the player what properties items and food have and their small previews for each item. Currently, there are only a few selected items that are shown in the knowledge tab, even after equipping or acquiring more new items.
This will surely be updated with further small fixes.
[u]Map[/u]
The map shows the player quest locations and animal spawn locations. As well as the player's location. The island may look tiny on the map, but it is bigger than you think.
[u]Quests[/u]
The Quests tab keeps track of "Active Quests" and "Finished Quests." If pressed on a quest, the player can see detailed information on what they have done and what they need to do next.
[u]Settings[/u]
When simply pressing ESC, the settings tab will be opened, where the player can select from the usual setting options.
Unfortunately, the controls cannot be rebinded; only look at the control schematic.
[b]Building[/b]
Building is quite easy, but it takes pretty long to craft multiple structures because, after crafting one structure, for example, a wall, the crafting menu will shut down, and the player needs to open it up again and craft another wall. No mass production or putting another structure in line for crafting.
And this gets annoying if you want to build something large, since it is going to take a very long time.
The structure, when placed, looks decent but is very easily removed. By simply clicking one button “can be by mistake,” the unfortunate structure the player was looking at will disappear, and no structure or object will be regained after removal. Not even partly of the items that were required in making the structure or object.
[b]Crafting & Shops[/b]
The crafting is a bit of a love-hate relationship. Since the player will need to craft certain items at specific shops, the shop owner will help the player craft the items.
All items crafted at shops will be transferred into a small box, which can often be forgotten since, in most cases, the item will transfer into the player inventory, or the shop owner will have a side tab for the items.
[b]Fighting[/b]
The fighting style in the game is decent. The character doesn’t move or show any affection when getting damaged by an enemy, but when hitting an enemy, they sometimes show reactions to getting damaged/hit.
Either enemies have a lot of health and good armor, or the standard iron blade sword just deals a very low amount of damage. Requiring more than five hits on an enemy to take them down. (Maybe even more than ten hits)
[h1]Visual & Audio[/h1]
[b]Visuals[/b]
The graphical quality is pretty decent, along with the shading. The only small fault with the shading is the sun going down or up like it was powered like a clock with gears. Not the smoothest, but the textural quality and shading all look quite good.
And for some unknown reason, the player character has no head in their shadow. It looks like a headless man in the shadow, and the light effects inside the inventory could use a fix up.
[b]Audio[/b]
During the game, if the player is near a village, the sounds of blacksmiths hammering and people chittering and laughing will be heard. Which is a very pleasant addition to the player experience.
But I am amazed with the character audio and voice lines.
[h1]Pros and Cons[/h1]
[List][b]Pros[/b]
[*]Gameplay
[*]Visuals & Shading
[*]Music & Sounds
[*]Crafting Recipes
[b]Cons[/b]
[*]Knowledge Tab
[*]Missing Objects in Animations
[*]Crafting Methods
[*]Inventory
[*]Unbindable Buttons/Controls
[/List]
[h1]My final little thoughts[/h1]
Undomestic is a game with high potential and currently has good gameplay too. There are a lot of faults and errors, yes, but the game is still very enjoyable, and the deeper the player gets into the game, the more they unlock.
During my time playing the game, I have only encountered a game crash once, and it was down by the mining cave. Luckily, the game started from the time it crashed. The crash was saved, luckily.
Rating: 8/10
