The first thing that has absolutely turned me away from wanting to play despite how pretty this game can be.. the Territories... Why is HALF the map completely unusable and its the ONE SIDE THAT LOOKS PRETTY?? "Oh you wanted this Cliff side town surrounded by rocky cliffs that are surrounded by pretty ocean views?? No you get to be in the COMPLETE OPPOSITE corner of the map and its gonna be TINYYY. Have fun though! <3" like i haven't even started playing i've tried making 4 new seeds HOPING i could get a pretty plot but no.. the only pretty sides are completely unusable for NO REASON?.. i almost want to refund this game and i just got it....

I do like the game and the way it focuses on aesthetics while keeping some realism so I will be changing my Initial rating. After playing for a few hours i've noticed once you settle you start expanding your village pretty early on, so the first plot you buy is starting village status and you work your way up. I was kind of expecting this ofc (it is a city builder) i didnt realize however it would add MORE plots after starting. SO that initial plot you get isnt the entire map, there will be more which i mean makes sense but i just wish there weren't such awful starting points after you can customize a seed to your liking, so if you have a vision for the location of your village you might have to work your way there..

Bought this years ago while the project was in early access hoping it could be modded by the community into a more reasonable Rimworld 2.0 alternative.

Stopped playing it for while.

Now that it is out of early access I reinstalled it. Noticed right off the bat that the ultra settings are the same on a potato machine as they are on a high end gaming PC with 5000 series RTX card. Which is an interesting choice.

But can't even get through the tutorial again due to a weird issue. When pressing down on the middle mouse button and dragging up and down hoping to just tilt the camera, the camera goes insane spiraling around even when the camera is at ground level or back in the top down position. Also you cant zoom out. This is also a choice on the developers side so that you remain constrained to the itty bitty village area but makes it feel like you are chained to the ground.

Pretty much at the point of just uninstalling because this is unplayable. Back to rimworld i guess.

Very disappointed in this game and can't recommend unless major improvements are made.

Cute graphics, some interesting mechanics. Haven't encountered any bugs, although some functionality quite possibly could be bugged. I've played on easy setting and ended up restarting the game 3 times because I ran into problems beyond recovery because some concepts were not clear. Here is how it went down.

- On the first try, I ran out of wood. The woodcutters cut the available woods clean and forest doesn't grow back by itself at all. Turns out you need to build a Forester immediately when it becomes available. It is part of the tutorial but it's marked a optional. It absolutely isn't. At least in early game, wood is important because you need tons of it. Additionally, you're getting quests that require to sell wood. You can skip it once, but then eventually it comes back and next time it turns into blackmail: give us wood or lose reputation.
- On the same try, I also lost time on setting up tax collection. This mechanic is not different from Anno where taxes are the only source of money, except for random quests. However, in this game, quests are almost non-existent (or require materials you need yourself), so taxes are the only option. This is not explained by tutorial, however. The tax building requires "light fortification". It is in the research tree but very far down the line. But it turns out that Church building provides that, so you simply need to place tax building close by. You need to know this and plan for this, there is no clear information in tutorial or Help.
- The "procedural" building option in this game manifests in the residential buildings. Unlike in Anno or Manor House, you just "paint" a residential area and then residents build houses there. How many houses? Who knows! You have no idea. Combined with oddly shaped territory (more on this later), you think you're painting enough for 4 homes but somehow end up with 3 with oddly shaped useless gaps in the middle. Yes, you can blow up houses, but it leads to major loss of resources (you cannot move buildings for free and destruction refunds only part of resources). At first, I thought it's cool that I don't need to build each house but the more you play the more annoying this concept becomes.
- The territory. In campaign mode, you pick a piece of territory you start with. You have no idea what's in that territory and especially when just starting the game, you have no way of knowing what's important. The tutorial doesn't provide any hints on this. Small pile that looks like rocks turns out to be iron, for example. The territories are weirdly shaped and very small. Some games are like that and you need to manage city within given confines. But in this game, this concept is taken to a ridiculous level. You can't control residential buildings. You need lots of building for supply chain (e.g. tool production needs 4 buildings!), and on top of it, some buildings have a "dirtyness", like in Anno. (This isn't explained or even mentioned at all, but you can connect the dots when you see the brown "aura".) So you also need an "industrial park" setup. And you need to maneuver around resources, natural features like water, all on a handkerchief-sized plot. Granted, you get a second territory quickly enough, but then it is just as quickly consumed by residences and service buildings. In order to build a nice castle like in the ads, you need to play forever and save money for lots of territory or play in sandbox only.
- The money. As I said, taxation without representation is the only source. However, you need to spend money for almost EVERYTHING in the game. Decos? Money. Research? Money. Buildings? Money. Territory? Money. Promote citizens to the next class? Money. Very quickly you reach the point where you need hundreds but only earn like 10 coins per turn. I don't know what the solution is supposed to be. You can't get more people because you need more territory and to buy territory, you need money. This is like "my modem driver is on CD but CD player driver is on the Internet".
- Ridiculous warehousing system. A warehouse can store only 4 items, even though there are way more resources even in early game. The goods must be assigned to the warehouse in order to trade them. Trade, of course, is also very limited because goodness forbid you earn more money. And if you realize that you have no space and need to "unassign" some goods, then you lose them! Why? Can't they just be taken back to the production building? Oh and there is an option to "empty" item but it doesn't seem to do anything.
- As others noted, total lack of information that is needed in a city builder game. On first try, I had full warehouse of berries with just one worker. On the next, with 4 workers, barely any berries. I have no idea why. The bushes were abundant. You don't know when the traders are going arrive and how much would they buy. E.g. I started producing lots of meat for trade but then trader arrived and was like "oh thanks, I'll just take 10" when I had 50.

Overall it seemed like a nice game but turned annoying and exhausting very fast.