I was in bed, enjoying my rest and suddenly i had a link to an itch page shoved down by throat, held at gunpoint and screamed at...
They wanted my time and attention.. though worst of all... a piece of my mind.
So here i give it:
This game at present has its flaws, the awkward selection on settlements if the boat slips under and some movement issues, though i believe its due to the heavy limitations of it's current platform.
There is a good start to the world building and lore of the game, it is easy to see how this can turn into a kind of a strategy colony sim/ settlement builder game with the light house/-es at the center of it and especially so with the threat of the storm looming in closer with every passing day.
Preparing for the coming storm in the current game makes me feel like i am managing a supply line to ensure my survival and yet it gives me the impression of a colony survival fantasy where your supply lines and stockpile determine the survival of the colony in a world where water level is rising and people are increasingly more seaborne for resource gathering, light houses would be detrimental to survival as a historic figure of navigation, guidance and avoiding danger. I will stop with this here before i get carried away with my thoughts.
- Intro/ previous lighthouse keeper
The intro of the game gives me the impression of the previous lighthouse keeper as a mad man, why is he so sane afterwards when it is his time to leave and keep tabs on you after you seemingly throw him off in a cage in new rome? At least it looks like he is caged in the cargo transfer screen. The story needs a bit of work, polishing and it can be very captivating and immersive.
I felt like the controls could have been explained better yet i have nothing better to suggest as of writing.
- Trading
The game needs an economy system.. At the very least a basic price board and a better settlement trade resource generation.
At the time of writing there is nothing to tell you how much will something buy or sell for, all you know is that you will buy something and then sell it for more somewhere else. After playing the game a few times I noticed sometimes a case of being able to buy a certain goods like driftwood and then there isnt any settlement on the map buying it which if i just started playing and bought it all i wouldnt have any money left over which leads to another concern, there is no way to refund or cancel a purchase or sale which i believe is either due to a coding limitation or a lack of development time.
The settlements could display goods they buy or sell from a pooled amount of buyable and sellable goods, potentially taking into consideration the distance between settlements and the deals could rotate based on time progressing, alternatively have the deals be static but manually distributed evenly between all settlements and have a singular non changing map which could let players plan and set up stable routes without needing to worry about a deal/demand change in the future, splitting their attention.
Maybe you want there to be chaos and keep people on their toes and have a settlement consistently buying soup, suddenly crave for bricks and candles and not export any wood anymore.
I could go on but then the comment/review may get way too long. So to summarise:
The potential for this game is MASSIVE, YUUGE, big big BIG.
Depending on the scope this game could rival the likes of Frostpunk, the ANNO series and Surviving Mars.
I hope to see this game evolve.
I am sorry to whoever read to this point.
:3