Juegos indie de gestión #HG

What new thing does this game bring to the table? From what I experienced in the demo: almost nothing.

I briefly read something about races with different needs that sounded interesting but I did not get to experience it. The only "new" thing I got to experience were totems, so let's start with them: totems offer a flat buff radius of x for a flat mana price of x=y*x, they do not need connection nor anything else. You place them and forget about them. Or, you make a short calculation and decide they're not worth the hassle. There is nothing impactful here.

For the rest I experienced the beginning of some Anno/Foundation/Banished common denominator (what remains if you take those 3 games and strip everyting away that is not present in all three) with a general sense of lacking. Every one of those games has a distinct focus and shifts the weight of the"generic medieval city builder" around that focus. Anno's focus are islands/production chains/citizen requirements, Foundation gets away with it's simplistic approach because of the free pathing (and some special modular buildings) and sense of "natural growth", Banished's focus is seasons/population scheduling/thin margins that require careful growth and constant rebalancing. I guess for this game it is Multicultural city/empire and magic influence, but I did not experience any of that in the demo.

What I did experience was a sense of lacking:

• Impossibility to change camera view: I actually, maybe irrationally, hate it. It drives me mad and I ope I did (not?) miss some pop up wit the keybindings. Please consider adding NESW views. */jk Your modelers are clearly bored if you have 5 pages of cosmetics

• Limited ressources: 13 ressources is not nearly enough. Especially if there is always only one way/chain to get the ressource.

• Keybindings for construction and generally options (I know it was a demo, just in case).

• Outside kingdoms/world missing: could offer different trade interactions, diplomacy, a reason for defense buildings, etc. It feels like you are alone in this world.

• Building shapes: either you make everything multiple of 2x2 or you go all in on different space requirements (in the best case aided by the chance of tiny add ons for fine tuning). Lookup the Emperor game for market shape!

• Building upgrade system is way too simple: you could have physical addons with different effects (see Anno 2205 and expand upon it) to increase the "tetris" appeal, have different bonuses consume different advanced ressources, etc. +10% prod. for 1 coin is just lame and lazy.

• Decorations: either you give them a bonus/have them as requirement for housing since T1 or I'll never use them/will absolutely hate you when my perfectly condensed and efficient neighbourhood suddenly requires scenery points to advance the houses to T4.

• Lack of ledger:

  • No working class overview: who is working were? How many unemployed are available?
  • No ressource view: wood supply quickly became more important than money.
  • Building overview: how many do I ave on what? Wit what bonuses, what can I expand?

• Lack of transparency:

  • Is there physical transportation of goods? If so, I want at least some control over it to aid the AI: have buildings just gather from the nearest wearhouse (WH) (colorcode it when selecting the prod. building (PB) and viceversa).
  • Please consider having R/G/B pulsating floating ghost arrows indicating where the path connection of a building currently is.
  • What is the transport chain? Always WH -PB -WH or can it also be WH - PB - PB - WH? Arespecific workers designated for hauling duty? AI seemed fishy.
  • Do people have schedules, effect upon transport of goods? When I click upon someone I would at least like to see where he comes from, where he is going and why/what he is doing/what he is carrying. Bonus points for future plans and snarky comments (but check that the tavern line only comes up once you ave a tavern).
  • Construction blueprints effect upon enviroment: please show exactly what will disappear (trees, bushes etc.) upon placement. I thought I fucked up placing berries too close and deleting the existing ones until I discovered that I could just "plant seeds".

• Plant seeds: has the same problem as the upgrade system, it is just plain lazy. The gameplay loop behind it would become hell late game! Come back every 4-25 mins depending on your gamespeed and click a button that spends some of the cash you are floating so everything continues to function, forget it or come too late and see the cascading effect provoking an exodus. Be big enough and you cannot get out out of the loop witout having to hit the pause button.