About a year ago I hard about this game. I won't lie, I got super excited about it. In fact I got so excited I binge played Banished and Stronghold. I didn't want to get it yet because it was pre-alpha (very few pre-alpha games are good. Empyrion Galactic Survival is a good game and is in pre-alpha) and it would be too buggy.
In case you don't know about the game, ME is you and some friends in a giant pit surrounded by mountains with a forest smack dab in the center (at least on our map) and you have to bum rush for items like food and such. You build a castle and combat your others of the game and can build an army of peasent's to do your bidding. We never got far enough to see WHAT the peasents would do, however, as the game is now only in alpha and the many bugs left in the physics engine would kill the peasents. I want to say now: these guys are building from the ground up. They might be using unity or something, but I am still in awe at how complex this game actually is in it's early stages.
On to what I don't like here. As I said there are many physics bugs, however not so severe that if you get stuck in a crick in a hole you get shot into the atmosphere (this happens in 7 Days To Die, another good pre-alpha game). No, instead if you have your peasents doing generic things, like gather wood and stone, and have them flop it into a pile somewhere things have a tendency to slide wherever they want. EVERYthing on the map is a hill. You cannot go anywhere in the basin and not be climbing or going down something, Whether that is a bug in map generation or something, no clue. Because the items move around the AI trips over everything, including their own feet (which is really freaking funny to see). Bjorg and Helga can be hauling wood and stone while Ingvarad is organising wood, but then Bjorg hits Invar with a stick, nothing is actually no-collided in the engine, and then Bjorg, Invar, Helga, You, Half your castle, AND probably some trees are up in the atmosphere. Then some raiders run by and steal your shit; did I mention that? Fun fact the raiders are no-collided but nothing else is. You can walk through them. WTF.
Next to that there is no tutorial. The game has been out a year and all you get is an obnoxious block of text that never goes away that says "HIT F1 TO SEE SOME SHIT" and then you have SEVEN PAGES OF KEYSTROKES to go through to learn how to build a wall. A freaking wall. Yeah you start out with some walls, but you have to figure this shit out like they did way back in 903. Now that I think about it that it kind of ingenius.....
This would be fixed if looking at stuff would say "Hit T to Pick Up" or "Hit C To Open Crafting Menu!" In fact, if they would fix the damn inventory system that would be cool. I like it; it actually reminds me of games like High Seas Trader (dos game from 1992/5) but jesus shit man, you could do better..... Look up an image of it and try to figure it out, because I am lost A F. Actually NVM I can't even find an image bigger than 100X64...... It's bad, lets just say that. On one half you have a drop down to select a source, on the other half you have your pockets, nearby wagons, wagon's you aren't even close to, other players / NPC peasants, the ground, an ALL page (???) and a cargo page. I have no clue what all or cargo are, but it didn't bring me anything. Also the menu's will decide to disappear and reappear at random. I know what you're thinking. "Yeah you walked away from a chest or something right?" No, that chest is still in the inventory available space and I am on the other side of the map, but my pockets are not there........ This is an easy fix so no big prob there, but the inventory system needs to be thrown out and redone, even with legos, I don't care how.
Earlier I said the game was complex A F. This is no joke. You have to build your siege weapons by hand. You get to design how they balance, pull, push, counter balance, all of it. With the bugs in the physics engine you couldn't have a rotary balista without it helicoptering to space, but you could do it nonetheless. I never figured out crafting but I imagine that it is just as wierd. Even picking up basic resources is a pain in the ass. Cut down a tree! And again! And Again! AGAIN! Try picking it up! Leave inv and try again! No? Well walk out of the map chunk and back and try again. There ya go!
All in all this is an awesome game and anyone who picks it up will not be disappointed. If you're like me you jump in and immediately you think of a first person version of Banished. While it definately needs to have a lot of bugs exterminated and annihilated, pick it up, fund the devs, have a go with some friends, and I garuntee you that you will be laughing your ass off at some point.