Recent reviews by flaming_couches

Sony's PSN shenanigans almost made this game unplayable for me, but I'm glad to see they went back on their decision. Even though I've only played about 8 hours at review time, I can tell this game is really good and really fun and I would hate to see it ruined by corporate crap.

Props to Arrowhead for seeing through the situation over the last few days and working with the community to change Sony's mind. For Democracy!

Awesome little asymmetric game that's a blast if you have a group of friends to play with. It's so satisfying to be able to outsmart the worm by barely evading it on rocks, or by throwing things to distract it away from your position. Its equally as satisfying to predict a pardner's evasive movement as the worm and grab them when they think they're safe.

The guidebook definitely needs to be more clearly highlighted (I had to repeatedly explain to my friends where to find mission or kit information), but it overall summarizes how to do each objective well, and I don't feel that there's any important mechanics that haven't been explained in the guidebook or tutorial.

Some mission types definitely feel more difficult than others (finding the train key is leagues easier than most if not all the other objectives in the list right now, and lighting signal flares is pretty hard against a good worm). Furthermore, having a larger variety of maps would improve the game's replayability.

However, that doesn't detract from the fact that this game can make for an awesome evening with your friends - unless they're not good sports about it, in which case they can eat dynamite >:)

9/10

Very novel concept, highly underrated in my opinion. Definitely worth its full price.

SteamVR seems to think that I've been playing this a lot more than I actually have (I don't have more than 10 hours on any given VR game I own) but other than that it's a great piece of software.

I'll never get back the hundreds of hours I've put into the projects I've made with this, and I wouldn't have spent them any other way.
Definitely worth getting if you need a creative outlet, especially if it's on sale.

Stonehearth is a game where you select between 3 different tribes of humans and embark into a wilderness world and build a settlement of your own choosing and design. If you're not on peaceful mode, the game has many enemies and dangers ahead, and mysterious creatures and beings to encounter as you progress through the story. You craft many items and learn new recipes and new occupations for your hearthlings (citizens) as you go along and build an elaborate town.


Before 1.0 was released, many people were (and still are) writing unreccomended reviews about how many things that had initially been promised to be added were dropped. The game also had a lot of bugs and errors throughout the entireity of beta, (I encountered at least 20 or 30 in a single session, which was usually around an hour) which was also griped about with claims that the developers "never fixed anything." In addition, there were many performance issues and even my somehwat beefy computer had difficulty managing a town of over 30 hearthlings (the maximum at the time was 50) on even the lowest graphics settings.

Coming from my own observations, the above problems made the game barely playable, and many times I found hearthlings floating or stuck in the ground and standing around, idle, starving to death. This also made it fairly difficult to manage a large town without having constant "world freezing" where the actual world and its actions stopped functioning for a moment, although I could still move the camera around. In addition, the lack of a large workforce made accomplishing large numbers of tasks (which I always required to do) incredibly difficult to do in a timely manner.


I've been playing the game for a little while now that 1.0 has been released, and many of the problems observed before have been fixed. I seldom see any bugs anymore, and most of the ones I do see are hardly game-breaking. Even if they do cause problems, a simple world restart (which honestly shouldn't be much of a problem for most people) can fix it. Furthermore, the performance issues I had encountered have almost entirely vanished, and I now manage a town of 46 hearthlings and my computer is doing fine on decent graphic settings. (I could probably turn it up to maximum if I really wanted to, but for now I'm playing it safe. I run fine on max quality with around 35 though.) And those difficulties with a workforce? That was answered, not only by the performance improvements but also by (story spoiler) Amberstone, the underground residence of rabbits who bring with them the powers of Geomancy and working Golems.


That's what many early-access players will say to you (in short), if you haven't looked at the other reviews already. And while they aren't wrong in that many things were promised in the kickstarter that didn't end up getting added by 1.0 (at which point updates are going to considerably slow because most of the staff are focusing their energy elsewhere), there are still many features the game includes.

Let us take the stance that the game is finished. By that I mean we know (by this stance) there will be no more updates to it and it is in its final form. There's nothing else the developers are going to do, if this stance is correct.

Let us also analyze the game not as it could have been, as it "was promised to be," but as it is in its current state. Let us push the fact -- that "other monsters," "a dwarven race," "alternate planes of existence," were dropped -- aside, and study the game as it currently is, without any prejudice towards the developers or design because of these facts of what could have been.

That put out there, here are my pros and cons:

• Great music
  
• Maximum quality graphics are gorgeously simplistic
  
• Allows you to express creativitiy in a way many games do not
  
• Intruiging storyline
  
• The game alerts you to problems, ingame or engine-wise, if they occur
  
• Three different locations and groups of people to choose from allows for various paths of development
  
• There is seldom a time when you are idle or not managing something
  
• You can have multiplayer worlds with your friends

• Combat is not the most intuitive and can be problematic
  
• Worlds are a little too flat in my opinion, i.e. it exists in about 7 layers, each of which consists of flat planes with sharp cliffs to levels higher or lower. No slopes exist unless you carve them yourself
  
• Combined with other tasks you need to manage, actually providing quality housing and bedding for your hearthlings early- and mid-on can be a challenge to find time for (at least for me)
  
• (Possibly incorrect, have not tested this since the last beta) In water, hearthlings are stones; they sink to the bottom of lakes and rivers and can breathe underwater forever. In other words, water mechanics are minimal, if present.
  
• (Also as of the last beta) Multiplayer does not include PvP
  
  
  Conclusion
  
  Taking the viewpoint of what is currently in the game, the cons don't really cause any major problems, especially if you don't mind how the game works or looks in terms of world. It's totally worth playing if you don't get bogged down by the people saying that it's poorly designed beause the developers promised too much for their own good.
  All in all, this game is and would be a hands-down buy for me if you were interested in a small, quiet, creative sandbox game.
  
  Hope that this review helps you, if you've gotten this far. Have a good day.

Amazing Game. Extremely Short. Amazing Game. Extemely Confusing. Amazing Game.
Did I mention Amazing Game?

The game has crazy great sound and animations. It really sets a solemn and lonely mood with a lot of really hard sound-related puzzles. Here are my Pros and Cons of it:

Pros:
-Great animations
-Great sound
-Great Graphics
-Great Atmoshpere
-Unique gameplay/controls

Cons:
-Lacks a clear storyline
-No tutorials on how to solve puzzles, or even basic clues
-Not even the smallest clue about how to get the secret achievement
-Character moves too slowly
-Game almost too short

Overall, I say the game is a 9.9/10 and would definitely reccomend this to anyone who has enough patience to figure out puzzles all on their own. (Even if you can't, you can look up the solutions on the wiki.)

If anybody sees this review, this is a must-have for your library. Suprisingly simple and yet so unique, this can help you calm down after some high-action moment in some other game you are playing. It's challenging and yet easy. Relaxing yet exciting. Simple yet-- No. just simple.
For it's purposes, no game matches this for relaxing and settling down. It's a great game to play in between switching games when you're getting bored. If you haven't downloaded it already, download it right now.





Well? What are you waiting for? Stop reading this and go get it!




You're still reading this, aren't you?

Sigh... Messages like the ones above never really work, do they?