Planet Nomads - Review

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Planet Nomads is a Steam early access, open world, survival game on a planet which has varying biomes for the player to explore. In the game, you crash land on this planet and have to survive in the wilderness by yourself. As a lone scientist, you, the player, have to use your wit and knowledge to create whatever basic needs you require in this sci-fi sandbox. The is constantly being updated and is never boring. When starting a new save in Planet Nomads the player is presented with a sleek looking menu which prompts them if they want to play a survival game, or a creative game. The feature is something fairly small, but it proves that the developers have thoughts quite deeply about who they might want to target for their audience. For an early access survival game, it is very good that they have already considered that not many people will want to do the “survival” element of the game and just want to build a cool base or a cool car. After all, not everybody is into resource...
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Kingdoms and Castles - Review

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Kingdoms and Castles is a newly released city builder developed by Lion Shield. So far, the game has been very positively received by the Steam community and by myself. Let me explain why:


Mechanic wise Kingdoms and Castles is very tightly bound to the genre in which it resides in, which was great for me, since there was a lot of transferable knowledge from other city builders. There are basic buildings ranging from small houses to barracks, mines and farms. Every now and again a dragon or raging Vikings attack the land and the player must defend their town, village or city from the invaders. Absolute pain, that’s what they were. Defences such as walls, and wall mounted archer towers and ballista’s can be built where ever the player desires, but alas they are useless against Ogres in small numbers, which I found out the hard way.

The player must also manage their resources, similarly to most city builders I’ve played . Iron, coal, wood, stone and food all need to be intelligently placed for the city to survive. By resource management, simple placement of mines and farms isn't the problem, the placement of stockpiles and granaries is vital for the success of your city, or your cities can crumble and fall. You don’t need to ask about what happened to my first attempt at this game. Markets aid with the distribution of resources, however, they too must be close enough to stockpiles and granaries to allow resources to be transported to the markets, yet another mechanic I didn’t know about. The entire system becomes very complex and very fragile. If your population gets too large, or isn't large enough various problems can occur, ranging from defences not being manned, to shortages of food and coal. There are probably more consequences, I haven’t been trying to fail though.

The graphic of Kingdoms and Castles are a very minimalistic yet colourful visual style. Everything is simple enough to make it unique, yet also complex enough to allow detail to be seen. As art is very opinionated, you may not enjoy this art style, however, I personally find the art style compliments the type of game that it is and allows for a very pretty aesthetic to the entire game. It made the game easier to play and it was much easier to envision my cities as I built them.

Musically the game is very pleasing too. The music fits both the mood and the style of the general aesthetic of the game. It turns potentially dull moments of waiting into a peaceful and calm experience for everybody to enjoy, especially when Vikings are raging through your city and ruining your life’s work.

Since Kingdoms and Castles is a newly released title, development should also be taken into consideration. After speaking to the developers about the game and suggesting features or adjustments to them via their Discord channel, I can whole heartedly say that the games development is going quite well. Although there are a few performance issues currently at hand, the developers are looking to fix and improve the game though user feedback. The Steam discussions page is constantly receiving new posts and the developers are constantly reading and responding to questions and suggestions that the player base are making. Typically, when developers are active with their communities such as Lion Shield are, the game thrives and lasts for a very long time.

Now, with most of the analytical section done, I would like to mention my personal experience. After playing this game for a few hours I sincerely believe that this game intends to make people Buddhist. Whenever a Viking attack or a dragon comes, if the defences aren't in place and manned, all you can do is accept what is going to happen and watch peacefully on the side-line as your city gets destroyed. Disregarding my Buddhist conspiracy, the game is incredibly fun and very promising. Regardless of how destroyed your city becomes, it is always possible to rebuild and recover with time.

Now, not every game can be perfect and I am certainly not saying that Kingdoms and Castles is. The game has a lovely art style, but during the winter the white landscape is ruined. The white coverage could look so crisp and beautiful, but a very irritating and pointless overlay is put over the screen that makes an otherwise wonderful looking game quite ugly. On top of that, the armies in the game are useless. They don’t attack anything unless it is on their position. Vikings simply run past armies losing only a few men on their way. It isn’t a viable strategy to have a standing army, leaving only one way to play the game with walls and archers/ballista’s. With more building types, better battles and more community feedback, this game could be as close to perfect as possible.

Anyways, that's all I have to say about Kingdoms and Castles for now. Maybe in a few months the game will be improved hugely with the community feedback the team are receiving. So far, I’ve loved playing it, despite it’s imperfections and I honestly feel like you might enjoy it too. 

-X_Pilot

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