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[Darkmere]

It released less than 10 hours ago. Sounds like a good analysis, I guess?

[Wiles]

I bought the game a couple of weeks ago. I played until I had somewhere around 50 colonists but stopped playing because there wasn't a lot going on and it felt like I was just waiting for stuff to happen. It felt like a game that has potential and could have used more time in early access. It has been in early access for a long time though so I assume they just really wanted to push it out now and decide how long they want to continue working on it depending on how well it does... Adding events and spicing up ones that were already there was a big part of the 1.0 release though so I'm hoping that things are better now.

I just started playing the 1.0 release but I'm not very far in, maybe an hour or two so I can't really say how much they have added yet. I've already run into some bugs though. They didn't release this build to be tested in early access beforehand so I'm not really surprised. Nothing gamebreaking yet though.

If you're looking at buying this I would recommend to wait and see how much people have enjoyed the release version after they have had enough time with it, because honestly the last early access build felt a bit lacking.

[Retropunch]

My favourite negative steam review:
"Sorry Gaslamp. I really wanted to like it. Sure I’ve got my money’s worth for 60 hours but I was hoping for more and was really surprised to hear it was exiting early access considering it was “missing” so much of what I was waiting for "

60 HOURS. 60 HOURS.

Absolute robbery from Gaslamp. 60 hours of gameplay for £20. I am sickened by this brazen money grabbing from BigGaming. Just disgusting.

[Wiles]

I see your point, 60 hours is a lot of time to put into a game you dislike enough to give a negative review.

However I could see how it happened with an early access game. With this kind of game it takes a while to see how good it is. If the early game is decent you're encouraged to keep playing to see if the mid and late game are also good. Clockwork Empires has been in early access for a while (I'm not sure how long, 2 years at least). So this user could have kept trying it in the hopes that they fixed the mid-late game as development went along (which was pretty boring in early access).

[Criptfeind]

There's also a whole idea of quantity vs quality. Even if the game has 60 hours of content (not actually that much for a sandbox colony building game actually to be honest.) and that's "your monies worth" (like this guy fully admits that it is) that doesn't make it a good game.

[Retropunch]

I can't agree that this might just be 'trial time'. 60 hours is seven and a half full days of gaming (playing for 8 hours a day!?). That's not 'trying it a few times during EA to see if it's improved' or 'lets see what end game is like' - that's some serious game play.

Anything that can keep you coming back for 60 hours must be doing something right, and is certainly worth £20.

[Wiles]

Yes, you are right there is something that keeps players coming back to early access games, in this case I think that it is promise that keeps people coming back. This game felt like it had promise during early access, but it hadn't yet fully delivered on it.

It took me 20 hours to get to the point in the game where I felt like I had experienced a lot of the content and could decide if it was a good game or not. Obviously the game isn't terrible or I wouldn't have put that much time in. But it wasn't great either, I kept playing hoping the game would build up to something, that I would get to experience the eldricht horrors hinted at throughout the game. But when I got there I found that the events were uninteresting and all that waiting had been for pretty much nothing.   

So lets say it takes you 20 hours to decide if the game is good. The game has been in early access for over two years (2 years on steam at least, pretty sure it was available through their site for longer). It has had multiple releases in that time so maybe this user tried the game through multiple releases over a period of years. Sure if you take 60 hours and put it into a time block of seven and a half days it seems like a lot, but when you put that time over a period of years it's not really that much...

Besides, I don't think the reviewer was trying to say that they didn't get their money's worth (since they outright say they got their money's worth). They were commenting on the quality of the game.

[Mephansteras]

I think what he means is that this player may have 60 hours worth of play throughout the entire early access timeframe.

So it could be that they have had lots and lots of restarts and little playthroughs whenever updates came out, and each time ended up quitting after a while because it wasn't quite 'there' yet.

Which is a bit different from "I bought this game on release and got 60 hours of play time from it but I'm giving it a negative review anyway"


Ninja'd a bit by Wiles

[Darkmere]

Well, there was a good stretch in EA that was getting the colonist interaction systems hashed out - framework building that let the rest of it come in. I'm not saying the endgame is awesome or whatever, I haven't played since alpha... but I have read some pretty neat sounding lategame stuff on the forums that I'd like to at least try before I make a judgment.

So far I'm a couple hours into a game and I do get that DF-ish feel to it that makes me want to keep going and poke at stuff, so it seems like a win so far?

[Krevsin]

Also for some games you really can't just put in a couple hours and see that you don't really like it. Sometimes you put dozens of hours into a game and only then figure out that hey, you're not really having any fun and that this has been a waste of your time.

[The13thRonin]

I'm still waiting for them to put in the actual game...

[Antioch]

I only tried this very briefly a time ago, but I found the interface to be extremely clunky.

Did it get any better?

[Wiles]

I've only tried the release version and the version immediately preceding the release. So I can't really comment on how much it changed throughout the development process.

The UI is functional for the most part, but it's not pretty and I feel like it is missing a few elements (like why is there nothing on the mini map to indicate where your camera is?!). It's not as bad as a game like Dwarf Fortress, but it isn't slick either.

[BigD145]

The tutorial might as well have been a checklist at gamefaqs. It barely recognizes you've triggered certain parts of the checklist. The interface is minimal. You can at least set minimum items to have on hand. The two classes of people are not explained much at all. Why can't I set an Overseer to cut trees? Where would be a good place for a graveyard? How do Barracks work? I should make one, but how big, what should I furnish it with, and where do I make those furnishings?

"There's an artifact." Great. Sooooooooo now what...

Hey devs? There are people that have never played this game. You know that, right?

[Wiles]

I can't say I agree. I didn't do a whole lot of reading up on the game and didn't watch any videos of it or anything and I didn't find it too hard to intuit. There was some trial and error but the tutorial gave me the basics and the rest kind of fell into place through playing.

I'm not sure what would be complicated about a barracks in particular, when you build it the game will tell you that you need an overseer assigned to it. As for furnishing the barracks, after it is built if you open up the building menu it will tell you what furnishings you need for it to function. And when you open the module builder menu to add the furnishings to your barracks it tells you on the tooltips which workshop you build said furnishings in.

How big do I make my buildings was a question I had at first too but I found it pretty easy to adjust after I made my first couple of buildings too big. I guess I can see it being annoying if you're the kind of player that wants to do everything optimally from the get go but for me I just plonked stuff down and if it worked, great, if it didn't I learned something and fixed it.

One thing that is a little too obscure for my tastes right now though is that some modules need to be researched before you can start building them but the game doesn't tell you that. For example there is no real indication that rugs need to be researched before you can build them, it shows up in the module builder and on the tooltip it says you can build it in the carpentry workshop. You go to the carpentry workshop and open your various workbenches and it doesn't show up anywhere. One of the developers has mentioned that they want to make it more obvious though so hopefully this issue will be resolved before too long.