Many moons ago, when I was optimistic and bright-eyed about nearly every single game that appeared on Kickstarter, I backed a cute little village-builder by the name of Stonehearth.
It was one of those games that seemed to have everything that I wanted in a village builder, and I chucked enough money on it to get three copies so I could throw it at a couple of friends once it had released. Plus! With the amount I pledged I would get a cute little kitty cat pet in-game. SOLD!
I'll be honest: I completely forgot about that cat until now, whilst typing this, otherwise I would've activated it before starting my game. Obviously, this means I need to start a new game with my pretty kitty. 😅
I'm not too sure where to begin with this game. It was originally a Kickstarter-backed success story, of which I was a proud part of. It seemed to be getting regular updates and every now and then I'd open the game and have a look, approve of what was happening, and impatiently await the upcoming 'large' updates that included new races, new bosses, new pets, new everything!
It didn't quite go as planned, however.
Although I'm sure it's well-documented somewhere, I'm really not that interested in what went down. All I know is that at some stage after a lengthy early access, the game was hastily "finished" and a group of modders were given developer approval to do their thing with the game, going so far as to call it the Authorised Community Expansion.
It's available on the Steam Workshop for easy download and implementation into the game, and it's nigh upon unplayable without it.
Well. That might be going a bit far.
It's playable, if you want a very basic village of twelve... but no, we don't want basic and we don't want a mere twelve people. We want a full village! With everything! We want to catch fish, keep bees, enjoy a mass of random events, irrigate our farms; WE WANT ALL THE THINGS!
And with the Authorised Community Expansion, we are allowed all the things.
There are three different factions you can choose from, who can live in a choice of three different regions, with a choice of difficulty settings.
This is my story. Well, yesterday's story, since today I'll have a new village with a new cat!😸
The People of the Ascendancy are well-suited for forest living, and so, not wanting to lead a difficult life, I sent them to live in the forest, and I have my difficulty set to Gentle which makes enemies the same challenge as Normal, but the pace is slower so I'm not bombarded by goblins every single day.
After rolling a few maps, I decided to go with this one. You only get the highlighted square.
I chose this particular location because it has a good amount of water, forests, mountains for mining in, and a mountaintop lake! Which I was planning on using to create a waterfall for my village. I didn't get that far.
And here we are. My people have arrived at their destination!
The last time I played Stonehearth, it was still in beta and I had never seen one of these chickens before, ever. I was very pleased to notice an entire flock of them in my area! 😁
At last my people would feast upon chicken and eggs!
With the knowledge that they would one day feast upon food better than berries plucked from a bush, the people set to work building little houses and soon became an outpost.
I'm just using the buildings already in the template; I haven't gotten into the nitty gritty of the actual builder yet and these houses do the job just fine. One day, when I'm feeling more creative, I'll try and make my own. 😅 The editor looks a bit overwhelming at first glance, but I'm sure it's easy enough once the UI stops being scary.
Each villager has their own personality with their own likes, dislikes, and wants. Some are weaklings who should most definitely not be a warrior. Some are vegetarians, mighty meat eaters, some enjoy the night, whilst others get depressed very easily.
They will stop and chat to one another, and sometimes they'll have good conversations or they'll have annoying ones that'll put them in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
Later in the game, they seem to talk more often instead of going about their God Given Jobs! Which is very annoying for I, their Creator. All this stuff will be littered around the town, pumpkins going rotten because they're not being stored, houses going unbuilt because the Carpenter would rather get drunk on mead.
Just like real life, I suppose.
But at least they all come together to defend the town if need be.
Just look at this goblin, being overwhelmed by peasants.
After a few goblin attacks, wolf attacks, a friendly skeleton and her master taking my Mason away for a few days to teach him Bonecrafting, a few traders popping by, and general day-to-day living, my settlement has reached 20 Villagers!
Unfortunately there is a big-arse warning on the popup telling me that more than this may result in lag or villager-idle. So, maybe it wasn't the mead after all.
I had no issues with lag whatsoever. My game was running fantastically! The most well-optimised I had ever seen it! However. My villagers most definitely weren't doing their jobs.
I wanted more people, but I'm thinking with my next village I'll need to cap it at 19 just so my people keep working. 😔 That's pretty disappointing, but the ACE modders are still alive and kicking, so hopefully this is a thing that'll be fixed in the future.
At least my people got to enjoy their chickens before everything went to hell. xD
It's still a cute little village builder and I'm enjoying it. I didn't experience anywhere near as much as I could have in this initial village that I made.
There's an irrigation system I didn't put in place, you can catch fish to eat or to put in an aquarium type thing, keep bees, decorate with a bazillion items, but by the time I was going to try and do these things... my villagers didn't want to work anymore because apparently more than 20 means PARTY TIME!
So, I guess my recommendation is: yes, you should play this adorable game. Just don't go over 19 citizens. You can cap it in the settings. Don't let that stop you from playing; it's worth it!
Don't play it without the expansion. You'll have a lacklustre time. Very lacklustre. You need ACE.
Until next time,
😺 Thanks for stopping by! 🐈
, and are from the game: Stonehearth, ACE Update.