I was originally going to be playing Path of Exile today, taking a small break from my ongoing They Are Billions story-campaign thing, but once again timezones have thwarted me. Who'd have thought that a company based in New Zealand would use an American time system?
Who'd have thought that when they, a company based in a country just next-door to me, said the 3rd of December, they actually meant the 4th because 'Murica?
I mean, I should have expected it, or read a little better, but I didn't. 😅 So tomorrow I'm going to be Endless Delving, and today... today I tried out Craft the World for the very first time!
You can find it on the Steam Store here!
I'm honestly not sure how long this game has been in my Library. A quick browse through my Account History tells me that I purchased it on the 21st of December, 2014. So it must've jumped out of me during the Winter Sale or something, haha.
2014... a whole seven years later, I'm finally opening this purchase and having a looksie!
The Steam page tells me that I'm going to control a clan of dwarves. I'm going to set them to work and make them gather resources, craft weapons and armour, and fight the creatures whilst we build our great fortress.
Cool. Sounds like the type of game I'd buy and play.
Onwards!
When I first start the game, I can choose between the Campaign or a Custom game. Not sure if 'custom' basically meant 'sandbox,' I had to quickly Google to find out which mode it was I wanted to play.
Apparently the Campaign will lead you through many different worlds and you won't be able to unlock everything you can. The Custom mode is one world that you can specify but you can unlock everything on the one world.
So sayeth the Steam discussions.
So I chose to play a Custom world instead of the Campaign.
Unfortunatelllyyyyyy.... when I select a Custom game, there are absolutely no options available? I think they're there, I can click on the arrows and the arrows turn grey when I can't click any further to one direction.. but I can't see any options.
Once more I had to use Google to discover if this was a common bug or just something that I'm personally facing.
Turns out it's common! And you need to actively set your language before any options will appear. Great. So I change my language from English, to Deutsch, back to English, and now I can see the menu! Hooray!
(This really isn't raising my hopes for this game. Just sayin'.)
I've selected the choices for my world, and prepare to enslave a bunch of dwarves.
We begin with a young, bearded fellow named Glew.
I can actively select him and make him walk around, or release him to allow him to do his own things. If I want to craft, I'll need him to deforest the surroundings. And so I send off young Glew to chop down some trees and things.
As I chop down trees and remove rocks and dirt and bushes, clearing the land for our base of operations, we gain XP! And as I level up more and more dwarves appear to help with the cause.
And now there are four!
With the materials we've gathered so far I make our little bearded friends some new tools and things to help them on their merry way.
If they're going to dig up all this dirt and stone and look for treasure, they need good, sharp pickaxes!
The crafting menu is pretty straight-forward. You can move items manually into the crafting box or you can simply select what you want to make and press the craft button.
If you don't have the materials required, the material in the craft window will just show up as red and you will be unable to create it. Easy, easy.
I do have one issue with this interface however.
So we can see in the following image that the item I am hovering over has positive armour and negative agility:
That's great and all. BUT. It appears the menus are once again not working properly. You hover over some items and a hover-window will pop up, but there'll be no writing whatsoever. You can select an item to learn more about what it is. BUT. You can't. Because there's no damned writing on the menu:
Is that image above a shield? Or a round decoration looking thing on a table? I have no idea what it is!
And then my friendly little dwarves killed some mean ol' skeletons, and one of them dropped a shiny purple book that looked important!
One of my little dwarves goes and picks it up...
and...:
I have no freakin' clue what this is, or what it does, or what skill it's talking about.
Nothing. Na-da!
This truly looks like it could be a fun game. 10,000 mostly positive reviews say that it's a fun game. But all I am witnessing is a buggy mess.
So, once again, I turn to Google for the third time while trying to play this damned game only to find out that once again, this is a common problem and blah blah blah. "Turn the game off and on again."
Oh, look! Now I can see descriptions. Stupid, bloody game. Maybe now I can finally play the thing and try to enjoy it.
Oh, look. That item above? It's not a shield or a weird decoration on a table. It's a hatch. See? That would've been helpful to have known before I made a bunch of them and tried to force my dwarves to carry them around.
Eurgh! Okay. Back to the game.
Now that I'm able to actually read what the heck is going on, I have discovered that the dwarves I have collected are all different! One of them thinks he is a cook, another is a hunter, so on and so forth.
So now this little fellow who wants to cook, gets to read this other book that I found and learns some new recipes!
The purple book I found earlier? Turns out it's a Mages book. None of my dwarves are mages. Yet, anyway. So it's a good thing I just didn't click it on some random dwarf thinking it was going to get a skill-up.
Words. Are important. I'm going to keep harping on and on about this because I think it's ridiculous that an issue that's been cropping up since 2014 is still cropping up today. Obviously the developers didn't care.
In order to craft a bunch of things I really want my dwarves to have, I need to make nails! I assume I make nails out of iron, so I send my dwarves out on a digging expedition and soon come across a couple of deposits.
Unfortunately, because I've been really slow on this first ever playthrough, disaster strikes!
A rampaging group of goblins are attacking! I'm in the middle of trying to build a basic shelter for my little bearded men, but it's too late!
We're under attack!
A dwarf has died, more have been fatally injured, then another died!
The remaining dwarves run into the mines, seeking shelter, terrified for their very lives!
But it's too late.
The goblins aren't daft, dumb creatures. They follow the little bearded men into the mines and lay waste to their fluffy facial hair! Dwarves heal by sleeping and I have yet to give them any sleepy spots. They perish.
I mourn their loss.
And start another game.
Maybe this time, starting a game where I can actually read right from the start, I won't be so terrible and my bearded men will survive. 🤣
First impressions?
THAT DAMNED INVISIBLE TEXT! GYARGH!
But it looks like it could be fun and now that I've spent a bit of time in the game and understand the controls and can read, I'm willing to try it again. If it was terrible, I would have absolutely no interest in wanting to try again. 🤷♀
I'll write up another post about this game in coming days, now that my "first impressions" are done and dusted. 🙂 Might be a bit more glowing.
Until next time! 🍄
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 