Got suckered into buying this game after watching a few videos on it. Never did I realize how awful my first playthrough on this game would be. Evidence you might ask yourself? Below is my personal first time playing the game, in which you can see my excitement from the start diminish to almost nothing by the end of the video.
My video was made shortly after the purchase of my game, and there has been one minor patch to the game since. If it is being updated outside of Steam *Something that really irks me about Early Access lately* at least make the effort to make posts about it under your annoucements which is something the Starbound team does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Fv8JhD3gQ

I just looked at a upcoming game called Rising World which is pretty much the same game but actually might have the promised features already in the game. Such as the survival aspect. It was looking at that game which made me come back a write a review on this game finally in the hopes that gamers will have an idea of what they are getting into with this game.
I hope you enjoyed my rant as well as the video.

There are so many things wrong with this game. I am honestly convinced the developer has stopped support (it's never been updated since I've owned it). If I had to choose one game in my library to kick myself over, this would be it. I was desperate to find an in-depth and attractive voxel/building game. I snagged this up right after seeing the screenshots and trailer.

Optimization for this game is piss-poor in it's current state. It suffers from constant stuttering and a distinct inability to minimize the window. Minimizing the window wouldn't be such a big deal if the game had a decent tutorial or any tutorial. The UI is confusing to learn and clunky once understood. There is a hunger mechanic (I think), but it diminishes so slowly it makes no difference (Apparently, there are some animals to kill or something. There's an occasional bird.). Gathering resources is a pain, especially trees. And, there seems to be no real incentive to get AI characters as they are buggy and pretty much useless.

I can say this game has a great amount of potential. And, is an ambitious endeavor. It has beautiful graphics. The idea of pre-constructed castles/towers is cool and adds a mystifying element to the world. Should the developer ever continue this project, it could be an amazing experience.

I just wish it was better.

EDIT: After reading some of the other reviewers, I checked out the developers website. There is progress being made, but none of it is yet released. The developer may release a new build before Christmas. Still, there really should be more frequent updates. I've had this game for months now, and that's too long to wait for an update (Call me fickle/demanding, but I feel like I should be able to see what and where I've invested my money).

REVISED REVIEW: This review is a work in progress and will change often, until it feels right.

I've been following this game since late 2011 and have helped spread the word for what I thought was the future of the genre that Notch helped revolutionize. It had blocks 1/16th the size of Minecraft and the corners had 45 degree angles, helping to make the game seem less blocky than anything else on the market, even into late 2012/13. The game had a few glaring issues that held me back from playing, like the inventory system that hasn't changed and isn't at all intuitive--but it was a solid start to a game with HUGE aspirations like sailing with lifelike wind patterns.

But this is where a fundamental problem came into existence. The vision for the game was never clearly laid out. Jens had his vision in mind; and the forums had their own. So the forums pushed and prodded in various ways and we ended up with the engine that's in the videos on the store page. It's an amazing engine, and the forums went crazy over debates like whether it's even 'fun' to have life sized mountains. I mean, if it takes hours of real time to get to the top of a mountain... is that fun?

I was one of the ones pushing for them though. I'm not sure it was the right choice, not only because I no longer believe it's actually fun; but because somewhere in the mix, Jens lost the game that he was so passionate about in the start. And this is consildering that there were probably less than 60 people following the game, and only fifteen or so who were even registered on the forums at all. You can imagine how some of us felt when Jens proposed a Steam release in the spring of 2014. The forums were split over whether it needed more time before release. My personal belief being that it needed another year to actualise itself as a game. A YEAR? I hear you say? Yes, this is where I mention two of the biggest concerns I have with Blockscape.

The game is and always has been developed by one individual, Jens. This is a HUGE undertaking for one individual and it can take very long periods of time to develop even mundane features. This has led to the issues that the Steam community are already all too aware of: Slow output of releases. It seems that weekly blogs and at least a bit of forum interaction is required to thrive in the Steam community. And yet there are a great number of games released on Steam, where the developer thought they could handle it and it seems they couldn't. So you see a bit of activity for a few weeks and eventually you never see the developer again. See 'Sentris' for a great example.

So now Jens isn't happy with his game, the forums are unhappy that he's completely shut us out and the Steam community, for the most part, have no idea about any of the history behind it all.

I think I have a partly-built pre-alpha of a game somewhere. Maybe I should try and get it on Steam for $20 bucks a go. Seems like easy money, especially as I don't have to do any other work. So people complain - so what? It's not like I'll have to give anyone their money back.

"I release new updates at a steady rate. I often ask questions to the community and take part in discussions and the feedback I get is of high value for me.” Quote from the steam page of BlockScape. It hasn't been updated since July of 2014, A.K.A The month it was released.

Do not let them take your money this is possibly the worst game I ever bought on steam.I had hopes for this game during the crafting rise.Just look at the last update it was in July it didnt do nothing.It's the most boring game ever I'd rather play pong on atari then this ♥♥♥♥.If you love building realistic ♥♥♥♥ then this game is for you if you want to hack up cannibals while building tree houses and spying on naked chicks then go play a real mans game the forrest.

I have been following this game since january 2013 and while I admit it does have potential for creative builders, it's all there is: potential. The game has not been updated since july. The developper does seems more or less active since he is still playing the game here on Steam and he was connected in the forum the 23th of december but he barely communicate with the community. We don't know whether the game has been abandoned or not (maybe I'm too optimistic since some have already lost hope).

If you are interested in building richely detailed buildings and decoration; you can do that with the present game. You can look at some of my pictures to get an idea of the possibilities the game offers. And yes the game look just like in the video but don't forget that they were taken in the optimal conditions with a pretty good PC. The problem is that the game take a lot of time to load the map properly and this creates a lot of issues.

I don't regret buying it but I would not recomend it at this moment. You should wait to see wheter the game is updated or not in the near future. This is my main drawback. The game has others issues but it's still in developpement, so it should be expected. But since there is a lack of communications and no updates, the issues are not fixed, yet.

This game is barely playable. pre pre pre pre pre alpha. and not a single update since july.
....what a waste of money.

lack of updates, slow pace and poor communication are going to doom this game, with the money made hire some help if you have to but if you havent bought it yet? steer clear!

This game is definitely not ready even for early access. Unless you're on a flat surface you will be clipped off of the landscape, always just below it and making it really difficult to navigate. The game controls an non-intuitive and the help doesn't provide the most basic methods to build something, only to change what you have selected.
Graphics looks good but since I can't really navigate or figure out the most basic things of what to do, they are useless.
Save yourself the $19.99 or whatever the offering is at the time - the game is not playable in any form at the time of this riting (12/19/2014).

I bought this game in July, its now the 29th of December. I have not seen an update to make the game any more playable. I have a horrible memory leak that causes the game to crash every 5 or so minutes. I would call this an excellent crash simulator! I would wish nobody the misfortune to purchase this game believing its an amazing block builder. I think one day if the developer decides to update the game it could be amazing. But, right now this game is a piece of trash honestly it should be removed from sales on the steam market. I don't know if its abandoned or not the developer makes communication promises and never holds himself to them. Also he said he feels as if he should release an update by christmas...... nothing.

I don't understand why this game has mixed views! This game is horriable and should be pulled from steam so people dont get scammed into buying a broken game! If I could I would demand for my money back.

The game doesn't run at all despite me having all the requirements met to run it.

0/10 do not recommend.

UPDATE 12/25/14

Taking a break from my three children on Christmas to post a few words (see Jens, this ISNT hard)
Jens gave a lackluster post earlier this month about how he "felt he had to" release an update by Christmas. No promise, and absolutely no excitement in him about it.
Well it's Christmas (after Christmas in Sweeden actually) and the "Update" we recieved was a picture of a sled on the blockscape main page.

The little bit of hope I had died today on Christmas. Thanks Jens.

I'm calling this Vaporware until the dev. proves me wrong

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UPDATE: 11/12/14
Jens seems to have a new person doing part time PR on the forums now and has promised us daily updates on the blockscape main page. I'll give him a point for the attempt to reach out, though those 'daily' updates are starting to grow less frequent, and the last one only served to show us that:

A- Jens does indeed own a set of legos, and
B- He can build monochrome landscapes with them

Not that I don't appreciate him at least trying, but aside from his afinity for tiny plastic building blocks and a few screenshots of a supposedly revamped lighting system... we're still not getting any real information and certainly no interaction. This has the oily feeling of abandonware where the dev pops up from time to time with a meaningless update just to prove its still in production. (Castle Story, Spacebase-DF9, etc)

I'm still recommending that people stay away until we see at least one code update (with significant bug fixes and user issues adressed).

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Until Jens is willing to grace his user base with a post, information, or just any basic interaction.. I have to reccomend that you stay away from this game. we were promised involvement and community interaction, but if you want to see how well that has played out, just have a look in the forums for this game. Not one devlog post since Steam EA, no interaction with the community, and not a single update of substance (both in programming or simple comments).

Many of us simply cannot play the game- I'd say at least 30% of us are experiencing memory leaks so severe that the game will crash every time after no more than 5 minutes. This specific problem has existed since before the steam release, but as of yet Jens has not even acknowledged the issues, let alone given us info on it.

These communcation problems have begun to turn Jens supporters against him.... every day I watch the rating on Steam go down just a little more due to negative reviews. I could turn this review into a 3 page rant, but I wont... if you're on the fence about buying this game, please go and read some of the forum posts before you make up your mind!

I have had a lot of faith in this game. It has looked beautiful, however BE WARNED. The developer has announced that he is changing the look of the game significantly. It will not have the realistic look as the main style anymore. It will revert to a more minecraft blocky look. While it will apparently have an option for realism, that will not be a focus any longer. This is pretty much a game killer for me, so if you are considering buying - wait until the new render settings are implemented so you can see what ot will look like - because what you see now may not be what you get.

Update: Dev is communicating again and saying that he will be keeping the realistic world, so fingers crossed it will shape up to be all it is capable of being.

A really nice concept, but in its current state, very bad. NO UPDATES! Its been months and months, no word of an update. Dont waste the money on it.

STOP! READ THIS BEFORE YOU BPURCHASE!!!

THIS GAME HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED IN 2 MONTHS. Today is the 2 Sep 2014.

I have posted several tweets and messages to the developer of this game which have been deleted. There have been no updates what so ever on steam or the original site which was created.

All I can see this game doing is stealing peoples cash just so the dev can live easy.

The game is buggy and horrible to play for long periods of time, crashes heaps.

please reconsider before you purchase, the videos sucked me in too, its not what you think guys!

Long Story Short: This game isn't ready for primetime, and the Dev doesn't understand the difference between "proof of concept", Alpha, and Beta releases. This game is borderline proof of concept stage, maybe early alpha release. And it's not worth the $20 USD (or your regional equivalent). I am suffering from Buyer's Remorse.

What I had hoped was this game would be the answer to the question that Minecraft poses: Can someone make a voxel sandbox game that allows for a realistic world built from unique (non-blocky) shapes. The videos that the Dev has posted on YouTube seem to say this game has the possibility of answering that question. But not in its current state.

Pros:
-The graphics are great. Don't get me wrong, the rendered world looks fabulous, and so does the buildings built in this world.
-The Dev is on the right track with his User Interface. Reducing the voxel size (to 1/64th of what Mojang uses) and using a pallet and brush approach to paint the voxels onto the world canvas is the right direction. Tools still need work, but this is the right direction.
-The generated castles (while not really built like castles) are neat structures to explore.

Cons:
-The underlying engine isn't there yet. It needs a lot more work before this title can claim Alpha status, let alone Beta status:
- Game randomly crashes to desktop.
- Game randomly throws up "Game Over" screen with no indication something was going wrong or why the game ended.
- Game randomly hangs. Whole system freezes. Sometimes it recovers if let sit to stew long enough.
- Game uses too many resources.
- Game does a basic render and skin on the entire visible spot of the map, and only renders a small section around the player with the shading, skins, and textures. Screen twitches and jumps like a kid on a caffeine binge. Players will have to wait for the map to render the spot they moved to till the system renders the new location. This high definition render bubble is very small.
- Object collision bugs leads to some rather interesting game play. (Example: Walking down the stairs can lead the player to get stuck between floors, as the system only tests collision on feet and head.)
-There is very little help available. Players are expected to figure out everything.
- The only help provided in game is a list of basic controls. (And this is missing a few of the vital controls. Expect key smashing to find the hidden features.)
- There is very little text for objects in the game that can clue a player into tasks. All of the tabs are blank, and most of the objects have just a name and what resources are required to make them. There is nothing to help players figure out how to use most of the objects.
- Unless I'm mistaken, there is very little documentation online to help the player along. Even the wiki site for the game seems to be a half abandoned after thought.
-Most of the user interface menus are half built. Many are missing navigation prompts (Hint: ESC backs out of most, but not all screens.) In-game menus also do not appear to be well formatted.
-Text in game can be quite small for large resolutions. Font choice doesn't help either.
-Features are not as far along as the Dev lists on his web site and on the Steam page.
-The tools are still a bit clunky to use.

At this point, if you are considering buying this game: Only buy it if you wish to help the developer along and you can catch it on sale for $5 USD. If spending half your play time fighting bugs and reporting them in the boards does not sound fun, same your money and buy Minecraft instead. (It's only $7 USD more, and further along in its development cycle.) The game in its current state would have been good to use as a demo for a KickStarter campaign, but it should never have been released on Steam. I fear his rush to make money off this game will actually discourage people from buying it once it's polished and playable. I doubt many people who play Blockscape can actually recommend it.

I do not wish to discourage the Dev. I can see the general direction he wishes to go with this game, and it is a good one. If this were more polished product that was further long the development path, it could stand to be a challenger to Mojang and Minecraft. I welcome him to contact me about the comments I made here.

This game looked like it had so much promise...It looks like a good idea, it is like minecraft but you can get much, much more detailed. So i got it since it looked great, but it hasnt updated at all lately...i only played for a little and then i just got bored. Its quite laggy for me, and there isnt much to do at this point. As of right now i dont reccomend this game, but if they start doing what they said they'll do then this game could be great.

Even though I've only played Blockscape for 3 hours, that is enough to have experienced all it has to offer. Blockscape is reminiscent of Minecraft, there is no denying that. Does that make it a Minecraft clone? No, not yet. Will it be? That remains to be seen, but from what I've seen so far, I don't think so.

What I like

The graphics. It's a very beautiful looking *ahem* game.

The building. Blockscape offers many different shapes and sizes of blocks, so it's possible to build some very nice-looking structures. Likewise, because you can also carve so many different sizes of blocks from the landscape, it is possible to sculpt many nice-looking things.

The bugs. The only bugs I've found in Blockscape so far are crawling around on the ground. The programming seems very solid, and the developer seems to have spent a great deal of time making sure everything works as opposed to simply cramming new content into something that is a buggy, unplayable mess.



What I don't like

Well.... it would be unfair to list what I don't like here because what I don't like actually falls into the next category...


What I would like to see

More options.

• Key binding. I'm left handed, and I can't stand using WASD.
  
• Volume control. The music is loud enough to drown out my friends on TeamSpeak.
  
• Mouse sensitivity. I would like to turn this down. My mouse jumps all over the place.
  
• Intuitive UI. I spent much of my 3 hours poking around the keyboard just to see what was what.

Verdict

At the moment, this is a game that I would play merely as a casual game. Something I can go to when I've got a few minutes to kill at a time, not something I would devote hours of game time to. If you can pick it up for $5, go for it, but I cannot recommend it at $19.99 at this time.