If you've heard of Dwarf Fortress, this is the closest you can get to that, whilst still having a nice, human-friendly UI. Doesn't have quite the same depth, but then again, nothing does.

This was the first every early access game I brought and is the main reason I'm really, really careful when buyng ones now. Most of the time I won't buy them any more. It was abandoned a long time ago and only seems to have managed a full release for financial reasons. My personal recomendation would be not to buy this game. Go look for one of the other completed dwarf fortress clones.

This game was fun and exciting for a while, until I grew frustrated with the countless amount of bugs. As a colorful and user friendly clone of Dwarf Fortress, this was very promising. However, I would like to stress out that I would never be playing this game again. Incidentally, my plan was to wait until the game gets updated with the latest bug fixes from the one and only dev before playing it back. That will never happen anymore because the dev disappeared into the aether.

Yes, the dev literally disappeared. No updates whatsoever after the last hotfixes for v1.0 was done. Last time I noticed activity from him, it was when he deleted his reddit account this June (or July, I forgot). That was the time I lost hope for the game.

Yet still, this game gave me loads of fun, for the time being. So this is what I think of the game:

Likes:

• A simpler, less complex isometric clone of Dwarf Fortress.
  
• User friendly UI
  
• Amusing combat log
  
• Fantastic pixel graphics

Dislikes:

• Buggy AI pathing, especially in building
  
• Seasons look the same (4 seasons mod no longer works)
  
• Lack of updates
  
• Countless other bugs that I won't enumerate here

This game is far from finished. Don't be fooled by the version. That was the dev's technique of Houdini-ing his way off the stage without getting that much negative impact. It was a clever ploy to not break his promise of not leaving the game until it's release. The modding feature does not help with the bugs either.

Conclusion is that I don't recommend buying it. If you want to see what the game is like, you're better off watching some YouTube videos. This game belongs to the same pile as Towns and Spacebase DF-9. I have learned my lesson of not trusting devs who make building crafting management games until they absolutely finish the game. I'm glad I bought this game on sale.

Decent, But now abandoned

The game may have been greater than it is but it seems like development has been stoped for this game...

However I would say for the current price (£10) the game is worth it and you can still get 10s or even 100s of hours fun if this is your type of game.

I do have to say there are still a few bugs that can crash the game or force you to reload last save, they suck, but ther game is still enjoyable if you dont mind a bug once in a while.

The game also has a great soundtrack!

(and we never know, the dev might come back :x)

>^-^< Cute dwarfs doing stuff =^-^=

not finished.

We got shafted. Get it? Lel.

Don't buy this game.

it had huge potential ..... I hope robobob comes back but right now it dosent look that way... the wiki is abandoned as well the sectuity is lapsed ...... I thought it was a beautful game it just needed some more AI work for me and a little more fleshing out... if the dev comes beck this could be a awsome game so keep it ona watch list not a buy me now list ....

I played a little over 70 hours in early access. Bought four copies for my kids. My two youngest sons still play the game and get continuely frustrated with AI issues outside of the player's control or combat issues that cause your wonderful gnomes to die. My boys solution is to play a few hours to get their community started then start a new game or play on easy mode. I would agree with other reviewers that game should really be early access until some basic things like AI and combat issues are addressed.

The AI and combat issues aside. Caring for and managing your gnomes, even with the outdated UI, is entertaining to our entire family. We don't play as much as we would like due to issues stated above. The game is 90% finished and enjoyable. I just can't give the game a thumbs up when some very frustrating issues can ruin my 10+ hour gnome adventure and I lose my precious gnomes.

Dev should add ability for player to manually take over a single gnome with full control. At least that would give the player the ability to mitigate problems when AI bugs tend to clog a workshop or even worse, kill your gnome.