Ultimately I feel like this game isn't actually finished. It still feels like early access to me. So the fact that they have been working on ios and are now supporting two platforms for the game is a bit annoying.

The biggest reasons why the game still feels like it's in early access/ beta are:
- The Dwarf AI is still pretty bad. I find myself frustrated by it more often than not
- The AI still feels clunky and not very friendly
- Lack of control over dwarfs. Seemingly not enough buttons or commands to do some mass orders
- Lack of ability to just tell a specific dwarf to go somewhere. Instead I need to manually move him there
- Pacing of the game just feels off. Most people seem to be finishing the first level in around 9-11 hours
- Game feels too easy but is just a tedius waiting game most of the time. The difficultly is in staying focused for so long to play a level
- Tech tree still feels like it needs work to be more fluid

I did nothing but mine day in and day out. Everyday was a fight for survival. I must put food on the table or everyone would starve. Every night we were attacked by countless enemies surrounding our home. When will this end? The attacks never stop, but we must continue fighting. I dig deeper seeking precious stones and metals. Everyone is tired and injured and hungry. When will this all end? Our destiny is revealed now, we have found a purpose. We have to decide if we step into the next world or stay and rebuild what has been taken from us.

The Ugly: UI is extremely clunky where you have to manually drag and drop items to craft objects

The Bad: If you're not ready for the long haul, games and progression will take a long time to complete (40 hours on one area) This could be a plus if you're looking for something to really pass the time with.

The Good: Pretty fun and addicting if you are able to look past the 2 above.

http://youtu.be/TR5QmN_seBA

Pros: good atmosphere, a variety of enemies and crafting.
Cons: the AI is simply intolerable disgusting, your dwarves will always be blunt, stuck somewhere, die like idiots. During the battle with the most powerful monster in the game, a couple of gnomes just ignored him and started to cut the vines next to it (do it automatically), when you get tired with AI, you will encounter the second problem: what, in fact, to do? And there is nothing. No plot, all you have to do - just move up the scientific tree, then build a portal to a new world and all over again, with the passage of one of the world took me 16 hours, on the second I just got bored.
It pains me to play it.

Hear a strange growling noise at night
Scroll over...
horrid growling...
Cheesy-Petes what is that NOISE!?
terrible growling....
SCROLL TO SEE THE GROWLING IS...

...

...

...

a snoring dwarf.

10/10, would mistake a snoring dwarf for a terrifying monster thing again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0rgZYCmY9U
(rozwiń treść, by zobaczyć wszystkie zalety i wady)

- Gra wciąga jak diabli. Cały czas coś jest do zrobienia, albo wynajdywanie nowych przedmiotów, albo poprawa schronienia, albo kopanie suroców, albo powiększanie pomieszczeń, gotowanie, zdobywanie jedzenia
- Bardzo niskie wymagania sprzętowe, gra ruszy nawet... na komórce (chyba), wymaga procesora dwurdzeniowego i 1 GB RAM minimum, plus ruszy na kartach zintegrowanych
- Ciekawy system przeciwników, przykładowo pająki jeżeli nie są "czyszczone" to zakładają swoje legowiska i rozrastają sieci
- Możliwość wyboru czy chcemy grać sandboxowo i przyjemnie, czy może mierzyć się z silnymi potworami oraz permanentną śmiercią

- Gra rozwija się bardzo wolno i twórcy skupiają się na oprawie graficznej zmieniając grafiki menu, czy HUDu chyba 3 razy w ciągu roku, zdecydowanie za mało nowych ficzerów
- Kiepski samouczek, który omija wiele istotnych rzeczy

Pamiętam z Commodorka taką grę Boulder dash, od razu mi sie skojarzyło :) Craft the World polecam wszystkim, bo bardziej wciąga niż te wielomilionowe produkcje...

Okay so, I'm not exactly sure if i should upvote or downvote it, because both would be true.

First of all the good part. The first 10 hours of the game or so, maybe a little bit less, 8 hours - seem magical, astounding and absolutely amazing. It reminds you of old masterpieces - dungeon keeper, Knights and Merchants, even survival games. It's all great - I mean you can dig, create stuff, decorate it, smash monsters, level gnomes up, craft, you can craft a lot. More advanced crafting requires gnomes with specific skills. So the idea's great, you unlock more and more recipes by crafting newly unlocked stuff, the world seems a better place with this game around.

And then you get to midgame.
You start lacking resourses, especially the most important resourse ingame - iron, which is non-renewable. You start going to edges of the map, which takes gnomes forever to just reach, not to mention they prefer spending their time doing something you didn't really even ask them to do. Even with teleportation to the right place, you just no longer control them, the AI gets dumber the more you build and explore, while gnomes never get faster, nor you get a huge army of them. By midgame you require at least 5 times the amount of gnomes you have!

The crafting turns into hell, because you need to unlock 5-10-15 more levels to reach a needed crafting level by crafting stuff you clearly do not need need in huge amounts: like 50 book cases, or 15 stone statues. You exhaust your resourses on trash, just to get over it. You also got to build that trash, which requires you to use pretty inconvinient system of placing the newly crafted item into one of 20 fast access slots, which in midgame are already filled out with important things like spells, food, walls, bridges etc. And then restore the previous one the same way.

By that time you get the feeling that you'd rather stare at the wall doing nothing, than play on.
Awful late game balance and AI management completely kills the game.

But at least you can enjoy first 8-12 hours.

This is a nice 2d dwarf management game, kind of like a mix between Dwarf Fortress, Terraria and Minecraft. I've enjoyed the time I've spent playing it and I recommend it.

However, it does have a few problems.

I wish levels didn't take so long to complete: I've played this game for 60 hours and I've only completed 2&1/2 levels. There's no real reason for the game to be so slow, there's just not much to do on a map after you've secured your fort except more of the same stuff you've been doing from the beginning.

There's a research tree, but it sucks. New techs have too many prerequisites. You need all of the prerequisites and most of them don't make any sense. Resetting the tech tree each level is also pointless and just makes levels take longer.

Dwarfs are also pretty dumb and still get lost while pathfinding. They'll also gather up junk resources like dirt and sand which you simply won't ever need or want again after a certain point.

I'm not sure why this game has a Minecraft style crafting grid either. It just means every time I want to make something I need to drag each item onto the grid. There's no need for this, the game gives you the recipe, it could just give you an inventory count for the ingredients on the crafting grid so that you could make stuff and be aware of how many of your raw resources you're using without any dragging.

Last but not least I would say the game is very easy. Just kit out all your dwarfs with some good weapons and armor. A few melee dwarfs and the rest with bows or wizard staffs and you're set. You can also just armor your base well and wait out the hourly monster sieges.

I guess that's a long list of complaints but I really do enjoy building up my fortress and fending off the monster waves while I gradually expand my mines deeper and further away.

Nope. Not a fan. Looks good from the outset but it's really poorly designed. The biggest and most pervasive issue is it takes way too long to get anything done. I put in at least 15 hours to complete the first world and almost all of that was waiting around while making decisions of very little value.


The Dwarf AI is really terrible. Their prioritisation is all over the place. You'll have a dwarf with 90% mining skill and your best pick cutting trees while your brand new dwarf with no skills and no gear will be haplessly hacking away at the toughest rock in the game. Your cook won't cook. You'll set a job to kill a chicken and find every dwarf you have chasing it around the map. Possibly worst of all - your dwarves regularly refuse to pick up after themselves, rendering all the work you (finally) got them to do moot. What's the point of chopping down trees to collect wood if they never bring the damn wood back to the storehouse? This last complaint is mitigated somewhat by the spells you receive later in the game but they are neither a solution and they invoke the game's fairly terrible magic system (but I won't get into that).

The tech tree is really awful. It's mostly linear - if you recognise a tech further down the tree you need you generally have to unlock everything that comes before it, regardless of that tech's use to your or relation to the tech you want. Perhaps this is somewhat permissable as a way of gating your progression through the game, fine (though its a terrible one). But when the tech tree is 50% useless decorative elements it's just infruriating. Decorative stuff does have some use in the game (though its effectiveness is extremely unclear) but generally you'll be forced to produce far more than you'll even have the room to use, let alone the desire. In a game where it can be hugely frustrating to produce the items you DO need - like a sharper axe - it's just insane to have to sit through the AI's nonsense and the giant travel times to produce items that have both no use and have been forced on you by lazy developers.

To add to the nonsense and the endless walking-in-molasses feeling of playing this game, the items that are most useful - extra stockpiles, minecarts and elevators - are all at the very end of the tech tree. After spending the whole game managing dwarf travel times with the portal system (again, utilising the terrible magic system), actually reliable and interesting transport solutions show up at the point in time I didn't need them anymore - I could have just finished the game at the point I was at and was simply closing out the tech tree.

There's heaps of other issues I could get into (holy crap the 'Minecraft inspired' craft system is awful) but I'd be here all day.

I do not recommend this game.

STOP! YOU THERE! Did you like Dwarf Fortress? Did you like Dungeon Keeper?
Then give CtW a chance even if it may not look like it could be interesting to you!

I've playing since release, and knew this cute little bugger will make it to release and now it finally did!
And it just got better :-)

What it's all about?

You control the world like you do in Dungeon keeper. You say dig here, build there, gather this, kill these. And the dwarfs will decide when to do what.
Your job is to...

• keep them alive (craft good and diverse food, watch what you'll attack and so on)
  
• upgrade their weapons and armory
  
• give them jobs (they level in up to 3 specialisations each like fighter, miller, smith, archer etc.)
  
• loot ruins & discover secrets
  
• find rare ores
  
• build a nice shelter to increase the comfort so everyone is happy and can chill in their luxury bed
  
• craft things to be able to craft other things with these things that finally let you craft this one thing to...do...things

One example:
Need fish for a recipe but there is none? Build a pool with a bridge, gather snow, craft ice, put ice on bridge, watch ice melt, water drops into pool. Rinse, repeat until fish consider your pool frigging awesome and move in. NOW GO FISHING!

If things get complicated you could, like in Dungeon Keeper, control one dwarf and do it yourself!

So what are the positive aspects?

• Addictive gameplay
  
• In 3 playthroughs (which will take quite a while) i have not discovered a single bug or crash. Looks more done like many major AAA-titles that call themselves "finals"
  
• The dwarf-AI is considerably clever. They pretty much always do what you want WHEN you want them to. E.g. they're busy crafting 100 ores and you want ONE weapon NOW? They will probably make that ONE weapon and continue back to their original task. Somethings laying around somewhere? They'll get it as soon as time permits and so on.
  
• 3 different worlds. Well ok, differences are marginal and mainly only visible on the surface but at least it gives some replayability-value
  
• Music and sound effects are pretty fitting and not annoying even after hours
  
• Regular updates, the dev seems very commited. While being in EA that is.

But there are negative aspects too:

• The UI could really be optimized in some aspects (like said in most negative reviews). Crafting can become a pretty frustrating finger-click-party
  
• Even though the AI is pretty cool, some things suck like building narrow trenches where they start at the beginning not the end and can't continue. You either have to do one block after another or control a dwarf and do it yourself
  
• Sandbox-mode can get pretty frustrating if you're needing one special recipe but EVERYTHING ELSE drops first and you're stuck doing nothing (recipes drop randomly while diggin instead of a tech-tree)
  
• Most people find the tech-tree stupid. Although it can sometimes be very stupid (craft 10 of this one thing you don't need but would need the resources, just to be able to craft the next tier) it still makes sense and gives a sense of progression and a target to work for.
  
• Some people seem to have problems with the AI. Well, *I* never had any and i played through 3 or 4 times yet.
  
• Nearing the end of a map, resources can become scarce as they don't respawn/regrow. So if you need ONE stupid Gold-ore to reach the end and you've wasted all gold for cute gold-fishes (bad pun!) and gold-doors and goold-spoons and goldened silver and gold...you get the point? :-)

tl;dr:
Considering the cheap price, this game is a keeper! It's also now one of the shining examples of Early Access.
I *LOVE* Dungeon Keeper and played it a thousand times and this cute fellow comes pretty close (gameplay wise not visually). Although it's still quite different (instead of War For The Overworld) it's more than enough to keep you hooked.

More depth? Try Gnomoria!
More casual but still quite complex? Buy this one!

I looked at the clock and it was 7:45.

Checked it again ten minutes later.

It was 10:30...

What the Hell...?

Game: Craft the World
Price: $21.99*
Genre: Simulation/Building
Time Played: 95 hours
Personal Enjoyment Rating: ☺☺☺☺☺ (out of 5)

Links I Found Helpful**

A Youtube lets play by paulsoaresjrhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FF8kgUIy-U
This video pick might seem strange since it's episode 18, however I felt that it would give you a good idea of what the game is like. If you enjoy exploring a new game for yourself, then you perhaps don't want to watch it!

I bought Craft the World about a year ago during Early Access. This game has been a good experience for me. Although there was a bit of a rollercoaster when it's OS requirements got changed from a minimum of Snow Leopard to Lion. A few of us objected to the basic OS requirements being changed because it meant we could no longer play the game, and the dev did change it back. I was very appreciative that he listened to us and was able to stick to the original game requirements.

However, you want to know whether the game is fun, not how honourable the devs might be. It's very fun, although sometimes I question why it is because it can get quite monotonous and I begin asking myself what the point is. And yet I keep playing.

You control a bunch of dwarves. As you gain exp you gain levels, and with each new level you get another dwarf. Don't panic if a dwarf dies, because after a few minutes (you'll see the timer) he will respawn. You get your dwarves to execute two major actions - dig, and build. They will also gather materials that are on the ground by themselves. It may not sound like much, but now consider the zombie hordes that will spawn as the game progresses. You need to build strong walls and a good defence against them. The ultimate goal of each level is to complete five portal pieces to rebuild the portal and move onto the next world. If you're the sort that likes building games though, you will definitely get distracted along the way as you experiment with building a fortress for your dwarves.

Although you can control everything with the mouse alone, it makes life easier to use the keyboard. WASD lets you pan around, and there are various hotkeys for selecting dwarves and telling them to go eat or sleep.

There isn't really much of one. I'm not sure why I'm controlling these dwarves and sending them through portals. I have no idea why there are dragons. I haven't even grasped why the zombie hordes are attacking me. But considering how many hours of my life I've already had consumed by this game, I guess I don't really care too much either!

It can get a little monotonous, but on the other hand I find the music is quite addicting. I'll find it starts playing in my head when I feel like coming back to Craft the World for another session. The music is informative, telling you whether or not you're under attack, or whether it is night time. Otherwise, there isn't anything phenomenal here, the sound supports the game.

An interesting art style that I quite enjoy. The inventory and crafting screens are a bit clunky in their design and functionality, but they get the job done. I enjoy the bright colours and the various monsters. The trees are quite fun to watch grow and get chopped down. An important tip for players concerned with aesthetics - for things like paintings you can right click a painting with a painting and it will change the image that is being displayed.

+ addictive and fun to explore the world and build a fort
+ digging
+ building
+ hotkeys
+ zombie hordes to destroy
- bit of a clunky UI
- not sure why I'm playing it
- dwarves are stupid, and with time they get even dumber (dwarf AI needs work)

If you did not find this review helpful, I would really appreciate your constructive criticism - tell me why it wasn’t helpful for you. It’s my hope to make the reviews that I do take the time to write up, as helpful as they possibly can be.

Footnotes
*Prices are in CDN because that's what I see.
**I will not be keeping all of these links up to date, if they are broken I apologise. Remember that these are external websites and I'm just trying to be helpful, I'm not responsible for the content on the other end.

Edit Log
27/11/2014 formatting

This is a fun little, casual, game. Won't satisfy any hardcore gamers' gaming appitite. However, it is a great game to pick up and play for those casual moments.

This game is a lot like Terraria meets Dwarves. A bit of a mix and match genre. You have your 'craft the world' genre, allowing you to build anything your imagination allows you to. Combat system for stratagies. Tower defense. Exploration and minning (reminds me of Miner Miner). Instead of playing the whole game as you control the player, you are more the overlord telling your minions what you want done and when.

I was dissapointed by the fact this game feels very much like any game you play on a smartphone or tablet (pretty sure it was designed for tablets). It takes too much to click and access certain items. I really think the crafting system needs an overhaul just to be easier to use. If not an overhaul maybe: 'one-click reciepes' instead of constantly having to add the items to the reciepe box. 'Auto craft' items like food, where the dwarfs will automatically craft food and/or fill the table.

I would love to see more customizablity to the game, such as making your own dwarves. Assigning jobs or duties. Being able to sell stuff to the shop. I would also love to see more item options in the crafting menu and tech tree!! What this game REALLY needs is more tower defense items to help against the attacking hordes. More traps.

If they can step away from generic tablet app design and more cross platform full feature game design, this game has a lot of potential.

(sorry for any misspelling)

This game deserves to be looked at. Made by a russian developer, this game doesn't fall short.

Pro:
+ updates, Updates, UPDATES! This developer stands for early access, this game never laggs behind and delivers new content on a very common basis.
+ Gameplay: this game is morelike, you give orders, and somedwarf will do it. If you dig for this "indirect commanding" this is your thing... if not... take controll of the dwarf and do it yourself.
+ Progression: there are many things to achieve, enough to build and enough to kill.
+ "Settler-effect": you can see those little dwarfs running around your monitor, and watch them doing the housework.

Neutral:
* Grafics: it's a matter of taste, if you love this tableski style of game, alright, if you want battlefield-4-grafic's engine... well, tough luck
* Progression: You can't craft everything "right away" you need to, build enough of the previous items in the "itemlist"... it's not for everyone's taste.
* Sound: also matter of taste, I switched off both right away (snoring dwarfs... snoring dwarfs everywhere)

Negative:
- routing and object-retrieving: it's still not very polished, right now. Still some issues with the "item-grabbing" from far away. You can't tell a dwarf to "pick something" up.... he has to do it himself.
- no defined jobs: While now dwarfs have skills, it's still not save to give a attack order, and believing, just melee dwarfs (or archers), will get to it. No, gueriilia-style. You can loose your best miner/workshoper, when he fails to retrait.
- skills are only gained, if they know the basics. They CAN use the item (cooking-base, while no cook is around), but won't gain any skills; while a cook would get some. New skills can only be unlocked with books. There are pretty rare.


Overall: Solid game, worth the money and effort. If you are not sure, wait for the next sale to come up. I recomment it fully!

Absolutely, hands-down, one of my favorites. If you like a bit of Terraria and Banished/Dwarf Fortress you will get a kick out of this building and resource management game. It's way more relaxing than most building sims since you can just queue up the actions, open a can a beer, and watch them dwarves do their thing :D

It only gets a thumbs down because of the UI. It's CLEARLY being designed for tablets/ipads and the PC community are being used as the BETA testers. No save function accept an auto save you never see, no load function, no screen res function, no windowed mode function and more. Everything about it screams tablets.

Once it hits the tablets I expect micro-transaction shop to open.

My eyes are hurting, because my first session of this game lasted 12 hours. It's like crack!

I Usually like minion management games like this and it does have potential.

But it is VERY frustrating to not be able to save the game!!! For example: Lets say you have invested
several hours of progress and development in your dwarves and you want to give that undead elf boss a try and then you screw up.
Then its back to square one more or less because there is no save function!!

Fix a saving option!

Still recommended though because it IS great fun and has potential.

Okay! So.

This is:
Terraria + Dungeon Keeper + Delve Deeper/Dwarfs?! + obviously everyone's favorite Dwarf Fortress all combined in a pretty package, with a CiV-esque tech tree, Minecraft-ish crafting system and a bit of Tower Defense.

What you get is the campaign and sandbox modes with adjustable difficulty settings (that includes permadeath and various world types/sizes), so there's a good amount of replayability and whatnot even after you beat the campaign. Fun fun. No story though, but who needs a story in these types of games, right? Go whack a tree. Beat some chickens down with a large stick. Pick up all sorts of useless ♥♥♥♥. WHO KNOWS, YOU MIGHT NEED IT LATER. (Hint: you can disassemble items \o/)

It also may look like a mobile/casual game with microtransactions due to the art style but it actually has none of that bull. Dekovir Ent. have apparently only been making Popcap-style games prior to this so it just kinda shows. It's a pretty solid game, especially for something that's still in Early Access. What a shocker, right.

It's 50% off at the moment of writing (which is a STEAL), and is about to get out of early access, with new content on the way. Cool! Go get it.