Brilliant concept and tons of potential, but has failed miserably.

Bought this game over a year ago. Nothing has changed. I saw the devs update less and less. Then Nothing. Then almost Months later come back screaming "where not dead!!!!." with no updates since then or anythign else done.

Its my assumption this game is dead.

Sure, some fun things to do in creative, but i bougth this for survival. And so its unplayable. So many bugs and glitches. You dig a hole and the wall disapears or you fall forever. Dig a deep hole to mine. No simple later to climb your way back up. Just that grappling hook which is ridicously stupid since you will grab a wall and will just fall instead of holding onto the ledge to regrapple to the next higher area.

No enemies even though they sit there. You can't find any specific ore, or be able to access the ones you need.The robots or other tech to help you gather the resources don't work and create a really big irritant.

I spent majority of my time running between sites trying to repower them so they could work a little more.

Then you die by freezing to death. Go underground Freeze. Search for deposits, Freeze. Lose your energy, Freeze. No way to locate your base? Freeze. Repower yourself and end up burning yourself Alive.

Speaking of which, No compass or way to find your base again! Yes the map is small (which is another issue), but you can't find your base, because everyhting looks the same.

The map is small and you can't find any materials you need. I kept digging and digging, not a single material i needed (Lithium) *cough* *cough* could be found.

I thougth this game would feature defend you minning base or somthing cause aliens will attack. Nope....

And oh yes the UI.... Looks like a kid in HS made it. I mean its bad. Majoirty of the items in your inventory don't have images. Half the items don't work. and when would I make more than one item at a time? unless I'm in creative mode where I'm just messing around.

At that point its boring to me. Sure maybe for you artsy ppl this is great. but for me its a waste of time and I find no entertainment out of it.

Overall, A great concept. But executed so poorly and lacks so many updates. it is the worst game on my steam account.

I really want to recommend this game because I like it a lot, but I can't...

I have this game from 3 Oct, 2014 that's exactly 6 month (first review 4 April, 2015)
Bought this game for survival, but I did not get what I was expecting from survival game, when I started playing, it was interesting and fun to build all automation but sadly that's all you can do in survival. There is no challenge in survival mode. Only one type of biome and annoying snow that you can't turn off.

In 6 moths developers added:

Added Multiplayer for survival (I'm not interested)
Changed some item crafting balance after every update (useless updates in my opinion)
Improved UI (still not good enough)
Added short Help how to start in survival (for new players)
Added new ores/crystals (nice)
Added new items for auto sorting and storage (still needs a lot of work)
That's all I can remember...

Why I can't recommend this game:

Lack of content and things to do in survival.
Game development is to slow (my opinion)


P.S, It's not minecraft clone, if you like voxel games and decide to buy it have fun with it but do not expet much from it. In my opinion survilal is still in alpha stage.

Well for starters, i love the concepts and usage of machines and automation in this game. it brought some of the minecraft mods that i love to use into the core of the game, however after Researching and crafting every machine in the game it quickly becomes a game of production optimization and not creative building.

when i first started the survival mode it was a bit confusing on what to do and what to look for, there is a help page that pops up as soon as you enter the world but its not much help other than what keys do what.

now i was under the impression that there would be at least some form of adventure in this game but alas i had gotten very bored running constant logistics trying to optimize my production. there is no challenge in this game and you quickly stockpile ridiculous amounts of resources with nothing other than the machines to craft. there is only a handfull of creative blocks to build with ( maybe 15 or so ) and almost all the blocks take 1 of 2 resources to craft ( wood or rough hewn rock ) so you aquire a lot of other useless resources like rock, deep stone, rubble, and a multitude of others.

i realize this is early access, but i also realize this has been in development for 1 year or so now. the developers need to focus more on priority issues and content rather than constantly trying to add more machines that are buggy and unusable. now i'm not saying i didn't enjoy playing this game because i did enjoy it ( 114 hours of game time will attest for that ), what i'm saying is that the development seems to be so scattered that a lot of things are added and not much is being resolved.

the development team is actually a great bunch and very interactive and involved in the community, but they seem to try and please EVERYONE all at once instead of focusing on the task at hand. i noticed they get sidetracked a lot at players requesting seemingly small things ( like my request for a simple window block ) and diverting their attention from development itself.

hopefully this game gets some more in regards to backstory, hostile mobs and actual survival elements and focuses less on perpetual mining and power grid logistics. so i will continue to play every now and then to look for improvements but will give this game a "not reccomended" for now.

This game combines all the best aspects of Minecraft, the creative building, the exploration, the hostile environment, etc. with an impressive automation system. It's like Minecraft + Factorio. What more could I ask for?

So why do I give it a thumbs down?

Because the controls and UI are terrible. They try to paper over this fact with a ton of in-game help text. And having the in-game help text is great... But it doesn't counter the underlying shortcomings.

• You need to remember 4 different hotkeys scattered across the keyboard to switch tools, instead of just putting them on the number keys like every other game. They seem to do this because they want to reserve the button bar for building materials, which only show up when you have the building tool selected. But it would be much clearer if they just reserved the first 4 slots for your tools, and put the blocks in the other 6 slots.
  
  
• The generator UI allows you to put fuel in. Except instead of opening your inventory and letting you drag in the fuel you want, it just has an insert fuel buttons. Even though there are multiple types of fuel that will work. So it both denies interface conventions, and removes choice.
  
  
• The crate doesn't actually have a UI. You can't put resources into it directly at all. They can only be put in automatically from other buildings, and the only meaningful interaction with it is to hit Q to remove everything in the crate directly into your inventory. [Edit: This is properly called the Hopper, and you can put things in it with T. This is in the interactive help text in the corner, but that text is currently bugged, making it often unreadable, and I would posit that it's still a poor UI for interacting with the Hopper.] [Edit 2: The help text in the corner is no longer bugged.]

There are numerous other examples of bad UI. I don't have time to list them all. Thankfully, this is an early access game, so they have time to fix all of this... But in it's current state, I can only recommend this game if you're the kind of gamer who is willing to put up with Dwarf Fortress UI for the sake of good underlying mechanics.

Watch out! This is an actual review with actual details about the game and such. you may not want to read this. I know most people like to read / write reviews that only gives 1-2 vague sentences about the game.

I’ve been playing FortressCraft for 4 years now. I originally bought FortressCraft on the Xbox when it first came out back in April of 2011. I have played the Xbox hundreds of hours and have been there through all of its development. I can sit here all day and tell you all about the Xbox version too, but this isn’t about that version, this is about the evolved FortressCraft, FortressCraft Evolved.

FortressCraft Evolved isn’t a port or a remake of the original FortressCraft, it’s a reimagining. The game has been completely rewritten from the ground up using Unity as the game engine (They were using XNA framework on the Xbox).

This review is of version 1.15d. I’ve owned FortressCraft Evolved on Steam since the beta for the pre-alpha (You had to know someone to be able to play it, wasn’t available for purchase on Steam yet; It was hidden).

Story:
There isn’t one currently, unless you count the 2 paragraphs of text in the help menu.

Main Menu:
Currently, the main options in the main menu are the 'join multiplayer server" option and the world select option. You can create and select at least 10 worlds currently. You may be able to make even more than that, but I have never had need for more than 4 worlds at a time because the creative worlds are so large, I can just go find another place and start building.

Graphics:
The graphics are great. There are shadows and mist, and dynamic colored lighting. The textures are HD and the models are very good.

You can change the resolution of the game, whether it is full screen or not, and the quality of the graphics.

Controls:
I read a lot of reviews that say the controls are horrible and this and that and I don’t know about them, but I don’t have any troubles at all. You move with wasd and any command you need to press ‘on-the-fly’ are all within reach of your left hand. Keys that aren’t are things such as: The Help Menu (h), Toggling the headlight (L) (which requires power and glow sticks are better (g key)), Inventory (i), and that is it.

As for creative, you will have to use the F9-F12 keys to use the special build commands, such as super build and copy / paste.

Any complaints about the buttons being in a bad place are really rather dumb though as you can customize any button. When you first launch the game, a configurator appears and you can scroll through every ‘control’ and change the key and also change / set a secondary key. Don’t like the “Toss a glow stick” key being G? Change it.

You can also change the sensibility of the mouse in both the X and Y position and you can invert it.

Playability:
The game does have a few bugs and mishaps, but as far as playable, it is very. I can get on survival mode and play for 5 hours straight and have almost no issues. Almost all bugs are found pretty quickly and are reported to the developers who are actually pretty active. For an Early Access game, I would say it is high on playability. Is it perfect? No, but it's...EA...

Annoyances:
You can not change worlds without exiting the game. This will be changed before it leaves EA though.

You can not change the graphics and controls in-game, only in the startup menu. This does not include sensitivity.

Creative mode:
This first mode is creative mode. This mode has transformed a lot over the years and I think the best thing about creative mode are the custom blocks.

Custom blocks allow you to create...custom blocks. You create what is called a ‘workshop’, which is a hollow cube that is 2x2, 3x3, 4x4,..., and 8x8. You can place blocks inside the workshop, like normal, but once you leave, anything inside of the workshop will be compressed to a single block and you can then go and place it and use it. Check out the 13th picture in the Steam picture roll for the store page to kinda see more about what I’m talking about (The train).

The other special feature about creative (and is in survival) is called build-to-me. You hold down control and click on a block out in the distance, and it will build the block all the way to you along the axis. This feature is amazing and I wish more games had it.

The other two nice features about creative are super build and copy and paste. Super build is kinda like WorldEdit (the Minecraft plugin) but way better. You can see what the build will create in real time and you get a simple GUI to customize the super build you are about to make instead of typing a bunch of complex commands. You can build a sphere (you can edit the radius), a rectangle (you can edit the width, height, and length), and a cylinder (you can edit the radius and height). You can change the size from 1 to 64 and you can make it hollow or solid. You can also make it build with the selected block, or you can change it to dig, so it will essentially add air as the block.

Copy and paste also works sorta the same as WorldEdit. You select one corner, then you select the other corner. You then get like a preview type of a thing and can see exactly what you just copied and what you are about to paste looks like. You can rotate your paste and see it rotate in real time. You can simply press the paste key and it pastes. You can paste the same object as much as you like, it doesn’t go away after the first time. You can also save what you have copied and the developers have said that they will one day add a workshop where you can upload the copied items to.

As for blocks, there are over 200 different blocks you can currently choose from.

A REALLY nice feature they added recently is called the paint gun. Some of the blocks are ‘paintable’. You can change to the paint gun and change the colors of the R/G/B. There are 16 of each color, so you can make a wide range of colors. You point and shoot and the colors of the blocks will change (but keep the texture). The feature is topped off with the fact that you can point at the block and middle click, and the block will be selected as your current block and keep the color that the block is painted.

The last significant feature is the Storm Staff. With it, you can use the scroll wheel to select different features and: change the time of day, make it sunny / thunderstorm, and spawn a meteor that starts in the sky and crashes and explodes wherever you point the staff. The latter is super cool to use and spamming it creates an awesome lag fest of awesome and explosions.

As a final note, the world goes 1,000 light years in all directions. This is different in Minecraft because Minecraft only goes about 1 million in length / width and about 128/256 in height. Another note is that while the world is still 1,000 light years down in survival mode, once you get at about 5,000 depth, the world gets super hot and you will die from hyperthermia.

Survival:
Survival mode is totally unique and really awesome. It has machines, kind of like Tekkit, but not really. When you start, you start off with a way to generate power, a crafting table, a smelter, and an ore extractor. Instead of health, you actually have power. If you fall, you lose power and depending on your conditions, you lose power more quickly.

===================

As it turns out, my review is too long. If you want to view the rest, check out this thread I made:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/622954023414468626/

No.
Just no.
- Devs (I think there's only one dev - Adam Sawkins) are making FortressCraft since approx 2 years. We can see that on their Youtube channel, FC videos are 2 years old or more. After this long time FortressCraft is still in early access with lack of most interesting features. I'm wondering why this game development is so slow when the original FortressCraft was sold and earned milions $... Or maybe they lied about FortressCraft success?

- Game is still in early pre-alpha version where we have ONE world that looks similar every time we want to create it again, why to the ♥♥♥♥ there's always snowy biome?! Every new game starts in the same way, the same world, the same origin.

- Lack of block, there are maybe 40 blocks in whole game

- The original FortressCraft was one of the best-selling Indie games of all time. Maybe it was... but this one will be dead soon, only 300 reviews in one year. 100 of them are negative. People are not intrested in making ripoff of ripoff again.

- Unique survival mode based on... well... nothing, because there's nothing hard to do. You as player, you are not forced to defend yourself using weapons, walls, shields, cannons or something. Game isn't challenging. The main difference between survival and creative is simple - there's no flying mode and you have to craft stuff. That's all.

- You can achieve all avaible stuff in this game in just one day

- There's nothing much to do, devs should play Factorio for some days and look how factory-based game should work

- There's no in game tutorial which could teach new players how to play this game, there's just some info what cartain block is doing, without example.

This is a great game with a good potential. However now, in it`s current state, it has two problems. First of all, it is vey, very buggy. Look at any part of the game and you will find bugs. Player falls through the floor, items cannot be moved to inventory, capacity of smelter changes randomly, sometimes items just disappear while dragging.
Second problem is balance. Prepare to wait a lot and to make many monotonous movements. Dig and recharge, dig and recharge, dig and recharge, dig and recharge, dig and recharge, dig and recharge, dig and recharge, dig and recharge. Then go to smelter and smelt for an hour. Capacity of smelter is low (and changes randomly) so you cannot just leave game and go for a walk.
Of course, there is automation in this game, everything can be automated. But you`ll spend hours and hours to craft automatic resource processing. And these hours will be very boring.
I dont recommend this game untill all bugs are fixed and long hours replaced with brief breaks.

I have a hard time recommmending this game yet. A lot of the ideas are there, but it is super unpolished, and there are things that just don't make sense. I need some more time with it for sure, but initial impressions aren't the best. It looks like if you can get past the lack of a good tutorial/help guide and can figure things out on your own you can build and do some neat stuff.

I do applaud the developer for trying to make a mine craft style game with more objectives and focus.

When I first read the game description I got quite excited as I thought of it as a Minecraft in a more futuristic environment. I've been playing for a few hours now and I find it rather frustrating. Mainly because some of the features just don't make sense and are not well explained and the worst of all: survival you're basically locked to just one world, it's NONSTOP snowy and windy and all you actually hear is the generator's humming and the wind blowing. So not only does the frustration add up, it's basically also very frustrating.

I made the mistake and got my brother a license as well as multiplayer was announced and again... was very disappointed as many features were not included and to date I have not managed to actually get a server running and even if I managed, it basically would only be a creative server. No thanks.

It doesn't help that the EarlyAccess information box targets a release towards the end of 2014. It's 2015 now and still far away from release. Worse: if you follow the dev's twitter (or twitch) account, you can actually follow him streaming other games. I think I stopped following him after he started playing the borderlands pre-sequel and even gloated about how much he played and streamed recently... at the time mostly borderlands. I wonder at what stage he actually tries to finish the game, rather than playing and streaming other games but his own. Obviously not much, otherwise the game probably would have been finished before the end of 2014 as promised. And I will not go into all the whining he does on Twitch and Twitter how bad money making is via steam and that he could do with a bit more games being sold etc...

So far, I cannot recommend this game at all if you're interested in the survival part. I cannot talk about the creative part, but then again - it says it's survival... and as that part is certainly by far not close to be finished or any good for that matter.

- world setup basically non-existant (other than free name choice)
- world setup features that are in with placeholders restrict to things like difficulty, and I think the amount of resources
- world setup cannot change the world you're landing on, or the weather, so you'll forever be stuck with annoying nonstop wind sounds... snow... cold... and wind... and snow... and wind... if you don't die of hypothermia, you'll either die real-life of boredom or the after-math of a depression
- it's nice that conveyor-belts etc. are being big announced in the screenschots but what's the point if it doesn't explain how the system works (and that's a big downer in general... many features have no explanation, i.e. research, what gives points, why would you scan things, what's the point... etc.) and for some of the resources I ran back and forth (very repetitive) for an hour and only had enough resources for one item, far away from any automatism... I wonder how some other players managed that.

Anyway, the game has been released December 10th in 2013. It's January 2015 and game is still in EarlyAccess.

That should answer if you really want to buy this game or not. If you don't believe me, feel free to follow his twitch and twitter accounts. I unfollowed the dev on all platforms shortly after his borderlands streaming, if I could, I would have requested my money back at that point.

It is a fun and addicting game. It is like Minecraft with the focus on a singleplayer mining factory type experience instead. I highly reccomend you use a guide to get started as is is unclear how to do certain tasks like replenishing power and crafting materials.

Definatly worth a buy escpecially at the time I am writing this since it is 75% off. I got this game a week ago and I almost wish I waited, but it is enough fun for me to not be too sore about not saving money.

When they say "infinite worlds" they really mean it! I decided to test this and built a structure going from the surface (Y:0) and built all the way up to 3,254... I could have kept going, but let's be honest, that would have been pointless. So then I decided to find the floor of the world, and dug down to 9,153... And I could have kept going. Minecraft's 256 block height limit is put to absolute shame, as this game shows its beefy and well-constructed voxel engine. I'll admit, I'm going to use Minecraft as my comparison here, because Minecraft is the definitive voxel game to compare to.

The game's view distance is comparable to that of Minecraft's 15 chunk view distance, which means you can see a lot. In Minecraft there's a survival situation which revolves around food. Currently in FortressCraft Evolved the survival situation revolves around body heat. You're in a constant struggle to keep yourself cool enough and warm enough at the same time. Standing in fire makes your body overheat, draining your power cells, and will kill you of heat exhaustion. Staying underground or out in the elements at night can cause you to begin to freeze, and you can die of hypothermia as well.

The game is looking good already in its pre-alpha state, and I absolutely can't wait for the full release. Normally I'd say "don't buy this early access unless you're ready to deal with bugs," but in this case, the sooner you get it, the less you'll end up paying in the end. So it's at your discretion, buy now and save, or buy later for peace of mind.

Some of the features work, some of them don't, but you'll still find plenty to do in this game. Better pack yourself a lunch, because you're going to be playing this for long hours.

So far as I can tell, this game is dead. I take that from the forums which have virtually no activity, the complete lack of any reply to game breaking bugs (literally, I've got one right now which prevents me from performing the most basic initial operations and player progression).

Looks good, may be someday it'll be worth buying, but surely not now.

So I would love to give this a thumbs up, I really would. It has great potential However i purchased this back in July 2014 since then we have had a few minor updates havn't seen anything game progressing at al.

All of the current mobs are friendly
very low block count
Apart from building a some Automated mine there really isnt much to do, might as well just go play a certain other block based game,

Sorry but untill we start getting some decent/ more regular updates this is a no go.. This will be in Early access for a very long time to come.

You know those really grindy "free to play" MMOs where you have to do the exact same thing over and over again to get the cool stuff? This game is exactly that, but without any payoff whatsoever.

-Want to explore the wastly huge terrain, that is randomly generated to look exactly the same every single time?
-Sorry you can't do that cause you'll freeze to death in 2 minutes.

-Do you want to build the ever expanding factory of your dreams that produces all the cool stuff you could think of?
-Well you can't quite do that, but what you CAN do is run back and forth between your mining drills, and your ONE smelter for 10 hours straight to gather enough resources for 20 conveyor belts. YAAY!

This game is marketed as a HARDCORE base builder, which is all about automation, but in reality everything is way too resource expensive, and all the vital resources are too far apart. You'll literally have to spend at least 20 hours with hidiously boring grinding to make any form of automation possible.
If you want to play a basebuilder that isn't a minecraft clone but is ACTUALLY FUN TO PLAY, dont waste your time with this and go buy "Factorio" instead.

PS: I know this is just in early access, but that is not an excuse for not having actual gameplay.

There is not enough words to describe how AWSOME this game is even in early alpha state. There is no real combat (yet) but the single player survival mode is so damn fun i literaly stoped playing the MC(minecraft) ftb server i spent months setting up for this game. If you are a voxel/sandbox/survival fan of any sort or even if you are familiar with the concept i highly recommend this game it is worth every cent and then some.It is like a Fortresscraft original and MC modpacks had a baby and shot it up with steroids and it is only alpha the finished release will be godly compared to any sandbox type to date. The greatest thing about this game is the tech/research/automation system they have going on it is complex but at the time simple to understand the basics and i love the challange of the different enviromental hazards you have to counter
cold/heat so far have not come across any other types but the bases for other hazards are already implemented. So support this game if you read this review and like the sound of the game I know i will continue to support it!

Shows tons of promise, but be aware of what you're buying. This is an early alpha, basically a tech demo. There are no enemies to fight, no objectives, and no real challenge beyond not freezing to death (which ends at your first coal deposit.) You can mine iron and make fantastic machines, but the machines are largely for mining. And smelting... And making more machines to mine...

Some suggestions to the dev, who seems to be active on the steam community board (major plus):

Let me move my starter base. I've generated a half dozen worlds now and the game keeps putting my starter base in jaw-droppingly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ places that make getting back and forth frustrating.

Make wreckage from the station dot the planet surface. I really started enjoying Fortresscraft about two hours in, when I had iron and could build hoppers and coal power plants to automate the otherwise boring task of ferrying power (in me!) to my outlying extractors. I only had that iron because I spent 45 minutes digging straight down. Give the player some starter surface iron to make basic starting quality of life tools.

Let me use my grappling hook at all angles, not just higher than waist height. The grappling hook is a blast. This weird limitation is not.

Super short version: Look very closely at your early game. Fortresscraft is a ton of fun when you're throwing down fancy machinery, but in the first two hours when you're just hoofing it back and forth manually charging extractors it is boring.

This game has a lot of potential.

Once you create a world, You're thrown in with nothing but 9 pages of text telling you how to survive the first night.
It took me a few hours just to craft a single hopper using all the ingots I had.

Blocks break instantly and the building tool has no range, so accidentally breaking your machines happens a lot.

Also, Your spaceship does nothing and takes up a ton of space, Not to mention looks really out of place.
And it can't be moved.

Constructing a building is pointless, In some worlds it snows day and night, and snow clips through blocks.

The research table has a bunch of things you can search, with the exception of research points and power cost.
1) There is no explanation on how to get research points, They generate slowly it seems.
2) Power has a limit, but has no way to recharge it appart from letting it generate by itself
3) Projects that can be researched don't give any valuable information, They don't even tell you what it does.
4) Any recipies you research have no explanation of what the item does or how it's used.

The inventory screen is a little buggy, and like the crafting and research benches, It has no explanation of what the item does or how to use it

I do NOT recommend buying this game until a LOT more content has been added.

On a side note, The game does have a help button in the menu.
Clicking it does nothing.

Usually 1 minor super small update every, what 8 months?

Cons:

This game randomly hard-locks my computer. This happens with no other program and I have throughly tested my memory.

The menu does not pause the game, so you can die from adjusting settings (especially in the first 5 hours in a world).

You're in constant peril of death for the first several hours of the game and after patiently strategeicly attempting for almost 12 gameplay hours in a world, I just got to the point of crafting the first 2nd tier item. Survival is frustratingly slow.
You start with a single device to smelt ores, and to build another is a 3rd teir build and reportedly among the community takes roughly 30 hours of gameplay to get to. I have more than 20 hours and can still not yet survive going deep enough to *find* T3 resources.

Can very easily jump into a block and see through the level. There is even a four-click method to see through the world reliably at any time you want. Major game breaker.


Pros:

The mining is automated for the most part as you grow. Then the smelting becomes automated. Then the building.
Cool system, allows for huge top-end growth.

Really nice voxel graphics.


Summary:

The ore mining/energy/processing is a really cool idea, but this game has screwball glitches, partial graphics failures regularly, inventory failures often, and total system lockups on a healthy computer. Lets be honest, this is a minecraft clone, and not worth the money.

looks its a minecraft modpack