This went from tentative for a for sure recommendation! The game is still incomplete (story-wise, not enough furniture, stuff like that), but the devs obviously care A LOT about the game. I see them active all the time in the Discord, and they take note of every bug, plus they interact with their gamers quite a lot. The game has a lot of content already, with a big continent to explore and multiple quests you can do. The main story isn't finished yet, but that's fine given it's early access. The game has five or six shops you can build up and decorate and run to five stars! I'm also playing alone, so my experience may differ from others. It can have up to eight people. Now, with that stuff out of the way: Wow, this game is pretty fun! Since I'm playing alone, I appreciate that I can hire SO MANY employees. I do wish they were better - the cashiers seem to barely do their jobs even with the shop trait to make them work 90% faster on. Stockers are also not particularly great; since they can only carry one item at a time, regardless of size, they can barely keep up with demand. The resource gathering isn't too grindy at all, which I really appreciate! So far, there hasn't really been a resource that I've just absolutely dreaded getting, either due to difficulty or the grind, which is great. My biggest complaint here is that trees are a PITA to cut down - once the tree is felled, you're left with a stump which you can't hit until the tree gets out of the way. If they changed this so the falling tree didn't block your axe, it'd be even better! I do wish there were better backpacks. So far, most backpacks I've found have been 2 slots, and you can only equip one, but it takes the same slot as, say, a lantern, making it not the greatest. A dedicated backpack slot would be great. The best backpack I've found so far has been four slots, so it's worth carrying around, but it's still a pain - to open it, you have to place it on the ground and interact with it. A dedicated backpack button would be a better system to access the backpacks. Speaking of storage, there's plenty of crates and stuff you can make, which is great! What's lacking, however, is a "stack to nearby" button that I find integral in survival games and I often mod in if it's missing. Or even a button per crate to "store similar", etc. Sadly, this game doesn't have mods yet, so I'm stuck manually placing things in their designated crates. Not a deal breaker, but it would be a nice feature! The research table is honestly a pain. Thank goodness the wiki has an interactable research table module; it's been helping me a great deal. A different method would be better, although I'm unsure what -- maybe categories, drop down menus, etc? Bigger pictures? All I know is I don't really like the current table, like at all. I love the fact that I can sell (so far) literally anything at my shop. A rock I picked up on the ground? Sure. A piece of bamboo? Why not. A gun I took from a corpse? Absolutely! The shoppers do request items, but overall you can do whatever you want. There's a few different shelves etc., you can use, but I do wish there were more for large items. I also wish you could craft the food displays from the tutorial. On the topic of food, there's great potential here. I've seen ovens, stoves, rice cookers, tea makers, coffee makers, wine barrels, even a pasta maker! They're planning on expanding the cooking system, which I'm excited for! You can cook quite a bit now, but the rice cooker and pasta maker don't have a use yet. Yay, stealing stuff! The lockpicking is really finicky, and high-level locks are really hard at low-level lockpicking. Skill issue? Maybe. As you level it up, though, it becomes easier. If people catch you lockpicking, they yell at you - if you apologize, they go away, but if they catch you again, they start fighting you (in my experience). I killed SO MANY people in the tutorial on accident. I've also had the lawman come up to me and demand money from me for my crimes, although I'm unsure which crime he's talking about.. Shops also have perks you can learn to specialize your shop. The perks, so far, have been interesting! You can specialize into smaller items, larger items, hand-crafted items; you can accept more people into your shop while either increasing or decreasing the flow; and there are perks to enhance your employees, too. I never specialize, but I appreciate the option to. The building is pretty decent. You can designate floor space to different things such as walkways, employee-only, the shop, and "needs", i.e. bathroom, food, water. You can even build multi-story buildings. There's also things like wallpaper to help customize your store more. I finally built and decorated two shops, and they look pretty good! Again, I wish there was more variety, but it is early access :) I still wish the diagonal pieces were better! There's no diagonal floors or anything, so they're difficult to work with. The crafting tables can definitely be janky. For a while, I thought my resources were straight disappearing, because the crafting table would be paused and despite canceling the crafts I wouldn't get my resources back. Turns out the crafting tables have their own inventory that you have to access by enabling the "continuous craft" thing, which is where most of my "lost" resources ended up. A different system here would be splendid, but again, I'm not sure how. Crafting already takes resources from nearby chests, which is a MUST in any crafting game IMO! Combat can be a little janky, but isn't too bad overall. There's perfect blocks (which are really easy to do; this isn't a soulslike) that can block melees and give you a counterattack, but also reflect bullets which is really fun! I've seen a decent variety of weapons too: melee weapons; crossbows; magic; guns; MORTARS! I haven't used one yet, but oh boy. When you get overrun by enemies, it can be really annoying, but if you just spam your block button you should come out OK. Health regenerates slow, but cooked food replenishes health so it's fine! Some things I wish were explained better. For example, the trash can in your inventory; it's not a trash can explicitly, but it scraps items for you. I was super stuck at the beginning of the game because I never had any scrap bars and had to look it up, but yeah; drop unwanted tools, weapon, armor, or furniture in that slot and you get scrap! If that was in the tutorial anywhere, I sure missed it (which wouldn't be surprising; I'm a lil' dumb). The story is interesting too. Definitely better than you would expect from a shopkeeping game! Currently, my biggest gripe about the game is the day/night cycle. I don't care what the devs say, night is way too long in this game, and you don't have a way to change the day/night cycle in the server settings. Definitely do the tutorial when you play; you get a cute reward at the end :) (It's not tutorial exclusive, but it's free!)
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