DarkSpar

This is a long term Idle game, that does not have an early gameplay loop.

At the start you can research (30 minutes), pick a character and have them gather (also 30 minutes) and build to unlock more buildings (also 30 minutes). Unlock a new character? 3 hours.

I am going to point out that there are lots of long term idle games, but many of them have an earlier gameplay loop. The fact that there is going to be nothing interesting for the player to do for around an hour is a flaw.

The game needs an early game tutorial/gameplay loop where you can experience some aspect of the game early.

Also, no auto save function? It just fastforwards from a save file that I have to constantly manually save? This is not a good idea for this genre of game.

I like the themes, I think the map is cool, I think the game lacks a lot of polish.

In my opinion, this is an ok start but lacks a lot of pacing and depth that other idle games might offer. It is because of these factors that I don't think the game is currently worth 10 dollars. I will look at it again with any updates made to the game.

Edit: Adding to this review due to developer comments in other areas.

The developer linked a post in the discussion boards about how the text guide was a replacement for a tutorial or intro to mechanics. No its not. If the game is unintuitive enough that it needs a guide like this just to be able to tell what resources actually are or basic game functions, then it is a flaw.

Devloper responded that it takes less than 30 minutes to build the first building. Sure, if you know exactly where to click to gather, which resource to go for, how to select your hero and send him there, it takes less than that (1 resource every 5 minutes which slightly improves over time, so 200 would take slightly less than 14 minutes, and then there is 5 for it to build. So lets go with 19 minutes. What did you unlock? Oh, now there are other building to purchase, which again are more long term idle components and the graphic changed a bit. The point is not the time, the point is that the pacing of the game is poor and could be better. Is the intended gameplay to launch the game then to read the text guide on the forums?

I am pointing out that this developer criticism of this issue is because the developer is blind to this feedback on their game. They understand the systems, they don't need to know which resource is which or how new areas unlock. The playerbase does.

The game is a long term idle game where the gameplay has an incredibly slow start and that pace never changes other than to get longer and longer. New tier of items cool, now we make iron swords, but the gameplay is still the same and its not very engaging.

I will be re-reviewing the game if their is an update to it, but based on the responses the developer has made on reddit, I do not have a positive expectancy.

-End of edited review.

not enough interraction for me. Feels much more idle with not much decision making. Research is really slow and there are only a couple of options at a time. Combat also feels really slow with a 10 second timer per action that you have no control over. If I'm watching an auto battle I'd rather just watch it battle not check back every so often to see if It's progressed.

There's random 10 second pauses for various popups and things which seems weird. The game is already glacially slow so pausing progression for 10 extra seconds feels kinda needless and bad.

Seems like there's some great foundation here but things need to be sped way up with a lot more decision making for it to be engaging for me. I don't see myself opening the game again after today unless big changes are made.

meh.

I would've refunded this but I accidentally left it running for too long. $10 is an insane price for this game.