Inclement

From humble beginnings, in Inclement you set up to build a farm in the harsh wildlands of the north

This is a light strategy/production management game. You begin with a small plot of land, initially only producing grain and selling it in the town.

You can construct buildings that allow storing more grain, hiring more workers or otherwise increase profits. Eventually, you can buy more land and expand to cattle and oil business.

From micromanaging to the grander schemes

Initially, there's some micromanagement: while the grain, wood and stones (and later oil) are always automatically gathered, you at first have to go to town and sell your meagre grain stocks yourself. Later, contracts allow selling more grain (and oil) at once every few months (essentially required for larger quantities), and late-game merchant fleets allow you to ship them yourself, at a better profit.

There's some waiting, as the months and years fly past and you wait for the funds for the next building, upgrade or expansion.

The enjoyable, fitting set of string/piano tracks provide suspense, though there's only a real losing chance (due to bankruptcy) close to the beginning, if you overspend or otherwise expand too much before the revenue can handle it.

Indeed, the very late-game resembles an incremental/clicker game. It becomes rather repetitive: each upgrade requires building materials, so you go to town, buy them, upgrade the item and wait until funds replenish for the next cycle. But I think this is okay: by that time, the most everything has been done and the game is at the end.

Clumsy UI

Part of the difficulty comes from the user interface: the farm is navigated with WASD or arrows, left and right navigating the lands and up and down for the various menus. There's no mouse support nor native gamepad support.

There's relatively lot of options, so it's confusing at first. Most buildings can be upgraded, and the main building lets you go to the town, with an assortment of buildings with special options.

To get you started, there's a quest list that acts as a tutorial, but this becomes obsolete after a while since it keeps suggesting old stuff that's already done. Though after a bit this tutorial element has lived its need anyway.

This all takes a bit of getting used to, but afterwards it works splendidly.

Active developers

On my second playthrough (first to the end), I encountered a bug and couldn't build a second oil tower. This bug was promptly fixed, so thank you devs.

One thing that was confusing was that you can expand the farm by auctioning more land. You "bid" money until you win the auction. However, there's no feedback whether you're soon winning or otherwise making "the other side" sweat by your rises. So this could've used some improvement.

The End

Game begins at 1832 and ends in 1939. As the game goes on, month by month, you experience building up a striving farming community, with yourself as its lord.

Unfortunately, while the upgrades emergently simulate progress, the age and the technology could've been more integral part of the game. There's no events associated with certain years, unless the fluctuating prices are considered. This feels like a missed opportunity: especially various wars (like WW1) surely affected farming communities in meaningful ways.

I played it through thrice. There's a different ending associated with how far you made it before 1939. My first game (or maybe two or three) was a quick bankruptcy, when I overspent and hired too many workers. The second game I did well, but only in the third and last game I got the main building fully upgraded before 1939 and got the millionaire ending. Both full games lasted about about 3 hours.

All achievements work and can be gained in a single playthrough. Also, if you're mostly interested in them, you'll be pleased to know that for them there's no rush nor time limit as you can continue after 1939. The end date only triggers the ending.

Inclement is a fine, albeit simplistic, management game at a very affordable price (it's surprising it wasn't €5 at base). I recommend it, as long as you think you can work around the retroisque graphics and UI.

~Twistorian Curator~

-Quick Review-
Within seconds of loading the game I thought "oh no...", then I proceeded to try to figure out how to "SELECT" a thing, after stumbling over the god awful UI for a few minutes, I succeeded in bankrupting myself and gave serious consideration to uninstalling and deleting Inclement from my steam account forever.
...Then something clicked and I understood the controls, and I realized what Inclement actually was: an idle farming game with bear-bones-pixel-graphics. ...Then I harnessed the power of leaving the game up throughout the day, and I became the wealthiest farm owner ever.

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: February 2nd 1832... you invest all of your life savings on a plot of land and small house in northern Europe.

...please don't do that ladies and gentlemen, unless you actually know what you're getting into, or have some kind of safety net. Or else you'll end up like my character did... bankrupt and walking into the sunset with only a package of cigarettes'.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328324066

Gameplay: When you first start the game you're hit with a control screen which looks about as engaging as reading aircraft stats... Yes I actually tried that when I was in highschool.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328323613

The font is tough to read and the controls are weird. Here's my attempt to explain the controls:
A and D are to move to the East and West VIEW. Think of these keys as camera control.
Q is your "starting quest" advice. After you build the first few things, you can safely forget this key is even in your keyboard.
H is a key to bring up this god awful visual if you forget, promptly forget that key is on your keyboard too.
E is how you select a building. There's a faint line at the bottom-center of the screen, you'll always select whatever is there. Then move to a new building with A or D and press E to select that building.
Shift confused me because I thought it made TIME go by faster... nope. It makes you scroll faster with A and D.
And lastly your arrow keys are used to navigate menus and Enter is pressed to select an option.

If you look at the visual you might notice they're all color coordinated... but that didn't help me at all. My eyes glazed over and I thought "What is this crap?" ...After getting used to it I get it now... but... man this graphic is one of the hardest I've ever tried to understand for controls. I'd rather have a standard key binding menu.

The rest of the game is just resource management... but very easily done. Just don't overspend later on in the game. I almost bankrupted my 3 hour game because I bought something without having enough money... you can buy stuff early but you go into the negatives, if you're in the negatives for a year you lose and your game is deleted.

Conclusion: It's weird to me... I was venomously angry with this game at first... but then once I realized it was a minimal effort idle resources management game where I can grab the achievements quickly and be on my merry way...

I'm strangely okay with it. a 1 dollar steam game with achievements that I picked up for free on my steam curator page... Take that as you will, hopefully this review has been helpful! If you want to hear my ramble and see gameplay I've attached a video at the bottom of this review. Thanks for reading!

Unscripted Thoughts Video:
https://youtu.be/n7HC0re5jss

I wish there was a neutral option for reviews. The new font makes the game playable. UI/QOL could be improved, particularly in navigation and menus. Some balancing would make the game better.