Avaliações

• gamedeal user

  Jul 1, 2021

  [h1]The King of Medieval township games[/h1] I really like medieval games that feature hard labour instead of wizards and magic. I've tried Banished and Foundation, and while these games were [i]good[/i], Ostriv comes along and smacks them both. There are a few cool features that I didn't see listed in the game description or from reviews so i'll state them now before getting stuck in. [h1]Amazing Animations[/h1] I was immediately blown away when I saw the first buildings going up. They are animated PIECE by piece, meaning you get to see every panel, plank & clay wall being put up. This must be utterly painstaking to animate and plan for in the modelling process. Foundation, timber and then interior walls - you gotta see it in action. There's no 'banging a corner with a hammer', each part of the building is carried (by hand, cart and eventually wagon) to the construction site, and then erected by the workers once all materials have been received. I LOVE when games do this, it gives a real sense of immersion. Bravo to the solo developer for these amazing animations. It's even better than Soviet Republics construction process. [h1]Farming and Soil management[/h1] Your farms take a little bit of planning in Ostriv due to crops eating the plotted farms nutrition. You have to cycle between crops to not use up the fertility of the fields. If you do, you have to miss a year by making the field fallow so the fertility can regenerate. Fallow means dead for those who don't know. Thankfully, when you eventually get livestock - you can set your animal barns to use these fallow fields to help with the regeneration. Also, when you have ploughs (you need animals for them), ploughing makes fertility more efficient. It may sound daunting but it's really not, I highly advise looking on the wiki for a great image of meta crop cycles. Make this the first thing you do if you want to get stuck in. Using cattle to help the farms is an awesome feature, If you have a full farms on the go you can also make dedicated pastures for them. It's a simple toggle switch on the animal buildings to 'allow fallow field pastures'. [h1]Modular Housing[/h1] There are two choices of houses in this game, one is just a house by itself and the other contains a garden. The garden house allows you to not only move the house in the construction plot via pins, but also you can move the fences too which allows custom garden sizes and shapes. This lets you have beautiful housing sections in your town, and the gardens are important because the villagers will grow their own crops/food in their plots for themselves. You can also set your granaries to buy from locals for their sweet vegetables/honey at a cost of course. A very organic and cool system, probably my favourite if I had to say. No need to painstakingly decorate each house with fences/plants because the villagers do it for you. Houses look organic all fenced together with plants/food growing - it's very satisfying right out the gate. [h1]Dynamically formed paths[/h1] I've seen this in Foundation but Ostriv does a better job. There's no need to plot paths as your villagers will wear down the terrain to form eventual paths. This gives your village another +1 in the organic-look department. Worth highlighting because it's just another immersive feature in the game. I'm fairly certain paths fade too, so if you have built something afar, it will eventually settle back down to one singular main path, rather than all the trails from the construction workers, if that makes sense. [h1]Easy villager & Job management[/h1] I liked Banished but juggling labourers and active jobs became very annoying in the mid game. Ostriv keeps it simple by having labourers as a separate type of job. You assign paid workers to buildings, but labourers are basically freelance workers that automatically are called upon once needed from your unemployed pool; They are useful for a lot of buildings! These guys are the life savers of your farms and transport related buildings (Moving food/items etc). Charcoal burners for example, do not have a dedicated job-slot so are reliant on labourers. It just feels right, and how a village would be run. There's no annoying gaping holes in the workforce like in Banished. Initially when you start you may struggle with people leaving jobs, but with the Town Hall you can adjust wages up a few % so people don't leave critical roles (Farm Manager, Boat builder, 2 Lumber dudes). Just keep building houses so you have labourers ready to slot in when needed. Certain job roles can only be performed by men, which leaves a large women labour-force. I highly recommend using women for Granary work/markets/farm labour. It's good to have a few unemployed women for these purposes. The town hall will allow you to see the unemployment rate. [h1]Villagers are named and are smart[/h1] I like it when NPCs are named and have families in games. They grow old and die and their kids take over. Time passes month to month for a whole year in Ostriv so granted this takes a while. Your villagers go about their business each day and also take rest which is essentially the games form of sleeping. Fun random praise: BENCHES are actually animated and are functional for resting periods. I haaaate when city builder decoration objects are not used and accounted for mechanically! So bravo again for this. Villagers will go to your markets to buy food and clothing (important, because if they don't have clothes, they'll move out) and do their job. They can become destitute if they don't earn money, but you can throw them 5.00 coins to sort them out if you desire. They will complain about lack of food variety but I don't think there are any adverse effects or happiness stats/efficiency mechanics yet. As long as they have food you're good. [h1]It never feels easy, in a good way[/h1] Foundation & Banished kind of reach a point where things are easy, you have huge surplus of everything, but there's a sense of dread every year in Ostriv. Do we have wheat for the animals? Sunflowers for selling?! Did I remember to check the farm cycles before spring? There are finite elements of the production processes in this game. Limestone is limited which is used a little later into your villages life, and things like salt/cloth production are reliant on a mid/late game product-chain. You HAVE to trade Iron because there are no iron deposits or infinite mines [yet?]. I kind of like this as trading is essential for survival at times. My tanners are slow AF so I'm always buying in Iron & Leather because the curing process takes 6 months and metal is always being produced for cart repairs and horse tack stuff. You will need to buy buy buy. Thankfully everything is cheap and you never feel too cheated. Trading really feels like medieval trading like a real village would of done back in the day [i'm assuming]. You can also sell stuff to other villages with trade posts/docks. Buying livestock, selling stuff you've grown/made. My tip for you early would be to invest in sunflower oil. Grow sunflowers, make them into Oil & Sell. It's the easiest of the trades and if someone wants 3000 Oil, it's a good 400 coins which is very good; this leads me into my next segment... [h1]Productions feel limited & Trades can be difficult early on[/h1] For now, the game is heavily reliant on food and animal produce for trade goods. Despite what I said about liking trading, I really hope there are some more early game options such as foraging and creating low-tier products for sale. A starting village won't have much to trade. The best basic thing I've found is Charcoal, and eventually Sunflower oil. Charcoal is pretty much unlimited due to the foresters being able to build sustainable tree-nurseries which in of itself is another great mechanic in this game I wanted to fit into this review. I have to cut this short but AMAZING game, lots to come and it's in active development.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 4, 2020

  Much like Cities Skylines is the spiritual successor to Sim City 4. Ostriv is the spiritual successor to Banished. Years ago I gave Life is Feudal: Forest Village, a 'finished' game with a similar premise, a negative review for bugs and imbalanced gameplay loop. However, Ostriv receives my positive endorsement in an alpha state. If all that were to happen from Alpha 3 to final release was to close some game play loops and production lines then this will be an incredible game. However, it seems that the developer has much more in mind and makes me both hopeful and excited for future updates. This is a strong economic city building game in the same way that Dawn of Man is a robust survival city building game. This game rises above the failures and catastrophes of games like LOF:Forest Village, or Sim City 2013. If you like Dawn of Man, Cities Skylines, Banished, Frostpunk. or Surviving Mars (which this game seems to be heading toward this echelon of quality) then this is a game where you should support the developer and try for yourself.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 30, 2020

  Overall, this game is amazing! Especially for being an early access game, the amount of detail in the design and mechanics of the game is impressive. Here's what I like and a couple things I'm hoping to see in the future: LOVE: - Supply chain mechanics for resources (food, clothes, materials) is really in-depth and provides a level of challenge as it takes realistic amounts of resources, buildings, and workers to produce items like flour or nails for example. - I really like the immigration requirements. It's a lot more real with food, job availability, etc. whereas in other games all you need is available housing and they just show up. - I think the trade system being based off the demand of other towns is really neat. It requires you to be a bit more strategic with trade - The style of the buildings and game is super cool Things I'd like to see in the future: - Stuff they're still working on like additional buildings, health/education, etc. - It'd be cool to choose what the houses look like in terms of variety - I wish I could store more resources in the trade building or at least be able to build a trade auxillary or something to store more resource types to account for trade Something that's worth noting, the developers of this game have been very transparent and clearly working hard to release updates and provide info of what's next. I'm excited to see where this game goes and can't wait to play it more as it develops.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 1, 2022

  Really enjoy this game. Stay safe Yevheniy. The world is with you.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 26, 2023

  Based devs releasing a major update while in the middle of an active warzone.Buy the game to support them.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 20, 2020

  If you looked at the Steam/Valve description of this, you would see the developers's ideas, as well as the reviews of comparisons to other simulations like Cities: Skylines, Dawn of Man, Cities in Motion, Banished, Transport Fever, and the most like Workers & Resources: Soviet Republik. It seems like a mix of all of them. I'll list what it has, for you to see what to expect (Some of the simulations I listed wouldn't compare - such as, it is not a tower defense game). The timeline is indeed starting in the 1800's. Tutorial. W-A-S-D, Q-E, Zoom-Recede. Great graphics. Great music. Different game speeds. Seasons. Years. Individual character names, skills, home/work/entertainment, & family trees. Needs. Births. Old age. Able to see architecture blueprints, supply, needs, & construction. Resources grow back. Trees, animals, fish. Choices of crops. Trade with other towns, markets, barter system. Roads & bridges. Disasters. Disease. Unhappiness. Government. Religion. Education. You decide what you want to upgrade. And that's an Alpha review from someone not paid to play! ~Pozzy Thump
• gamedeal user

  Aug 12, 2022

  I really like this game. Its relaxing, fun and watching the buildings be built really is amazing. Dev is still hard at work, even if a war rages. Recomended.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 21, 2020

  (Please ignore the low amount of playtime. Family sharing my library requires me to stay offline. Blame COVID-19) For quite some time I never imagined anything knocking the crown of the king of the survival city builder from off the head of Banished. For a while I thought the title may be claimed by LIF: Forest Village, but after development of that game was eventually abandoned (sadly) no other serious contenders came forth...until now. Ostriv is a game like few others, a survival city builder. As previously mentioned, it was made famous by Banished back in 2014 where you build a town and have to keep your citizens alive by providing food/clothing/heat/etc. However, it is not an easy genre to get right as make it too easy and it becomes a bore, but make it too difficult and it becomes impossible. Ostriv manages to thread that narrow gap pretty well. One of my absolute favorite features, and one I can't recall seeing in any other game other than Stonehearth, is seeing your citizens build every building piece by piece. I was delighted when I put down my first forestry that the actual timber foundation pieces were placed one at a time. The deck frame was built timber by timber. It was wonderful to watch and a little detail that shows just what kind of game Ostriv is striving to be: slow paced but active. Another feature that I see rarely is pathfinding based roads. Meaning, you the player do not place roads but they form naturally based on the paths the citizens find. It is gradual and I didn't realize it happened at first, but I eventually started to see the paths the citizens themselves created. You will never really be able to create nice grid-based settlements, but they will appear more organic than contrived. Some other great features: - Full production chains (eg. iron + charcoal = nails). - AI automation is pretty well done. There is little micromanagement that I saw. - Trade with other settlements. - Builders will build based on what materials they already have on site and focus on one project at a time. - Disused paths will disappear. - The game tells you what you need, but...(see below). - Current Alpha is better than many finished games. Some things that are not quite so good: - Tutorial is not that great and the game is unforgiving. It has a nasty habit of telling you you are short on some material when it is almost too late. For example, I was told I needed a smith because I was running short on nails, but didn't have enough nails to build said smith. - Only four maps (currently) is a little bit of a bummer. - Limestone is hard to get. - I still don't know where to get iron from. - Building styles are a bit lacking. Now I realize this takes place in Ukraine and the buildings are styled around that, but I get bored with my towns looking the same all over. If the devs keep doing what they're doing my cons list will likely get shorter and shorter. This is an amazing alpha that looks far better than many finished games, so they are doing very well so far. So time will tell, but Banished has another contender finally for King of the Survival Citybuilders.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 16, 2022

  I bought the game years ago and played it for for a good while. I was like: Okay, it's playable, it's great. Let's wait until this guy adds more content and take a second look in a few years. The war happened. I don't care how long it takes to finish the game. It will be forever a testament of the beauty of Ukraine and it's great people. Playing it is still therapeutic. Just stay safe Yev. Slava Ukraini
• gamedeal user

  Sep 29, 2022

  I don't even have enough words to describe how much I love this game! Everything in it is perfect. Yes, it's still in early access, yes, the developer is now more focused on staying alive than updating the game, but even now it's absolutely incredible. I love the attention to detail in everything - from graphics to being as realistic as possible. Little things like the addition of flowers in front of houses create a cozy, warm environment of the whole settlement. You wish you actually lived in that village! I bought this game several years ago, played almost 700 hours at the time of writing this, and I still go back to this game again and again. I wish the developer long years of life and endless creativity to continue working on this masterpiece!