Demographic - 42 year old, woman, parent, college grad, full time job.
I found this game on Dec 8, 2024 - the day after I got my early Christmas present. I got an HP Omen laptop that can handle games so I can finally play stuff on Steam again. Since then, I’ve logged 103.5 hours on FF, usually an hour or two at a time after dinner when kid is in bed.
The good:
- the bones of the game are
awesome
and I’m really excited to see where it goes from here.
- response here on the forum when bugs are pointed out is great
- If the forager shack upgrade is any indication, the changes will be pretty as well as impactful for gameplay.
- the audio, music, sounds are truly great. It is ideal for relaxing after work and building a small city. I’ve never bought a game soundtrack, but I’d buy the background track from the game. It is perfect.
- The visuals are great. The art is well-done and appealing.
- I appreciate that I can select what kind of game to play and scale the complexity very easily. Since I’m using this game for relaxing, I play pacifist mode and just want to see how big and pretty a town I can build. If it was a really bad week, I can turn off crop diseases, etc and make it really easy. Appreciate that I have the option to do that (but it does mean making a new town).
The wish list:
- A place where popups like this are logged so I can go back to them. If i’m in the middle of something and I miss clicking on this notice, its a pain to go find the one work camp that needs work area redone.
- link the resource display icons to what I have on/off on my minimap. I like the icons on main map, but it gets so cluttered. If I’m trying to find iron only, wish I could turn just those on to find a spot more easily. Echoing someone else’s comment that these show up pretty small on my display.
- fishing shack placement. Why is this invalid? When I select the fishing shack, can the map have an overlay that shows me places to put it along water (like when a mine is selected and you get a colored overlay showing spots to put the mines?).
- can arborist work areas behave more like crop fields? The round circle is annoying as all get out and I hate having to place each tree. I’d rather specify a field to use and then what % of each kind of tree the arborist should manage.
- housing desirability and upgrade option. This could use an ease of use refinement. The color coding is helpful. But why is this one deep purple but not at same upgrade stage as the other one? I guess I’m not seeing / understanding the logic behind this status indicator.
- why do decorations not have the upgrade available icon like other structures?
- This is nitpicky, I’m sorry. I’d prefer matching red bricks on decorations and upgraded structures. Or if we’re getting very fancy, make it something we can choose when the final upgrade tier is reached so at that stage further customization for personal taste is an option.
- Why can I only sometimes go from construction info panel to main building production panel but not always? Bakery for example. I can go to build site from production panel but not back. Depending on where I click, I get one or the other window when upgrade work is in progress.
- Why can i not increase max cap of farmers here? Why do i have to go to each farm to add more worker slots?
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Schools - will further growth along this path add colleges or tech schools? I love to train engineers that work in mines to improve production rate and reduce rate of injury.
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My kiddo requests addition of pig farming
Might be a good option to allow for increased tallow resource production.
The two big topics:
Resource management
- I assume this is a UI scaling issue? in resource mgt panel, the details panel overlaps the place where i access this information. When I see how many saw pits I have built, I’d also like to know how many settlers are working at all these locations. Then if I’m low, I know I could add workers vs building another building.
- For single items critical to settler survival, would there be a way to see/know the monthly or annual demand vs production? For example firewood - how much does my town need now vs how much is my current production capacity? Am i running a deficit? I know this would be impossible for food stuffs since there are multiple options for that, but items like firewood, clothes, shoes, coats this should in principle be a known quantity (ie., I need 300 firewood per large house per year).
- when i’m in a production building using raw materials, the icon showing materials in storage could be a button or at least have a bit more info in the hover over tool tip. For example, if I’m wanting to know why they don’t have more iron ore, how much do I have in my entire settlement? Have the tool tip be “Iron Ore (150)”. Or have it open a small info panel with some details that include how much I have in all my storage locations, how many mines I have going, how many settlers are working to mine it.
- please give me a “Go To ___” button on this window. This would be especially helpful when i’m trying to find far-flung mines to check status, add workers, etc.
- Apiary is broken. I need waaaaaaaaay too many of them for even a moderate size town. The production rate should be a bit higher per building. On the flip side, the output from upgraded forager garden is a bit high.
Faming
- I’m really enjoying this part of the game. Needing to rotate crops, crop diseases, clay/sand optimizing of the soil are all great. I may have gone a little overboard and made myself an excel sheet that calculates how much I can plant per field per year, yield, 3 yr effect on fertility, soil preference per crop, etc.
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Irrigation would be an interesting option.
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Wish I had a “Remove all crops” button to fully wipe all allocations vs removing each thing one at a time. Wish the crop side panel was sorted/grouped by crop soil preferences.
- Wish I could name fields. I’d name according to what rotation I’m putting in place so when I’m looking here, I can see how many of each type i have in place at the moment. The scaling of this window vs others feels out of whack - its much bigger than others…