It’s a clicker game, but one that becomes more annoying the longer you play because it adds unnecessary and overly convoluted mechanics that constantly slow the gameplay down. The world is a frozen land divided into several patches, each with a resource source in the center. Clicking on a source spawns resources. You start with wood and rocks, then eventually move on to copper, gold, different types of trees, and various plants. However, only the basic resource spots can be mined at first, while the others require upgraded tools.
One problem that becomes frustrating almost immediately is the lack of a map or any kind of fast travel system. Every time you need a specific resource, you have to move the camera across the frozen landscape to find it. The sources are scattered everywhere, and while you’ll eventually memorize the common ones, you’ll constantly forget where the less frequently used resources are located.
Then there’s the interface, which somehow makes even basic actions feel tedious. Left clicking on a source creates a resource, but instead of collecting it automatically, or even by simply moving your cursor over it, you have to pick it up with the right mouse button. This becomes especially annoying because nearly every mechanic in the game revolves around collecting different materials and personally carrying them from one place to another.
Basic resources are only the beginning. Progress quickly depends on processed materials made through buildings like furnaces, which create various ingots, and saws, which produce planks and stone blocks. There’s also a bonfire that exists just to produce water, along with a forge that lets you craft better tools needed for gathering advanced resources.
Buildings can be placed anywhere, but if you want to make the game even slightly less irritating, you’ll need to build multiple copies of the same structure for different recipes. For example, you practically need ten forges because switching production always requires opening the recipe menu and manually changing what the building creates.
The recipe menu itself is another example of poor design. It’s small, cluttered, and forces you to scroll endlessly instead of displaying everything on one page. With saws, for instance, you’ll likely dedicate one to regular planks, another to stone blocks, a third to frost planks, and so on. To make matters worse, once a building is placed, it can never be moved or even removed. You can build replacements closer to resources later, but the old structures just sit there permanently, taking up space and serving no purpose.
As mentioned earlier, every crafting process requires you to personally deliver materials to each building. Once supplied, the building will continue producing items until resources run out. The problem is that managing all these production chains becomes a huge chore, constantly forcing you to run back and forth between resource nodes and crafting stations.
Resources are also needed for the talent tree, which offers small quality-of-life upgrades. You begin with things like increased carrying capacity, then unlock auto-clicking so you no longer have to spam the mouse button, along with upgrades that reduce the number of clicks needed to generate resources. Each upgrade can be purchased multiple times to improve efficiency, but the material costs become increasingly expensive and time-consuming to produce.
Overall, the game simply isn’t fun. It takes the basic satisfaction of a clicker game and buries it under excessive micro-management, repetitive busywork, and mechanics that waste far more time than they add enjoyment.
