[h2] The Brief Rundown: 85% [/h2]
Odd Realm is a wonderful "Dwarf-Like" settlement game that continues to evolve for the better. I've played much of my time in earlier builds, and have so far spent time playing as the leader of the Humans, Ancients, and Gwdir races, so having spent time with most of the races, as well as 133 hours (at the time of this review), I felt I could give a fair review. In case you aren't interested in reading the whole review, the short of it is that I would give the game a 34/40, and recommend it at full price.
[h2] Complete thoughts on the game [/h2]
Unknown Origin Games Inc. took what I loved about my time tinkering with Dwarf Fortress and obsessive time playing RimWorld and managed to blend the elements of both in a game that is pleasing to play while maintaining a fair difficulty curve. Each race has its own benefits and seem to be well balanced. For instance:
[b] Humans [/b] tend to play as you would expect with a basic metabolism, reproduction that involves families having their own private homes, and they tend to benefit more from gathering resource jobs.
[b] Ancients [/b] are immortal skeleton people who can't reproduce, but never age nor need to eat. They rely on immigration, finding underground tombs on the map, and summoning creatures and constructs to help them build their kingdoms. They have a bonus to magic combat given their mastery of the Void.
[b] Ardyn [/b] are a very interesting race that I hope to delve into soon that don't need to eat, and they age at a faster rate, but they also capture creatures to use magic to steal their "time" from them so that they don't die of "old age." They are another race that doesn't reproduce naturally, but requires an Ardyn corpse to make children.
[b] Gwdir [/b] are, perhaps, my favorite race so far. This race depends on a queen to nurture a special tree, the T'Thdir, in order to create a new biome within a map that allows them to grow new citizens and special resources to make items that only their race can create. Otherwise, they eat food as humans do, but do live longer than humans as well.
[b] Tomek [/b] are also an interesting race. If you took a dwarf and a Goron and smushed them together, you'd have the Tomek. They love living in underground keeps, are miners, tougher, and eat rocks instead of "normal" food like humans and Gwdir. They are also long lived like the Gwdir are, and their unique method of reproduction is sacrificing an adult Tomek to make new children.
Mechanically, the game plays very similar to other settlement sims. You have limited control over what your people can do, often only ordering them to move or attack directly, and you have them work by designating professions, priorities, and placing a blueprint of what you want done somewhere on your settlement map. Stray animals and people will often wander into the map, sometimes violent other times neutral, and you can choose to interact with them or will have to defend your people from them. The building is very similar to Dwarf Fortress in that you can designate structures to be built on the Z-axis as well as the X and Y, and assign rooms their function and place blueprints to make work stations.
There is also a newer element that I haven't engaged with that adds a 4X element to the game as well. You can use parties to leave your settlement and explore to look for neighboring cities to meet for trading or war, and you can expand your kingdoms' influence on the map. This is a mechanic that I also have to play with soon, and I'm excited to engage with it.
As a settlement sim, there is a learning curve. At the beginning, things will seem overwhelming, so I recommend not getting too involved in your first couple settlements while you learn how the UI operates. Additionally, I did have a minor issue with some of the UI tooltips being a little vague. The first time I attempted to plant a T'Thdir tree, for example, it said nothing about sunlight being required for it to grow so I thought it would be best to plant it under ground. After wasting my seeds and starting over, I tried it top side and it worked just fine. Definitely user error since I thought I was being smart, but, it never hurts to add in a warning about it needing to be above ground! Comparatively, I do find this game to be much easier to get into and play than Dwarf Fortress due to its much easier to read UI, mostly self-explanatory functions of items and room placement, and a basic 1-3 (one being the lowest) priority system to set up duties for your settlers. While I wouldn't say the game is "beginner friendly," I can say that it is easy enough to learn quickly for someone used to the concept, but far from impossible for someone new to the genre to pick up and learn!
[h1] The Score Breakdown (AKA, numbers!): [/h1]
[u] Gameplay: [/u] 10
[b] 5 [/b] - Game has a consistent style and theme that doesn't vary wildly to confuse the player in its setting and
scope.
[b] 3 [/b] - There has been no issues with the game mechanically or with unintended player progress blocking
(invisible walls, clipping, etc)
[b] 2 [/b] - The game has been completely stable with no crashes, freezes, lag, or hangs.
[u] Sound: [/u] 9
[b] 5 [/b] - The style of music, ambience, and UI sounds is consistent and has no strange unexpected deviancies.
The music is great and fits along with the bit-era style of the game and doesn't tire the ears too quickly,
while the environment noise like rain and crickets is pleasing to the ear.
[b] 4 [/b] - Honestly, the sound engineering is done very, very well. The only major issue I have is with some of
the audio balance as to get the volume of the music where it didn't feel loud comparative to the rest of
my system, the master volume was at 60% and the music volume was nearly 10%. Otherwise, no
crackling or other errors.
[u] Controls [/u] 7
[b] 2 [/b] - The UI is done very well, but it did have some issues that I keep running into where the icons don't make much sense to me at a glance. The Settlement Overview has tabs that are showing pictures that aren't exactly easy to deduce based on the picture and could probably stand to just have a text label put on it instead.
[b] 1 [/b] - There is some basic HUD customization such as resizing windows in game, but the rebinding isn't intuitive. Rather than allowing a complete rebind of a key command, the game allows you to make entire new hotkey groups and disable the default key. I feel it would be more prudent to just allow the default to be changed and allow a "reset to default" be at the bottom rather than a cluttery list in the hotkey systems. Additionally, the colors are also distracting and make the options blend together.
[b] 2 [/b] - The controls are very responsive in the general gameplay with no issues to report.
[b] 2 [/b] - Ergonomically, the controls feel comfortable. You can play the game with mouse and keyboard, just a keyboard, or even just a mouse (minus any typing such as names). No complaints here!
[u] Graphics: [/u] 8
[b] 4 [/b] - The graphic style is consistent and has no major variations to pull a player out of the gameplay unnaturally.
[b] 2 [/b] - While I love the game's pixelated style, it can be difficult to spot the difference between my characters and someone they're fighting unless I'm very zoomed in.
[b] 2 [/b] - There are no issues with graphical designs when it comes to things like screen tearing.
