Fun game, needs some balance and tweaking of progression mechanics
The best description I've come up with so far for Whiskerwood is Timberborn but with colonialism. The added mechanic of colonial overlords and a tribute/payment system is an interesting spin that shifts your focus from pure production like in Timberborn to more of a resale production focus. It's an interesting take on the colony sim genre that has some merit to it, but the current state needs a lot of balancing to make the crafting and building progression feel more consistent.
I notice a lot of the reviews want this to be more Timberborn like in its mechanics, and to some extent I agree. That said, Whiskerwood IS different, and some of the ways it differs I tend to like. Don't buy this game if you're expecting Timberborn but with mice - that's not what it is.
Disclaimer: I've only reached t3 research so this is only a partially informed review
Overall: 7.5/10 in current state
Things I like
- Overall fun gameplay
- The more hands on management of colony residents and an ability to control overall buffs/abilities/assignments is nice, and gives the colony a bit more immersion
- Animations and audio are both fairly good, and building models are mostly interesting looking
- Lots of ability to customize appearance of your colony
- There's some fun hidden/less than obvious mechanics that feel rewarding to discover (mushrooms, for example)
- The overall crafting/building levels are pretty robust, and you can progress through research (kind of) freely at each tier based on your colony's needs.
- There's some decent challenge to effectively balancing your colony and keeping the Meows paid, which keeps building more interesting than just slapping buildings down.
Things that need more time in the oven/feedback for devs
- The progression just isn't there yet mechanically. It's all bound behind a single material, and feels too linear currently. More variety in materials required for progressing research, the ability to queue research, and making sure that foundational building items are available earlier would all go a long way in balancing this
- The day end interruption gets quite immersion breaking the further you get into the game. This is more of a shop sim concept than a colony sim concept, and I really hope the game makers either do away with it or give us an ability to auto-skip it since it feels very out of place. It serves no gameplay purpose at all other than keeping you aware of passing days, and all the information it provides is already readily available in more detail in the regular UI.
- Binding more advanced building behind an item you can only get through very expensive trade until very late game is an odd decision, and I think this mechanic needs to be revisited. Shipments should be dedicated to getting supplies you need to progress or comfort your colony, not binding you to making obnoxiously expensive purchases that you otherwise don't need at all. This either needs to be changed to more item specific purchases, or better balanced against the cost of operations of colonies.
- Cat favor is too simplistic, and needs expansion. I hope they build on this in the future to make it more nuanced and with several ways to earn/keep favor as we have with whiskers. This is already there with whisker favor
- Production outputs aren't super clear in the game's UI. Because balancing production across several types of buildings seems important to efficient colonies that can afford to operate, I'd love to see additional tools to manage this more effectively
- Material balance in random map seeds isn't great - my first world made me choose between travelling 3 islands over to gather coal, or 3 islands over to gather copper. Both are fundamental for early game, and since the tools to do that with any kind of efficiency are gated towards t3+ technologies this seems like a kind of silly limitation to progression.
