Hearthlands

Good enough? Despite its weak moments. Sadly, suffers from some of the same issues other city builders ail.

Good game

fun little game

A Caesarlike citybuilder in a fantasy setting, but I found the building's logistics to be too big a pain in the ass to keep playing. There would be a stockpile with coal next to a smelter, and they would walk to the other side of the map to fetch coal . It's disappointing because I was enjoying it, but once you get to the campaign levels where your city gets much larger the logistical issues become too much of a headache.

tl;dr: Ignore the description which makes it sound like a Majesty game, if you are on the fence, it is indeed worth trying out. If you've played Impressions Games city builders and enjoy Anno, I strongly recommend that you buy and try this game. The first two missions (less than 1 hour) will help you determine if you will like this game or not. Tip: skip the tutorial and go straight into the campaign as it already contains a great tutorial. The soundtrack is great, the sound effects are retro, and each building has its own individual sounds.

I grew up on Caesar III. Right there with Red Alert 1, Tiberian Sun, Lionel's, and Rollercoaster Tycoon all the way through to Factorio, Rimworld, and They Are Billions. I'm always searching for another great game that can fit in that city builder-management game and yet here I am shocked that I did not hear about this game until now. Without a doubt, this is an exceptionally well done and finished Impression Games-like game with an Anno-like heavy emphasis on resource provision to tiered residents except instead of sailing or flying your resources to and fro you do it through a classic early 2000s city builder with good manually drawn graphics to boot rather than the bloom-infested 3D eyesores (Banished).

The current Steam market is finally filling up with new city builder games and I've been buying and trying many of them out and if you've done the same, then you probably already know, but 1-in-2 of these new city builders are engaging in an effective demonstration of the idea that they're doing you a favor by letting you in on their Early Access limbo hell and yet none of them are even half the game this is - and it's not even in Early Access, it's already out since 2017. A finished city builder game, ready to enjoy in full, RIGHT NOW. I can't believe it.

A good settlement game,It could be improved if it had a total free "no rules", where you do what you like!! The buying and selling of goods (which is my favourite part of gaming) is limited!! I want to be able to buy and sell what i like!! , not 3 items chosen by the game!! If the creators of this game fix these problems with a good update, this game could be up there with the all time video game greats!!!

"Are they warriors? Mercenaries?"
Aahz shook his head.
"Worse!" he answered. "They're merchants.”
~Robert Lynn Asprin

Caesar 3, with better graphics, horrible UI, casual tier depth and unreliable logistics on basic buildings. I'd rather just play games that are 20 years old AND still better.

It's a fun little city builder in the vein of Caesar, Pharaoh, etc as has been talked about by many of the other reviews here. The only thing I would add is the upkeep on military units is perhaps a bit too high. Some mission objectives require you to have 4 military units built which, despite selling every available item in the trade menu, required upkeep that was easily 10x my income.

Some games encourage you to build massive economies with gold sinks like these, but you can only trade so much of any given item in a year, which caps your income regardless of how much production you have. This then pushes you towards building more housing and raising income by taxes, but when you're already producing as much as you can sell (and then some), there is no incentive to build more production buildings so now your new citizens are unemployed and taxes don't increase to the amount needed to maintain the army, etc, etc.

I can see why people play about 10 hours of this game and move on. So many of the builder elements are fun and engaging, but the military upkeep bit is like hitting a brick wall.

Hearthlands – A Blast from the Past

Sergio makes a stunning debut on the PC with Hearthlands. You may be familiar with his work already under the company Artefact Games, a small indie mobile games development company, which he co-founded with Simon. Don’t let that fool you, as Hearthlands is perfectly suited for computer play. Hearthlands is a fresh take on the old city building genre of Impression Games’ titles such as Pharoah, Zeus, Empire, and Caesar. It doesn’t feel like a cheap copy pasta either. It builds on the genre in every way possible and has become my favorite in the entire genre.

The game’s graphics may give you some pause, but if you are able to embrace the style you will find yourself hours of enjoyment. This game plays similarly to the old city building tropes, particularly Pharoah, Zeus, and Casesar games. With that as a basis, I will explain what they do differently. The entire housing loop system was streamlined and simplified. Creating unique and interesting housing communities has never been easier and the beautification options allow you to create a lasting and unique design every time.

One of the biggest turn offs I had with the older games was how the industries required the same attention as the housing. This caused my cities to look haphazard and almost spastic as I plopped down random safety measures to protect these industries. True to form, Hearthlands has simplified the process completely removing this arbitrary need. Now industry stands alone and is much more flexible.

You might think that all this over simplification will make for a rather boring game, but you would be wrong. This game builds on the ideas of predecessors and becomes the true spiritual successor of the city building genre. The military system will seem quite unlike other titles of the genre. While you create forts to house your infantry similar to other titles and while they gain experience the same, it feels fresh. Individual units within each company gain experience and level up becoming more effective every moment they fight.

These aspects become increasingly important as you have more to worry about than your neighbors. Every map has a (toggleable) amount of baddies built into the area before you even arrive. These monster lairs become problematic as your city grows and will even start launching attacks against your city. Soon you will find yourself in a fight to cleanse the map and truly claim it.

As far as how combat is handled, don’t expect much innovation. You have very limited control over your forces. You can command them to travel to areas on your map and they will automatically engage baddies as they come within range of them. There are no special attacks or anything. Simply click and watch your guys fight their guys. The same goes for invading foreign cities. You dispatch your men, after a time dice are rolled and you win or lose with no say on how it goes.

That doesn’t mean they haven’t added anything in that area. Magic is a new feature to the genre that can greatly improve your ability to both command your city and fight your battles. Spells range from healing your troops and creating temporary phantom warriors to filling empty homes with people and creating raw resources to be exhausted by your city.

In addition to the magic interface, there is a research interface as well. This new tool allows you to collect research points from your ever expanding city and invest them into simple technologies. Some of these improve your tax collection. Others can improve your army’s capability. Some even grant ways to gain permanent sources of certain resources.

Graphics: 7
The style is unique and interesting. It seems to fit the feel of the game and is on par with other indie studios. Don’t expect A-list graphics here.

Music: 6
The music is just above average. There were no tunes that particularly grasped me, but they weren’t annoying either.

Story: N/A
Doesn’t really exist. There is a campaign mode, but it does very little to explain any sort of lore behind the game.

Content: 9
Almost a perfect 10. A lot of the content I could ever want is there, but I feel the game could use the steam workshop and a map editor. Even without these features the replay value is off the charts and there will be plenty of content and customization options to keep players coming back for as long as they choose.

Controls: 10
I didn’t have any complaints about the controls at all. Everything was fluid and functioned as expected.

Gameplay: 9
Glitches and bugs were extremely uncommon almost to the point of being nonexistent altogether. Gameplay was fluid and the mechanics work well. Almost a perfect 10, but there were some issues with the balance of goods production. Some goods seemed to require dozens more factories than others to output the same amount, but this is a minor complaint.

In conclusion, if you are a fan of the older city building games, buy Hearthlands. Anyone who is a fan of city builders will also almost certainly enjoy this game. Don’t expect much of an RTS though that is a different genre.

Pros
Good controls
Simplified interface and design
Simplified gameplay
Excellent replay value

Cons
Lack luster music
Lack of military control
No Steam Workshop functionality

Tl;dr: I rate this game an 8.2/10

Of note: The game is still being updated and some of the features and ratings of this review are subject to change.

$20 for over 20 hours, SO thats a thumbs up from me.

Is the game perfect? well... no... but its quite enjoyable in its own way. Im enjoying the campaign mode, its not overly complex and is just fun to play.

No bugs, no crashes, enough complexity to hold my attention.

If you like this genre of game, you'll probably be entertained for 20-30 hours atleast.

Pros:

It combines elements from Ceasar, Banished and Anno to create a very interesting city builder game. The best way to put it is Ceasar's buildings and UI style with Banished's survival and inventory management and Anno's city evolution (Anno 1404 to narrow it down)

Gameplay is enough to keep you playing, and this game provides a fair amount of content compared to city builders of the same calibre.

I've not experienced any bugs while playing the game, the only thing that's happened was the game not tabbing back in when I tabbed out. Forcing me to restart the game.

Tutorial is helpful for learning the basics of the game.

Cons:

There aren't any set maps to play off in free build. You will have to use a randomly generated map and chance having your resources spread across the entire map, making it difficult and expensive to get resources.

The game offers little in the way if events, out of 90 minutes I saw 3 events: plague, robbers and AI rivals demanding money for 'projects' There are no events which are good or neutral, only bad.


The economy system in this game is stressful and honestly, the worst part of the game. There is no real way to achieve a stable economy, from the start of the game you just spend money, and earn a smidgen of it back through laughable tax rates or through trade with AI rivals, which we will talk about in a second. The way the tax system works is the less people you have working, the more you tax, the more people you have working, the less you tax. Simple. This game requires you to keep building and building to keep your city evolving and preparing for invasions from on map enemy camps and off map AI rivals. Because of this you'll never have unemployed citizens, meaning the tax rate is always low. With about 1000 citizens I tax about 250 gold from them every tax rotation, thats about 1/8th of what I spent keeping them happy that rotation.

So, tax is useless, what about trade?

If you choose to play and trade with AI rivals, from the very start they will constantly demand money from you, sometimes it's 1600 gold, others it's 3200 gold. If you accept, they like you more and are more willing to trade and less likely to invade. If you decline, they invade you, this is just another way of adding challenge to the game, another way to burn your gold reserves. I refused to pay a rival and before I could even build a troop of soldiers I had enemy war pigs riding in and destroying my city. If you do pay them and trade you need to be a fast builder, they won't start off with requesting and selling simple resources like planks, or turnips, they will demand and sell luxury resources which you can't make yet or have no place in your city currently. Making trade in the early game, near impossible.

I would like to mention that the three AI rivals I played with promised to pay me back, I didn't see a single piece of gold come back from them.

Not cool.

Summary:

Despite the not recommended I did enjoy the game. But ultimately the economy aspects were just too much to recommend. It just felt like it was all there to play against you and make the game harder but with no true challenge, because there was little you could do to beat the challenge. in other words the game's economy mechanics are imbalanced and to really have a stable economy you cannot play with AI rivals and you'll have to play on a low difficulty.

Worth It? YES

LIKES

• Colorful graphic style
  
• Scratches that nostalgia itch for city-builders of old like Pharaoh or Caesar
  
• Icons hover over houses to show what citizens need
  
• Campaign steadily introduces gameplay mechanics
  
• Sandbox mode
  
• Four cultures each with their own strengths and weaknesses
  
• The construction UI is easy to read and understand
  
• Visuals showing houses evolving/devolving based on needs being met/not met
  
• Real time army control
  
• Loot treasure chests and research points within the game world
  
• Ability to invade other cities
  

DISLIKES

• Goods distribution can be a little clunky
  
• I had a number of issues where my houses were in the coverage area of the food peddlers but were not receiving food or medicine
  
• I would like to see a small tutorial on the more complicated features such as correctly setting up trade depots
  
[*]Ability to rotate the map would be helpful, especially when building roads

The Final Word

Positive: A good addition to your library if you were a fan of the Caesar/Pharaoh/Zeus/Emperor games. There's a good tutorial that will teach you the basics, and a campaign mode that slowly introduces more advanced gameplay mechanics.

Negative: The graphics aren't good, but I quickly got used to it. The quality of the voice acting and the repetitive sound effects of some buildings and units are terrible and annoying though. I hope the dev updates the voices with better VAs and more speech variations.

Conclusion: Despite the mediocre graphics and bad sfx, I liked the core gameplay loop enough to give this a thumbs up.

So I've been diddling around with this game for a couple of hours. I've played the first two campaign missions and the tutorial.

This is actually a really good game. It's a cross between Stronghold, Banished, Anno, and Settlers, with some of the better parts of each attached to them.

You have a plethora of options when building your city, and there doesn't seem to be anything completely deadweightish. Everything is necessary. It's pretty intuitive how it all works, with your little settlers running around and picking up what they need.

Inside the buildings it tells you what it will get, but there's some issues with the toolbox where it doesn't exactly tell you what it needs if the building produces multiples of something...for instance, the armorer makes leather and chainmail armor. I did not know it needed leather and iron for chainmail, I just thought it needed iron...so little things like that need improvement. Otherwise it's simple and nice.

Logistics is always the key part of games like this, and it works mostly like settlers. You have stockpiles, and the shop owners go and get stuff, I think...or the stockpiles do now I need to go and test it. Each stockpile can hold 32 of an item, and you can specify exactly how much of each item you want in your stockpiles and what will NOT go into your stockpile...as well as tell it to pull items from everywhere. That's awesome and I wish the other games could do that.

The problem with the logistics is if you only want medicine to drop onto one stockpile, you're going to have to go inside every single stockpile menu and tell them not to receive medicine. If there's an easy way to go through and set this, it's not apparent or intuitive. I looked through the options and could not find one. So while I enjoy the micro detail on the stockpiles, the need to go through every single one is definitely annoying.

Another issue I did not appreciate is that the game straight up told you the ratios to build buildings...I'm more of the type to go and figure it out myself, but I guess that could be nice for newer players. What I did find interesting is that its possible the game is wrong and the ratios it gave isn't correct, but we will see.

The trading in the game is very well done. You start with low volume of trades but build a relationship with your neighbors to gradually grow the volume and profit from it. It's better to sell goods to one neighbor instead of a weak amount to everyone. On top of that, you can limit exactly how much surplus you want to trade, so if you suddenly spike in demand in your own economy, the game won't go and sell your much needed goods. I love the trading system and have nothing bad to say about it.

The game is tough and it doesn't hold your hand on some of the mechanics. It might mention it, but there's no prompts when there are problems. My grain and hops were getting out of control, and I was trying to build beer for my settlers and to trade...so I built more breweries...nothing happened. My grain and hops kept going up, and no beer was being made. I finally figured out that all my stockpiles were full, but the game did not alert me to this and it was something I had to go troubleshoot. So be prepared for a higher learning curve than other games.

Overall I'm enjoying the game and looking forward to see what else is in store with the game mechanics.

What I do like about this game is that it pushes me to the limit. One mission you have to conquer another city, so I did what the game asked and sent a full squad...well I lost the battle, and my army was sucking up gold faster than I could trade. So I rebuilt a bigger squad by taking loans from all the other cities and then crossing my fingers it would work.

Or when you need to sell 200 clothes a year to your neighbors, and you get swarmed by rabid wolves when you hit 150. Drop a bunch of wooden towers on them, expand trade, build more of everything, build more wood choppers, drop more wooden towers, and pray

Bought this game due to the recommendation of people who liked games such as Ceaser and Pharaoh. This game was fun for a bit, but after awhile I realized I was tuning out and just letting the game continue at speed 3 while I waited for "X" to happen.

The gameplay is okay, but you'll spend most of your time trying to debug why your supply chain isn't giving a resource to the right building when you have 50! of them available.

do you like the old Sierra Strategy-Games like Emperor, Ceasar, etc?

then this is for you!

polished, fun, awesome!

A Campaign that present you all the Details you need to know for starting a huge endless run, with knowing all your possibilities... thats the way I like it :P

Im kind of torn apart by this game. I would like to recommend it, but only because of it being a game in a genre with not many choices and not because its a really good game.
I also realized, that there arent many negative reviews rating this game in its finished state, so i will have a go for it. Im sorry that its so long, i will start with positive, follow with negative and end with a resumée.

At first the positive things:
1.) Its a city builder with mechanics similar to games i loved playing. Such as Emperor Rise of the Middle Kingdom, Caesar and Pharao. It uses the *Walker-Mechanic with doing so, i kind of hated this mechanic and rather prefer a hybrid of area of effect and walker. (*Explanation for what Walker are scroll to the end.)

I have to say though, that while having the walker mechanic in this game, it at least is done well and limited to an acceptable amount. Also some buildings have an area of effect type mechanic behind, such as gatherers or hunters, watchtowers or miners.

2.) Its deep. Not only the economic aspect of it is deep enough with many different goods, it also offers a diplomatic aspect similar to the ones in the old City Builder games (traderoutes, attacking/invading, being attacked, giving gifts or handing out goods to increase popularity with factions). On top of it you have to deal with several neutral factions, such as undead, goblins, wild animals and other creatures.
I have to say though, that it is a bit unbalanced in that aspect.
You can build your city and get no problems for at least an hour playing, suddenly the game decides to spawn a pack of wolves near your city.
A pack means about 12 wolves, which are so strong that killing even one needs a strong military force and several towers. And sometimes the game decides to spawn 3,4 or even 8 of these packs in a timeframe of 5 minutes. They are then simply ripping your town apart. More about that later.

3.) Several factions with different strengths and weaknesses to play, many customization options for your session, such as how many opponents you have, how you look or how the gameworld is made.
Also starting conditions. All of that easily gives dozens of hours to play and each attempt will be different if you wish.

Now the negative things that even might drive me away:
1.) It looks HORRIBLE:
I mean really bad. It starts with you getting into a main menu screen having a picture that would even look bad for a game from 1990.
I would even say that games like Knights and Merchants had a better looking and higher resoluted menu screen.
Point is, you could overlook that if it was only this, but the whole game looks just like from at least 15 years ago.
And not in a nostalgic way.
I can be bothered to play a Pharao with a 800x640 resolution and no widescreen or zoom options, but at least the sprites in these old City-Builders look good and the overall presentation is well done.
Hearthlands sadly has a horrible presentation. Animation quality of each character is abysmal, the colour palette...i question the choice and cant believe a sane person would call the whole package to look good. In no way. This problem goes on with all presentation aspects you can think of.
The sounddesign is mediocre at best, music isnt noticeable and far from good, the menu layout and UI is...not well designed. In the end you have a complete package where every aspect of the game is literally just ugly for eyes, ears and your brain. I think the only nice thing to look at is the world map, but you maybe spend 10 seconds at most in that window every 10 minutes.
If at all...

2.) No multiplayer: Emperor already had multiplayer, it can be done and quite easily even. And the City-Builder Genre screams for a game like that with multiplayer. Its still a good game without, but it could have delivered a unique experience here. I know such a feature costs alot, time, money and workforce. So i hope it will be something to be considered for a follow up title, see more in the Resumée.

3.) Diplomacy seems shallow at places:
You can get a good stance with each faction in this game, hand them out resources when they ask you a favor, gift them stuff and have trade agreements.
But dont give them what they ask for only one time and you will instantly get a notification telling you that they invade you in no time. I had a game where i built up my city, traded with people, gifted them resources and helped them out several times.
My popularity was up and running.
Suddenly the game decided to throw about 30 wolves at my city.
I wasnt prepared and had to build wooden towers, train soldiers and build watchtowers.
During a quite long fight that didnt want to end because the game threw more and more wolves at me, a factionleader asked for 16 logs.
Logs normally are easy to produce and i could hand them out, but not while having to build wooden towers to defend my people from extinction. I rejected.
When i was nearly done defending, killing the last 4 wolves, the notification came. You are going to be invaded. Great, so i can forget that session. Btw, here a multiplayer mode could help alot. Not only would i deal with real people that arent totally irrational, but also could a friend you play with aid you with ressources or soldiers.
As could you do that for him/her.

Resumée:
Its a solid game in and of itself. It has enough to keep you busy, is deep enough to stay interesting and has content to fill many hours.
The genre is lacking anyway these times, and leaving people who like strategy and build-up games with not many choices. So its not that hard to fill this gap with the only competition being the Anno-Series, Lethis or the old games of this genre. But thats where it starts to fall off, even in such a "dying" genre, its quality is questionable.
Mostly its look and presentation is driving me away.
If it was looking as good as Lethis Path of Progress i would call it a great game you have to buy.
The lack of other features, such as a campaign, missions and quests and most important a multiplayer feature, just push me over the line of calling it a very flawed game that fills a gap in an under-represented genre.

I have one hope and request to the developers:
Do a follow up. Hire an artist and do the same game with the same ideas, but then do it with someone slightly talented drawing some better characters, buildings and so on, so it looks better.
Get better animation quality, maybe also get a unique setting.
Then implement multiplayer on top of it with all that is needed to play with at least one other person and i wouldnt hesitate to buy this game for full price and call it game of the year.
I think you are talented in some aspects and the overall idea and the mechanics, the content and depth are really good. Get presentation to an acceptable level and you are up and running to maybe help this genre to new glory.


*For those not knowing it: Walker are "NPCs"/People/Worker in the game sent out to distribute services. So people in the game dont get food with visiting a store and buying it or getting it from a storage, you have to build a deliverer, which walks around in the city to bring food to people.
This applies to all services.
Problem with it is, that you have to look whether all houses get their stuff, which can turn out to be fiddling with the city layout and sometimes be bothersome.
In older games of this genre you for example built a temple, which spawned a priest walking through your city.
Whenever he passed a house/building he decreased the demand of the service he offers, in this case belief. The whole point of city builders was to place each building in a way, that the spawned walker reached every building in time before negative things happen.
Buildings could collapse, catch fire, people catch the plague or their houses downgrade because they didnt get the goods they needed.
This turned City Builder into puzzles, where you could build after a maximum effective layout.

Great Game, i found it a challange to start with. However its quite nice to not just build everything then your done, like some other city games. Still in development, i can't wait to see what else gets added in the future.

I can't say this is a game for everyone. It has a learning curve, and the game is unforgiving. It is a fun city building game with elements of pre-built in conflict. Neighbors WILL invade. you have local unfriendlies that will compete for city space and block access to resources. but the worst enemy is you. i had to restart multiple times to get the "right" build for my city. some of the problems with design only become apparent later on in the game. for example, i built my city in such a way that my peddlers (a food resource distribution node) would not cover the area needed, and i was out of resources to create a new node, but i need more houses to house more workers to.... you get the idea.

There are things in the game that are not intuitive (mostly UI issues) that are annoying, more than game breaking. so be prepared for some tedium. Overall, i had fun :)

Highly recomended. The devs have done a fantasic job so far. The mechanics are great. Similar concept to games like Zeus-Master of olympus/Pharaoh but with alot more potential.

Side note- If a delete option could be added for saved games the would be great.

A very good simulation/management game with, beside cute graphics, a huge potential and possibilities. I recommend it if you like games like old Sierra titles (Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor), old (& best) Settlers games (Settlers 2,3 and 4), but also Beasts & Bumpkins, and Anno ! Nice job devs, I look forward the release and new content/features ! At this stage of developpement (0.4.5), the game is enjoyable.

I've only put a few hours into this game, but can already tell there's a mountain of possibilities here. Definitely BUY this, support the developers and follow it closely!

If you like classic RTS games like Settlers, Majesty or the Anno series, this is a very well-produced hybrid of those in progress. You build a city, manage resource production / distribution, train a military and fight off monsters / other cities. There's also a roguelike, sandbox element in that your city exists on an overworld map with other cities who will trade with you, invade you, or be subject to invasions/raids.

Though it's not complete yet, it's clear that the developers have done a good, solid job of building the engine and foundations -- that is to say, from here it seems like a lot of the groundwork has been done and the rest will simply be adding content and features.

Features I would like to see implemented in the future:

- Greater varience of buildings/skins, or random rotations (at present there is only one "look" for houses, for example, which can make blocks of houses which you need lots of, look somewhat bland or boring)

- More supply/demand dynamic for trading. Resources often have a relatively set cost that hardly deviates at all. I would like to see something implemented where resources will fluctuate more heavily in price, even between other cities. It makes trading more exciting/dynamic, as currently if two other cities want to buy your resource, they will both largely offer an identical price. I would like to see this fluctuate, so that a player would have to pay attention to trading -- and could even mean that a player running a "trading village" could be economically viable, as buying resources low from certain cities and selling high to others at a profit could potentially work.

- More permanent overworld map changes as the game progresses. i.e. other cities going to war and "taking over" rivals, which would in essence form small "kingdoms" (say, a certain NPC city will then own 2 or 3 cities). Also perhaps something like "invasions" of other cities from monsters, so that cities would become "monster citadels" or "lairs" if they are taken over.

- More military options (siege weapons, different units (perhaps using shields and swords as resources as well))

- Better "fortification" options. Right now there are stone walls and stone gatehouses, but only wooden stockades and no wooden gatehouses. This would be a valuable addition.

- More monsters, though I think the devs have already mentioned wanting to do this. Goblins, orcs, dragons, etc. etc. etc.



Overall though, great game, one of my most favourite in recent memory, and I can't wait until the content starts being more fully fleshed out. There's so much potential here.