Dark Forester

It's basicly base building plus an MMO plus an RPG except the base is a forest. Devoted developer which is more than can be said about most stuff these days. slow but steady progress. Have had a lot of fun with it. Game has finally been over-hauled and brought to full released. Amazingly immersive world and quite a unique little game. Have yet to get tired or bored with it and the game has gotten better and better over time with the Developer's hard work and dedication to seeing it reach it's full potential. Can't go wrong with this little gem if you are into it's genre elements.

Worth the .89 for sure.

For Some reason when i click play it comes to a blue screen that doesnt do anything someone please help

I played the game once because I got it for like a cent. I think I planted some trees and then I never played it again. It was probably good.

For now the game is very buggy. but it has alot of potential and im not recommending it for now but deffinetly a game to look into in the future once it has been developed more.

Couldn't spawn trees for my forest. 10/10

I bought it for .89 cents it seems worth it.

Bought it because I liked the concept and it was below $1. It might have potential, but right now, you are just stuffed in the middle of a forest without much explanation. There's a short tutorial that basically tells you "trees are good, press this button to summon waves of enemies", but not much beyond that. When you start, your forest is very large, and your actual buildings take up only a small part of the area, and the enemies can attack trees in the forest directly, and calling waves of enemies often results in them just attacking the trees, taking your stuff and you don't even see them or know where they are. You do have the ability to move the trees, but given the clunky interface and the size of the forest, I really didn't feel like spending literally hours positioning all 300 and some trees closer to the base so I can actually protect them. Also, the main character's spells (at least the starter ones) will destroy trees on contact, and trees cost resource to build or replace, and they have a tendency to sail right by enemies.

TL;DR - This could be good with a polished and more intuitive interface and a smaller or at least better defined area where the combat takes place, but as it is now, lack of these things cripples it.

Edit - quick dev response is always a good thing though, hopefully there will be improvements and I can change to a positive review.

At first, I thought this game was deserving of a thumbs down, but in that time I found out that, while some of my problem were legitimate, a lot of it had to do with messing around with the game a lot. you have to TRY ERY HARD to like this game so don't give up, but after that it's a decent experience for 99 cents. What's more, the developer himself chimed in on my original review and that's really cool to see a developer care so much about game they stand right up to critics in a helpful nonconfrontational way.

This is my original review, read it or not, like I said, there complaints will happen a lot until you get the hang of the game. After that no worries.

I want so much for this game to be good. I think the premise is very original and the fantasy setting is great, but the gameplay and display needs serious work. With TLC, this game can be great so I urge the developer to improve it.

First off, your units aren't smart, in fact they don't even seem to care about their own survival. They'll just kind of stand there and wait to die, rarely if ever engaging enemies. You have your own unit who walks around and fights, but he's full of glitches. He doesn't fight so much as run by an enemy and hope they attack him so he can attack back (for some reason he won't start the fight) and he seems to just run around on his own a lot. You can really need him but suddenly find him on the other side of the map walking into a wall. He really should not move unless you tell him too.

People consider this a Tower Defense like game but personally I think that's one of the biggest flaws. You don't get to control your units or even help them during a fight, and so they die without even scratching the enemy. Unlike a tower defense game most units aren't ranged so they don't do a lot of damage and they're only programmed to attack what's in front of them if you are lucky. I think this feature is the one that needs the most revamping of all of them. It should not strive to be a tower defense. Rather, you should be able to control your units like you control your character and deploy as you see fit so it becomes a real-time strategy game instead. For a good example see Age of Empires.

The least pressing but preferable if enhanced issues are the graphics and display. I can give a pass for the battlefield graphics, but it's so pixelized even at optimal levels that when you need to read something it's hard to decipher (yes I have 20/20 vision.) The display is more of a problem however in that you can't set it to full screen and your cursor disappears when you play the game, so in the middle of something important you often find your mouse pop out of the screen and that's kind of annoying. There should be an in-game cursor so you know where the mouse is and it should be put at full screen.

Once again I really like the idea of this game and I hope it improves and even becomes more popular, but until those much much needed enhancments come in I feel this was money poorly-spent.

Good luck designers.

First time in hundreds of Steam purchases that I've requested a refund... and it really is that bad.

The UI is terrible, there's no tutorial, just a 9-step panel of quick tips on the UI which were clearly built with the help of Google Translate from Russian, making it very difficult to understand, character controls are terrible -- requiring you to click and drag defensive units during live combat, which also simultaneously forces your main unit to move (and get stuck moving), and a load of other technical issues that were already touched on by other reviewers.

If there's anything fun about this game, it's lost in frustration long before I could get to it. Stay clear of this one.

OK, perhaps, i should say, that my review is not so fair and i explain later why!
Don't be confused with my English, i'm German spoken person and i apologize for arising mistakes.

About the game:
You are playing for the Goblin character and trying to create safe forest. You character is something like a mage; he can summon some buildings, creatures and can also cast a few spells. By enemies invasion i played most of the time in Ego-shooter mode. In god-mode/RPG view you have really great futures to build unique forest. There are so many things which you can summon, and i actually think this is just the beginning.
The idea and the concept of the game is very interesting.

To be honest i'm not a gamer anymore and pretty old for this stuff-:) And now is the reason, why for some people this review is not so fair and why, maybe this is the fairest review of all-:)
I worked with this developer almost for a year for one company in Germany. And, i can say what he is trying to achieve alone is amazing. This is really so freaking crazy to develop Dark Forester without any investments.
At all he is the true indie developer and i hope he has enough motivation to bring it on.

Bug: there are some issue with the music if you are scrolling the camera and in Ego Shooter view sound is too loud.

And i actually would recommend some descriptions or an explanation for the left panel, because i thought there are drag and drop function. This is not obvious to click on the icon and then on the battle field.

everything feels unfinished and of poor quality. nice idea, badly executed.

IMO, this is not ready for Early Access. I spent an hour doing the tutorial up to level 3, and crashing out back to the beginning. I want to like this game but it's not ready for game play suggestions or new features.

The UI vanishes randomly, and it's a mess in any event. I can tell that, if I were to ever get to a higher level, it would be one of those games which has me hunting through menus trying to find something really simple.

Why are the battle units the only things you can't move? Like, I can move trees, but the ogres can't by directed (by player or AI) to confront invading enemies? And why is the little elf dude running to the end of the map every time I tell him to go anywhere?

This game really just needs basic debugging. Do some play-testing with, well, anyone. Like, actually watch them play. Not new features like PvP, arena, marketplace, and so on: it need that core game ironed out so that it's playable.

Until that happens, I can't recommend this game.

This may be one of the worst games I have ever played. I only paid $6 for it, but that is $10 more than I should have paid. No this is not a typo. I don't think I would play this game if I was paid to. DO NOT BUY THIS POS!!!

Do not buy this piece of crap game. It is awful. Not worth 25 cents. One of the worst made games I have played.

Just getting this game and playing for few minutes, i can honestly say that this game in its current state is pretty meh. The concept is great, defending a forest in a tower-defense type way, but the current state is pretty mediocre. The UI isnt good, the placement is horrid, and the grammar, oh god the grammar. English teachers everywhere are crying.

This game has some great potential, and it is pretty playable right now, but you wil have to overlook a lot of things to be able to play it. So get it if you want to try it, because later on after some polishing, i will probably make this one of my favorite games, but only after polishing.

I predict the game a huge success, and i explain why!

Dark Forester is still only in alpha version and developed by one man!

I'm level 10 and know what to say.
- beautiful graphic

- physic based game

- Nice PvP idea, many Clash of Clans elements in 3d.

- I see (final release) as 'Mighty Quest For Epic Loot' alternative

- 'Never die' - better restart the game if your hero gone down... -:)

- Forest decoration, you can create your own unique forest.

- UI/UX is much better now, as after release

- One man develops Dark Forester! Great respect!

- corpses, falling trees, traps - simply brilliant.

- Non stop action, summon everything, no build time.

Minus:

- Price is too high, discount news for alpha is good idea.

A very nice game with a lot of new elements. Dark Forester is a wild mix of many genres.

I want the game survives and comes good to final release

As you can see i put in this game only 30m. This is because I didn't want to ruin it to much for myself before release.
Normally I don't play games at all, but many years ago (many of you dont even know Panasonic 3DO) i had the game "The Horde". In one of developers videos he mentioned, the game would have some elements from this EA game.

Good Luck!

This is Early Access Game, so this review is also based on the game's current state. (11/2/2015)

1. Game performance: horrible. Game's engine is unity aaaaaaaaand the performance is indeed horribad. My machine can run Skyrim without lag but I'm getting only like 15 fps here in this game. It needs so much optimization since I honestly think it's unacceptable for game like this that doesn't even require advanced graphic capabilities.

About the settings, in-game menu doesn't give any noticeable options. You won't see any exotic options for graphic settings here, no fancy AA, Shadow or particle options. The setup is mostly done in menu pre-game (has launcher) where the game will present you with preconfigured setups - Fastest, Fast, Simple, Good, Beautiful, Fantastico.. oh I meant Fantastic. The launcher also allows you to preconfigure your keyboard mappings, though my experience when setting up these controls was not pleasant one. Very difficult if not impossible to reset back to default state, so I finally just left them alone.

2. UI/UX: awful. You're left on your own to learn the mechanics of the game. No tutorial, no hints whatsoever. If you first timer loading the game you'll be puzzled as to why the random buttons are placed on random places. So, main menu, what's this connect button for? Ok let's tap it.... Oh my it loads my game...

Hmm... ok, so next!

Game's loaded and I'm ready to go! Let's check around!

To the left there are UI to dropping... supposedly... your units. Cow, ok for what? Prise: 1 gold. Prise? What is this madness? Did the developer want to write 'price'? Alright typo, let's check another. Hm... Ogr... Attacking unit? What's with this power level Power, Strength and Potential indicators? What do they mean? Can my Ogr have over 9000 powahhhh???

Then to the top right of the screen supposedly there are counters to tell you how much resources you currently possess. Seemingly it's gold... lumber... crystals? What am I gonna do with these stuffs? Again, this is where the game's failing, it doesn't even give tooltip for these items to help players how to utilize them.

I'm appalled.

3. Sound: Put the game on silent, fire up Winamp or MP3 player of your choice, and play your own music. That's all you need.

4. Story: Mostly revolves like Clash of Clans. You write your own story... or so from my observation. Despite it has RPG label slapped on it, story is pretty much non-existent. If you're looking for games that has touching, well written plot, then this one is definitely not for you.

Thankfully, the Developer seems to be fairly active on Steam forum. Well, this is just the beginning, so I can't say much about how he will do this project. Whether he'll make a good product out of this game or not, it remains to be seen.

For 30 USD (US region) it's not worth it. Slash it by 90% still not worth it. Game has so much to be desired. I bought this game when it glitched (like 0.002 cents), so I don't feel being ripped off, but certainly I will if I had paid 30 USD.

Buy at your own risk - you've been warned.