Burned Land

fake as hell, it is uniquely demented that someone got all sorts of fancy graphical fluff and proceeded to do nothing with it, just fake nonsensical stats and a few lines with typos

billion years ago i must have noticed this slop, and nothing changed since then

it has 1 tutorial message to click ui

it is incredibly tedious to try get anywhere and any random monster could be effectively unkillable, in near 70 turns i got one great pipol point out of hundreds population and assigned it to be a minister with surprise effect, that created "nobility" (minister) and almost instakilled stability of civilization for a guaranteed gameover

seems it is 2nd french author that made something convoluted and nonsensical which ends up largely unplayable, there are even no buttons and no settings, save function just freezes it for a while (unimaginably shit coding)

exit to main menu and restarting is not even intended, not sure if i seen anything more unfinished and genuinely 0 effort except for the completely deranged larping that it could work

despite all that, there are still graphomaniac shill reviews or maybe they weren't even bought and naturally were happy to bullshit all readers with 0 essence in every vague word

"this says a lot about our society" and i know telling them to stop lying will not work, delusional liars met 0 resistance, the last dev post was "this is not the end!"

I'm actually contemplating getting my $1. back. I'm not even sure it was worth .50 . Nonexistent difficulty scale. It's just a straight fastball to your face. The only time you have to prepare is the short time before the ball breaks your eye socket because you were busy fighting snakes, boars, raptors, dwarfs, and rioters. Horrible game!

*Sigh*
This is a game I want to absolutely love. The concept of playing what is effectively a city state trying to stay alive in a world that starts about being fantasy Civilization, and gradually becomes more and more hostile as the gods levy increasingly insane curses is a really really really good one. Having only a single city forces you to focus on efficiency and a chess-like need to always guard the beating heart of your kingdom. Furthermore, there is an interesting ramp-up of your own capabilities. Starting out with militia and mercenaries to deal with mauraders, going into a proper war economy fielding true armies and elite units, until eventually you begin fielding armies lead by superhuman heroes or flat out avatars of gods gives a great sense of the arms race between you and the game's challenges.
However...
The UI is bad. This isn't immediately obvious, since everything is functional and you can tell what you are looking at (the Dwarf Fortress test). However there is no true options menu, even for something as simple as volume control, let alone keybinds. And in turn as you start to control more units it becomes increasingly annoying to be managing them around each turn. Furthermore, this game is shockingly poorly tutorialized, and there are many features I would need to play multiple games with before I could begin to understand how they work. For example, I still do not properly understand what does and does not cause rebellions, which are one of the biggest potential game over dangers.
Additionally there are simple balance problems. Partly this is because of how variable starts can be. Whether you wind up near goody huts that will double your starting population or get run down in the first 30 turns by a giant frog is very up in the air. This problem is exacerbated by the very unreliable ai. Sometimes a divine curse will summon a massive army of subterranean monsters, only for them to just stand around for over 100 turns. Sometimes a divine curse will summon a giant tree that will make an instant beeline for you and crush you in the first 50 turns of the game. The RNG doesn't just make things unreasonably hard or unreasonably easy, it does both. And since you don't know which it will be, it is very very hard to plan.
The other main balance problem is stone. Put simply the bottleneck for almost all advanced buildings is stone, which can only be gathered from random deposits throughout the map. The problem is that even with every stone desposit exploited you can wind up coming up short. Unless your map spawns with many of them, in which case they can become far far easier to deal with. There are ways to mitigate this, but the fundamental problem remains that a great deal of your options are simply out of your control.
If this game were given some serious work it could be a complete classic, but as it is now I simply cannot recommend it.

Abandonware, do not buy it.
The basics are missing.
No tooltips on icons/ressources, no informations even in discussions.
Dev sells it as "1.0", just rebranding his alpha version of the game.
Stay away from it

DO NOT BUY!
This is not a game. This is barely more than a proof of concept.

No settings beyond save or quit game.
No graphic or video settings, you cannot even mute music.
No difficulty settings.
No world generation settings.

The tutorial is literally 1 click, "open this menu screen, it will tell you all you need to know".
(Spoiler: it does not tell you all you need to know.)

Tool-tips are non-explanatory flavour text.
No mission to tell you what to do.

No real explanations what different currencies like faith, literacy, heroes, great people, actually do.

Some buildings can only be stacked on top of other buildings but it does not tell you where, you literally have to click build and then mouseover your entire settlement to find a spot.

Around turn 100 or so you get swarmed with hordes of enemies than will just stomp you without much you can do.

The game tells you in advance in so called 'Prophesies' but there is still not much you can do to survive.

The last update was 16 months ago, so it looks abandoned without so much as a goodbye from the devs.

Such a shame, it really could have been something, the fundamental idea of slowly settling the wilderness is super appealing.

I got this dirt cheap on X-mas sale, so I'm not mad, just dissapointed that a great opportunity was wasted.

Next to no content as you can't figure out how to survive to learn it, or have a tutorial, or a help doc that explains how anything works. Don't even grab if its free.

Just not good enough. Its annoying to move your dudes around the map. They always deselect and sometimes you need to click multiple timeson the guy that he is actually selected.

Random spawns of ressources. I couldnt find an iron mine for the life of me and so i couldnt progress anymore.

Its way to cheaply made for asking for 10 €.

Pretty decent survival game. Note that I said survival game instead of a 4X game because that's what the core of the game is. People raged after having their shin kicked in because they thought this was a pure 4X game, so they didn't expect an abrupt end or seemingly never-ending problems. It is true though that the game is too reliant on RNG. You either get blessed with nearby stone mines and discover iron there with random chance or find out that you only find a single stone mine that is way too far to defend, hence very susceptible to enemy raid.

Out of almost 2 hours of playtime, I haven't encountered any critical bug, but the lack of settings/options and explanation really need to be addressed. I had to use sound mixer to turn the game sound down and alt+enter to make the game playable in windowed mode. I needed 1 hour to figure out how civilization expansion worked and I still haven't figured out how to send a hero to a site. A QOL on controls scheme will be really appreciated, since you know, a laptop doesn't have numpad 0 to find next idle unit.

Review may subject to change after I play and discover more of this game. For $3 (on discount), I deem this game worth the price. Not worth the full price otherwise with the current flaws the dev left behind.

Not what I expected, not sure what to make of it. I did not enjoy it much, but it looks pretty, seems like an honest attempt, is playable, I can't justify a negative review.

*update*
WHAT THE HECK I hit End Turn and suddenly 109 people died including all my soldiers and now there's -20 unrest just out of nowhere!!

Changing my review to NO.
Started a new game and 50 turns in 539 rebels just appeared AND I'm being swarmed by 210 giants and 60 snakes. Considering you can only build 1 city, best to just buy Civilization.

===========

Good game so far. Quirks encountered:
> The in-game menu only has Save Game (F5) and Quit (which exits the game).
> Saving takes 19 seconds on a Ryzen 5 3600
> Cannot change the edge-scrolling speed so it often takes off when you just want to look around.
> Auto-movement doesn't follow roads so units will waste movement going through the forest.
> Building houses only says "+houses" but not how many people they support.
> As far as I can tell, every other race is an enemy, unless it's an event, so you can only attack. Maybe I'll unlock diplomacy later?

Everything else is pretty simple and I really like the graphics and sounds.

Any RNG game that requires you to have stone for progression, then makes the nearest stone quarry 20 hexes away so that you get to it on turn 68 (After the first invasion is spotted)... I mean. I want to like the game, but this is just rough. If the game were to produce a quarry within 5 hexes of your start, then maybe it would be more fun since I could you know; play the game.

I've played through a dozen fresh starts, and never had a stone quarry closer than 8 hexes from my start. I can't recommend a game that will literally waste 15 minutes of your time before showing you that you can't progress. And to those that would say that I could restart until I have a start with stone in range of my start... Then I'll need a restart button (Or an options menu?).

Really wanted to like this game. But I could not even make an iron mine, I had all the thing to make one. I kept selecting a hill square and it would never work. I tried every Hill square I could find it would never place a mine. The UI is very wonky my unit would deselect 80% of the time I tried to move it. Refunding the game maybe it will improve in the future.

So I am playing this as of release day. Its possible that the team will get it fixed and functional at some point, but at least my initial attempt at playing this game was complete failure due to the unbelievable bugginess thereof. Buttons and units become inactive for no known reason even if you have sufficient resources to build/move/etc the unit. I only got to about a little over turn 40, so no doubt I am missing out on huge portions of the game. If not for the bugginess I'd rate this as sort of fun but not really as advertised. It feels a bit like d&d combined with civilizations, which is a cool combo idea. At least on my play I did not really observe lasting generational tensions from things occuring long ago, but essentially the game was non-functional by the time I reached this turn, so maybe I missed out on all that.

In conclusion I'd probably say that if they actually do fix the game where the buttons and units do not freeze up and become inactive, yes, this game seemed fun and has lots of potential. Yet sadly I can not recommend it at this time as it is currently unplayable due to the aforementioned issues.

Seems fun, but I have no clue what I am doing. It is kind of an unorthodox strategy game. Which is nice since it is different from other 4X titles. But it's going to take me time to get the hang of. Especially with no tutorial. I don't like how the areas you explore get covered back up. Makes the exploring seem moot.

An excellent 4x game with a very defined goal and multiple potential strategies to last as long as possible. In its essence its a survival game to last as long as you can against impossible odds. You will have hoards of homeless elves, lizards, bandits, animals and the gods themselves trying to bring down your civilization and if they don't kill you the population will eventually revolt if you don't take care of the nobles. This game is unapologetically hard and that's a large part of its charm.

Unlike what many of the less attentive reviews posted this game is still being worked on the the dev is active in the forums and we can expect a 1.0 update in the future, although I personally would prefer it if it was updated in small portions then all at once.

I would recommend this to any strategy game fan that would enjoy a 4x challenge and like to support a indie dev.

This game will kick you in the dick then ask why you ran right into it's foot. It's wholly unforgiving but I think that's what is so enjoyable about it. Being able to overcome the obstacles it drops on you and just barely make it by gives every moment and decision a lot of weight.

If you don't like games where you improve every time you play, I can understand not enjoying this game. You'll lose a lot but hopefully you'll improve with every loss.

I think the dev did a good job with this game and I can't wait to see what more they do with it.

No rules. No tutorial. No tool tips. Poorly designed and basically unplayable. The overall game premise might be great but this a completely an unfinished product as the developer bit off more than they can chew.

Burned Land is a niche game, and a little gem to me.

At first sight it might seem a little bit empty and obscure. Then it will seem very hard, even unfair. But if you push forward, you will discover a game with a very original approach, very rich and permissive in the ways you want to shape your kingdom and face the gods.
In this game, you not only build units and facilities, you will also "monitor" your population (literacy, devotion, nobility, sedentary, etc.), so they will provide you what you need and when you need it.

Don't need so much people ? Let's don't build any sewer sytem and deseases will regulate the numbers for you. But beware of public anger if you let unsanitary skyrocketing !
Urgent need of soldiers ? Let's recruit a nice bunch of dwarfes that can save your ass. But that might also cause some trouble on the long run...

Lot of nices touches, every action you take will have consequences, generally both positives and negatives.
Once you start to understand the mechanics (which is not easy right now due to lack of polish, as it is still in early access), you might get delighted to discover what the gods will throw at you and how you will manage that, given your development. And then you will see... the world being scortched, injured, fractured !!!

A word also for the very active developper, which is pulling out very regular updates that considerably enrich the game since it came out in early access.

Ah, and I've got the head of the god ! So it's defintely doable !!! :)

It is a pretty rough game, both in terms of UI and difficulty. The UI will hopefully get some polish from this one-man dev team, and perhaps the difficulty as well, but the difficulty certainly needs the polish a lot less. The dev is still pushing out regular updates, thus my recommendation for this Early Access game.

I made it to Turn 194, after narrowly dodging a very early game defeat. The early game near-defeat came about as my village almost starved due to a famine brought on by the gods. The entire point of this game is that the larger you grow, the more interest the gods have in stopping you from growing.

So, the gods first backhanded swipe at me was a meteor that fortunately struck just outside my growing city. Other than turning a few tiles into a No Mans Land, it did no damage.

Their next effort was a famine, and I really had to scramble to develop fields and mills to keep my populace fed. After the famine had run it's course, I did pretty well for quite some time. The plague of Giants weren't so bad as they mostly milled around randomly and weren't too much trouble as the few that found my city were easily dealt with.

The Orc Uprising was another matter entirely. Thousands of orc warriors and hundreds of orc shamans do not just mill around. They know their target and they march straight to it. I desparately raised troops and defenses. In the end, I was able to destroy all of them, but they did a lot of damage. Unfortunately, the Underpeople also chose that time to surface from their underworld.

They were much weaker than the orcs, but much more numerous. Like the giants, they were more aimless in their onslaught, but between them, a pack of giants, and a couple of angry elfen refugee groups they destroyed enough of my city that I couldn't afford to maintain my few remaining troops. After they deserted my city was helpless and the game was over.

I really like the core of the game. You get to take one civil action each turn, except in the summer when you get to take two. If you can accrue enough stone, you can build a castle that will allow you to take an extra action every turn. Civil actions are generally to build a structure or raise some troops. Scouts are critical for exploring and finding the resources (primarily stone) you will need to fuel your expansion.

There are ways to reduce the gods' interest in you, but I never tried any of them. I'm not sure their is a win state for the game, but perhaps that is an apt philosophy when it comes to dealing with angry gods.

Every now and then a game comes along that is a "hidden gem". They are often small Dev teams or single Devs, they truly involve the community and the Devs are approachable, and you feel part of the game. Burned Land is one such game.

On the surface it is a 4x4 game with survival aspects and random events, battles etc. The graphics are in my view wonderful reminding me of the old pictures in my history.fantasy book from school years (many many years ago).

The gameplay is "simple" to pick up but difficult to master with lots to do and manage while exploring the map. The dev has acknowledged that at this stage there are a few balancing issues, and there is a lot to sort out. So far for me no real crashes (can be slow to save and appear stuck but sorts itself out). Gameplay wise the Dev intend to add a lot of content, and is really open to suggestions.

If you like being part of development and want to support a great small game then this is for you. Like other similar type developments I would say this game is going to be a classic. Highly recommended.

So I bought the game without any idea what it is about. To start, the game does have potential! However, there are a few things that happen within the first ~50 turns that kind of kills the rhythm of the game:
1) There looters....alot of them. I was able to beat the first 2 looters without a lot of touble (albeit, I had to raise militia 4 dif times)
2) There is an ability to have a farm, but I've branched out to ~40 tiles or so and could not find any farms (which prevented from creating scouts)
3) Stone was another pain to find. I found it by accident when battling looters
4) Random soldiers joining the village was a good thing. Try deploying them (100 joined the village), and you have the game freeze on your ;)

Again, I can deal with the quirks of the game ( even if there are issues), but like I had said, the game has the potential, but the quirks at the beginning seem to kill the rhythm a bit.

There are other minor quirks in terms of pop up boxes in game without a way to close, or volume control as such.

I guess I am ok with some of the above because I've done QA testing before so I am used to bugs and such.....not to mention finding interesting workarounds.