Stonehearth

Last updated

Stonehearth
Stonehearth logo.jpg
Developer(s) Radiant Entertainment
Publisher(s) Radiant Entertainment
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows, macOS
ReleaseJuly 25, 2018
Genre(s) City-building
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Stonehearth is a 2018 city-building game developed by Radiant Entertainment. After an early access phase beginning in 2015, the game was released for Microsoft Windows and macOS on July 25, 2018. A tentative port for Linux was canceled, along with several "stretch goals" from its crowdfunding campaign. [1]

Contents

Gameplay

Stonehearth features a procedurally-generated [2] world where players manage a colony of people called "hearthlings". Players are tasked with caring for their hearthlings including, feeding, sheltering, and defending them from the dangers like orcs and skeletons.

When creating a new world, players go through several series of selections. Players must first select from three different kingdoms, or types, of hearthlings: The Ascendancy, Rayya's Children, and the Northern Alliance. Each kingdom has its own style of play as The Ascendancy is a basic, beginner-oriented type with a focus on Carpentry and easier access to building while Rayya's Children focus more on trade and the Northern Alliance focus on mining and Masonry. Next, the player selects a biome to play in. There are three base biomes: Temperate, Desert, and Arctic; each biome aligns with the theme and are "favored" by of the kingdoms listed respectively.

Temperate is a mostly forested environment with a balance of resources. Desert is a deserted region with occasional rocky mounds and water presents itself as a more flat and open environment for easier expansion. Arctic is a snowy, mountainous region that has plenty of ore and stone. After that the play decides the difficulty which include peaceful, normal, and hard. Peaceful means that there will be no enemy invasion of the player's camp although enemies may be found scattered throughout the wilderness. Normal and hard are quite similar in the sense of occasional invasions and enemy patrols although hard experiences both of these with more frequency and with stronger enemies.

After establishing the general makeup of the playthrough, the player must now select a starting roster of five hearthlings. Every hearthling is random and the player can choose to randomize all or some individual hearthlings again. Each hearthling has three statistics (Mind, Body, Spirit) which are randomly given a score or value ranging from 1-6. Mind represents how fast a hearthling will gain experience and limits their distractibility. Body represents the stamina and health of the hearthling. Spirit represents the friendliness and comradery (seen in effect during invasions) of a hearthling.

After finalizing their roster, the player selects one of five starting packages, each with their own play-style orientation. Lastly, the player must choose where on the map they will settle. Players are presented with a world which is determined by a random or entered seed. For the best chance of success the player must select a map with a balance of the three main resource sources in the game: Tree & Plants, Wildlife, and Minerals. These resources are shown with their frequency level.

Development

Stonehearth was developed by Radiant Entertainment, a company founded by Tom and Tony Cannon, co-founders of the fighting game eSports event Evolution Championship Series. [3] Described as a "passion project" by Tom Cannon, the brothers spent two years making a prototype before creating a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation in 2013. Asking for $120,000, the campaign ended with $751,920 and 22,844 backers. [2] [4] After the success of the Kickstarter, the development team was expanded with friends of the brothers after pitching the idea to them. [2]

Tom Cannon credits Maxis' Sim games and Dwarf Fortress as inspiration for the city-building mechanics, while the class system was inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together . [5]

On June 3, 2015, the game was released on Steam Early Access. [2]

Development on the game ended in 2018 with several promised features from the Kickstarter left unimplemented, [1] even though the game Kickstarter surpassed the original goal.

Reception

Reviewing the early access build of the game, Brendan Caldwell from Rock, Paper, Shotgun criticized the pacing, saying that the "build, defend, grow" cycle of the game distracts from the creative side of the game. Caldwell also critiqued the limitations on what to make in the game beyond houses and garrisons. [6] Paul Tamburro from Game Revolution raised the issue of repetitiveness in the game, also criticizing the pace by calling it lackadaisical. [7]

Lena LeRey, writing at Indiegames.com, acknowledged that the early access release was buggy, but still full of promise. [8] At PC Gamer , Christoper Livingston said that he found himself engrossed in the town building elements of the alpha build, but said that he would "probably wait for the beta before [getting] too invested." [9]

Related Research Articles

<i>Ascendancy</i> (video game) 1995 video game

Ascendancy is a 4X science fiction turn-based strategy computer game. It was originally released for MS-DOS in 1995 and was updated and re-released for iOS in 2011 by The Logic Factory. Ascendancy is a galactic struggle to become the dominant life form, hence the title. The game's introductory cinematic states: "Wildly different cultures competed for the same worlds. In the enormous upheaval that followed, one of these species would gain ascendancy."

<i>Star Citizen</i> Upcoming multiplayer space game

Star Citizen is an in-development multiplayer, space trading and combat simulation game. The game is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games for Windows. An extended retry of unrealized plans for Freelancer, Star Citizen is led by director Chris Roberts. The game was announced via a private crowdfunding page in September 2012, followed on October 18, 2012 by a successful Kickstarter campaign which drew over US$2 million. Pre-production of the game began in 2010, with production starting in 2011.

<i>Godus</i> 2013 video game

Godus is a god video game developed by 22cans and published by DeNA. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and met their funding goal on 20 December 2012. Godus was designed by Peter Molyneux, who described it as the spiritual successor to his earlier creation, Populous. A real-time strategy, combat game spin-off, Godus Wars, was released in 2016. While the mobile versions of Godus continue to be updated, the PC editions of both games never left Steam Early Access, and are no longer available for purchase on the Steam store.

<i>Sir, You Are Being Hunted</i> 2014 video game

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is an open world survival horror stealth video game developed by Big Robot for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. An alpha version of the game was made available on 19 August 2013. After years of no updates, in September 2021 the game was updated to version 1.5 by the external Dutch game development studio Den of Thieves Games.

<i>7 Days to Die</i> 2016 video game

7 Days to Die is a survival horror video game set in an open world developed by the Fun Pimps. It was released through early access for OS X and Windows on December 13, 2013, and for Linux on November 22, 2014. Versions for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were released in 2016 through Telltale Publishing, but are no longer being developed. A 1.0 version was released for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on July 25, 2024.

<i>Risk of Rain</i> 2013 video game

Risk of Rain is a 2013 roguelike platform game developed by Hopoo Games. Initially made by a two-student team from the University of Washington using the GameMaker engine, the game was funded through Kickstarter before being released on Microsoft Windows in November 2013. Ports for OS X and Linux versions were released a year later, with console versions being released in the later half of the 2010s.

<i>Darkest Dungeon</i> 2016 video game

Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike role-playing video game developed and published by Red Hook Studios. The game was first released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in January 2016, which followed a year-long early access development period. Later that year, it was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Linux, with a port for iOS being released in 2017, and ports for Nintendo Switch and Xbox One being released by 2018.

Strafe is a first-person shooter video game developed by Pixel Titans and published by Devolver Digital. The game is an homage to 1990s first-person shooter video games, such as Doom and Quake, advertised as to have "bleeding edge graphics and gameplay", citing the year 1996. It was released worldwide on May 9, 2017.

<i>Hand of Fate</i> (video game) 2015 video game

Hand of Fate is an action role-playing roguelike deck-building game developed and published by Australian studio Defiant Development for Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, released via early access on 7 July 2014, and then in the full release on 17 February 2015. A PlayStation Vita version was announced but ultimately cancelled due to development issues.

<i>Into the Stars</i> 2016 video game

Into the Stars is a space simulator video game developed by Fugitive Games, a development team made up of former EA DICE and Spark Unlimited developers, and published by Iceberg Interactive. Following a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, the game was greenlit and went into the Steam Early Access program.

<i>Xenonauts 2</i> 2023 video game

Xenonauts 2 is an upcoming turn-based tactics video game developed by Goldhawk Interactive and published by Hooded Horse. A sequel to Xenonauts (2014), the game was released on July 18, 2023 through early access.

<i>The Wild Eight</i> 2019 video game

The Wild Eight is a survival game developed by Fntastic and published by HypeTrain Digital. Players control people stranded in the harsh wilderness of Alaska and must cooperate to survive.

<i>Ironcast</i> 2015 puzzle strategy video game

Ironcast is a turn-based strategy video game with individual missions played through a match-three system. The game features procedurally generated missions and permadeath, staples of the roguelike genre. The game was developed by Dreadbit and released for PC platforms in March 2015, PS4 and Xbox One in March 2016, and Nintendo Switch version in August 2017.

<i>Conan Exiles</i> 2018 video game

Conan Exiles is a survival video game developed and published by Funcom for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. The game is set in the world of Conan the Barbarian, with the custom playable character being rescued by Conan, beginning their journey. Early access versions of the game were released in early 2017, leaving early access on 8 May 2018. An enhanced version of the game for Xbox Series X and Series S was released on 8 June 2021.

<i>Deep Rock Galactic</i> 2020 video game

Deep Rock Galactic is a cooperative first-person shooter video game developed by Danish studio Ghost Ship Games and published by Coffee Stain Publishing. Deep Rock Galactic was fully released on May 13, 2020 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One after its early access release in February 28, 2018. The game was later released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in January 2022, and for Xbox Series X/S in September 2022.

<i>Slay the Spire</i> 2019 roguelike deck-building game

Slay the Spire is a roguelike deck-building game developed by the American indie studio Mega Crit and published by Humble Bundle. The game was released in early access for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux in late 2017, with an official release in January 2019. It was released for PlayStation 4 in May 2019, for Nintendo Switch in June 2019 and for Xbox One in August 2019. An iOS version was released in June 2020, with an Android version released in February 2021.

Radiant Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Los Altos, California. Founded by twin brothers Tom and Tony Cannon in 2011, the company has developed Stonehearth, a city-building game, which was released in July 2018 after three years in early access. Radiant was acquired by Riot Games in March 2016 and Radiant's second game, Rising Thunder, was canceled during its alpha phase. The game was later replaced by a freeware "community edition" in January 2018.

<i>Valheim</i> Upcoming video game

Valheim is an upcoming survival and sandbox video game by the Swedish developer Iron Gate Studio and published by Coffee Stain Studios. It was released in early access on 2 February 2021 for Linux and Windows via Steam, and for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on 14 March 2023. The game was developed by a five-person team, building on development work which Richard Svensson had undertaken as a side project in his spare time. Since its early access release, Valheim has achieved both critical and commercial success, being praised as a "rare exception" of a refined early access game. A month after its release, it had sold over five million copies and was one of the most played games on Steam.

<i>Core Keeper</i> 2022 video game

Core Keeper is a survival sandbox game developed by Pugstorm. The game features mechanics similar to other games in the sandbox genre such as Minecraft, Terraria and Stardew Valley, including mining, crafting, farming and exploration in a procedurally generated underground world. It was released to Steam in early access on 8 March 2022 and received praise for its game mechanics, art style, tone, atmosphere and ease of access to multiplayer modes. The game was released on Windows, Linux, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on 27 August 2024, and was released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on 17 September 2024.

<i>Terra Invicta</i> 2022 video game

Terra Invicta is a science fiction grand strategy video game developed by Pavonis Interactive and published by Hooded Horse for Windows that was released into early access in September 2022.

References

  1. 1 2 Wood, Austin (July 6, 2018). "Stonehearth's development will end this month, without meeting all its Kickstarter stretch goals". PC Gamer . Retrieved July 7, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Fillari, Alessandro (June 3, 2015). "Stonehearth is out now on Steam Early Access". Destructoid . Retrieved May 16, 2017.
  3. Evan Narcisse (April 30, 2013). "They Changed Fighting Games, Now They're Making Something New". Kotaku . Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  4. Radiant Entertainment (April 29, 2013). "Stonehearth". Kickstarter . Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  5. Clouther, Andrew (May 23, 2013). "Interview: Talking Stonehearth with co-creator Tom Cannon". GameZone. Retrieved May 21, 2017.
  6. Caldwell, Brendan (July 11, 2016). "Premature Evaluation: Stonehearth". Rock, Paper, Shotgun . Gamer Network . Retrieved May 16, 2017.
  7. Tamburro, Pau (June 22, 2015). "Stonehearth Early Access Review". Game Revolution . CraveOnline . Retrieved May 21, 2017.
  8. LeRay, Lena (June 10, 2015). "Early Access Pick: Stonehearth is rough yet, but full of promise". Indiegames.com. UBM plc . Retrieved May 16, 2017.
  9. Christopher Livingston (June 1, 2015). "Stonehearth: the townbuilding game with an unfortunate name". PC Gamer . Retrieved May 27, 2017.