In this week’s spotlight, I decided on a game I was looking into for a little while now, Odd Realm, a fantasy simulation that draws its inspiration from Rim World and Dwarf Fortress. Can you create a colony that will survive the harshness of the realm?
Odd Realm is a fantasy world simulation game. You start with a group of settlers based on your difficulty setting and type of settlers. You pick a plot of land that you wish to colonize and try to survive against hunger, bandits, and time itself to create a colony. You can use the resources of the land to fortify the defenses and keep away starvation and have patrolling soldiers to prevent bandit kidnappings. Managing your settlement is all about micromanagement. You are telling your people what to mine and where to live and what to build. For those that love simulation-based games might enjoy this one. This game is still in alpha and still has some things to improve on, but overall can be a real enjoyment for those that love Rim World or Dwarf Fortress and are waiting for its arrival on Steam.
Initial Playthrough
All games have their strengths and their weaknesses. For Odd Realm, its primary weakness is intuitiveness. It has been a long time since I played a simulation game. While there are a lot of clean tutorial boxes and help, I felt like this game will need to make the first time play-through experience better. Something that might be better than a lot of words on a tutorial page is to show the player how to accomplish different tasks visually. Show an animation of what to press and show off how it is done. You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Now that doesn’t mean this is a bad game. I like this game! After looking up some of the how-tos on accomplishing the tasks, I got the hang of building and surviving, creating a fortified castle with my rooms all safely inside to reduce the chances of being kidnapped. The layer system is pretty nice too. You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to change which layer of the ground you want to explore or extract resources from the trees and mines. Or my personal favorite of creating a bunker within your base and dirt to create levels of farms and big rooms.
In the end, I enjoyed my playthrough. I could have kept playing for many more hours, but I had to stop so I could write this article. In the end, I like the economy of the game and the way the developer creating the building with layers technique. For enhancements other than the tutorial play mentioned above, I think there needs to be an escalation of the threat to push you to upgrade your settlement. Otherwise, you are building for your cosmetic reasons and creating your fake threats like in a Sim world.
Mechanics
This game is still in alpha but has come a long way from another playthrough I have looked up. I didn’t experience any game-breaking bugs. I only had some slight issues with layer management, but otherwise, I was able to play without a problem. Many of the game controls take a little bit of getting used to, but then it ends up working out. Or just use your mouse for everything like I did for so long of my first playthrough.
There is another race called The ancients, and they take the standard gameplay of finding resources to survive into a more vampiric Lich style. You harvest void crystals to feed, and you do not grow in population the same way standard reproduction works for the human gameplay. Instead, you recover sarcophagi and revive ancients to join your settlement. The ancients are a harder experience since you have limited workforce resources and can not just use population increase to brute force completion of tasks. Instead, you use minions and void crystals to gather your forces and accomplish your goals. I am excited to see the new races to be completed and then can play those and give a full review once the game is ultimately released.
To find what is left, check out the developer’s dev log, and if you do get the game and feel like something is missing, contribute to the community! The element that makes indie games amazing is how community contribution transforms games from an idea into an immersive fun experience. Developers quickly get tunnel vision and play the same experience over and over again and miss that first play feel, and that is where we as testers and players can support and help instead of only criticize.
Simulation Inspired from Dwarf Fortress
The inspiration of Dwarf Fortress and Rim World is obvious. If you have not played Dwarf Fortress, know that it is a similar game in that you are trying to create a colony of dwarves and ASCII (until the game is released in graphical form on steam… eventually). Odd Realm is a great alternative and has the potential to stand out even when Dwarf Fortress does come out. There are plenty of simulation games out there, and I think this one deserves to grow and stand as an equal to others over time. Many times you hear how one game is like another. Given enough time and polish, you will then understand how games are like Odd Realm.
All that said, I think the element that is making this game shine is also a drawback for players. Many people go into it, saying it should be like the other game and come back, not feeling like it is on the same level. Or others say why to play it when it is just another Dwarf Fortress. I hope the developer continues to use the inspiration to push it further as I see those elements so more and more players can try the game and know that it has the potential to stand on its own. It just needs more time to come into its own and more people to play and spread what makes this game different.
Learn more about the developer
For $10, you buy this on itch.io, and you will get a steam key when it is released. I am always a fan of supporting Indie Developers, and Unknown Origins has put in so much effort in getting this game where it is today. It is already worth the $10 today, honestly.
Check out their site (oddrealm.com) for the mailing list to find out when the game is released Or…
Follow the Unknown Origins Dev Blog
Follow them on Twitter
Join their Discord
Check out the dev blog on Itch.io and get your copy today.
Watchlist on Steam today!
Normally I put the Twitter embed here… this developer doesn’t have a direct twitter for their game as it is more a personal Twitter. Still Support them if you can!