How many video games do you know that have dwarves as absolute protagonists?
Who writes excluding Dwarf Fortress does not remember many and, fortunately, this time we are dealing with something that has a graphic sector that is spans superior to the ASCII delirium of the aforementioned title.
The colony sims or managerial titles in which you have to manage a colony of something more famous are usually set in locations other than the bowels of a mountain. In this case, Hammerting responds perfectly to the requests of a niche (we don't know how noisy) that is clamoring for a video game with dwarf protagonists: dwarf workers and diggers, to be precise.
No more chatter: let's see together how it behaves in the field, in a preview, this title just arrived in Early Access.
Take me home, mountainhome.
The title in question has, on its side, a narrative sector that is not exactly very original but more than functional I respect what we have to do. As expected there is the usual conflict good versus bad, exemplified by the match between the League Of Metis and the Dread Horde.
In this melting pot of situations and things we arrive, virtual commanders of a handful of dwarves sent to rebuild (in the main campaign) Mountainhome, which is the ancestral home of the dwarven race.
The reconstruction of the house is obviously accompanied by assistance in the war that rages on the surface, this through the accumulation and the gift of resources. Armed with holy patience our dwarves and our subsequent dwarven colony will have to enlarge and will have to set up a sustainable ecosystem, on pain of death of the brave and defeat in battle. Here we come, brave and tireless captains.
A little' rimworld, a little title to the SsethTzeentach, Hammerting takes care to show us the mountain with a lateral view where dwarves in three dimensions take care of animating the tunnels, modifying the surrounding environment, opening passages, building structures and houses. Starting from a trivial mine the player will have to work hard to put together a real industrial complex, with streaks of military production because it is known that the war is raging outside and takes its toll.
Of dwarves and tasks.
In Hammerting the player will have the opportunity to set up a wide range of infrastructures and structures, whether they are an integral part of the scenario navigable by the dwarves, or instead they are only contour figures in the background who take care to set up numbers on the statistics. Between lifts, trolley rails, scaffolding and other things there will be fun for those who have come up with the most famous tycoons in the world of video games.
Of course, these tools are not always easy to use intelligently but this is due to theabsence of a tutorial real that explains the most common tricks that would be very comfortable for the average player.
Without this, Hammerting fortunately does not require a particular microskill, thanks also to thenot very obvious intelligence of the dwarves who will take care of completing the tasks that we will give them. As players we will have to remember just to take an important look at the traits of the dwarves and to choose well how to give them tasks, in order to exploit their characteristics in an intelligent way.
The early stages of the game, moreover, are very kind to the player by not asking for the aforementioned aggressive micromanaging and leaving aside the physical demands of the dwarves such as food and sleep. This element of the game, specifically, will be one of the next to be enhanced by the developers according to the mini-roadmap that can be read in the main menu of the game.
What do dwarves need to be happy?
Well, the dwarves apparently are terribly greedy creatures: this means that it will be our job to build rooms for them where they can accumulate coins to make money. Dwarves also need to feel energetic and in this regard there will be all the food in the world waiting for them while they also need to be a little social, to be able to keep morale up; this last point will force us to let them out every now and then, perhaps to drink a few kegs of beer between one excavation and another.
War never changes.
What happens on the surface while our dwarves do their utmost in excavations and other beautiful activities as true homunculi? Well, there is war, the bad and dominant one.
The war on the surface unfortunately generates requests called "omens of war" which are nothing but micro quest to meet to prevent the Dread Horde from conquering allied areas that can be found on the surface.
By completing the quest (which usually only ask us to donate a given number of resources) we will gradually succeed in expanding the dominance of the dwarves on the outside world; failing to complete quests will mean losing outposts and territories; losing all of the latter will mean lose the match.
Our contacts with the outside world, however, will not be limited to economically supporting a war. In Hammerting it will also be possible trade with others in various ways, obtaining resources that are not obtainable through excavations.
Basically the interaction between the excavations of the dwarves and the outside world is one pretty cool mechanics which increases the fun and generally improves the gaming experience, although there is room to improve everything with more variety and more sensible requests.
Big big and (for the moment) complicated.
Hammerting also has a large technology research system with which the player must learn to interface very quickly. This system of technologies basically allows the player to set up complicated structures starting from simpler resources, crafting itself in the course of a lot of different tools that will be used as a basis to do something else.
At the time of writing we found the encyclopedia rather confusing which does not particularly help the player when it comes to understanding. where to find x resource to perform y construction but we strongly believe that this problem will be resolved within a few patches. In these situations, more functional than anything else, you can see the few parts of the title, almost all linked to a production that still needs some time to finally blossom.
Another not particularly exciting sector can be found in the scombat system integrated in the exploration of our mound.
By expanding our domains within the mountain more often than not, we will end up finding single opponents or areas that spawn opponents on our path. In the latter case we will often find ourselves seeing our heroic miner die without being able to argue in any way or, even worse, see him flee chased by a coven of monsters unable to worry about any fellow dwarves on the way, too focused on eliminating the fugitive. The fight in the title can be better refined with a few tricks and at the moment it is more of an obstacle to the fun than anything else.
Technically speaking Hammerting defends himself decently, despite the three-dimensional models that are not exactly pleasant. Better on the sound front, with music with engaging melodies and an epic fantasy soul that never hurts.
Hammerting is an early access management software with a lot of potential, which has very interesting ideas and some gaps due to the youth of the project. The title has interesting ideas related to interactions with the outside world but some distortions in the use that will surely be fixed within a few patches. The vote in any case can confirm the goodness of the project, as long as we decide to play it in English.
