Greenlight Highlight | Homestead

Title: Homestead
Developer: HASJ Interactive HB
[Greenlight Page]

What type of game is it?

City Builder

What’s the 30 second elevator pitch?

Oversee the lost villagers as they tame the wilderness and build a home for themselves; employ careful resource management so as not to overfarm or overuse else you’ll doom your future with your lack of planning.

What do we like most about it?

I like the fact that the developers have a made a point of the finite nature of the natural resources around the players’ homestead. While this is becoming increasing prominent in games (IE, a lack of outside trading forces to inject absent resources) with the likes of Banished a few years ago, it’s an important design decision that will force players to be more careful in their decisions to expand outwards in game.

It’s the visuals of the game that seems to be dividing the voters over in greenlight, and it’s easy to see why. Most of the terrain and it’s features (bar some water edges) look absolutely brilliant, which stands out abruptly versus the overly geometric, different style features of the characters and many of the objects(housing) in game.

Further still, the weather and fog effects look fantastic, obscuring the screen and showing exactly when your character’s need to worry about temperature. In fact the game looks at it’s best when those effects are in full swing, drawing attention away from the lesser assets. With a slight art overhaul the game could really look as good as it sounds. So, let’s see how the developers act out their remaining time on GL.

When’s it due?

Homestead is set for release on Windows PC & Mac in the first quarter of 2017.