Hammerting

Review

The raging war between the Leagues of Methis and the Dread Horde has intensified on The Overworld. To help the war effort of the Leagues of Methis, a group of dwarves are heading to the highest peak of the Mara mountain to a cave that was abandoned by their race a long time ago. There, they will establish a camp and dig in all directions to find precious minerals to make weapons for the League of Methis. Not only that, the food supply and all the other commodities need to be set up to keep these little fellows happy in their new camp. After all, who knows what they will be crossing path with while digging day in day out. I have a feeling that these 4-foot-10-inch people are taking on a difficult challenge, way beyond their height. Their morale and confidence has hit the roof since they heard that you’ll be the one who will steer them through the tunnels of Hammerting!

Hammerting is a strategy/colony sim/resource management game developed by Warpzones Studios and published by Team 17 on the 28^th of October 2020 on the Steam platform.  The game has been released as an early access and therefore is under development.  

Some of the games released as an early access do not have a tutorial, and Hammerting falls in that category. If you are slightly familiar with this genre of game, you’ll probably figure out what to do reasonably quickly. If not, it will be a trial and error type of gaming experience until you get up and running.

They are two main screens in this game, which are inside the mountain (mine) and The Overlord map. On the map, you’ll have several towns and other locations where you’ll be able to monitor the battle between the leagues of Methis and the Dread Horde. As you progress through the game, orange and yellowish arrows with an exclamation point on them will appear, which indicate missions that you can accept and complete. Most of these missions are to provide specific goods to that location, and you’ll be rewarded with land resources or coins. But the main gameplay is the mine screen which is where you’ll start the game with three dwarves.

On the top left of your screen, you’ll find a tab with several icons. The most important icons (buttons) are the Overworld map which you can refer back to in order to see the evolution of the battles and to access missions as well. There is also a small technology tree, mountain lore, trade points and how many dwarves you have in your colony. And of course, currency. Make sure you have enough mountain lore and trade points, as you’ll need them to learn new technologies.

On the right side of your screen are displayed your tab dwarves, active missions (cave and land) and a few other bits. And at the bottom of the screen you have all the actions, such as building new structures, scaffold stairs, attack, dig, mine etcetera.

I like the fog of war within the mine and you have to send your dwarves to explore or dig to see further inside the mine. And let me tell you it is a big map! Not only will you receive Mountain lore points for exploring, but you might encounter strange creatures, skeletons, and rats that will attack you on sight. You’ll also find graves of fallen heroes, old camps, carts, plenty of mushrooms and a few other things to rummage. You can sell them if you’d like to.

The most important thing is to keep your dwarves’ colony stocked with plenty of commodities, as well as paying them so they keep their morale up and greed satisfied, otherwise you’ll be stuffed!  I had several plays through and each time I seemed to make progress with the cave, land missions and exploring the mountain even further, but I kept hitting a wall with the currency system in the game. With three dwarves it was ok, but very slow in terms of buildings rooms, crafting or just transporting goods to the storage room and chests, even with accelerating the gameplay. But with 4+ dwarves I would keep hitting the number 0 at some point in the game and then it would all go pear-shaped.

I like the character menu, which you’ll need to use frequently as each of your little fellows will gain experience each time they mine, explore and complete tasks, but there are no key bindings so you have to constantly click on the individual tab to have their menu pop up so you can distribute the achievement points you receive into their 5 different attributes. It’s madness!

I experienced several bugs which made me restart the game a few times. The main one is when one or two of your fellows are making some sort of protest by being stuck to the wall, and that’s it, you can’t do a thing!

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like what I’ve seen so far, and I like that each of my plays through was different as the cave is randomised at the start.  Most importantly, I had fun. I would not have persisted if I didn’t think the game had a solid base, and the developers also give you some information on what’s coming up when you login into the game. Graphically, the game looks great! It’s important to remember that this is an early access game.  

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com