Farworld Pioneers Review by CiphriusKane

CiphriusKaneCiphriusKane407,571
31 May 2024
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Farworld Pioneers is a colony management simulator made by former employees of Chucklefish, the devs behind Starbound. They put together a single planet, made a second to show off space travel and that was that.

Put simply, this is an incomplete game that will never be completed or patched due to development ending a mere nine months after launching. It's a clear beta that tries to build on what Starbound started but fails.

The story is that you and your pal Buddy crash land on a planet in a dropship and seek a way off said planet. To do this you must explore a monster-infested underground lab and defeat a rogue supercomputer so you can build a ship and crash land on a different planet. Along the way you collect other survivors and face off against raiders. How or why you or anybody else is on the planet is never explained, and given how development on the game has stopped the story will never be expanded.

It's a colony simulator, which basically amounts to telling your colonists what to do while you go exploring or gather resources. While you can do most of the tasks yourself, often it's quicker to just let the colonists do it, as they have stats that affect how quickly they can craft and gather and you, the player, don't. You're also dependent on colonists to do your research, as all you can do is decide what gets researched, though it can be sped up by having multiple research desks. Some colonists have special skills depending on their "background" that acts as another skill that can offer some bonus items, but it's vague how those skills level up.

The major threats in the game are the local fauna and raiders, that can quickly overwhelm a new underequipped player but are pretty much pushovers with some body armour and guns. The bats are just annoying and the tiger can be cheesed by hugging a wall with spiked boots. There are infrequent snowstorms that can freeze colonists and the player, but you're safe as long as you keep moving, even without protective gear.

Playing the game, the movement always felt jittery and the initial loading was slow (always on the sound loading). I also encountered several bugs, such as invisible walls after mining, colonists being stuck in walls, interactions being broken after using the Buddy teleporter in multiplayer, items disappearing, colonists dying instantly for no reason and the entrance to the Underground Lab failing to load in (the boss itself can also fail to load in). The truly sad thing about these bugs is they're fixable, but the developers have stated they're not going to patch the Xbox and Windows Store versions.

Assuming your game doesn't softlock, it should take a matter of hours to build a ship, get off the planet and earn the game's 10 achievements. It's not a full game and will probably never be a full game, so don't expect much and maybe look elsewhere if you want a fleshed-out game.
.5
PsiScreamThe single player experience on Windows store was pretty decent for me. Aside from your NPC teammate logic being somewhat broken, and the raider damage being quite high, I had fun running through this game. I could see what the devs were going for - it's too bad they couldn't quite achieve it. Makes me want to revisit Terraria.
Posted by PsiScream on 31 May at 14:42
FCO RusseVery good description

I want to add, that softlocking is a major problem. There is this boss in the underground laboratory (it is unmissable, somewhat story related) that can just not spawn in the set location (also unmistakably unmissable)... if that happens it is another run, unless you find a NPC shopkeeper, that is selling needed items for research...
Also there is the money achievement "Now that's Paper" that, for whatever reason, seems to only unlock, if you are playing a world in multiplayer, so that might be another run...

I was playing on a series X and had constant jitter during all gameplay, especially annoying doing stuff in the inventory / in-game menus
Posted by FCO Russe on 03 Jun at 07:49
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