Stonehearth is a town building/RPG hybrid game by Radiant Entertainment, with heavy emphasis on exploration and survival in an epic fantasy setting. Inspired by games such as Dwarf Fortress (though your little people are much more mentally stable), your job is to help a small group of settlers, the so-called Hearthlings, survive and carve out a place for themselves in a hostile land. You'll need to establish a food supply, build shelter, defend your people, and find a way to grow and expand, facing challenges at every step.
The graphics of the game are essentially a tribute to The 16 Bit Era Of Console Video Games; the Hearthlings, animals and monsters are all rather adorable looking creatures built in voxels, and the world they inhabit is bright and very colorful.
The game is still currently under development, but a open alpha version is available on Steam Early Access and from the game's official website
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Compare Clockwork Empires, a more Steampunk-y, Darker and Edgier, and much more Lovecraftian game in the same vein as Stonehearth.
Tropes:
- Ancient Conspiracy: The Black Cord, a cabal of shady necromancers, who has been around since the days of the Phoenix Empire.
- The Blacksmith: One of the available classes.
- Clock Punk: The Engineer class introduces elements of this, as they can create clockwork gadgets to help defend your base.
- Dem Bones: Wandering bands of skeletons and zombies are amongst the first enemies you encounter.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Each of the three human kingdoms.
- The Ascendancy is Western Europe, mostly England.
- Rayya's Children is North Africa and the Middle East, with elements of East Asian cultures in the philosophy and appearance of settlers.
- The yet-unimplemented Northmen's Alliance is Vikings and other Scandinavian groups.
- Gaia's Vengeance: The logging and mining activity of the player's village will inevitably attract the anger of wood and stone sprites of varying sizes. Ironically, they can also be a good source of stone and wood once the villagers defeat them.
- An Interior Designer Is You: Part of keeping up the Hearthlings' morale is to place decorative objects in their homes to brighten them up a bit.
- Our Goblins Are Different: The Goblins are tribal creatures who thrives by shaking down settlements for tribute or organising raids on the ones that refuses to pay up. They represent the first organised opposition your settlement encounters.
- Precursors: The mysterious Phoenix Empire once ruled the area your Heartlings are trying to settle and have left a few relics behind here and there.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: As long as you have the resources, you are free to build and expand your settlement however you want.
