This review is on the Alpha version, not the steam release
Founders’ Fortune is a colony survival game mixed with The Sims. This is because they act like real people; they have emotions, skills and thoughts. Every choice you make could make or break your colony. Don’t let lives be lost and friendships destroyed. Be the leader your people need.
Your colonists have wishes and expectations. If their expectations aren’t met, like providing comfortable beds, then they will become lazy and will not do any work. If they still aren’t met after a while, they get angry and start fights with other colonists or start breaking items. If they are met they will get a productivity boost.
It’s important to make sure you meet your colonist’s wishes and expectations or you won’t be able to get more colonists and, without enough of them, your colony will struggle to survive. Besides dealing with your colonist’s emotions, you also have to deal with their health. They can get sick, injured, or even affected by a devastating plague that can wipe out your whole colony.
The goblins are amazing looking enemies — but that does not mean they play nice. Fortifying your colony is key to making sure you don’t get messed up by the goblin’s blow darts.
If you like designing rooms for your colonists, then Founders’ Fortune will cater to that. The developers have provided plenty of building blocks and furniture to use.
I would recommend going into the “Calm World” if you just want to build. Unfortunately, goblins still attack you in the Calm World, so it is not really a creative mode, but it is not as stressful as the other two modes.
Personal Takeaways
I think the hardest part of this game for me were the seasons. This was due to the fact that foods could only grow in the correct season and everything died in winter. So, if you did not stock up on a lot of food before winter, then your whole colony would die.
The game includes three difficulties which are the Calm World, Exciting World and Dangerous World.
The Calm World is better for creative base building as opposed to combat or survival, colonists only take half damage from all injuries, you start with 100 meals and your watered plants yield higher harvests.
In the Exciting World, your colony starts with 40 meals and offers a good mix between base-building and survival.
In the Dangerous World, colonists take 50% more damage from all injuries, your colony starts with 10 meals and get hungry faster and catastrophes occur more frequently.
In all of these modes, your colonists will die if you don’t look after them. I recommend starting on the Exciting World so you learn the game mechanics, but still have fun with all the challenges that may arise.
There are a lot of jobs your colonists can do. The jobs include
farmer, forester, miner, craftsman, doctor, scholar and guard. Jobs are the only way for your colony to improve and to look after your colonists. There are also promotions, so your colonists can do more in their job like using better tools or using bigger machines. Dumb colonists can’t be promoted unless you remove the dumb traits.
More information
The developers have been putting out a lot of amazing updates as well as fixing bugs as soon as they appear and adding amazing content to the game. It is always good to see devs working to improve their games.
Oachkatzlschwoaf Interactive is a two-person team based in Germany. Daniel and René have been making games together in their free time since they were in high school.
Founders’ Fortune is the latest in a string of projects by the team and the first to be published online. Prototyping began as part-time development at first to test the core game features, but since January 2019, both developers are working full-time on the game – accelerating the development a lot.
They are planning to release Founders’ Fortune on July 19th on Steam. So, why not wishlist the game on Steam and show them some support for an amazing game.
Conclusion
I have only covered a few key parts of the game, but there is so much more to explore. It is mind-blowing how a two-man team has created such an amazing game in such a short amount of time. The crazy thing is that the game is still in alpha and already feels good so early in development. You know this is going to be the next big thing.
This game has been in development since 2017 and has come a long way from there. With an amazing art style and developers, I can’t wait for more to come.
