Adventure Craft

‘Procedurally generated world’ and ‘sandbox game’ are word combinations of which we’ve been seeing a lot of lately and for good reason. One offers a seemingly endless world to play in while the other leaves you the freedom to pretty much shape the environment to your liking.

Those are two things that are great but there seems to be a gigantic number of games which use and/or abuse these features and yet… Adventure Craft manages to set itself apart.

At its core, Adventure Craft still is the already patented sandbox RPG with pixel graphics so it’s not all that original but it does have a flavour of its own, one that really stands out. Visually, Adventure Craft is just as good if not better than already popular games which rock the same ideas.

In terms of gameplay, you gather materials by chopping down trees, hitting boulders with your fists or pickaxe, there’s the occasional chicken you can slap around for some eggs and so on. What you have to do seems familiar, and it is, but when it comes to Adventure Craft, a lot of things are implemented a lot better than in other similar games. To list a few, a simplified GUI that makes sense, a crafting menu that makes even more sense and exploration that makes the most sense. You get the idea.

Adventure Craft features a procedurally generated world that gets bigger as you explore it. Each giant tile is created to have everything you need, from food sources, to resources to minions that don’t take kindly to you. Even in this pre-alpha build there’s rarely a dull moment because you’ll be sharing the forests with trolls and plenty of creatures that lurk in the night.

When it comes to crafting, you obviously get to put together everything from a simple club to a fully furnished house (furniture sold separately). However, don’t you go thinking that a nice little club will be enough for you to take on the world that lies around you. Combat in Adventure Craft is simple and effective but you need to think things through and be prepared.

Adventure Craft isn’t a punishing game but it is the kind of survival sandbox that takes a lot into consideration to make it authentic and realistic. For example, I died after I ate uncooked meat. Expect solid gameplay from this one.

Even though this build is classified by its developers as a pre-alpha, it feels like a pre-release. Everything is just great, gameplay is fun, it’s visually pleasing and it gets you hooked quite easily.

Get the demo, try it out and if you get some good vibes, feel free to check out the Adventure Craft Kickstarter page. There’s a lot more information about it there, you can drop the team a bit of feedback and even help them speed development along.