LifeisXbox’s DwarfHeim review | About 1,5 months ago, a new RTS game came out of Early Access and is here to take over the world. Or even better, let you build a world from scratch. I’m talking about Pineleaf Studios’ game DwarfHeim. In DwarfHeim you have to build your settlement and take on other players, survive against waves of trolls, or just casually build a lovely town in the sandbox mode. I got very excited when I learned about all this information so let’s dive into the game and see what I found.
Whether you want to play a survival game, a match against other players or just calmly build a city in the sandbox mode, DwarfHeim offers it all.
ℹ️ Reviewed on PC | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we liked!
- Gameplay/modes | DwarfHeim offers a few different game modes where you have to do different things in order to complete or win the game. In its core, DwarfHeim is a class-based co-op RTS for 1-3 players, which is how the developers describe their game. While playing DwarfHeim, it is you goal to build a settlement, gather resources, and develop your skills/equipment in order to build an army to take on enemies, depending on what mode you are playing. First of all you have the survival mode. Here you have to defeat hordes of trolls who want to destroy your civilazation. It is your job to hold out as long as possible. Secondly, you have the skirmish option. This is where you are competing against the settlements of other players or the AI if you are playing in singleplayer mode, last village standing wins. As a third option you can play in the Sandbox. Here you can build the city of your dreams. It’s a great way to learn how everything works and get the basics under control before you dive in the competitive modes. Another addition to get familiar with the game is the two-part tutorial. In part one you will learn the basics of the game and in part 2 you will get familliar with the mining aspect of the game. Both tutorials are very clear and provide a nice introduction to the game. DwarfHeim definitely offers enough gameplay and modes, providing a lot of fun to all players.
- Graphics/sound | The graphics that are used in this game are good and clear. DwarfHeim is designed in a cartoony style with lovely details. Don’t expect really fancy things but it just looks good and fits right in with the gameplay that DwarfHeim offers. Everything is completed with some nice sounds. While playing there is some sort of fantasy theme music playing, and the developers made sure to add some lovely sound-effects such as the sound of you mining some ore etc. Again nothing too fancy but it’s as good as I expected it to be and completes the game.
- Friend Pass | A great addition and feature that DwarfHeim offers is the Friend Pass. This allows you to invite a friend who doesn’t own the game to play with you. Here you can team up and play the different game modes. And let us be honest, everything is more fun when you can play together with friends. While playing together you can take different roles to progress even faster in-game. For example, one person can focus on gathering resources and the construction of buildings while the other one focus on the development en recruitment of soldiers to take on your enemies.
- Classes & thanes | I alreay talked about it a bit but there are 3 different classes that you can choose to play: builder, miner, and warrior. If you are playing solo you still have to manage all 3 roles but if you are teaming up you can select a role and purely focus on that. I’m not going to explain every role in its core since they are pretty self explaining in my opinion. Besides the different classes you have Thanes. When you start a a new game, you can select one of the 9 Thanes. These are you main characters that offer unique abilities and skills. They also can be used for every class, however each has a specialty so choose wisely.
Somewhere between
- Assigning roles | While playing DwarfHeim there is on thing that gave me mixed feelings. The game is about micromanaging and giving tasks that need to be done, but when you are for example mining ore and you want to build something in between, your worker starts building but as soon as you click away, he stops building and continues mining. I can see why this is happening since his main task is mining, but if you are quikly assigning thinks to do, it is very annoying that as soon as you click away, the assigned dwarf stops. Personally, I hope that they will fix this in future updates.
What we disliked
- Multiplayer | DwarfHeim heavily relies on multiplayer, you can team up with other players or compete against them. And I can imagine that it sure would be a lot of fun and offer exciting moments while playing. You can also see that the developers really went for the multiplayer aspect of this game with the Friend Pass where you can let friends play with you. Unfortunatly, the game is dead as can be. There aren’t any players to play with and I’m not sure if there ever will be. I tried playing online a few times but never encounterd any other human being online while playing. It’s a shame really, and even though the Friend Pass does make up for this a little, it still doesn’t change that fact that, for a game build around online multiplayer, there isn’t much to it.
How long to beat the story | The is no story in DwarfHeim
How long to achieve 100% achievements | 20+ hours depending on your luck and skill
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