The Kindred (PC) Review

The Kindred is a cute, quirky game from Presistant Games that uses voxel, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Minecraft and a few other names to mind as its inspired gameplay recipe. The Kindred is a lot like the Settlers from way back when. However being its own fresh feeling game. It offers a simple drag and drop style interface that gives you a bit of control over where to drop many items. In this review it will be easy for me to really go over the game as it is still in early access so many features are yet to be added or implicated into the structure of the game.  I will be going over the graphics, gameplay and overall fun factor for this. Lets begin.

The game itself starts you off with six settlers/kin. Then it gives you hints to where to start off for constructing your foundation. Which was pretty helpful and nice to have as at first I was completely lost with the controls. It was easy to pick up shortly afterwards though. I began to work on making tools by mining around the area. I noticed each kin had its own hunger gauge and sleep=o meter. So I began to build beds. Then before I knew it I was multitasking on top of multitasking. Constantly meeting demands to these blocky little people. Like a nanny for socially blunt children. Who themselves off spring. The game itself is still in its current development. For what it is so far it is pretty darn good. The Sims, but with more demands then a ransom note. The controls are easy enough to pick up and understand. Hopefully the interface gets cleaned up a bit more and feels a bit more smooth when sliding across for other options. Maybe add a clickable button. The game itself feels a bit like they ported it from a android where I think this games interface would work greatly from. Sure the mouse and camera controls do the job decent for the keyboard, but feel clunky at points. Just me maybe. One thing in the future I hope to see is combat. Things like under-worldly orcs and imps or whatever else can attack villages after awhile. So building walls and or hiring mercs or training soldiers can play a part. That would add some really insanity to the game. Characters can be manually commanded to chop down trees or told to stand in certain locations. One thing to do note is the characters all have random stats. So one does something better then the other. Or can simply just do the task without a whim. Most tasks get done rapidly quick even on the normal play speed located at the bottom right of the screen. The lasting appeal to the fun is pretty solid. As you are constantly moving or keeping up with demands or needings for your kin to survive. A lot like Black and White as another reference.

Crafting in the game is pretty surprising with the depth behind it. You can make generators for power sources. Like wind fans that produce natural energy. I would not go as far or say as deep like Red stone from minecraft, that crap is a whole other planet of depth and complexity on its end. Everything is set up in clickable box tabs so none of that drag and drop crafting box stuff like in minecraft to deal with. Which is fine by me. Your village has a crate that holds all supplies, items and tools. So crafting a decent slot number of a handful of tools is pretty key in the game to have. Your effective goal is to keep a even apply of food and shelter for your little kin to hang around with. So learning the number of things you need is a must.

Graphically the game looks pretty colorful and cheery. When it gets dark outside it IS dark outside. So building light sources are a good thing to invest into once you get a power source running along. Character movement, animals and even down to the water effects are simplified, but look so charming as you move about the landscape. Everything randomly generates, so everything looks new or fresh every time you begin a new. Landscapes are not as varied and mostly are green. You know, looking like grass, and some sand along with some ore nodes.

In Closing:

The Kindred is a fun, addicting experience for many players of games of old or even new can sit down and build a pretty little village in, ether alone or together. With others. So far many good ideas are following out of the ears from the developers so far for simple commands and complex building. If you are creative or just practical this game offers a lot for that mix of many gamers. So far so good. I would personally like to see a Zelda like combat system for hero characters, but I am thinking too hard here for this game as I was wondering about looking for orange trees. I will say this much. If you can keep me playing for more then four hours just obeying a munch of villagers who have weird cravings for oranges. Then you have something here.

Heavily Recommended