This review will be for those who are unaware of what exactly fortresscraft is like, and who don't know if it's worth getting over similarThis review will be for those who are unaware of what exactly fortresscraft is like, and who don't know if it's worth getting over similar creative titles. Fortresscraft is as you may be aware from the descriptions a creative builder in the style of titles like Minecraft and Blockland, with the main features setting it apart from those titles being the inclusion of additional minigames, as well as the ability to make your own custom blocks using the "workshop" in the game, allowing for greater creativity in building.
The first thing you will notice when you start Fortresscraft is that you don't have all of the abilities available right away such as flight and increased speed, and you may also notice weird droning sounds in certain areas, this is because of "relics", relics are pickups hidden underground in most general levels, which when acquired will grant you the feature of a given relic, which can then be toggled in the relics menu, such relics include both mechanics to make movement easier for the player, as well as the extra game modes, such as spleef, freeze tag, and manhunt. finding these relics may seem annoying for some, but it can be achieved easier by making a flat world, or simply going into the "demo world" included with the game, as you'll find the relics within that map if you don't already have them (not sure if that is intended behavior however).
The main and most important factor of the game is of course how it plays, and that may be a mixed bag for some, as some of the controls can seem a little clunky such as needing to use keys to access various menus such as switching blocks, this is because fortresscraft is a port of an xbox 360 indie title which made use of the xbox 360 controller and as such the mappings are more of a translation of how they were on console, and as such you may prefer to use a controller as the controls were originally designed for such, but I found for me using the keyboard was fine, and using the mouse for building just feels really nice. As for building, you have a selection of a few different blocks of various themes, and in regard to placing them you have various options, such as various tools that all seem to perform similar functions with placing and breaking blocks, as well as a tool that allows you to rapid fire blocks making placing and removing large amounts of blocks easier, and on top of that, you have builder and digger machines that automatically place or break blocks for you meaning you have less work to do, although they function a little oddly with for some reason the digger obeying gravity, while the builder does not, and while not much can be done to stop the digger before it eventually despawns, the builder can be stopped by putting blocks in front of its path.
As I mentioned before, one of the biggest draws of the game is the workshop, where you can make custom blocks allowing for various features that are not included by default to be added, such as stairs, and doors (unless I just didn't look hard enough for them), and this feature is in general quite robust, allowing you to make blocks of any shape as long as they fit within the physical space of the workshop.
Graphically, the game does look like an xbox 360 indie title, and some of the visual features such as bloom can be overwhelming, but thankfully you can turn those off if you don't like them, and the game has dynamic lighting, including multiple coloured torches achieving features that certain titles haven't achieved in over a decade of existing, and did I mention this game is a decade old? Overall it's not a bad looking title for a voxel based building game, but some of the ui can be a little primitive, but given the small dev team, it can be forgiven. I should also mention that if you have a good enough pc, you can have most settings up high while maintaining 60fps, but due to the engine being limited to 32bit, certain settings may not work well on any setups, and there isn't much that can be done to fix it unfortunately.
Overall I'd recommend this game to people who want a good creative builder but don't wish to mod minecraft, or don't have the money for one of the bigger titles, but do look out for some of the jank and bugs, but having played 3d sonic games, it's no big deal to me personally. If anyone ends up deciding to get this game because of me, feel free to add me and come visit my world of crappy builds since I'm not a great builder, but I got the spirit lol. If there's anything I missed, I either haven't checked it out yet (the minigames, certain aspects of the workshop) or am unaware of their existence.
That concludes my review and I apologize if it appears as a wall of text, but hopefully it's helpful to some people.… Expand
