Mountaincore Reviews

Cool game with elements of Dwarf Fortress and RimWorld. The learning curve is reasonable and the developer is dedicated. Recommended since it already has a lot of content (with more to come). This is a small team worth supporting.

I like the concept ... the priorities is completely out of wack. Trying to do the tutorial, but with no settlers wanting to do their jobs ... I just now had two settlers die of thirst ... close by a full water barrel. It took 17 ingame days for them to finally build a kitchen top, 11 more for them to chop down 1 tree. They had planted like 15 fields total, the rest they were just running around, 90% of the time getting water from the river, even with the full water barrels. Basically got to winter, still waiting for them to make a carpentry and masonry, and the settlers started dying like flies.

MountainCore has amazing potential! Clearly being based on Dwarf Fortress, it takes all the low-res features of Dwarf Fortress and incorporates them into a new style. At the time of writing this review, some features like animals herding and hunting are still lacking functionality, and there are ores that still don't smelt into bars, but I'm sure in short time the devs will add a wealth of features to make this game a true successor of DF. The only thing I'd really hope to see is multiple z-levels, allowing the player to build 3-D fortresses. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this game goes, and I hope you'll give it a look as well!

While it's still in early access, the game gives a very good colony sim experience with lots of crafting progression to figure out, trading mechanism for haggling for items you can't produce, and multiple options for food production to hopefully keep your dwarves from starving... It also has Twitch integration so viewers can have their names appear in game as current or immigrant dwarves. A fun mechanic that ended up allowing one of my first dwarves to bear my twitch name MikesIgloo... First game I get some crop plots set up, wood and stone production sites up and running. I set an area to be mined. Shortly after I get a notification 'MikesIgloo has died in a mine collaspe.' First lesson learned - always put up pillars when you mine large areas. I'm both sad and laughing at my mistake, and that it was my dwarf that paid the price. Second game goes much better. We had some immigrants come in and everyone was happy... Then something happened with my bread oven and they stopped making enough food... And death happened again. And again my dwarf died. And I laughed, and cried, at the rise and fall of my kingdom. This one might have been chalked up to a bug with the oven, but it's possible the new cooks I assigned didn't prioritize cooking over their other duties. I'm looking forward to finding out! I have good feelings about this game and the developer is active on discord answering questions. I'm excited to be a part of seeing this journey through to greater things!

Honestly, I want to like this game but it just feels so empty. How can a whole year go by with no interesting events, which would be fine, if not for the fact it feels like a lot of the rooms also feel empty and pointless. Small pet peeve, I also dislike how you need to build a separate export pallet for each thing you want to make, with the other alternative to swap the production in the export pallet. Spent a good 15 minutes tryna figure that out.

The Early Access launch appears to be a solid start so far. Definitely worth checking out if you're into games like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Odd Realm etc. The import/export mechanic is especially elegant and innovative and let's you tightly control the logistics of your base. The UI is simple, slick and intuitive. The developers are super friendly and eager to help, and the modding potential is massive. I can't wait to see where development goes!

This game has been abandoned. The Developer is defunct, and released the game (Mountaincore) on Github under the MIT License. Do not pay for this game.

Abandoned entirely, dev released the code as open source. Bankruptcy, publishing company with weird strict laws, etc etc lots of unfortunate factors but just a warning to anyone trying to publish indie games i guess Kinda a shame, i liked the much simpler aspect of this game as opposed to rimworld and wanted to see where it went Steam should just link the github repo for this game's code, maybe someone someday will take this up and work on it Or not, who knows but yeah don't buy this game

UPDATE: As of 1/14/24 NO MORE UPDATES-DEV ANNOUNCED TODAY- New story about publisher, bankruptcy, etc... THIS GAME WILL NEVER FULLY RELEASE. So this game used to be called King Under the Mountain, the store front for that game was closed and it was re-released into early access under Mountaincore. No contact or updates have happened since 06/23. Dev had to return to their day job and it seems they just don't have time for this anymore sadly. If you decide to buy just know that it will probably be "as is" don't expect any updates.

Edit: Unfortunately Mountaincore has been abandoned as the company (actually a solo dev by now) developing it has gone under due to middling sales. Its predecessor King Under The Mountain has been released as open source under a very generous license, so if you're interested in a free version or maybe even picking up and continuing the work (potentially to release it commercially yourself), take a look at https://github.com/rossturner/king-under-the-mountain A laid-back but surprisingly robust dwarfy colony builder, somewhere between Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress in complexity. The game wears its inspiration proudly on its sleeve, but is not afraid to try new things. Even though the game is in Early Access, the core gameplay loop is solid: striking out with your 7 dwarves, building up and surviving your first winter to get migrants and managing an increasing complexity of industries, all the while anticipating the arrival of all sorts of fun. The UI is okay and there are currently almost no hotkeys in the game, but these are all the kinds of the things that are being ironed out and improved by the Early Access process, along with adding content to the game. The developer is very responsive in Discord and clearly appreciates player feedback. The game runs solidly, there are hardly any crashes and the bugs are pretty minor, getting hotfixed soon after they are reported. Overall, I heartily recommend Mountaincore even in its EA state to any fans of Dwarves and/or colony simulators. Strike the earth!