Witanlore: Dreamtime Reviews

I LOVED the idea that modders were making a full game. So, I purchased it as soon as it became available even though I was not interested in the characters and knew nothing of the story. I just wanted to help them succeed. I have bought games from modders in the past and they were as good as anything out there. But these guys took my money and didn't even deliver a decent tutorial. I bought the game for full price long before it went to less than a buck. Since they promised a lot of things and took our money, then abandoned it, if they had any integrity, they would provide full refunds. It is NOT in Early Access. They walked away from the project once they took our money. Almost everything in the description is a lie. It is nowhere near a game at all, not even a short one. It is a crime called theft. They should be ashamed of themselves for stealing our money. The page and ability to buy it at ANY price should be removed.

I don't normally write reviews, but I thought I'd share this time, because I would love to see this polished up and ready for a full release. I've been following this game's progress for a while, and they've poured a lot of time and effort into this project, leading me to believe they're not going to readily abandon ship. For early access, there certainly are some issues that I'm sure are being addressed as quickly as humanly possible. I'd like to list some of the pros and cons I've observed during my first bit of play. Cons, or bugs I'm sure will be fixed: For me, even with a pretty decent rig, I experienced the choppy areas and strange looking rock and water textures that have been reported. I've read that they're working on the FPS performance already, so I'm very much looking forward to the patch. Combat for me is frustrating and a bit clunky, not sure if it's because of the engine or the performance issues that are being addressed. Some of the controls aren't explained or easy to find, like switching between first and third person (I know it exists, I just can't remember where it was in the demo) and sprinting is caps lock rather than shift. I'm sure these will also be addressed as they receive reviews and bug reports. I've noticed a bit of dead space between areas with not much to explore between them, but I'm also just tinkering around on novice mode for the view. I'm hoping to eventually run across some more distractions between the back and forth quests. :D There IS a bit of back and forth so far, if gopher (go-fer/fetch) quests aren't your thing. I gripe about them when I'm playing, but ultimately enjoy the exploration. Pros: It's a unique story, one very well thought out with quite a bit of lore behind it. While I'm not typically a fan of playing as a beast race type character, the lore fascinates me, so I don't mind it much. And I'm REALLY looking forward to being able to play as an Icecore. :D The artwork is great, music is great just from what I've heard so far, the voices are pleasant to listen to through all of the dialogue, which can be quite lengthy at times. I list that as a pro because I like story time, some of you might be a little less patient with lengthy dialogues. Though if you're looking to play an RPG, I can't imagine why you'd dislike that, except I suppose to get on with the killing and looting. Class selection is pretty extensive, giving us old favorites like warrior, rogue, mage, along with different ones I'm eager to try out, like warden. We'll also be able to make our own from scratch--I sense the potential for quite a bit of re-playability there, and I hope there's some different dialogues to go with the different class/RP styles. The interface, while confusing at the moment, has the potential to be nice and simple once polished and explained a bit more thoroughly, and I know what exactly I've just equipped. Looking forward to relaxing with a nice pipe, once I actually manage to acquire one. The landscape does have some lovely bits of scenery, and I'm a sucker for firefiles and a pretty night sky. I also enjoy long walks along the beach... I'm probably leaving out quite a few things, but I don't want to throw out TOO long of a wall of text, and some of what I've encountered so far will be more appropriately reported on their bug tracker forum for fixing. If the story interests you at all and you can spare a few bucks, I do actually recommend purchasing it, even at this point, knowing you're still playing a work in progress. No matter how extensive beta testing was and will be, there will always be issues that come up that a wider audience with wildly different gaming rigs will discover. The best way we can show support and to help the devs out is to report bugs and issues, and provide constructive feedback. I have a good feeling they'll listen. :)

Really enjoyed the short playthrough I just did. The high points are the writing, the music, and the environments. The writers really should give themselves a pat on the back. Great characters and dialouge choices, and some of the books really had me chuckling. The music is beautiful and really works with the forest environment. Together they're quite transportative. The only downside was the contrast was a little high and there was no way to reduce it. After a while it made it a little uncomfortable to look at, but not game-breaking. The first quest is where I stopped playing as I was playing with a laptop trackpad and had trouble finding all the items in the training ground. I felt it was a bit of a lame quest to kick the game off with. I get that you want to build up to more epic things, but that doesn't mean you have to go all out cliche with the early quests; "find X items and put them in crate Y". I was surprised after all the lore in the intro and the scattered books that it wasn't a more unique quest. All in all, beautiful environments and music, and well written. Looking forward to playing more!

Just got through my first 2 hours and I had a blast exploring the bit of area I got to and getting to know the other tribe members. I was suprised by the amount of dialougue choices which brings a particular depth to feel I have not seen in many games. For a game in Beta I'm impressed with what I've experiecned and look forward to the progression and release! I had no issue with frame rate, CTD's or errors during gameplay while playing in 1440p. My specs are: Strix GTX 970 OC i 7 - 4770 3.4 GHz 12 G of RAM Windows 8 64bit

This is the second time I have had to write a review like this. If you want a complete game, do NOT buy this. Development is suspended. What you see is what you get, an incomplete game. What is there is nice, fun even, but there is not much. So I will say the same thing about this as I did the other game I own with the same status. Only buy this if you want to look at something to build ideas for your own thing. For a dollar, you will at least get a couple of hours of play.

In its current state, I cannot reccomend this game, the graphics are fine. Quite a bit of the voice acting is completely coated in cheese, and the controls can get locked up if you fail to navigate the menu's properly. (Dont even get me started on combat) All in all it is VERY Early Access. However! If you want to support these devs to create something awesome, I suggest buying it to support them. Just dont expect it to be playable yet. If you want to buy it for the game, wait a long while. This harvest is still rather green. Edit: It has been a year seince we heard anything from the devs, and the one update they have was from febuary of last year. I think its safe to say this game is dead, I just hope the devs pick it back up one day, it had some potential.

Now that development is officially suspended, I'm comfortable saying I wouldn't recommend this game. I was hopeful at the start, because it involved members of the Nexus modding community, however it appears that the development team took on a project that was too ambitious for them to complete. I guess it's a lot harder to make a complete, working game than it is to mod someone else's.

You know, I wish there was an option to give a "mixed" review, since I don't outright "not recommend" but I also don't straight out "recommend" either, more of a mix between the two. I've been following this game's progress for months, each time a sneak peek was given of what in-game would be like it was amazing, and considering the Dev Team have a lot of prior experience with modding different games we all knew this would be something wonderful and well-constructed, planned and tested. Unfortunately I haven't been able to play the game... Constant CTD's right after the intro movie, which the Dev Team posted a temp workaround to skip the movie, which made no difference whatsoever. Now when someone submits a report about this "bug" they're asked what their specs are... I could understand why they'd constantly ask for specs if this problem was only happening to a small pool of people, but it's happening to the majority of people. It's not a spec-system problem. It's either a hosting server issue, or something else deep in the game. I'm not going to say to stay away from this game, all I'm saying is there are problems that need to be addressed and fixed before this is playable.

The game can get a bit hairy, and the devs still have some knots to brush out. But bear with it: there has been a steady improvement with each update. There's plenty to chew on even in EA, plenty lore and worldbuilding with more on the way. For folks - like me - who want a world they can devour, this game has lots you can really sink your teeth into. I've genuinely enjoyed seeing features added and bugs fixed with each release; I recognise I'm in the minority, but it's really amazing for me - as a non game dev - to literally see a world come to life month by month. It brings a whole new meaning to worldbuilding. Plus: you get to play as a BEAR.

Ok so I know there is problems going around with low FPS and bugs and such, but from my side im giving this a HUGE thumbs up. And im sure they will get the bugs sorted. My game is running smooth with very little freezing moments when im guessing textures are loading or catching up. Im running an I7 2700k, 16g ram with plenty HDD space, GTX 760 video card 4g memory and on 1920x1080. It looks like big map, maybe tonight ill run from side to side and see. Look its early access and there is still plenty to be sorted out but this game has potential. As for the game, the colours when the sun sets is just beautiful, the sun blinding your eyes as it hits the running water is so cool, the huge and thick trees gives the feeling of you belong and yet so small in comparison. If you dont mind bugs and some problems in the beginning, but something new in the RPG line, support the devs.