I've got to say I'm glad I got it when it was on sale. It's definitely more of a $5 game, not a $15 one. If you find this game at $5 or less, then think about it, but any more than that and you might want to find something that got finished. This review is based off of my experience and the regular price though, so overall I don't recommend it. There's no way there isn't better games out there than this.

Let me start with what I found to be good about the game though, since I did technically like it. I never played this Gnomoria that everyone else is mentioning, and with little function in Minecraft for watching a village come to life even with mods, I found it to be a great idea. Even though it was immediately obvious from opening the game that it was far from finished I found myself enjoying finding different combinations and ways of getting my limited villagers to survive.

Secondly, the zoning. By assigning a zone type to an area the area gains a particular function, while losing other functions. This makes building a city kind of cool because the buildings one makes will actually function the way that they've zoned it to. Added to the fact that, if one could figure out the menus easily, one could get the villagers to use and upkeep these zones automatically, without any help from the player.

Then there's just the world in general. Although the maps are small, they generate well, and they're fun and easy to shape. If a player shows enough patience, it actually is possible to build the kinds of places they show in the promotional material and screenshots.

The last thing I thought was really cool was being able to put writing on tombstones and books and things. I can go through my village and remind myself of the events that passed. Who died, who did the best, or helped the most – it felt like making a civilization, even though it was really just a town at best. Epic legacies in a tiny town.

Now, the wonderful negatives that ruined it. Unfortunately there are a lot of these, so I'll put a chunk of them in point form;
*Odd menu style. That took a while to get used too, and I feel like things could be implemented better.
*Moving items is a hassle, or just plain confusing.
*Can't place enough text in books, graves, signs, etc, and can't use characters like “/”, making labels and text look flat and odd, like they were written by some 10 year old that was too lazy to use any punctuation. Breaks immersion.
*The use of scaffold isn't clearly stated to be useful, and so it can be difficult to find out about it and how to use it properly to build better buildings. There isn't a lot of direct help on the internet either, so simply building can be a hassle. Also, making second floors is too tricky.
*Extremely limited character sprites. Everyone will have too many clones for you to care about them. They also all have weird french-sounding names, even if playing the English version, and though unimportant, feels like it takes away from immersion into the game.
*The armour doesn't fit on the sprites properly. Sometimes this is funny, but it just isn't proper for a game that costs $15.
*The first floor dungeons, though easy to pass, are too expansive and too full of monsters. There's no easing into it at all, making the game feel less thought-out and more slapped together. Also an immersion breaker.
*Next to no updates. These people probably don't care anymore, and it's showing. They don't update anywhere near as much as they should, and some of the bugs in the game could really use some fixes.
*The bugs. Seriously, the game is definitely not a finished product. Amusing, but certainly not finished.

And lastly, though kind of silly, what I found to be the game-breaker;
The weapons you make, buy, and find are cool and all, but it isn't hard for some "hero" to waltz by and take all your good stuff, leaving your citizens and soldiers pretty close to defenceless. Some heroes. I worked hard on that stuff. “That hat was for the blacksmith!” and “she needed that spear to save her life!” might become alarmingly common frustrations.

So yeah. Ends up under $5? It'll amuse you long enough. $15? It's cute, but it ain't that cute, just go back to your Minecraft mods and this "Gnomoria" everyone else is talking about.