Recent reviews by Nemicu

When it comes to voxel games this might be the next holy grail. A sandbox "city building" game with crafting support and basic trading, this one mixes it all into one enjoyable game.

Due to its early access phase its not a game I would suggest everybody to play right now. However, if you are not easily aggrivated by bugs in an early access game this might be the one game you have to try in the least.
This game has a very active community which can be found trough the discourse Stonehearth website.

Ofcourse the quality of the game isn't decided by its community, but the support the developers receive of all the players does help it to get in on track of becoming one of the better games out there. What does make the game so great is that it carries a replayability in its core design that will keep the players coming back over and over to sink more hours into Stonehearth.

The music you hear while playing is not distracting and fits the game just right. Same goes for most of the sound effects. After about 15 minutes you'll learn to recognise the warning sounds from when your town is under attack and it feels almost like it has always been that way.

The graphics aren't the best but its a voxel game that pushes the feeling of older 8-bit games into a modern 3D game environment. And it does it great, it shows a style that wasn't unique among similar games but if you see video's of screenshots you know that its Stonehearth. Together with the sound and music it just fits.

The UI is userfriendly enough that without a tutorial you will learn to use it within the first 30 minutes. A small concern is the usage of the combat menu. You will navigate trough to many buttons in my opinion to react quickly enough to the enemy invaders of your town that there is a higher chance that one of your soldiers wont survive the battle.

Also, because the game features your villagers as free spirited enitites, you give them commands that arent't always exact. This will give you the feeling that the AI is not listening or your villagers seem to be complete idiots.
This can be very frustrating sometimes and with the early access bugs you will need alot of patience.

With everything together I would give the game an 8 out of 10 score and when it comes out of early accesss I'd advise it to any voxel/city builder/strategy lover out there to at least give it a try.