Info about TFM: The First Men:

Official game description:
Roadmap
=======
About the Game
==============
TFM: The First Men is an open-world colony sim inspired by the creation stories, and enriched with character-driven base building, party-based exploration, and tactical real-time with pause combat.  
CHARACTER-DRIVEN BASE BUILDING
------------------------------
Build your settlement, assign your characters to various jobs, and help them choose the right path when they level-up their professions, where these choices will echo for generations - as they can be the doom or the boon to your future!  
PARTY-BASED EXPLORATION
-----------------------
Team up your characters as you lead a party of heroes in an RPG - discover a living and breathing world full of wonder that rewards exploration as you traverse, interact and learn more about the multitude of races, authentic cultures, mythical creatures, and special characters you will encounter during your adventures.  
TACTICAL REAL-TIME WITH PAUSE COMBAT
------------------------------------
Survive the invasions or claim other regions in an unending cycle of war where adaptation is the key to success - raise children, train warriors, distribute loot, synergize your party - these are all important parts of your grand strategy, as all enemies you encounter, whether a gang of orcs, a pack of wolves, or a swarm of ghouls, each will have respective threats to overcome.  
CREATION STORIES ABOUT THE FIRST MEN
------------------------------------
Help reshape the ancient, untold stories of how mankind started its ambitious journey of life. Suffer the struggles they’ve been through together and help them overcome the challenges of loneliness when they were afresh in their universe.

Release date: 2 Nov, 2022

Categories: Colony Simulation, Base Building, Character Progression, Tactical Real-time with Pause, Open-World Exploration, Strategy, RPG, Worker Management


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Engaging and Rewarding Gameplay (weight 0.81): Players find the game highly enjoyable and immersive, especially once its unique and complex mechanics are understood. It offers significant replayability through procedural generation and diverse progression paths, making it a compelling experience for fans of deep strategy and base-building.
- Unique Genre Blend (weight 0.33): The game stands out for its innovative combination of RTS, 4X, RPG, and colony simulation elements. This unique mixture, particularly the character-focused colony management, offers a fresh and deep experience within the genre.
- Active and Responsive Development (weight 0.32): The developers are highly praised for their frequent updates, active community engagement, and responsiveness to player feedback. This consistent evolution and a promising roadmap instill confidence in the game's future potential.
- Distinctive Art Style and Atmosphere (weight 0.29): The game's unique comic book-style graphics, combined with atmospheric music, create an immersive and visually appealing experience. Players appreciate the blend of fantasy and historical visuals, enhancing the mythological setting.
- Deep Character Progression (weight 0.29): A core strength is the character-driven progression system, where attributes, skills, and traits shape individual destinies and influence tribe development. Players enjoy cultivating stronger characters and exploring diverse career paths.
- Rich Story and Exploration (weight 0.16): The game offers an epic, narrative-driven experience set in a mythological world, where player decisions have lasting consequences. It features RPG-like adventures, exploration, and a dynamic world that ensures a different story with each playthrough.
- Strong Early Access Content (weight 0.14): Despite being in Early Access, the game provides a surprising amount of deep content and offers a rewarding experience. Players are optimistic about its future, especially with planned features like multiplayer and modding.
- Dynamic AI and Village Management (weight 0.11): The game's AI, which allows characters to pursue passions rather than just chores, makes the villagers feel more alive. This, combined with robust village development options, provides a satisfying sense of establishing and fleshing out a settlement.
- Nostalgic and Cozy Feel (weight 0.08): Some players find the game reminiscent of classic strategy and culture-building games like Dwarf Fortress, appreciating its depth and the feeling of discovery. The overall ambiance is often described as cozy and inviting.
- Pleasant Audio Design (weight 0.04): The game's music and sound effects are generally well-received, contributing positively to the overall atmosphere and providing a warm, fitting ambiance.

Common complaints:
- Steep Learning Curve & Poor Onboarding (weight 0.99): Players find the game's initial experience overwhelming due to unintuitive mechanics, a confusing UI, and a significant lack of proper guidance. The current tutorial is insufficient, buggy, and fails to adequately prepare new players for core gameplay loops, leading to frustration and a feeling of being lost.
- Incomplete & Buggy State (weight 0.83): The game is perceived as unfinished, with numerous bugs, clunky mechanics, and a general lack of polish. Many players feel it was released prematurely, lacking essential quality-of-life features and a clear direction for its final form.
- Overpriced for Current State (weight 0.62): Many players feel the game's price is too high given its current unfinished state, numerous bugs, and limited content. They believe it does not offer sufficient value for money, especially for an Early Access title.
- Excessive Micromanagement & Tedium (weight 0.25): The game demands an unreasonable amount of manual input and micromanagement, especially as colonies grow. Tasks like replacing workers, managing individual colonist traits, and handling equipment are repetitive and detract from enjoyment, making the game feel like an 'idle clicker' rather than a strategic management title.
- Performance & Optimization Issues (weight 0.2): Players report significant lag and frame drops, particularly in the late game when colonies expand. This poor optimization negatively impacts the gameplay experience, making it frustrating to manage larger settlements.
- Incomplete Localizations (weight 0.16): Several players, particularly those in non-English speaking regions, report that translations are incomplete, awkward, or entirely missing. This significantly hinders their ability to understand game mechanics and enjoy the experience.
- Limited Content & Replayability (weight 0.1): Players note a lack of content variation, with repetitive gameplay loops and a limited number of interesting campaigns. The absence of random maps or skirmishes after completing the main scenarios reduces replay value.
- Unintuitive Equipment System (weight 0.09): The equipment system is criticized for being illogical; new equipment overwrites and discards old items rather than allowing them to be unequipped or reused. This design choice is seen as frustrating and wasteful.

Gameplay feedback:
- Complex Villager Management (weight 0.25): Players must individually manage villagers' five color-coded life-sustaining statuses, assign traits for jobs, and monitor needs like relaxation. Villagers are mostly autonomous but require player intervention to prevent death from depleted energy levels or old age. Villagers can also get stuck, requiring a save/load or rebuilding structures.
- Strategic Colony Simulation (weight 0.21): The game is a strategic colony simulation combining character-driven base building, exploration, and real-time tactical combat. Players collect resources, craft equipment, and plan buildings, character skills, and tasks. It focuses more on map exploration and boss fights than base defense.
- Deep Character Progression (weight 0.19): Characters gain experience through work, which can be spent on new skills, stat upgrades, or choosing 'Personalities' (passive buffs) or 'Passions' (gathering/crafting abilities). This RPG-like growth allows players to flesh out characters and keep them alive for extended periods.
- Profession and Building Unlocks (weight 0.1): To unlock new buildings and crafting items, villagers must first select specific professions. Once a profession is chosen, a corresponding profession-specific building can be constructed, which is essential for the villager to perform their work.
- Party-Based Exploration (weight 0.08): Players can form small parties of 4 adventurers to scout the map, engage enemies, and collect loot. This involves drafting colonists from their normal duties to follow player commands and move to specific locations.
- Unique Mechanics, Not Rimworld (weight 0.07): The game's colony simulation mechanics are described as complicated and strange, differing significantly from classic colony management games like Rimworld or Settlers. This suggests a unique approach to the genre.
- Tradition System for Advancement (weight 0.05): The game features a 'Tradition' system, akin to a tech tree, which is used to unlock career advancements and progress through the game's various stages.
- Mixed Micro/Macro Management (weight 0.04): There is conflicting feedback regarding micro-management. Some players feel a lot of micromanaging is required despite most tasks being automated, while others state it does not involve micro-management. This suggests a nuanced or subjective experience.

Performance notes:
- Performance issues with large populations (weight 0.09): Players report significant frame drops and lag when their settlements grow to 20-50 people or more, indicating the game struggles with late-game population scaling. This is a common concern for an Early Access title.
- Moderate system requirements (weight 0.08): The game is generally considered to have medium PC requirements, with some players noting its graphical style is less demanding, similar to 'Don't Starve'. One reviewer provided their system specs (8086k, 1080ti, 32GB RAM) which suggests a mid-to-high-end setup.
- Mixed bug reports (weight 0.04): While some players experienced no bugs, others mentioned general bug reports as part of the Early Access experience. This suggests an inconsistent bug presence across the player base.

Recommendations:
- Wait for future improvements (weight 0.64): Many players advise against purchasing the game in its current state, recommending to wait for further development, bug fixes, and content updates. This sentiment is often tied to the game's Early Access status and perceived lack of polish or features.
- Target audience for strategy fans (weight 0.25): The game is highly recommended for players who enjoy deep strategy, colony-sim, or God-sim genres, especially those who appreciate games like Majesty, Rimworld, or Oxygen Not Included. It appeals to those seeking a challenge and new systems to learn.
- Improve tutorial and UI (weight 0.12): Players frequently request a more comprehensive tutorial to ease the learning curve for new players. Additionally, UI improvements are desired to reduce micromanagement frustrations and enhance overall usability.
- Enhance task and priority management (weight 0.1): Suggestions include allowing players to set priorities for character tasks and crafting based on storage thresholds. There's also a desire to simplify some professions into basic, universally available tasks, particularly for construction.
- Add diverse content and features (weight 0.09): Players are looking for more diverse events, scenarios, and additional content to enhance replayability. Specific suggestions include improving Tradition UI/choices, adding a 'focus' button for item sending, and an auto-management feature for character points.
- Game requires significant time investment (weight 0.07): Players should be aware that the game requires a substantial time commitment to understand its systems and progress, with one reviewer noting it could take 20 hours to defeat the first boss.

Other player notes:
- Long-Term Player Engagement (weight 0.37): Many players have been following the game's development for a long time, are committed to its journey, and plan to continue playing and checking for updates. They are invested in its future.
- Early Access with Potential (weight 0.22): Players acknowledge the game is in Early Access and still rough around the edges, but see significant potential for future development. They understand it's a work in progress by a small team.
- Gameplay Direction Concerns (weight 0.17): Some veteran players express frustration with recent changes, feeling that original features were removed, making the game simpler. They prefer the previous, more complex direction.
- Desire for More Content/Difficulty (weight 0.11): Players want more challenging gameplay, including more enemies, random encounters, bigger maps, and a larger campaign. They also suggest advanced difficulty settings for equipment design.
- Suggested Gameplay Mechanics (weight 0.1): Players propose new features like a soft population limit, infinitely expanding maps, a dungeon system with roguelike elements, and resurrection mechanics.
- Community Support is Helpful (weight 0.07): Players recommend using the official Discord community for questions and feedback, highlighting its helpfulness in understanding the game.
- Planned Day/Night Cycle (weight 0.04): The absence of a day/night cycle is noted, with players anticipating its implementation as it is expected to significantly alter the game's ambiance and gameplay.
- Fixed Progression Issue (weight 0.02): A previous critical issue where players could get stuck due to resource shortages has been successfully addressed in a recent patch, improving early game progression.
- Gender Imbalance Issue (weight 0.02): One player reported a significant gender imbalance in their game, reaching 12 females with no males, indicating a potential issue with character generation.
- Co-op and Multiplayer Desired (weight 0.02): A player expressed a desire for co-op and multiplayer features to be added to the game in the future.
- Trailer Misleading (weight 0.02): One player felt the trailer made the game appear to be an exciting adventure story, which may not align with the actual gameplay experience.
- Thai Language Request (weight 0.02): A player requested the addition of Thai language support in future updates.
- Turkish Developer Pride (weight 0.02): One player found it more exciting knowing the producers are Turkish, which is a positive but non-gameplay related sentiment.
- Compared to Majesty (weight 0.02): One player compared the game to 'Majesty', offering a point of reference for its gameplay style.

Emotions:
- Frustration (weight 0.22): Players experienced frustration due to a steep initial difficulty curve, confusing or broken mechanics, and a lack of clear tutorials. Issues like excessive micromanagement, slow progression, bugs, and poor optimization also contributed significantly to this feeling, making the game feel tedious and unintuitive.
- Disappointment (weight 0.17): Disappointment stemmed from the game's unfinished state, perceived lack of content, and misleading marketing. Players felt the game was barebones, buggy, and did not live up to its initial appeal or price point, often citing poor localization and missing quality-of-life features.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.15): Satisfaction arose from understanding the game's unique mechanics, deep strategy, and character development systems. Players enjoyed the visual design, the rewarding experience of building settlements, and appreciated the developers' continuous updates and responsiveness to feedback.
- Appreciation (weight 0.07): Players appreciated the game's unique art style, depth, and the significant effort put into its design. The active and responsive developers, along with the pleasant aesthetics, relaxing soundtrack, and unique genre approach, were also key factors.
- Hope (weight 0.07): Hope was driven by the game's perceived huge potential, promising roadmap, and belief in the developers' ability to improve it. Players anticipated future features, content, and quality-of-life updates that would elevate the game to a 'must-play' status.
- Excitement (weight 0.06): Excitement came from discovering the game's depth after overcoming the initial learning curve and its unique mechanics. Players were hooked by the rewarding experience, fantastic artwork, and the promising future development, including planned features and community engagement.
- Confusion (weight 0.05): Confusion was caused by unintuitive controls, unclear game mechanics, and a lack of proper localization. Players struggled with navigating the interface, understanding resource management, and grasping the game's overall purpose and complex systems.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.04): Enjoyment was derived from the game's uniqueness, intuitive design (once understood), and engaging character-focused building gameplay. Players found the strategy simulation and unique management style to be fun and rewarding after an initial learning period.
- Engagement (weight 0.03): Players felt engaged by the game's ability to hook them, often spending more time playing than intended, and approaching its mechanical complexity as a riddle. Following the game's development and providing detailed feedback also indicated strong engagement.
- Caution (weight 0.03): Caution was expressed as a warning to potential buyers about the game's current early access state, advising them to wait. This was due to the presence of bugs, incomplete features, and the significant time investment required to understand the game.
- Anticipation (weight 0.02): Anticipation was focused on future improvements, upcoming updates, and expected rapid development from the developers. Players looked forward to new content and fixes that would enhance the game experience.
- Optimism (weight 0.02): Optimism stemmed from the game's future potential and the developers' stated plans. Players believed the game could achieve great success if the outlined roadmap was diligently followed.
- Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom was reported due to the repetitive nature of micromanagement, even for small colonies, leading to a feeling of a 'repetitive slog' in gameplay.
- Support (weight 0.01): Support was shown for the developers' continuous updates and efforts to make the game more accessible. Players expressed belief in the developers' ability to improve the game over time.
- Curiosity (weight 0.01): Curiosity was primarily driven by the game's potential, suggesting an interest in how it would evolve and what future developments would bring.
- Sadness (weight 0.01): Sadness was reported when the game failed to meet players' expectations, indicating a sense of disappointment with the overall experience.
- Love (weight 0.01): Love for the game was specifically attributed to its art style and initial story elements, highlighting strong positive feelings towards these aspects.
- Patience (weight 0.01): Patience was expressed by players who were willing to wait for further development, acknowledging the game's early access state and anticipating future improvements.
- Defensiveness (weight 0.01): Defensiveness arose from the perception that the game was receiving 'mixed' reviews despite its perceived quality, indicating a desire to advocate for the game.
- Immersion (weight 0.01): Immersion was experienced through the feeling of establishing the first human tribe, suggesting a deep connection to the game's thematic elements and world-building.}