Lantern Forge

About

Lantern Forge is a single player role playing game. It was developed by Hearthfire Studios and was released on July 18, 2014. It received neutral reviews from players.

Lantern Forge is a sandbox survival game with building, crafting, and RPG elements. Mine and forage for resources to build a home, plant crops, and craft weapons and armor. Then venture out to explore the wilderness, find hidden dungeons and temples, fight unique monsters, and collect the treasures they guard.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

Skip User Reviews

53%

Audience ScoreBased on 205 reviews

gameplay12 positive mentions

grinding30 negative mentions

Engaging crafting, survival, and exploration gameplay with a mix of RPG elements and multiple playstyles including farming, building, and dungeon crawling.
Varied biomes and extensive underground levels offer plenty to explore and gather resources, with procedurally generated maps ensuring replayability.
Building and town management mechanics add depth, allowing players to create shops that attract merchants, farm crops, and tame animals.

The game has been largely abandoned by the developers, resulting in numerous bugs, crashes, and lack of updates or new content over several years.
Clunky controls without standard WASD movement, problematic pathfinding, and frustrating UI make gameplay cumbersome and unintuitive.
Lack of endgame content, story, quests, or bosses causes the game to become repetitive and dull after initial hours of play.

gameplay
34 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
35%
50%
15%
The gameplay offers an initially fun and straightforward survival and crafting experience with some RPG elements, but it is hindered by limited content, lack of variety, and frequent bugs and crashes. While the core mechanics and progression show promise, the game feels incomplete and becomes repetitive or dull after several hours. Overall, it needs significant polishing and additional content to sustain long-term engagement.
- “The combat is fun (although simple), and the RPG mechanics give it a little extra flavor that other similar games lack.”
- “Besides the survival and crafting gameplay elements, the game offers a decent and solid RPG experience with different types of armor, weapons, enchantments, and skills for you to develop your own unique character.”
- “The most interesting thing about the gameplay so far is that they have a nice balance between progression and a need to explore.”
- “Any updates after their initial offering on Steam have largely done nothing to improve either gameplay or bugs and glitches.”
- “Unfortunately, broken gameplay, poor design decisions, and a buggy client make it really hard for me to recommend Lantern Forge in this stage of development.”
- “The game isn't marked as early access - it really should be, since very little about its gameplay or aesthetics feel polished enough to be a final released game.”
grinding
31 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
3%
97%
Grinding in the game is a core element involving farming, crafting, combat, and exploration that appeals to players who enjoy extended, repetitive progression, though it can become tedious and unbalanced as farming often feels unnecessary due to ample food drops from enemies. While some praise the variety of activities and addictive base expansion, others criticize the slow pacing, clunky controls, and repetitive combat that can make progression feel like monotonous grinding. Overall, fans of farming and crafting will find much to enjoy, but those seeking streamlined gameplay may find it overly grind-heavy and cumbersome.
- “Crafting balancing - after a while I was drowning in materials. Personally, I love doing the farming/gardening aspects of these games, tending to crops and making food/potions etc. Unfortunately, there was very little need for any of it, because at some point you get so much raw meat you never get hungry, and I never needed any of the healing/mana potions either, so planting the herbs was pointless as well.”
- “The end result of this is that when dungeon-delving, you'll usually be stuck grinding against enemies 5 levels below you because anything higher is too hard, and getting appropriately low-level equipment drops. This gets tedious rapidly, and the problem is this is the entirety of the game. All progression is grinding.”
- “It is quite grindy... I *almost* feel like I am playing a free-to-play phone game at times, even though other times it feels like a fully fleshed out RPG.”
story
25 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
24%
56%
20%
The game offers a purely sandbox experience with no story, plot, or defined objectives, leading to a slow start and limited long-term motivation. While some appreciate the freedom from structured narratives, many feel the lack of quests, missions, or engaging elements leaves the gameplay feeling incomplete and aimless. Overall, reviewers suggest the game has potential but needs story-driven content or goals to enhance player engagement.
- “Very slow start, and no real objective to work towards (that I can see) outside of the ones you set for yourself - considering the low cost and the fact that while you have to learn everything on your own or with a Steam guide, it helped me pass a few hours - it's alright - I can definitely see this game going places, but only with some sort of story to work towards, or perhaps a multiplayer option?”
- “The game has limited content to explore, and story-wise, the game provides no plot, no choices, and no sense of urgency to motivate me to keep advancing.”
- “Overall, I'd wait a spell for more bug fixes, some more enemies/a plot/story/ or agenda to accomplish, and generally for it to be somewhat more expanded than this (if it ever is expanded on further).”
- “There's no story, big boss, or any actual goal (bosses and instanced dungeons were among the plans). It's a sandbox experience and can be played for dozens of hours depending on how you approach these kinds of games.”
- “The game has limited content to explore, and story-wise, it provides no plot, no choices, and no sense of urgency to motivate advancement.”
- “The game's complete lack of story or even a framing device makes this worse, because while you can build your town and collect all the vendors, there's no reason to.”
graphics
24 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
45%
17%
The graphics receive mixed feedback, with many praising the charming, bright, and cozy art style and appealing isometric perspective, while others find them overly simple or "meh." Several users report graphical glitches and UI issues, including memory bugs and lack of polish, which sometimes necessitate restarting the game. Overall, the visuals are considered functional and engaging enough to complement solid gameplay, despite not being cutting-edge or highly polished.
- “The graphics are awesome; I loved the different biomes that made each game unique.”
- “The lovely art style and perfect overview of the isometric perspective is very refreshing in a genre that is getting very saturated these days.”
- “All the stuff has a bunch of details for such a limited graphic engine; I really like the artwork.”
- “Graphic and memory bugs occur from visiting two biodomes onward; night cycle causes black flickering tiles, doors get blocked, and items disappear. The only solution is to save and restart the game.”
- “Though now I'm forced to constantly restart the game as the graphics are glitchy and got worse after the crash.”
- “Finicky and unnecessarily difficult/weird controls, overly simple graphics, really bad GUI, and it always feels like a browser game for some reason.”
stability
13 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game suffers from numerous bugs, glitches, and stability issues, including visual errors, runtime crashes, and broken gameplay elements, with little improvement from updates. While some players report a more stable experience, the game feels unfinished and abandoned, making it difficult to recommend at full price despite its potential.
- “Near-constant runtime errors, glitches, and bugs: sometimes my character's hair disappears; sometimes the animal sprites are replaced with large blinking white boxes; other times my hair stays visible but my armor disappears; and sometimes my character is replaced with a big white box.”
- “Any updates after their initial offering on Steam have largely done nothing to improve either gameplay or bugs and glitches.”
- “Same old story: a game with a lot of potential gets abandoned because the devs lost interest or didn't make enough money, so they declared their unfinished buggy game 'finished' and quit working on it.”
music
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The music generally fits the game's atmosphere well but has notable issues such as repetitive or dull tracks that don't change appropriately, and occasional bugs causing incorrect or persistent playback. Some users report music-related glitches that affect the overall experience.
- “Fitting music and sound.”
- “Music puts you to sleep and doesn’t change in combat.”
- “Graphics and animation are sweet, music and sound effects fit the game nicely with great atmosphere.”
- “I get a black screen with music that I cannot exit from with any key combination.”
- “The background music plays, but no logo or main menu pops up.”
- “The music puts you to sleep and doesn't change in combat.”
replayability
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users highlight that the game offers substantial replayability and enjoyment, especially given its affordable $10 price. Despite some unfinished elements, it provides plenty of content and value that encourages repeated playthroughs.
- “That equals infinite replayability for a measly ten bucks.”
- “Tons of replay value here and worth the asking price of $10 USD.”
- “Yes, the devs left us hanging and it hurts since the game is very fun and has a lot of potential, but the game you get is very enjoyable and has a lot to do for that $10, and has replay value.”
optimization
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Recent updates have notably improved the game's performance, addressing previous issues like long loading times related to z-level changes. The developers continue to enhance optimization alongside adding polish and new content.
- “The devs have recently patched the game and improved performance, addressing one of my biggest issues related to long loading times after changing z-levels, along with adding some new content.”
- “The developers, working in their free time after their job, released a new update featuring optimization, polish, and additional content.”
character development
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game offers solid potential for character development, particularly appealing to players who enjoy crafting and adventuring.
humor
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users find the humor enjoyable and note that the game is already funny despite being unfinished, with more comedic content expected in the future.
atmosphere
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's graphics and animation are appealing, while the music and sound effects complement the experience well, creating a strong and immersive atmosphere.
- “Graphics and animation are excellent, with music and sound effects that perfectly fit the game, creating a great atmosphere.”