Orebound

About

Orebound is a single player and multiplayer open world management game. It was developed by Emberforge and was released on October 24, 2024. It received positive reviews from players.

Explore, Mine, Automate - the world is yours!Orebound is a voxel, factory, automation game set in a first person open-world. Explore the vast mountain ranges before you, or journey deep into the Earth to find the ultimate Dwarven prize – the Emberstone. Lost in the depths of time, the King has tasked you to scour the mountains to find its location. Using your Dwarven prowess and knowledge to mine,…

Skip User Reviews

81%

Audience ScoreBased on 513 reviews

gameplay8 positive mentions

grinding27 negative mentions

Engaging dwarven-themed factory building and mining game with satisfying automation and base building elements.
Beautiful voxel-based art style with well-designed machines and immersive atmosphere.
Active and responsive developers who actively listen to community feedback and frequently update the game.

Early Access state with notable bugs, crashes, and frequent performance issues requiring restarts.
Clunky building mechanics with poor snapping, large machine footprints, and tedious terrain leveling.
Simplistic and repetitive combat with limited enemy variety and ineffective defense systems.

gameplay
49 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
16%
76%
8%
The gameplay offers a solid core loop of mining, automation, and building with an appealing steampunk dwarf aesthetic, attracting fans of factory-style games. However, it currently suffers from cumbersome building mechanics, spatial inefficiencies, incomplete or clunky systems (like hunger and combat), and limited quality-of-life features, making progression and management frustrating at times. While promising and enjoyable in early access, the game still needs substantial refinement and additions to fully realize its potential.
- “The gameplay is just as strong: fun, smooth, and surprisingly addictive.”
- “Exploration and production chain optimization are at the heart of the gameplay, and you quickly get hooked on searching for rarer minerals and improving your underground industrial network.”
- “The core gameplay loop is satisfying as heck: build, automate, upgrade, repeat.”
- “A large problem right now is the steampower mechanic. Running a processing and assembly line for just a single type of ore already takes up a lot of space, but even if you clip machines and steam lines into each other in a bid to save space, the required boilers and splitters to power it all take up a bunch of space and form a spaghetti mess that becomes annoying to climb around and pipe together.”
- “No way to blueprint a series of buildings, making base building a tedious chore for every setup as you fight the game mechanics.”
- “The automation and fighting mechanics are both subpar at best.”
graphics
44 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
50%
7%
The game features a charming, cartoonish dwarf-meets-steampunk aesthetic that is visually appealing and well-executed, with detailed environments and a good sense of immersion. While the graphics are generally praised for their style and uniqueness, some users note a need for more environmental variety and occasional technical issues like high GPU usage. Overall, the visuals contribute strongly to the game's atmosphere and appeal, especially for fans of dwarven and factory-building themes.
- “The art style immediately grabbed my attention — it’s unique, charming, and gives the whole world a personality of its own.”
- “Artwork and graphics are amazing and gameplay isn't far behind.”
- “The graphics are nice, it's a very aesthetically pleasing environment and it's just a good all-around way to immerse yourself in an entertaining package.”
- “4: the graphics are pretty good, but not good enough to justify my GPU getting up to 95 Celsius.”
- “The fix: seriously, what's going on with the graphics?”
- “My only gripe if any is that the world and graphics are a bit simple; that may just be the art direction, but I think this game could look better overall with a lot more variation in environmental assets.”
story
36 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
19%
73%
8%
The story is centered around a quest-driven progression involving resource gathering, base building, and automation to recover special gems and supply the empire "for the king." While players appreciate the engaging mission setup and gradual unlocking of new tools and challenges, many note the current story is relatively simple, with some quests feeling repetitive or hollow. Overall, the story adds fun and motivation but is still in early development and would benefit from deeper narrative elements and more varied objectives.
- “It has a great big quest chain and loads of research for better automation and tools. It has a marketplace to buy or sell items to make gold and use that gold for the research.”
- “You're a dwarf with a mission to eventually find some special gems for three mucky-mucks, but to do that you have to first survive against the orcs and goblins, mine and smelt ore, build and expand your base, gradually automate the processes of manufacturing, and get rich.”
- “It really feels like a casual survival game starting out. From what I have gathered, I'm on a mission to supply the empire and 'for the king', oh, and some kind of massive quest involving relics and some kind of LOTR/DnD kind of deal which I'm excited to delve into later on.”
- “There is a story in which you need to locate 3 gems, but 10 hours in I don't feel the need or desire to continue as previously stated.”
- “The premise, a little bit of background story, the prospect of hoarding gold in huge piles is appealing and gives you some starting momentum, but in the end it all grinds to a halt as you start suffering from clunky interface, unnecessary mechanics, limited construction options and so on.”
- “The quests seem hollow with little incentive to complete; I'm glad they're there, just wish they had more to it.”
grinding
27 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Grinding in the game is a mixed experience, with many finding early progression and task completion tedious due to automation and resource management challenges. Farming, in particular, is often described as underdeveloped, unrewarding, or unnecessary, though some players enjoy the homesteading aspect. Despite these issues, ongoing updates and QoL improvements have helped mitigate grind frustrations, maintaining player engagement.
- “The whole farming system needs an overhaul and rebalancing to actually work as a game mechanic.”
- “Many of the recipes sell for less or roughly equal to the costs of ingredients and none of the food gives such a good buff that it's worth focusing on farming in any capacity.”
- “Be prepared it'll stay tedious all the time.”
stability
22 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
14%
86%
The game currently struggles with frequent bugs, crashes, and performance issues such as freezing during autosaves and problematic collision/building mechanics. While these stability problems are frustrating for many players, some recent updates have improved performance, and given its early access status, bugs and glitches are expected but may be addressed over time. Overall, stability remains a key concern impacting gameplay but progress is being made.
- “Good game, better now after this update, runs great.”
- “I love the game but it crashes and freezes consistently.”
- “I have died multiple times due to the autosave freezing the game when being attacked and when it unfreezes, you're dead.”
- “It's like 75% there, and I normally can forgive early access issues, but this one is really frustratingly buggy.”
optimization
21 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
14%
72%
14%
The game shows promising potential but currently suffers from notable performance and optimization issues, including stuttering, lag spikes, and inconsistent frame rates even on high-end systems. While some users report manageable performance with settings adjustments, others find the experience significantly hindered, emphasizing the need for major optimization improvements. Being in early access, it is expected that developers will address these performance concerns in future updates.
- “I feel they need to focus on many performance tweaks before it becomes an even better game. The first few hours were brilliant and just kept me searching for more and more; just be careful, the more you dig, the more you go down to the core.”
- “I really think this game has so much potential, just needs to focus on performance tweaks to keep the game alive.”
- “The amount of entities on screen at any one time can be staggering when you have large extensive factories, and I have not run into a single performance problem.”
- “There's clearly some major optimizations needed here.”
- “Needs optimization though, only runs well on high-end systems, even on the lowest settings it causes lag spikes on my rig that has no problem with many other AAA games.”
- “I like the style of game but this game is buggy with bad quality of life, bad interface, bad building, and the worst is the bad optimization.”
music
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
14%
43%
The music creates a strong, immersive atmosphere fitting the dwarves and spelunking theme, though it currently relies on a repetitive loop that some players find annoying. Despite this, the soundtrack has a charming vibe and may improve with further development.
- “Music is good and nice, giving really strong diggy-diggy hole vibes.”
- “The music, though repetitive, is good and the art style is on point; with time, the game might surpass every other dwarf game we know.”
- “The music has grown on me now!”
- “The music is repetitive, with it feeling like one song on a continuous loop, which can get a bit annoying over time.”
- “It's difficult to justify the sale of the "soundtrack" given the limited variety and repetition.”
- “Hearing the same sounds and songs repeatedly becomes annoying.”
atmosphere
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users praise the game's atmosphere as solid and immersive, highlighting improved lighting that enhances the overall mood. The atmosphere is consistently described as awesome and a strong aspect of the gameplay experience.
- “The lighting has improved and is really atmospheric.”
- “Cool idea, solid atmosphere.”
- “Atmosphere is awesome.”
humor
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is light and occasionally amusing, with silly enemy ragdolling and comical goblin antics providing some entertaining moments, though the laughs may wear off after a few repetitions.
- “Even the silly enemy ragdolling is more funny than annoying.”
- “I did like the mining aspects, and there are really funny moments with goblins stabbing each other like a stereotypical 'London' meme.”
- “Kind of funny the first few times though.”
replayability
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Replayability is rated moderately, with users feeling it could be improved by adding more rewarding or satisfying content to encourage repeated playthroughs.