Polylithic

About

Polylithic is a single player and multiplayer action game. It was developed by polyperfect and was released on November 9, 2023. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

"Polylithic is a single-player adventure game set in the Paleolithic/Neolithic era with vibrant low-poly graphics and a sci-fi twist. Gather resources, craft items, and hunt animals to grow your tribe and build a settlement, with over 10 hours of playtime filled with grinding and resource management. Manage your tribe members, assign them tasks, and ensure their needs are met to strengthen your tribe and unlock new technologies."

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69%

Audience ScoreBased on 105 reviews

gameplay10 positive mentions

grinding17 negative mentions

The game features beautiful graphics and a unique art style that enhances the overall experience.
It offers engaging colony sim mechanics and allows players to manage tribe members effectively, adding depth to gameplay.
The developers are responsive to feedback and regularly update the game, showing commitment to improvement and community engagement.

The controls and camera mechanics are clunky, making navigation and combat frustrating for players.
The tutorial is excessively long and restricts players from exploring the game freely, which can be off-putting.
There are numerous bugs and performance issues that detract from the overall experience, especially in early access.

story
32 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
9%
82%
9%
The story aspect of the game has received mixed reviews, with players criticizing the lengthy and cumbersome tutorial that feels forced, as well as vague quest instructions that often require trial and error to complete. Many quests are described as grindy and poorly structured, with time limits that add frustration rather than challenge, and the migration feature detracts from the overall building experience. While some players appreciate the graphics and potential for interesting quest lines, the execution leaves much to be desired.
- “This game has good graphics, interesting quest lines, lots of things to build and research.”
- “In story mode, after each migration, I needed to reload because the tasks, the food and happiness meter (displayed nan%), broke.”
- “There is a common thing when you assign him, for example, gathering berries, and he will give you a quest to find him 5 berries.”
- “The tutorial is painfully long - obviously intended to be over 2 hours, and the game is locked behind 'story mode', which is literally a forced tutorial.”
- “Some quests have very little instruction, and you have to just figure it out by trial and error.”
- “I spent three quarters of an hour trying to find stalks for javelins and axes in this silly grindy migration quest that comes with a blinding bloody winter where you cannot save, and out of nowhere a bull massacres me and my tribesman, setting me back to a vast wilderness quest, so now I have to grind for another three quarters of an hour for these seldom found stalks.”
gameplay
26 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
50%
12%
The gameplay features unique colony simulation mechanics and beautiful graphics, but players find some mechanics clunky and the learning curve steep. While the game offers interesting challenges, particularly in hunting, many users express frustration with the grinding aspects and difficulty in early gameplay. Overall, the game is appreciated for its visual style and lack of microtransactions, but it struggles with balancing fun and complexity.
- “Beautiful game with unique colony sim mechanics unlike any other.”
- “Learning curve is somehow steep but in a few hours, you'll get the hang of most mechanics and your tribe will start to flourish.”
- “The graphics are beautiful and the gameplay is challenging enough to be interesting without being frustrating.”
- “Game mechanics are clunky.”
- “I'm so tired of developers not understanding what is fun and just doing stupid things to basically force you to 'understand' their game mechanics.”
- “It should not be this difficult to kill a rabbit or a chicken in the first minutes of gameplay.”
graphics
23 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
48%
39%
13%
The graphics of the game are widely praised for their unique art style, beautiful colors, and engaging visual effects, including various weather types. However, some players have reported performance issues that detract from the overall experience, suggesting that the ambitious visuals may not be fully optimized. Despite these concerns, many reviewers appreciate the game's distinct aesthetic and the effort put in by a small development team.
- “Love the graphics, makes the game very unique.”
- “The graphics are beautiful and the gameplay is challenging enough to be interesting without being frustrating.”
- “Beautiful colors and graphics.”
- “I was already gonna hang it up just from the performance issues alone which persist through all graphics settings, but when the dude told me 'twigs were everywhere' and it took me half an hour to find 10 twigs in the intro, that was about enough.”
- “Visuals may be overly ambitious for what they can actually achieve.”
- “I really like the art style, the overall scene and the campaign it offers sounds so interesting, but for me the game seems to try to hinder me from playing it, maybe because of lacking meaningful content?”
grinding
17 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the grinding mechanics in the game tedious and frustrating, often feeling that the endless questing detracts from the enjoyment of exploring the beautifully crafted world. Many express a desire for more engaging gameplay options, such as a focus on farming rather than constant hunting and resource gathering, which can lead to repetitive and time-consuming experiences. Overall, the grinding aspect seems to limit the potential for creative settlement building and exploration, leaving some players dissatisfied.
- “I don't find endless grinding mechanics to be fun; this world is colored and beautiful, and I want to explore it, not always be on the run to bring enormous food quantities to my tribe.”
- “I spent three quarters of an hour trying to find stalks for javelins and axes in this silly, grindy migration quest that comes with a blinding winter where you cannot save. Out of nowhere, a bull massacres me and my tribesman, setting me back to a vast wilderness quest, so now I have to grind for another three quarters of an hour for these seldom found stalks.”
- “The game forces you to play through and earn the technology to build 'bases' through solo achievement grinding.”
optimization
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
10%
60%
30%
The game's optimization has been widely criticized, with players experiencing significant performance drops across all graphics settings, even on lower configurations. Despite its visual appeal, the high polygon count seems to contribute to laggy performance, making it frustrating for users with capable hardware like the GTX 1080. Overall, the optimization issues detract from the gameplay experience.
- “Have a GTX 1080, getting major performance issues even on low with a 60 fps cap.”
- “It's pretty but you pay the cost in massive performance drops.”
- “I was already going to hang it up just from the performance issues alone, which persist through all graphics settings, but when the dude told me 'twigs were everywhere' and it took me half an hour to find 10 twigs in the intro, that was about enough.”
- “Another negative sight was the somehow laggy performance of the game on max settings.”
stability
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game exhibits semi-regular artifacting and visual glitches, which appear to be hardware dependent, indicating some stability issues. While the overall setup is considered cool, these bugs detract from the experience.
- “Pretty cool setup but still a little buggy.”
- “Semi-regular artifacting and visual glitches (probably hardware dependent).”
- “Semi-regular artifacting and visual glitches (probably hardware dependent).”
music
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The music and sound effects in the game are highly praised, with reviewers noting their quality and effectiveness, especially considering the game was developed by a small team.
- “The music and sound effects are really great, especially considering that this game was made by just a few people.”
- “The music and sound effects are really great, especially considering that this game was made by just a few people.”