The Kindred
- February 24, 2016
- Persistent Studios
"The Kindred" is a city-building survival game set in a procedurally generated voxel world. Players start with only basic resources and a group of people called the Kin, and must explore to discover essential items, plants, and animals to establish a village. The game features harsh seasons, diseases, and other challenges that players must overcome to ensure their community's survival.
Mac OS
PC
Linux
Reviews
- The game shows a lot of potential with its charming aesthetics and relaxing gameplay, making it enjoyable for fans of the genre.
- The developers are communicative and actively engage with the community, taking feedback into consideration for future updates.
- The building mechanics are intuitive and allow for creativity, with a variety of materials and a unique approach to resource management.
- The game is plagued by bugs and crashes, making it frustrating and often unplayable, especially in its current early access state.
- There is a lack of content and challenge, leading to a tedious experience once basic survival needs are met.
- The user interface is clunky and unintuitive, causing confusion and hindering gameplay, which detracts from the overall experience.
- grinding5 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious and occasionally boring, with resource acquisition feeling particularly laborious. While the core mechanics and world generation are appreciated, the repetitive nature of tasks and common bugs detract from the overall experience, leading to suggestions for improvements in micromanagement.
“Very grindy and can get a bit boring at times.”
“The game isn't difficult; acquiring resources is tedious and bugs are common.”
“Main reasons I can't recommend this game at the moment (aside from a relatively small feature set) is because the game can become really tedious pretty quickly.”
- gameplay5 mentions
- 60 % positive mentions
- 20 % neutral mentions
- 20 % negative mentions
The gameplay is solid and entertaining, effectively incorporating genre staples like mining, farming, and town building, alongside impressive world generation. While the core mechanics are enjoyable, some features, such as the electricity system, feel underdeveloped and could benefit from further refinement. Overall, players find the experience engaging but see potential for improvement.
“I really like the base mechanics of the game; it gets the genre staples right - mining, farming, tech, building up a town, etc. The world generation is pretty cool; I enjoyed the landscapes and flora and fauna.”
“But besides that, the gameplay is solid and entertaining.”
“It seems like such a great addition to the gameplay as your community grows.”
“The electricity part is very bare-bones at the moment and hard to do, but that's a mechanic that, at its core, is enough to really differentiate itself from many other titles in this genre.”
- graphics4 mentions
- 75 % positive mentions
- -50 % neutral mentions
- 75 % negative mentions
The game's graphics are praised for their beautiful voxel aesthetic, featuring clean textures and well-designed elements like wind generators. While the focus is primarily on aesthetics rather than challenge, the art style effectively complements the gameplay, enhancing the overall experience.
“Clean lines for the textures and wind generators and electricity are great and work well for the art style.”
“The game features a beautiful voxel aesthetic and includes some neat ideas like shepherding wild animals into fences to create a ranch, cooking complex meals with food, and buildings that you have to power with electricity-generating machines.”
“I'll have a much more in-depth review once I get further into this game, but for now I am giving this game the following scores: value: 32/40; fun: 25/30; controls & bugs: 20/20; graphics & sound: 8/10.”
“The graphics feel outdated and lack the detail expected from modern games.”
“The character models are poorly designed and look flat, making it hard to get immersed in the game.”
“The environments are bland and repetitive, which detracts from the overall experience.”
- stability3 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Overall, users find the stability of the game to be acceptable for an early access title, noting that while there are some glitches and bugs, they are minor and do not significantly hinder gameplay. The building mechanics, despite being a bit buggy, offer depth and creativity, suggesting a promising foundation for future updates.
“Still early, so the glitches and bugs are within acceptable ranges.”
“So far, not bad. There are a few minor glitches, but it's not bad for an early access game. I look forward to the full game.”
“The building aspect, while a little buggy (as most early access games are), has a good amount of depth and plenty of room for creativity, with a wide selection of building materials and fairly intuitive tools.”
- optimization2 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Users have noted significant performance issues with the game, indicating that optimization is lacking and that further fixes are necessary. Many believe that these improvements are typically addressed during the development process.
“The first major issue is performance.”
“There are performance fixes needed, in my opinion, but those usually come at some point in development.”
- story1 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- -200 % neutral mentions
- 300 % negative mentions
The story aspect of the game is influenced by its challenging early access history, drawing comparisons to other titles in the god game and city-building genre that have faced similar struggles. Players note that the narrative is shaped by the difficult situations encountered in town management, reflecting a sense of adversity and complexity.
“The story feels disjointed and lacks a coherent narrative, making it hard to stay engaged.”
“Character development is minimal, leaving players with little emotional investment in the plot.”
“The dialogue is often clichéd and uninspired, failing to add depth to the overall experience.”
