Single Game Account

I'll keep my review short and sweet.

It's very obvious this game has  an aesthetic much like Minecraft. But the core difference is Minecraft is a block building game with small survival elements. Vintage story on the other hand is a Survival game with block building elements. The game has a built in mod system, and official new update/content drops are consistent. 

The gameplay has a learning curve that is tough to get into, but ultimately rewarding.  You can very tangibly feel the progress in your world  as you go from barely surviving in a harsh world to thriving in a homestead that you pieced together. The feeling of seeing your carved out piece of land being the only beacon of light during the dark night in an abandoned world is not so easily replicated in another game I've played.

I'm assuming that anyone seeing this review, knows what a blocky builder game is. Thus, I would easily recommend this title to any one who likes said blocky builder games. The community surrounding it is small but friendly, and growing more and more by the day.

Give this game a shot, I promise you and your friends will enjoy it.

Iv died to bush bears more than the eldritch rust world monsters 10/10

I hope frogs get added

Often labeled as "Minecraft for grown-ups", Vintage Story provides an uncompromisingly realistic and deeply satisfying survival and crafting experience. With every hunt being a fight to the death, every harvest a reason for a festival and every encounter with the supernatural hair raising. If you're tired of the same old survival games, for ~20$ this is a breath of fresh air that will keep you coming back for years. Tip: For your first playthrough, be afraid of the forest  

i just bought this game after catching wind of its existence quite a while back. and WOW!!! i am so happy i decided to go out on a whim and buy it. it is SO cool!!!

i have been a minecrafter since early 2012, and i always craved something more out of it. the progression was too linear and straight-forward. but here, vintage story provides a plethora of new steps and mechanics that help in making the game so much more complex and captivating. i absolutely looove the knapping and pottery mechanic, it is so ingenious (and so satisfying). the realistic fire/torches, the nutrients bars, the temperature drops; these are all just base level things, as i have only just started, but they are exactly what separate it from just being another sandbox game, to actually being a survival game. the element of the temporal entities add another layer that keeps things interesting outside of just the survival.

i bought this for both my partner and i, and i have already drilled in over 8+ hours just overnight! there is so much more i can't wait to discover.

despite the fact that it is an indie game constructed by only a small team, it runs absolutely seamlessly. i have not experienced any glitches, and despite the gorgeous graphics, it is not at all as demanding as other games in its genre. i would provide small critique but as it is still being updated and edited i don't feel that it is warranted. i  have full trust in whatever you guys are working on.

keep up the good work, devs!! i am beyond excited for any new content you guys conjure up; what you have created so far is brilliant. 

I’ve always been very selective about buying games - in my entire life, I’ve only purchased two games, and I’m already 29 years old.
I don’t like spending money on something that doesn’t truly move me, or on something I could just watch on YouTube.

But Vintage Story is different
It’s the kind of game that makes me want to reach out to the developers and say:

Thank you so much for creating this masterpiece made with heart and soul!

Every single cent was worth it, and I’m deeply grateful for the amazing emotions and experiences your game has given me.

I do not even have 20 hours in the game yet. In fact, I am hurtling towards my first winter. That said, I am obsessed!  The game is deep and well thought out with just the right mix of cozy, and scary. 

Im stunned by how deep this game goes into the survival genre. 

Obviously because the graphics are so similar that it's hard to not initially compare it to Minecraft. But after a couple of hours it becomes clear that this game is so different from Minecraft in every conceivable way. 

Absolutely five stars so far. Love it. Obsessed! Please bring it to console! LOL  As a 50-something year old lady with carpal tunnel the fact that I can't use my chunky controller is the only thing that breaks my heart about this game. In fact, I  rarely venture from my console due to the carpal tunnel, but  I did it this time and I do not regret it. 

If you are into survival games, get it you won't regret it.

I love this game.

It took me a while before purchasing it after I've heard about it from one of Ethoslab's videos. I don't know why I waited, this game is everything it promises to be and such a joy to discover and play. I'm 50 hours into my first world and going through my first winter, and I just got iron tools.

The slow pace makes the game feel cozy and makes all your achievements so much more rewarding. Building a house, making metal tools, cooking and stockpiling for the winter, everything has more impact because what it took to get there. There is so much to do that even if things take time, you never feel bored and never need to idle. It's one of those games where I write down notes on my phone about what to do next because I can't stop thinking about the game when I'm not playing.

It also looks beautiful, especially as you see the seasons change.

There were a few small things that I didn't like about the game, and all of them had a mod to change it. With builtin support for modding, you literally only have to click one button in the mod page and it gets downloaded in the game. I've never had issues adding mods to my existing world either.

If you watched the trailer and it speaks to you, just go for it!

This game is addictive! I love the way the game is developping all the challenges the environment provides for you. If you like some mechanics that were originated from TFC but tries to go further, I really recommend for you to try this game.

One of my all time favorite games of all time, I've bought it for my friends and we love playing it! It's reasonably priced, and it's one of the most worth it games I've ever played.

I really like making bread, it makes my dopamine receptors go nyooom.

That's it. That is all it takes to make me smile.

Vintage Story - A game that almost takes the throne for me

The goods:

When I jumped into Vintage Story, (which I will be shortening to just VS for readability) , I was expecting a hard, immersive experience that felt familiar to it's core inspiration, and unsurprisingly it did not fail to deliver. VS encourages patience and a mind that's able to comprehend the puzzle of surviving. What I mean by this is it's ability to really invest the player in thinking about their next move, and despite how long the days and nights are you never truly run out of questions.

"I should probably get food"

"But wait, a shelter would be more important"

"Oh, but waiting the night in said shelter with berries is going to waste my time, maybe i'll try to find clay beforehand?"

These and other similar questions go through your mind when you first generate a world and explore around. You never simply idle around trying to think of what to do next, because there is ALWAYS something to do the next day or when the sun goes down (Prepping meals, making stuff out of clay, etc etc), and that to me feels like a game loop done right. The next day I attempt to run away from and kill a bear and on Tuesday I go searching out in the wilderness for berries.

I have yet to compliment how this game pushes you towards these goals in the first place, the impending doom of winter, where crops die, animals become less viable and you are only left with what you've prepared in your cellar, if VS didn't have a set in stone system where one season could ruin your entire run then what other factors would motivate you to go out there gathering in the first place? A bear attack? Hostile mobs? Nah, how about something humanity can never solve or fight against, the mother nature. And if things seem to get too difficult or overwhelming, prepare to have a mind for reading because VS is, in fact a "WIKI" game. Aka a game that benefits the player for looking into different things that they don't seem to understand or want to understand, and this game makes wiki reading super accessible, with most of the info you need for early and mid-game all written down when you press H.

When we get to the modding aspect I can't really talk too much on it, but I highly respect the developers going out their way to make an official modDB for VS, you don't see it very often and when you do it's usually from people really ambitious about keeping the games legacy alive, which I have very very high respect for.

The bads:

Mind you, the reader that when I say "the bads" it's not me outright saying some systems simply suck or shouldn't be in the game, that's absolutely not the case, and what did poor criticism ever do good for anything? 

Prospecting: 

This game seems very divided in what its community seems to think about prospecting. Is it tedious? Yeah. Does it serve as a filter that drives people away from the game? Maybe. Do many still find the concept of putting time into finding the ores you want rewarding? Yeah, absolutely. Do I like it? Not really, not right now, at least. This system deserves a overhaul, a balance. Considering how much time one can put into finding a clay node, food, fertile dirt and other items that are necessary for early game, the game doesn't leave breathing room and hits you with prospecting, which can absolutely drive people off, it seems to rub a specific niche group of people who enjoy tedious tasks, but sacrificing a tedious task for the sake of accessibility shouldn't be an idea that's immediately thrown off the cliff. If anything, I'd hold polls for the people who own an account to ask what they think and put potentially better ideas on the table.

 "I've been looking for [thing] for so long and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt!!!":

Clay, as important as it is for early game progression is absurdly hard to find, I did manage to find some but it took time, yet when you receive clay you are awarded with spending more minutes making the pots you require to go further, which I feel is a bit unbalanced, I haven't gotten too far into the game to have more of these "Cant find" moments but hey, worth mentioning everything amirite?

In short, despite the game being in early access this thing is a beast, it's totally worth your 20 if you are willing to get sucked in and blasted with serotonin that activates your pre-historic neurons, and I'm extremely happy with the game that I'll keep it and probably go back to smelting ores real soon after I've hit the post button.

- Mellie 

The best game I ever played

Vertical Slabs?!
Built in Chiseling?!
Weather that's locational and not server wide?!
Useful boats!!!???!?!?!
Actual lore?!
Funny sounding characters?!
Cave in physics?! that are OPTIONAL?!
In-depth crafting system?! 

lol so many things that Vintage Story has, that make it a cut above what Minecraft could of been.  Though this isn't a game for children, requires some patience and time to get use to, but many of us in the group I'm in, are loving it! Already bought the game for multiple people to come and join the fun times.

So I highly recommend it! Plus, the modding system and joining modded servers is so much easier than Minecraft, heck even the idea of Via Version is already built into the game and joining older servers while on a newer version =D

Also, this game is cheaper than Minecraft, by at least $5 It also runs on all 3 PC systems: Windows, iOS, and Linux.

I really love this game!

The survival mechanics are so enjoyable.
I can finnaly live out my creativity in the game.
It gives so many building block options even vertical slabs, and a built in world edit.

And the game is just so optimalised unlike other block games.

I hope they add:
- butchering (there are a mod for this but its should be in the game by deafult)
- aligators, Frogs, turtles and other reptiles
- painting (so i can use linen for canvas)
- chiselable doors, chests and chairs (because the chisel is already a thing in vintage story but only for blocks)
- rivers
- more wallpapers, windows, weapons (like zweihänder), astrology (connectable stars to make constellations and name them)
- wall painting

My apology if my english is a bit bad, im from hungary.

In first few hours I really thought about refund, because I thought I can't get past minecraftish graphics.

But then I tried few more hours, got my first farm, smelted early metals and really got into the game. It is very well thought out with some complex systems like metal smelting and smithing.

With 1.20 update, some really cool additions are coming in too.

Now I'm around 40 hours into my first single player world, and I'm really enjoying it.

I hope devs will continue to develop this great game for many years.

Discovered this game a few years ago on some random forum. It has quickly become one of my favorite games; I'm not quite sure what it is but I just love the world and feeling of it all. Those first few hours just learning everything was magical, and to this day I still have that feeling while playing. 

More engaging than its competitors!

With a valley of content to explore, this game has brought me joy and never gave me a creative block unlike the other big names out there.
I enjoy that the focus of this game is more exploration and survival based rather than true creativitiy, even though there are a plentiful amount of options to decorate your world with if you are into that type of thing.
Every time I return to Minecraft, I find myself bored, unengaged, and speedrun to try and get to the end of it. It really has too much to do in that game when it comes to buildings that I get overloaded with options.
With this game, I always have to slow down and enjoy the process with the game and forces me to go with the flow and really focus on the progression rather than skipping through it.

I would always recommend this to others that are having the same issues I am.

Thank you, and keep developing!

Beautifully made game. If you enjoy voxel games, bushcrafting survival, or both, you'll love this one. It's very lovingly made and is a great experience even though it is relatively early in development. The developer is very responsive and the community is awesome.

TLDR: I put 120 hours into the game in 2 weeks. It's the first survival game I've played for more than an hour. If you're even remotely interested in what the game advertises I think you'll love the game. Great survival and great building options built in - easily the best building game I've played.

This game really surprised me. Every survival game I've tried previously, including Ark, Conan, etc., has been an almost immediate no for me. But, while looking into Minecraft mods/alternatives, I found Vintage Story, and after reading up on it and watching some gameplay, I was really interested in trying it out (still not sure why, exactly). Because of their generous refund policy, I decided why not and gave it a shot, fully expecting to refund it within the first hour or two. Well, I blew past the 10 hour refund limit the first day I bought it.

What I like:
1. I wouldn't describe this game as fun necessarily - I think "satisfying" is more accurate. Most activities involve both a fair time investment and some kind of struggle, like finding your first tin vein or learning how to find that tin vein. Then, when you actually do, you just get a real sense that you've done something; I actually shouted "hell yeah!" when I found my tin and iron veins. Unlike a lot of modern games where it's a constant barrage of achieving/acquiring things, Vintage Story makes you work for it and it just feels better when you get something done, even if the rate of doing things is slower.

2. Just cool mechanics in general, lots of small things. You can build a greenhouse which will keep your crops warmer, which may let you get an extra harvest out of them before winter. On the topic of winter, animals become leaner (fewer drops) and you have to care about your body temperature. You can build a cellar to keep your food cooler and slow down the spoilage rate during the summer. Just lots of really neat things like this that add a lot to my next point.

3. Immersion. This is actually one of the most immersive games I've ever played. Great ambient sounds, fantastic and mostly realistic environments (blocky graphics aside), having to actually deal with the world around you. This is something that's hard to describe, but when I'm playing the game I feel like I'm really exploring a cave, or some ruins, or whatever.

4. Building. If you've played a voxel-based building game before it's basically that. But, there is a built-in feature called chiseling which is the real game changer. This has different levels of granularity which allow you to remove chunks out of most blocks, so you can make customized pieces useful for decoration. Additionally, you can combine multiple blocks for use in chiseling, which allows you to use all the textures of the combined blocks. Want to make a wood and stone block so you can do something like make a stone pillar with a wooden adornment? You can. This is such a cool feature and if you love building in games I think this will be huge for you - it has opened up huge doors for me.

5. Tons of customization options. You can adjust hunger rate, tool speed and durability, and so many more parameters right out of the box. This is a big positive to me because I think it allows more people to enjoy the game by changing/removing parts of it they don't like for whatever reason. Or just for accessibility - I set tool speed to 300% due to hand pain and not having to hold my mouse as much is great.

What I think can be improved:
1. Adventuring, They're actively working on this, and as of the latest patch have added the first static story dungeon to the game (which I haven't gotten to yet, but am looking forward to a lot). But, outside of that, I don't feel a strong desire to really go out exploring, particularly in the caves. There is loot, but aside from the lore it can all be gotten much easier and safer. And caves can be really dangerous. So it's a pretty poor risk-reward structure.

2. A reason to progress. Except for copper to make a saw to make certain things like chests and more building blocks, you really don't need to progress past stone tools. On one hand, this is great because it's really an open-ended sandbox game. But, it would also be nice to unlock cooler stuff as you progress up to steel (and possibly beyond). Right now if you go beyond copper you're basically doing it just because, not because you want to be able to craft something fancy for your base, or make minecarts, or anything like that.

Overall, I love Vintage Story and plan on playing it for a long time, keeping it in my "always worth playing/replaying" list (I'm still playing it, I just wanted to get a review out). The dev seems very active, has a good roadmap and, from what I can tell, does a good job of working towards completing it. But, even if development of the game stopped today, I think it would be well worth the price and you would get a lot out of it. Plus, it has native mod support and a fairly active mod community, so like any other mod-heavy game you have tons of options once you get through what the base game offers.

 

For those going in blind, the game is difficult, but not overbearing. Everything makes sense and when you can't find what to do next, look at the in-game helpbook.

Everything in this game is amazing and it's obvious that it was, and is, made with care. I heavily recommend this to anyone looking for their next survival.

I bought the game a couple days ago and I have to say it's been one of the best purchases I've made this year so far. The mechanics, the environments, even the progression is so well thought and so immersive, I really can't get bored with all that offers, specially with the latest update (1.18.0) and all that adds.

Is very well optimized and crafted in general! and the OST is AWESOME, I have to say I kinda have an addiction right now haha only thinking about "what will I do next" and even gifted a key to a friend too.

But overall a must play if you like challenging survival games! totally recommended!

Haven't had this fun and comfy of a time playing a game in literal years. Please send my regards to the chef because y'all cooked some of the best stuff this decade. 

Worth every penny and more ( I bought Supporter Addon as well ) !

I can't think of a single game that has captured my attention like this one has. The initial learning curve is steeper than you might be expecting, especially if you're coming here from Minecraft, but completely worth it, and constantly evolving as Anego Studios continues to support the game and release a major content update every few months. The developers are actively involved in the community, and the community itself (on the official forums and the discord server) is very friendly and helpful.

TL;DR: this game makes crafting your first pickax feel like a true earned accomplishment. Highly recommend.

Habs bei Gronkh im Stream gesehen und liebe die Spielmechanik. Echt tolles Spiel. Weiter so.

Saw it on the stream at Gronkh and love the game mechanics. Really great game. Way to go.