Blacksmith Master Early Access Review

Another tycoon game Blacksmith Master has been released in early access, published by the well-known company Hooded Horse, which enjoys all sorts of strategy games, and developed by Untitled Studio. This time, you'll be building a laborocracy in a blacksmith rather than in a tavern.

The NPCs in Blacksmith Master are slightly better than those in Minecraft or mobile games from Codigames. The gameplay in Blacksmith Master resembles that of Shop Titans, but in Blacksmith Master, it is shorter, as the game is single-player and in early access.

The same colorful frames around the products, the same designations — right down to the legendary swords, etc., only the products are unique, and naturally, there are fewer of them in early access, but even now, the game suffers from grind towards the endgame, as wealthy players have nothing to invest in closer to the end, no entertainment, etc. There are more opportunities only in The Guild II: Renaissance.

Even though the game is in early access, it is already clear that the game's foundation from Tavern Master has not changed; every morning, your workers wake up and fill the blacksmith's workspace, cashiers take their places, and customers begin their traditional hustle and bustle, etc. Tavern Master was simpler, a bit shorter, perhaps. Early access Blacksmith Master is a bit more complex, as producing high-level composite products requires spending huge amounts of money and time. The game introduced complex, high-cost production chains.

The release of Blacksmith Master pleased me, even though I called Tavern Master a junk game. Blacksmith Master cannot be classified as a hardcore game or a casual one. There is a problem in the game — grind. You need to grind blueprints and the required products for clay, gold, precious stones, and birch. When everything is stable financially in the game, you just have to wait and reassign blacksmiths and their helpers, moving them from one type of work to another. There is no convenient interface button to help reassign workers' categories from one job to another and back; you have to go into the worker's profile and do everything specifically. And this goes for each worker. It's just a routine that sometimes turns into chaos. There is no button to mass-transfer workers to another job. It would be especially useful to reassign a specific group of smelters from one type of ingot to another. It would be convenient to have a list of jobs and click on the type of work to then assign, marking the workers for that type. Just examples of what is lacking in the interface — mass reassignment, work labels, and job lists, category reassignment, and reverse reassignment.

The bane of tycoons is grind and lack of interesting, engaging endgame. Early access Blacksmith Master is currently a victim of these shortcomings.