Milkcraft First Impressions & Early Game Experiences
The Biggest Surprise Thus Far Of 2021
About once per year, a game comes out of nowhere and really impresses our group. Sometimes it’s a game we missed from years ago. Other times, it’s a much maligned triple-A studio title that failed to live up to the negative hype and was actually quite fun. Lately, the biggest surprises have come from community-driven projects and small “indie” studios. After reading extremely classy responses by a developer on Steam to some quite obnoxious and borderline hostile reviews, I opted to reward good behavior by giving the game a bit of coverage in February.
As someone who became bored relatively quickly with Boundless, Creativerse, Trove, and Minecraft, I figured it would be about 5–10 hours of gameplay and a quick impressions video. After nearly 100 hours of playtime between the three of us, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what this game has to offer and given that it is still a work-in-progress, we are both excited to see what will come in the future and have made it one of our core games amongst the group. I’m a sucker the obscure and sandbox games, having played many hours of Darkfall, Mortal Online, WURM, and even lesser-known titles such as 8bitMMO. Instead of doing the review by categories, I am going to discuss my experience in game and hopefully you will give the game a chance too.
Where to Obtain & Monetization
Download for free on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1204990/Milkcraft/
There’s a cosmetic and light convenience cash shop as well as a VIP plan.
Community Experience
The developer actively engages with the community and the Discord for the game is quite active. While not at population numbers akin to popular massively multiplayer titles, the core group of players is rather close-knit and helpful when around. The major player-constructed villages in game are visually-appealing, full-featured, and mostly open, with a few exceptions present. The current top-ranked village, Nessos, has open portals, crafting tables, enchantment tables, repair tables, books, and numerous other items of use for new and existing players.
During our combined initial 70 hours of gameplay, we found one player who was either new and confused about how to play the game or possibly a griefer. This player walked around Meg’s home (she forgot to lock the door), seemed to be trying to open the chests, killed our animals inside, and deposited the carcasses in our gift box. It was a careless mistake on our end but other survival-crafting games have higher ratios of toxic players than Milkcraft in our initial experience. Actual blocks, chests, and other items that are owned by the player are safe within the boundaries of one’s realm — the equivalent of housing plot.
Tutorial Phase
According to one of the developers, Babyfrog:
“Our early experience of the game is going to be a bit difficult. Because we deliberately didn’t design a good beginner’s guide, we wanted the player to explore it on their own.”
Despite the intention of the tutorial / beginner phase of the game being geared toward exploration and discovery, it’s definitely not without direction or hints. You start the game with a very rudimentary set of supplies. Pressing the “Y” key will open a list of achievements. If you follow the tasks in order and have any experience with survival games and/or voxel-based building games, more than enough information is provided to learn the general mechanics of the game. More complex aspects of the game, such as the alchemy system, do require significant exploration and trial-and-error but to build a house and be combat ready for Overworld creatures, there’s more than enough information provided in the initial tasks to teach the basics of the game.
I spent most of the tutorial phase of the game only completing the tasks on the list up to the point where I absolutely had to for the purpose of unlocking certain features (i.e. realm creation, going to Twilight Woods, etc). It wasn’t uncommon for me to have the next achievement be something that I had already completed, such as designing certain tools, gathering certain resources, etc. The player must complete through “Becoming a Warrior” to access Twilight Woods content.
Assuming my visit to Milkcraft would be rather short-lived (10–20 hours), I created a house that crossed over my realm boundaries and tons of random tunnels without good entry/exit points. I also had extremely poor security to keep people out of my realm. People are able to enter your realm but can’t destroy blocks or access storage or use equipment without permissions.
For any new player, I recommend the following:
(1) Create a list of general goals for the game, given it is heavily a sandbox game. Do you want to create the most beautiful village in game and roleplay with others? Isolate yourself and fight raid bosses? Something else? Having a general idea of what you want to do in a sandbox game helps provide direction in the early game experience.
(2) Scout areas for your realm and once you’ve decided on an appropriate location, create a blueprint to ensure that the structure(s) within the realm will fit their desired purpose and aesthetics. Choose a location that is fitting for your style of play and has a decent amount of resources nearby to avoid excessive travel.
(3) Craft lots of chests and save resources. You never know when you will need certain resources, especially as a new player. There is nothing more frustrating than having a tool or weapon break and being short an item that you had but decided to throw away to conserve space. There’s no limit that I’m aware of for number of chests in Milkcraft.
(4) Don’t get frustrated if you die and respawn at a lower level. This isn’t World of Warcraft or a traditional MMORPG. XP and levels work differently here. Some tasks require being of a certain level but a level 15 is not necessarily a weaker player than a level 30.
(5) A crafting station, cutting table, and furnace are essential. Unless you plan on joining a village or coming as a group with other players who will provide access to this equipment, you should make it a priority to build these items as soon as possible.(6) Make sure you have extra pickaxes, swords and a bow with quiver and/or a casting device and codebook, as well as at least a basic complete set of iron armor. Even if you plan on playing as a social player who will mostly just build, you will occasionally run into creatures that will cause issues or you will potentially end up in a situation requiring a teleport out as a result of perhaps digging a bit too deeply without steps and your pick-axe breaking. It’s easy to tell when an item is about to break based on a colored meter below it in both your inventory and on the hotbar, but it’s also easy to forget to pay close attention that information once you start playing.
(7) Utilize the Discord server if you have significant difficulties in game. There’s a small but very passionate and friendly community for this game so far, as well as active developers. Invite link here.
All three players in our group made it through the first few hours of gameplay without any issues. The two of us that have passed the 25 hour mark had no significant issues either, with only Meg (a casual gamer that’s fairly new to this style of game) having the occasional question for me. The menus and default mouse and keyboard binds are mostly intuitive if you’ve played similar games in the past.
Do Whatever You Want?
The “do whatever you want” line is commonly used in sandbox games. Occasionally, it is intended for marketing the game to a specific crowd of player that wants the freedom to modify the game world to an extent and not be forced down a specific path and/or storyline. All too often, it is used as an excuse for covering up the lack of any substantive gameplay given no matter how much of a sandbox a game claims to be — you can still only do what the developer(s) programmed into the game. It is also the slogan of many games where a few guilds end up taking over most of the resources and real estate on the map, making the new player experience sub-optimal at best and frustrating to the point of quitting in more problematic cases. Milkcraft has a good balance between being a sandbox game but having sufficient content in game to make it feel like the player has purpose in the world.
Milkcraft already has numerous regular and boss creatures in the world, as well as points-of-interest, to allow for gameplay for those seeking a bit more structure. Numerous items are available for crafting, with the crafting system making it easy to identify what can be crafted based on what is on hand. Recipes are listed as well, so if you want to build a certain structure or require a certain item, you can easily find it within the menus for the specific device used for constructing it. While lacking a bit in the costume department compared to many other games, it makes up for it with quite a variety of potential pets / mounts.
While you can’t literally “do whatever you want”, Milkcraft offers gameplay in it’s current state to satiate those seeking difficult combat, a place to build elaborate structures, and for social and roleplay players of a variety of types.
Overall First Impressions
This typically isn’t my style of game. While I love MMORPG sandbox games, voxel-style building and crafting games aren’t typically games I seek out. While I’ve enjoyed short bursts of Trove, Creativerse, Boundless, and Minecraft, I’ve never felt the urge to play either for 4+ hours in a single setting. Milkcraft manages to combine the elements of the other voxel-style games I’ve played that I enjoy while leaving much of the excessive grind and general feeling of lacking any real investment or attachment to the gameworld that I’ve experienced from the aforementioned titles. This is a work-in-progress and is definitely not without the occasional bug or graphical oddity, but even if released as is — I would still be highly recommending it unless you want a more “realistic” or hardcore approach to the survival-crafting style of game as seen in Ark, Rust, and others.
It’s casual-friendly, offers enough depth for a hardcore gamer, and is the only game in the past few years where I’ve put over 40 hours of playtime into it voluntarily. 40 hours in and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s available in this early access title.
FINAL VERDICT: TOP TIER / HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
