Buildings Have Feelings Too Review

Where and how did it go wrong? Blackstaff Games' Buildings Have Feelings Too can be a fun, relaxing strategy game. However, it soon turns into a frustrating chore.

Buildings Have Senses Too is a hybrid of city-building and management set in an abstract vision of 20th Century Britain. Players will progress through several neighborhood stages, often by opening businesses and putting down buildings.

Buildings Have Feelings too audio and visuals are the best parts of the game. The game's charm and friendly dialogue between the anthropomorphic houses gives it a charming quality. The music is great with melodies that are appropriate for each neighborhood. The inclusion of buildings as the main characters in the story is a nice twist on the traditional management and city builder genre.

Unfortunately, the best of the reviews ends here. Although it is functional, the core gameplay has serious flaws in its design. There are many things to do and places to visit. Due to the limited space available, businesses also have limited impact ranges. Therefore, it is important to plan and position your business efficiently. It's great to find the right location for a building to make it more pleasant to its neighbors and bring about an upgrade.

There are however some problems that can prevent the gameplay loop from being as tight and satisfying as it needs to be. A building's disrepair rating is required to prevent it from becoming an auto-destructible. A small amount of Bricks, the game currency, is all it takes to fix a building. Or, you can manually tear down the building and replace it with no additional cost. Management doesn't take as much of an impact on buildings in poor states than developers may think.

Infrastructure Permit slots are available for different building types that may add additional effects. The problem is the inability to control the effects of these permits on decision-making. The system works as it is, but players don't have much information about the options.

Another gameplay problem is the missed opportunity in interaction between buildings, the population, and what is basically a resource generated by certain businesses. The missing opportunity is in the absence of a two way street system that allows buildings to affect the population, and vice versa. It makes every neighborhood feel the same, which reduces strategic decision making depth.

Buildings Have Feelings too is an irritatingly buggy title. Bugs varied from simple UI components getting stuck and obstructing the text and vision, to language switching and music without any reason, and sometimes ambient noise that cut off after saving. Some bugs were so bad that my save file was corrupted or broken that I couldn't travel to different neighborhoods. Sometimes the game would stop saving and cause me to restart the entire playthrough.

However, performance can be a mixed bag. Although the game ran without any frame drops or stutters for most of the game, one neighborhood would experience a stuttering and crash. The program had to be restarted. Other annoying performance problems I encountered included long loading screens that were too slow and sometimes a bit of input lag.

Buildings Have Feelings Too faces a host balance issues. These problems reduce its strategic and decision making potential. The first is that vital operational resources such bricks and buildings can be found all too easily. It's easy to quickly become rich, which can make it difficult for city builders to build.

Bricks are inconsequential. Players unlock newer, fancier businesses. Older ones are also locked away as they have little to no impact on the neighborhood's growth. Unlockable businesses tend to be more resource-efficient than earlier ones. Although it is harder to upgrade newer businesses, it doesn't mean they should be abandoned in favor of simpler, less efficient businesses.

Some sections of this game have restrictions on some building types. There are many buildings to choose from, so developers may be encouraging players not to use them all. There's no reason to limit the space you have so it's best to stick with smaller buildings.

The game's controls, UI and presentation are the main issues. One way to summarize the main themes of these issues is that Buildings have Feelings To was clearly made for consoles and the PC port was a sideshow.

PC's most controls are bound to your keyboard. This is frustrating because it can be difficult to move large structures and makes it frustrating to use. Some sections, such the in-game menu pause, require only the mouse. Everything else requires the keyboard. The worst thing is that the game doesn’t take advantage of the PC’s best advantages for player flexibility.

On top of the awkward controls, the UI is inefficient and extremely fiddly. The UI is essentially a series menus upon multiple menus with more menus. The player must then carefully flip through each element to find the information they need. Although the UI has a lovely aesthetic and is stylized, it does not work well. There is nothing more wrong than an unhelpful UI coupled with incoherent controls.

The most common of the three types of failures is the presentation of information to players. The tutorial is presented using a series pop-up cards and dialogues to explain the game's concepts. The Guides section clearly states that players may go back to the tutorial to refresh their memory. However, there are portions of the tutorial that aren't in the guide.

Another sign of poor information presentation in the game is its failure to clearly define its ultimate goal. What is the purpose of this game? Is it to create a narrative city or complete quests. There aren’t enough role-playing and narrative features. It is a high-score game with the aim of increasing popularity. To what extent should players be focusing on neighborhood appeal There doesn't appear to be any leaderboard system or any other system showing appeal progress. Nor does global neighborhood charm have any tangible effect. It makes players' involvement feel a bit empty and void.

Buildings Have Feelings Too is a complex game that has confusing language. This can lead to player frustration and even block progress. I reached a stage in the game's later stages where one quest presented an objective in a different way than the rest. This caused me to question my English and stopped me from progressing. Either the developers failed to check how players will perceive the game's content or the game is simply not working as it should. It's a major problem.

The deal is sealed by two small issues. It's clear that the game is building toward something. At some point, it will open up to the player to test their skills. The game's aimlessness meant that I could not predict the outcome of the game and I didn't reach it.

The second issue concerns a dearth of accommodation that allows for experimentation. In management and city building games, it is crucial for players to be able experiment and find creative ways to optimize their city. Buildings Have Feelings Too is limited to three save slots. Each save slot can only be used for quicksaves. This prevents players jumping back to earlier stages.

Players are not able to quickly reshuffle their communities or use their avatar to move buildings around. Players will have the tedious task of waiting for their avatar move from one end to another, and then awkwardly going through every stage of each structure's demolition. If the player doesn't have a plan in place, it will be difficult to do major restructuring after putting buildings down.

It's sad to see Buildings Have Feelings Too go down. The developers clearly care about the game. The game is full of charm, character, and flavor, but it's ruined by bad gameplay design, poor technical implementation, and other inexcusable issues. It's likely that players will spend more time fighting than they are enjoying the game. While Buildings Have Felts Too may do better on consoles, it's not as good as a PC game.