Good review. You are probably right about higher difficulties. I played my first game on default difficulty and I managed to win without really knowing what I was doing (at the start at least). But I'm not above savescumming when RNG throws me a bad deal, and I was incredibly lucky with village location - two wood spots, sea weeds and fishes (I didn't realize how lucky that was until I started my next game where I didn't have ANY mining spots near the village).

Similar with me. It has strong "I have to go to work in HOW MANY HOURS??" factor. I generally don't like roguelikes, but there are exceptions so I'm willing to give them benefit of doubt, especially if there is decent demo. And this one was very pleasant surprise.

That particular project was designed as a "transmedia" property, meaning it was intended to exist in several forms (the source novel was going to be translated, there would be a game, a movie, and who knows what else). So my guess is that they thought the game was too expensive or difficult to fund at the needed level, so they tried to get the movie made instead. Then they would count on the success of the movie to drive interest in the game, not realising that movie-to-game conversions have a generally bad reputation in the gaming community. :)

This might be a little bit like King of Dragon Pass. Which would be a good thing.

You're welcome, even if I didn't really mean that as a review (my post is missing a LOT of things to say about Thea - though admittedly, most of them good - at least in my subjective opinion). Hope it helps you to make up your mind, though - personally I'd always recommend to give it a go. Even if you end up not liking it (hey, to each of their own), the developers are definitely worthy of support :)

Try 300%. Now that's where !FUN! starts... dwarf-fortress style XD

I think the difficulty balance got somewhat reworked as well - a few of my early memorable ignominious defeats (200-250% difficulty) were caused by three-skull enemy attacks around turn 30 or 40... >.>

"One... more... turn... hey, why are the birds chirping outside...?!"

Wouldn't really say those two are comparable. They do approach similar subject matter, but take rather different approaches. You do not have generic "people" as in KotDP - every character in Thea comes with a lot of statistics that determine their role. On top of that, each can be outfitted with gear that will either further strengthen their specialization, or make up for lacks in some other areas.

There's a lot of "survivor" type feeling to the game, as well. You do "supply runs" to resource nodes that may be several days away (and the night -is- full of terrors - or at least much more aggressive enemies ;) ), or try to scavenge resources and items from encounters. One very nice thing about Thea is that combat is not only not the sole option to resolve situations, but often can in fact be a lesser choice in terms of potential outcome. Though you probably should not rely on social skills to help against a dragon...

Your settlement can be upgraded with a number of buildings that bring various boni depending on the actual material that you use for them. Some can be built several times, others do not stack, but you do have hard cap of 10 buildings total. Also, there is a difficulty setting that restricts you to only a single building from each category (the game can be cheesed pretty heavily by erecting multiples of certain buildings) - and frankly, it makes the game all that more interesting.

You have the usual "research" tree, and even if it has a limited number of unlocks, they are -very- meaningful. Especially on higher difficulties, where you are always starved for research points.

Since "the world" itself becomes increasingly more challenging over time, you are very much on the clock. A lot of the gameplay comes from trying to stay ahead of the increasing general difficulty of enemies (and here RNG can screw you up real good if you do not aggressively pursue counters to possible antagonistic situations).

Then there's the layer where you are basically running around doing "quests" and firing up random scripted events...

Thea is a lot of things, and the beauty of it is that it was put together in a way that, when all is said and done, does work well.

On the other hand, it makes it pretty damn hard to categorize. But it's definitely the proverbial "good potato."

(Also, why are you still reading this, should've bought the game already and actually enjoy ;) ).

I had the same association and yes that is a good thing. both are fantastic games. there is something to it, caring for your people and trying to get every single being through. as already mentioned, this is a tough game.

a lot of content, intuitive gamedesign and lots and lots of atmosphere.

Good lord. So im not the only one...talk about overused terms.. like zombies in games....lol

Thanks for the detailed info. This was very helpful.

Could this work under Windows XP?

It requires DirectX 10 or better so no (XP only has DX 9c).