Doloc Town

I pulled up Doloc Town's tech tree before I even finished the opening cutscene, because that's how I operate, and what I found told me immediately this wasn't just another Stardew clone with a coat of post-apocalyptic paint. The vertical planting system alone changes the decision calculus: instead of tending flat rows of crops, you're stacking planter boxes upward on scaffolding platforms, routing around toxic ground, and routing lightning rods into automated systems so heatwaves and acid rain become resource opportunities rather than pure setbacks. That's the kind of environmental systems thinking I want from a sim, and RedSaw Games Studio, on their first ever release, somehow nailed it. The core loop starts lean: you're Proti, arriving at a rusted settlement stitched together from freight cars and collapsed bridges, handed a poisoned plot and told to farm it back to life. Early sessions are slow and deliberately so, with basic planter boxes that break after a single harvest and a combat drone you won't unlock until you join the Guild. Patience here is rewarded. The tech tree, which works more like a crafting recipe tree gated by XP earned across farming, labour, and exploration activities, gradually opens cooking pots, garbage smelters, upgraded planters, and eventually full automation. Players who enjoy build-order thinking will find a satisfying progression arc, and the public workbenches in town let you trial higher-tier crafts before you've personally unlocked them, which is a genuinely newcomer-friendly design choice I wish more sims would copy. Once you leave town and hit the Rivervalley and Wetland maps, Doloc Town pivots into something closer to a light Metroidvania. Robots patrol the wastes, shortcut gates open as your gear improves, and the combat drone becomes your main tool for clearing them out. The drone is customizable: swap chassis, barrels, and battery packs to tune fire rate, damage output, and energy drain. Toggle auto-fire for relaxed exploration or aim manually for tighter encounters. Veteran action fans should note that auto-fire trivializes most fights in the current build, and the friendship mechanics with NPCs are still partially gated behind future updates. The UI also has a readability issue: unlocked and unlockable nodes in the tech tree look nearly identical at a glance, and buff descriptions are vague enough to leave you guessing whether an upgrade actually fired. These are Early Access rough edges, not design failures, but they're real friction points worth knowing. Post-launch support has been consistent and directional. The third major update, called Harvest Fusion, added a Gene System where each seed can carry up to three mutation modules from nearly twenty available variants, which is the kind of late-game farming depth I didn't expect from this price tier. Animal husbandry, fish farming mechanics, new faction quests, and a Long Night Festival have all arrived since launch. The roadmap points toward Steam Workshop support and additional maps. For a debut project, the update cadence is encouraging. The game runs well on low-spec hardware and is rated Playable on Steam Deck, so the audience ceiling is wide. If you're a simulation fan who normally sits out Early Access launches, Doloc Town is the exception worth tracking. The foundational systems are solid, the content volume already exceeds plenty of full releases, and the developer is clearly listening. The main storyline remains unfinished and some NPC relationships feel placeholder, so if you need a complete narrative before buying, bookmark it for the 1.0 release, currently targeted for sometime in 2026. Everyone else: the farm won't stack itself.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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