First Dwarf

My first session with First Dwarf felt like three separate games had agreed to share an office and were still figuring out the desk arrangements. You are Tru, a dwarven scout engineer crash-landed in the sky-world of Driftland, and within the first hour you are swinging a mech fist at a tree to harvest wood, routing mana pipelines between resource extractors, and then hopping on the back of your dragon companion Ragna to reconnoitre the next floating island. That breadth is both the game's main charm and its biggest growing pain. The core loop is genuinely satisfying once it clicks. Gathering wood, stone, iron, and mana feeds a colony-building system where you lay down walls, turrets, harvesters, workshops, and alchemy stations, all networked through mana pipelines that you physically route across your island. Taint storms and enemy assault waves then test every layout decision you made. The Horn of Taint mechanic, added in a post-launch update, lets you deliberately call down escalating waves by offering crafting items as a sacrifice, varying the monster roster depending on what you throw in. That kind of designed-in pressure valve is the sign of a team that is listening. Playing co-op with a second person taking control of Ragna, who can fly freely and brings her own skill tree, shifts the dynamic noticeably: base-building becomes a two-person conversation rather than a solo checklist. Where the cracks show is in Early Access roughness that goes beyond the usual bugs. The story campaign is still unfinished, and players have reported Chapter 2 puzzle segments that offer zero guidance, a problem the community has had to self-document on the forums. The co-op mode, while functional, was flagged by the developers themselves as needing polish at launch. The Early Access opening was, by the developers' own admission, bumpier than hoped, and the first wave of player reviews reflected that uncertainty. Since then, the team has shipped consistent updates adding a third island, new weapons, a flyable airship that opens up the broader world map, a clans system, and building-as-Ragna support. The overall Steam rating has climbed to Mostly Positive across 300-plus reviews, which, for a genre-blending Early Access title, tells you the trajectory is upward. Aesthetically, the game earns attention. Driftland's shattered sky-archipelago has a visual identity that sits between grand fantasy and quiet melancholy: vibrant colour against real desolation, islands hanging in nothing. The Unreal Engine 5 underpinning delivers some genuinely striking vistas, and the world feels like it has lore worth uncovering even if not all of it is written yet. The mech customisation, including cosmetic blueprints and guild sigils, gives long-session players something to personalise. If you are coming from Star Drifters' earlier Driftland: The Magic Revival strategy game, the connective tissue of the setting will read as fanservice in the best sense. The honest answer to "is it worth it now" is: conditional. If you want a complete, polished experience from first minute to credits, wait. If you are the kind of player who enjoys watching a game assemble itself, contributes forum feedback, and can tolerate missing quests and a co-op mode that is still being tightened, there is already enough of a game here to spend real time in. The loop of gather, build, defend, fly to the next island, and repeat has a rhythm that justifies the investment for the right audience.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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