Revive this game! This is an order.

Yea this is a go to play now and then game for me.

A review for Stonehearth has been long overdue. I have been playing this game on and off since 2018, for a total of over 400 hours. It’s safe to say that I love this game, I keep going back to this game and it is one of my favourite games.

That’s why it pained me so much to see it discarded as it has been.

Long story short:

The game showed a lot of potential initially, promising an advanced engine and flexible building mechanics. But early alpha builds were unstable, and updates were minor, failing to address core problems, which wasn’t good.

RIOT Games acquired the studio mainly for the developers' expertise in fighting games, not for Stonehearth, but it got acquired nonetheless. Post-acquisition, the original developers shifted focus away from this game onto their other projects, leaving the remaining team without clear direction. Despite promises, meaningful updates were rare, and key features were never implemented.

Eventually, RIOT pushed, the devs caved and the game was declared finished in a disappointing state, far from its potential.

An amazing group of modders volunteered to keep the game alive through the Authorized Community Expansion Project or ACE for short. What started as a mod to expand the game vastly, ended up being its sole saviour.

All of this to say, yes, the game was abandoned rather unceremoniously and that sucks, because it really was promising, *but* it is still a good game regardless, especially if you add all the wonderful mods that are still being maintained and expanded upon.

Stonehearth is a wonderful game in a cosy, voxel setting with the right amount of gathering, crafting, building and fighting to keep brain occupied for hours, even more so with mods.

I have yet to find another game with those same parameters that pulls it off this well.