Medieval Dynasty offers an unexpectedly deep and refined experience for an indie sandbox simulator game. You do more than just chop trees and cook meat. You build entire buildings, recruit villagers, and establish a literal village. Multilayered mechanics exist for survival components, skill trees, reputations, and more.
That’s not to say that the game is flawless. While unexpectedly fun, there remain a few snags and hindrances to the overall gameplay experience. It’s not too late, though. Should there be a point in time when the developers were to push for an update, these are the things we would most want to see implemented.
8 Slower Days
Building a village is a lot of work, especially when you’re doing it alone during the game's early stages. That’s why it’s so dreadfully inconvenient how quickly the days seem to pass. Depending on where you settled down, you may need to travel a fair distance to hunt certain animals, find particular resources, or barter with specific NPC shops. Going to these places on foot can take up a majority of your day, all time that could have been spent preparing for winter or building a new structure.
By default, each season is only three days long. And while the Customize Game settings may offer the option to change the number of days in each season, the developers strongly discourage it for balance reasons. And yet, there is no option to slow down the passage of time itself.
7 More Ways To Pass The Night
To immediately contradict the previous remark, it’d also be quite nice if passing time throughout the night was more accessible. Medieval Dynasty takes place in a time before electricity; light is a valuable resource. Currently, the only way to sleep the dark away is to rest on your property or rest by a campfire. If you’re in another town away from home, you have no option to rent a room, borrow a bed, or even just sit on a bench to pass the time quickly.
When traveling, a campfire is your only option. You better already have a torch handy, though, because you need one to light the fire. If you don’t, you better have hay, which is only acquired from farms or reeds near water. You don’t think it’ll ever be an issue until you go hunting in the mountains without a torch and nightfalls.
6 Early Access To Portable Storage
There are various methods to increase what you can carry as you progress. This includes backpacks, perks, potions, and even mounted animals. The problem is, however, that none of these options are available to you very quickly.
Compounding this is the constant need for logs, which are pretty heavy. In the early stages, there is a plethora of buildings you need to construct to be productive. Farms, hunting lodges, wells, and storage all need more than a few logs to be built. And until you get an alternative, you’re stuck lugging four to five logs at a time from trees that are not as nearby as you’d like.
5 A Better Map System
There’s a map, sure. But it's not exactly one to be excited about. It marks all your structures, quests, and even where certain animals can be found for hunting. The presentation of information is not the problem, though; it's trying to use it.
There is no dedicated map button, so you need to toggle through the pause menu pages to find it. It doesn't retain the previous level of zoom, the zoom feature isn’t very smooth, and you can’t have more than one custom map marker. Our least favorite is the inability to see the aforementioned animal markers on the mini-map compass. All in all, the map is a frequently used feature that doesn’t feel good to use.
4 Better Food Balance
Eating and drinking are core components of any survival sandbox. But there’s a key to striking a balance. Too realistic, and you’ll be annoyed. Who actually wants to eat three meals a day in a game? Too slow, and the mechanic loses its sense of importance and priority.
While your hunger and thirst have a rather agreeable rate of reduction in the game, the degree that foods restore these metrics leaves something to be desired. It shouldn’t take more than nine whole ducks to satisfy your hunger for a day. And yet, there you are, with 15 ducks worth of meat roasting on the fire.
3 More Dynamic Temperature Concerns
Being centered around seasons, it makes sense that Medieval Dynasty would have a temperature mechanic. Bundle up in the winter to stay warm, stay near a fire, you get the drill. While neat, the mechanic doesn’t go hard enough. Getting wet (from swimming or by rain) should severely reduce your temperature, instead of the negligible difference it currently makes.
Being active is always an excellent way to warm up in real life. They could emulate that as well. Running, jumping, and chopping trees, anything that drains stamina could be a trigger for building up heat. Not only would that help in the winter, but it would introduce a greater concern of overheating by working too hard in the summer.
2 Toggle Inspector Mode Coverage
One of the most useful features is Inspector Mode. When activated, it dims the world and highlights specific items of interest. Depending on the skills you unlock, this can be foraging supplies like berries and sticks or live animals for hunting.
Unfortunately, having both skills means both are always highlighted. This makes it harder to find live animals among the glowing shrubs and branches. If we could perhaps toggle between each, that’d make for a far more satisfying time when hunting.
1 A Slow Motion Inspector Mode
Combat is not exactly Medieval Dynasty’s forte. Trying to aim at a deer or boar as it scampers away is terribly awkward, especially if you’re playing with a controller. If it's not a one-shot kill, finishing the creature off can be a difficult task. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could - if only for long enough to nail that killing shot - slow down time?
It’s a powerful idea and not something you should have immediately. But if such a function could be unlocked down the hunter skill line, that’d do leaps and bounds for improving the success and satisfaction of the hunting experience. Perhaps the mechanic could be connected to the Inspector Mode, draining your stamina accordingly.