The Kindred (PC) Preview

The Kindred plays like a game whose base engine is pretty much complete, but it's clear there's a lot of work to be done in terms of balancing and packing content in. That aside, the developers are definitely on the right track. The game plays smoothly, for the most part, and can possibly be best described as a hybrid of Minecraft and Harvest Moon.

Adorable townspeople, called Kin, have their own skill sets that will make them better or worse at specific tasks (though this system doesn't seem to actually affect much), which players can set them to perform, like mining, crafting, and shepherding. The world itself is voxel-based, with cubes making up most things, but is a little more varied and visually pleasing, with not everything being relegated to the exact same size of cube.

Mining is important, but it isn't the main goal here; verticality is actually sparse. Most necessities will be found at or just under ground level. It makes the game unique, but it also lacks the sense of exploration or dire consequences found in similar games; basically everything is ready and available from the gate, so it's just a matter of collecting it. Biomes in general don't seem to exist, with different resources being scattered somewhat randomly. This is something the developers can easily address, however, and fans of sim-type games can find a few hours of fun even at this early stage in the game's life.

On the whole, it seems solid, though at times it seems like Kin will stand around or not eat food for no obvious reason, and selecting certain tiles or objects can be finicky (collecting food one by one is especially tedious), but game-breaking bugs don't seem to exist. With its engine working so smoothly, hopefully Persistent can focus on balancing its world generation and packing in new content.