Trove Is A Better Landmark Than Landmark

I’ve been dipping into Trove a bit more lately, because it’s become quite stable. I don’t know how to say this politely, but it’s a much better game than Landmark. :)

Trove plays a bit like what we’ve been told Landmark will be. That is, you can explore, fight monsters, level up, find resources, craft stuff, and build stuff. The thing about Trove is that after about three months of alpha, all of those things work. In Landmark, after a bit more than a month of alpha, most of those things don’t work, we haven’t seen many changes at all, and we only have promises of future deliveries.

Trove has a ridiculously fast development cycle. They update that game all the time and the changes are large and obvious. During the first month they must have updated it every day. (It’s actually pretty annoying because they don’t have a self-updating launcher yet.) At this point I would consider it a playable game, easily good enough to release. I enjoy my time in there and I feel like I’m making progress. (I don’t want to play too much though because I’m sure I’m going to get wiped whenever alpha ends.)

Landmark has only done, what, two or three major updates since it came out a bit more than a month ago. Each update has not been that major, in my opinion, because other than the invert-mouse feature, I have not even noticed the changes. I still see all the same glitchy progress bars and graphics and lighting that I’ve seen since the very beginning. There is very little gameplay, very little to do except upgrade your pick, very little progress to be made, and on top of that is the near certainty that the core gameplay is going to radically change in the future.

So at the moment it’s no contest. Trove is winning the race to capture my sandbox gaming time. It’s fast to load, easy to play, and fun. Sadly Landmark got more of my money. :/

(P.S. I don’t want Landmark to fail or anything, I just want them to go faster and figure out what their game is supposed to be.)