Havendock PC Review

The ship DC370 has crashed, and a lone survivor has washed up on a small patch of land surrounded by endless sea. Luckily, they know how to build, fish, and survive with ease. Soon others sail towards this small hovel, forming a full fledge town floating on a makeshift wharf. Havendock is the first published PC project by new developer YYZ Productions. They appear to be a one-man team comprised of Yeo Ying Zhi but further supported by publisher Different Tales, who previously made the visual novel Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest.

Players first customize their player character. They can be masculine or feminine form but can pick their pronouns, including him, her, them, or it. Players can select any hair and beard regardless of gender settings, including neon colors that glow in the dark. There are a number of eyes, hats, and masks. Players always begin in a single jumpsuit, but the color can be selected. One can also give themselves a trait like "night owl" or "food lover", but they do not affect the gameplay as it's merely for role-playing.

Players begin on a small sandy island, with various objects floating by for pickup. This includes wooden planks, leaves, and small fish. Resources can be picked up as long as player avatars are close enough - their targeting line will switch between green when in range and red if too far. Larger items like giant fish are teased but cannot be gathered early on. Crates will also sometimes float by, containing a random assortment of possible items.

The survivor in Havendock starts by knowing how to construct single square docks, a saltwater pump, a water purifier, and a research desk. The former is handy as the player needs to eat and drink to live and perform at top shape. Researching instead opens up a large tech tree with many new crafts to unlock. This includes early devices like housing, hard rock beds, a dance floor, a burger farm, and a teriyaki grill.

Some early tasks like pumping water, studying new tech, and collecting sand require players to sit there real time and wait for a task to complete before moving. Other activities like growing vegetables and cleansing water are done passively over time. However, they still require one to come back over to collect the finished product or restock it with raw materials. This means it is best to load up all of these passive processors and manually oversee the water pump or research desk as other items forge or stew.

As players build up the dock to include a full ship pier, other survivors will make their way over and ask to join the new colony. They can be assigned routine tasks like restocking fresh water, diving for fish, cooking meals, or crafting items - they cannot discover tech or build, which will remain the player's full-time job. This means the more allies automating the work, the more freedom players will have to concentrate on the larger plan.

Settler assignments in Havendock can sometimes interrupt multiple supply chains. This is because they still use all the same facilities and storage as the player but don't inform or have a pop-up stating so. For instance, one might grab some ore to make a rock bed, only to find that the AI has decided to already use it all to create steel ingots. This can lead to strange and illogical feedback loops where characters are upset at the player when they waste colony resources.  

Additionally, more settlers mean more demands. Each new arrival needs ample food and water to be efficient, along with time to rest and have fun with leisure activities like dancing. By default, settler death is toggled off, but it can be flipped back on to make it possible for hungry and thirsty characters to perish. But with so much available fish and the ease of purifying water, this shouldn't be an issue unless the colony absolutely explodes in size.

There are quest objectives in Havendock to help guide players, though they mostly act as a tutorial with some story sprinkled in. The objective UI is a bit buggy, particularly when players expend a resource that was part of the goal; the tracker will not update and end up needing 15/10 of an item to progress. Early assignments might be something simple like gathering seeds to start growing hamburgers. Other times the tasks will suddenly balloon up without explanation, like making 10 steel bars, with little instruction on how to do so.

Some of these main objectives are misleading, often guiding players to spread thin and build up the settlement with things they don't truly need. This includes aesthetic items that make things look nicer but have no gameplay elements. Following the quest will also skip over important necessities like nets that automatically catch floating debris or the tech to grow trees for wood.

The main quest also does not factor in random events and disasters that are always on. This includes sudden fires breaking out prior to even having an ample water supply or settlers becoming sick and injured. An unhealthy worker cannot take on any task until healed, leaving players possibly scrambling to construct beds, research medicine, and get things back up and running.

Thankfully, Havendock includes a larger build encyclopedia that explains how each resource is made and what it is used for. Players will often need to dive back into this as often situations will suddenly pop up and ask for a resource that was never hinted at. This can include suddenly needing a food item or recreation that is much deeper in the tech tree.

Havendock features an experimental multiplayer mode with various limitations. The most notable one is that multiplayer can only be accessed as the initial game - if another instance is loaded, then multiplayer will be disabled until Havendock is fully restarted. Additionally, after multiplayer is entered, the game must be fully closed instead of returning to the main menu.

A player’s previous online avatar's cosmetics will automatically load between sessions, but a character name needs to be manually inputted each time - one’s Steam username is not automatically detected. Players will be brought to a multiplayer lobby from a selectable region. This includes the US, Greater Asia, and a dedicated Mainland China server. Within the lobby, a host is assigned, and up to 15 other players can join in. Players can dance, sit at desks, eat, or read various messages before entering.

The host can choose to start a brand new game or load one of their local save files. Having too many players can be a bit overwhelming in a fresh game, as everyone piles on in a single dock square. There are few multiplayer-specific features outside of text chat. The game encourages players to use Discord to voice chat or otherwise find each other for matchmaking. This causes the mode to just feel like a single-player with a full tutorial, except with lots of people running around doing their own thing.

Havendock is very dedicated to preserving save games regardless if they are single or multiplayer. The game has a cloud save feature, though it requires a separate new login instead of being fully integrated into Steam - possibly due to the game also being on other platforms like itch.io and more. Strangely, this login process does not have password recovery or e-mail confirmation, still making it possible to be locked out of one's account.

The sound design of Havendock is fair. The music is catchy with live guitars and gives a majestic feel. However, most songs are far too short, making it feel repetitious until there is a music change several hours into the night. The few-voiced dialogue is completely amateur and grating - it is possible Yeo Ying Zhi and their friends recorded dialogue without any professional voice actors.

Audio dialogue is all recorded in English, but both subtitles and interface can be changed to other languages. This includes Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, French, Spanish, Ukrainian, and German. This feature is buried a bit deep in the options menu, so it can be a bit confusing how to change languages back and forth.

The graphics and art design are a highlight of Havendock. The world is a crisp 3D combining both flat textures against superb lighting - this gives a feeling of cartoony fun with a small bit of realism. The clothing and decor options are also very lively and humorous. There is very little reason why shipwrecked sailors are also schmoozing with witches, Santa Clause, and blacksmiths. But it all winds up fitting altogether.

Havendock is certainly impressive for a one-person developed game. It has many great systems for building a fun colony. However, it still has many kinks to work out and may be in Early Access for some time. Players should take advantage of the free demo on Steam and make a judgment call if it is really worth spending money on. But even if one is turned off from purchasing immediately, it may still be worth adding Havendock to their wish list and tracking a full finished release.
 

Kurtis Seid, NoobFeed
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