Initially, Blacksmith Master appeared to me as just another ordinary simulation game, common on Steam for quite some time now. However, once I noticed it was published by Hooded Horse – known for creating games like Manor Lords, Xenonauts 2, and Against the Storm – I began to consider that perhaps it could be worth investigating further.
- Genre: Strategy Management/ Tycoon
- Developer: Untitled Studio
- Publisher: Hooded Horse
- Release Date: 15th May, 2025
- Price: $14.99/ 14,99€/ £13.49
- Buy at: Steam
- Reviewed On: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.70 GHz, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 2080
I’m pleased to share that I had a go at Blacksmith Master. It’s an engaging game where you craft weapons, stamp tools, and forge armor – all aspects of managing a business. This game appeals to my entrepreneurial side in the best possible way, particularly because it revolves around watching numbers increase and building something from scratch.
Initially, you’re a small-scale blacksmith with basic tools like a workbench, forge, anvil, hammer, and a few orders from merchants for simple, low-grade kitchen silverware. By fulfilling these orders, you can accumulate gold to invest in expanding your workshop, hiring additional blacksmiths, and setting up more workstations. With consistent growth, the volume of merchant requests will rise along with the quantity of items and the payment you receive.
In due time, your blacksmith’s workshop will gradually transform into a modest store, featuring a single cashier, a few display tables for merchandise, and workers arranging shelves with the surplus materials you’ve been producing. A couple of hours hence, your shop may likely evolve into a two-story warehouse teeming with numerous employees scurrying about, striving to fulfill merchant orders while also ensuring an ample supply to fill the shelves, catering to the steadily increasing number of customers.
In simpler terms, Blacksmith Master stands out from other management games because it doesn’t require a long time to complete tasks. It’s perfect if you want something quick to play before bed, like making sales, adjusting your store, and wrapping up within 30 minutes or so. However, if you’re seeking a comprehensive, deep, and never-ending blacksmithing simulation, this game may not meet those expectations.
As your polygenized team generates increasing numbers of requests, fresh designs emerge for you to explore new equipment such as tools, armor, weapons, and even jewelry from merchants. These merchant demands also offer you new cosmetic items for the shop, like walls, floors, paintings, plus additional resources like abundant ores. This engaging cycle encourages you to maintain the merchant requests, rather than solely concentrating on your store, until you’ve unlocked everything else – a process that may take some time.
With every new item you produce, your team members accumulate valuable experience in various roles. These roles can range from blacksmiths who specialize in forging, assistants responsible for moving materials and maintaining the workspace, workers transforming ores into ingots, cashiers handling transactions, miners excavating resources, and woodsmen gathering wood. While I’ll delve deeper into the roles of miners and woodsmen later, for now, it’s crucial to understand that your team members progress quickly in their positions, leading to frequent requests for skill upgrades. Each employee role has unique talents; for instance, blacksmiths become more adept at metalworking, assistants can handle larger workloads and move faster, while cashiers learn to cross-sell items to customers as they gain experience.
In the game Blacksmith Master, you’ll have the opportunity to manage both mines and forests, which serve as sources for various raw materials like wood, iron, steel, silver, and other valuable metals. You can oversee these resources much like a smithy or store, by providing areas for your workers to rest, store their tools, and work on the materials they’ve gathered.
The game functions as both an entertaining platform and a progression system. By creating various items within the game, you’ll earn research points that can be utilized in a ‘tree’ structure to reveal fresh additions to your inventory such as new stores, floors, ingots, and numerous other rewards and exciting features. As you unlock these new areas, they become accessible for further exploration and enjoyment.
Could I offer some constructive feedback or perhaps some ideas for enhancing the game? Despite the enjoyable playtime that Blacksmith Master provides, and considering its affordable price of $15, it is definitely worth recommending. However, there are areas that could use improvement. For instance, after building a large store that looks more like an IKEA or Walmart instead of a local smithy, and having a gigantic forge in the basement with numerous workers coming in and out, I find it challenging to keep the store stocked with goods due to the overwhelming number of customers browsing. Although it might seem as if the store is thriving, there’s an almost constant stream of shoppers, which can make it difficult to maintain a sufficient inventory.
In my opinion, one key aspect that could elevate Blacksmith Master to a remarkable game is the enhancement of player behavior diversity. Currently, it seems that all players behave similarly, and their preferences seem to hold little weight or significant influence. This is because, regardless of the variety of items available such as metal cups and bows, all players tend to purchase them in large quantities. I had anticipated dealing with disgruntled customers seeking weapons, which I should stock, but instead, I find myself without them. Even seasonal events like wars or grand town parties that would typically necessitate adjustments in production output to cater to those demands seem absent.
To achieve that within the game, it’s also planning to adjust how tasks are given to your digital workers. Currently, you can assign them to produce various types of generic items such as wooden or metal goods, ranging from inexpensive to expensive, with low or high stock levels, and simple or complex ones. However, I wish there was a way for my top-tier blacksmith to specialize solely in crafting, for instance, legendary kitchen knives. The current lack of precision in task assignment results in numerous inefficiencies and diminishes the satisfaction that comes from having everything functioning perfectly according to your desires.
In conclusion, let me clarify something that might have caught your attention – the concept of a renowned kitchen tool in this game. Don’t be surprised, as you can elevate the rarity of the items you manufacture, such as legendary hatchets, wooden cups, and common clubs. This is a playful reference to a well-known roleplaying game (RPG) feature. However, this brings me back to my earlier point about customers acting like walking ATMs, always willing to pay for something without questioning it. I believe that as managers of the smithy, we should have the ability to assign specific orders to our blacksmiths. For instance, I could request 50 standard swords, 25 superior ones, and 5 legendary ones. When you enhance an item to legendary status, you’ll only be producing legendary items, though it will cost more. I think that the rarity of the items should offer something more than just a larger payment for the same amount of effort and resources. For example, if you want to craft a legendary metal cup, instead of using a steel ingot, you should use gold, adorned with precious gems. However, I can understand the developers’ decision to keep the game straightforward, as an abundance of advanced blueprints could make the supply chain more complex. The game is already rich in complexity, so it doesn’t lack depth either. Additionally, I appreciate and admire their choice to maintain simplicity, as they may have wanted to avoid overwhelming players with too many options.
Final Score 7/10
In its current Early Access stage, I wholeheartedly endorse Blacksmith Master. The key factors behind my recommendation are its distinct concept, its already impressive execution, its affordability, and an intuition that this game has the potential to become extraordinary in the future. It’s worth noting that this is an Early Access review, so significant changes may occur as development progresses.
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2025-05-26 22:43