Before we jump straight into the review I want to state that this review and the recommendation we made is based off of the currently available release of Fortress Craft, “Chapter One: Creation.” The developer has promised future releases that may (or may not) bring in some of the features that we wanted to see; however, the episodic nature is not factored into this review as the features and games have yet to release. As Chapter One is a full release of itself, we are judging Fortress Craft Chapter One solely by it’s own merits. While some people may not agree with this methodology, I believe it is the most fair way to judge it for both gamers and the game’s developer(s). That said, lets jump into some Fortress Craft and see if it’s worth buying some Microsoft Points for!
Minecraft on the 360. What could go wrong with that? Developed by ProjectorGames, Fortress Craft purports to bring a “colossal world” limited only by your imagination. The single player aspect of the game drops the player into a newly created and “infinite” world where they are free to utilize unlimited resources and blocks to build or modify the world as they wish. Without the need to mine, cut wood, and craft the player is free to jump right into building whatever they wish.
From the Developer's website, the graphics are really nice.
Unfortunately, while this may seem like a selling point of the game, it actually detracts from the experience and re-playability of the game. The goal-less nature is fun for a time as you build to your hearts content, but at some point, due the lack of driving forces (enemy mobs, animals, and needing to replenish resources to stay alive) to keep the player engaged it just becomes “boring.”
Fortress Craft is not a bad game in concept. The concept of a Minecraft-like experience is surely an interesting one. Especially if persistent multi player worlds hosted on dedicated servers able to interact with PC versions of Minecraft as well as consoles were implemented. Alongside a split screen local multi player option, Minecraft on the big screen TV with family and friends could be huge. Especially if console access was rolled into the PC game (much like Portal 2 in fact 
) under a single one time price. This access would be tied to your account/gamer tag and would be available on any console or PC you logged onto. Then, you could get together with your friends and enjoy fighting zombies and running from creepers together.
I’m getting ahead of myself, however. This is a review only of Fortress Craft after all. I shall endeavor to focus solely on that from here on out. As one can see, I had high hopes for Fortress Craft upon hearing of it. Unfortunately, many of the things that I would have loved to see and that would have incentivized me to buy the game are missing. That said, Fortress Craft is not necessarily a bad game. It is just not a particularly fun game at this current release (1.0). As a first major release of a Minecraft indie game, it is a good effort. The graphics and loading times are very respectable for a game of this scope. The experience of using a controller to play a Minecraft clone ended up impressing me greatly, and were very slick. I will admit that I was skeptical that a game such as this would be easily controllable without a keyboard and mouse; however, the controls in Fortress Craft are very responsive and intuitive.
On the other hand, the price is 240 Microsoft Points, and the amount of content reflects the first release’s amount of content. While the world is technically infinite, your patience and interest will waiver much sooner than you can test the infinite world claims.
In the end, Fortress Craft is a first release worth a cursory glance if only to realize that a Minecraft console game is not only possible but potentially extremely fun. While Fortress Craft itself is not that fun, it certainly will have you demanding Mojang to release a full fledged Minecraft experience for your console. Fortress Craft is worth a look and would not be a bad choice if you had extra MS points that have built up but aren’t enough to buy anything else, so it is worth a “Rent/Possible Buy” rating. While its not something to go out immediately and purchase, it’s also not something you should regret purchasing if you do buy it with leftover points.
Verry Technical Rating: “Rent/Possible Buy”
(Also, it’s a game series to watch as future releases add more features to the series. We’ll definitely be coming back and re-evaluating the Fortress Craft series periodically as new chapters are released. This particular chapter by itself may not be worth buying yet; rather, you may want to wait for a full series pack once all the episodic chapters are released.)
Video Review: While I am an avid and frequent Minecraft player/fan, our newly deputized Xbox games tester Josh was completely new to Minecraft. After watching Duane and Wrigley’s commentary he was interested, so I thought it was a great opportunity to get a fresh take on Fortress Craft. First, I sat him in front of Minecraft for an hour or so as he learned the controls and I showed him around the world. Then we fired up Fortress Craft as shown in the video.
Enjoy
My cute corgi puppy :)
cool review, yeah it was about the same thoughts i had on it
Thanks coop
Glad you liked it. I’m kind of anti number ratings but is there anything else that I could do differently next time?
the one thing i could say is to improve the mic quality a bit, it was kind of hard to hear and the sound wasn’t clean sounding. also i know this might not be possible, but if you could get a recording off of the tv or have the camera positioned in a better spot, more straight on would be better i suppose
True that
Don’t worry, I’m working on that 
Next time I’m going to have a dedicated external mic(s) recording to my laptop and then I’ll just line up the sound and replace the camera’s audio in post, which will sound a lot better. As for the video, I’ll either use a tripod so I can position it front and center without any of the TV showing or some sort of capture device (though for HD those are kind of expensive 
). I sort of was under the gun for getting it out though so I had to work with what I had on hand at the time 
. The first recording that got corrupted had better sound as I did use a mic but alas.
IMHO you’ve got the right aswenr!