Little Kitty, Big City
Little Kitty, Big City
Game
Game2017
Hearthlands
Developer Four White Cats
Hearthlands is a medieval/fantasy city-building real time strategy game in which you take a role of a king in a procedurally generated world. You can not control your subjects directly; instead you focus on city-building, resource management, diplomacy, magic, etc. From the Steam store page
186 reactions from 1 source (Steam reviews) · newest Sep 13, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
74
Fresh
138 positive · 48 negative
95% range 67–80%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 138 | 48 | 0 |
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
342 of 414 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 186 · most liked firstWorth It? YES LIKES Colorful graphic style Scratches that nostalgia itch for city-builders of old like Pharaoh or Caesar Icons hover over houses to show what citizens need Campaign steadily introduces gameplay mechanics Sandbox mode Four cultures each with their own strengths and weaknesses The construction UI is easy to read and understand Visuals showing houses evolving/devolving based on needs being met/not met Real time army control Loot treasure chests and research points within the game…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What I liked: Mixing a lot of gameplay mechanics into one game What You Need to Know: This game is a jack of all trades kind of game. It has a lot of things happening in the game but it does none of them well. Keeping your supply line of materials isn’t a real challenge and the ratios are always even. You’re main challenge will always be making sure your houses get what they need to stay happy so people don’t’ leave. You can control what items are picked up and priority of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Im kind of torn apart by this game. I would like to recommend it, but only because of it being a game in a genre with not many choices and not because its a really good game. I also realized, that there arent many negative reviews rating this game in its finished state, so i will have a go for it. Im sorry that its so long, i will start with positive, follow with negative and end with a resumée. At first the positive things: 1.) Its a city builder with mechanics similar to games i loved…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Bought this game due to the recommendation of people who liked games such as Ceaser and Pharaoh. This game was fun for a bit, but after awhile I realized I was tuning out and just letting the game continue at speed 3 while I waited for "X" to happen. The gameplay is okay, but you'll spend most of your time trying to debug why your supply chain isn't giving a resource to the right building when you have 50! of them available.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →do you like the old Sierra Strategy-Games like Emperor, Ceasar, etc? then this is for you! polished, fun, awesome! A Campaign that present you all the Details you need to know for starting a huge endless run, with knowing all your possibilities... thats the way I like it :P
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →City Builder that revives the old-school genre. I am so pleased that this game made it out of early access and is now fully released. Hearthlands is a City Builder that takes a lot of influence from many older games, such as Caesar, Pharaoh, Emperor and Zeus, as well as some aspects from the earlier Settlers series. I might be slightly bias because I loved those games, so I had a heavy sense of nostalgia whilst playing this. The vast majority of the mechanics are not new or unique; but they…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pros: It combines elements from Ceasar, Banished and Anno to create a very interesting city builder game. The best way to put it is Ceasar's buildings and UI style with Banished's survival and inventory management and Anno's city evolution (Anno 1404 to narrow it down) Gameplay is enough to keep you playing, and this game provides a fair amount of content compared to city builders of the same calibre. I've not experienced any bugs while playing the game, the only thing that's happened was…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you look past the "Farmville" aestethic you'll find all the core gameplay mechanics from the classic Impressions city builders. Production chains, (smarter) walkers, leveling up houses by providing goods and beauty, combat, trading, etc, with some new interesting mechanics such as spellcasting and research. I particularly enjoy the open ended custom games. If you enjoyed Caesar3\Pharaoh\Zeus\Emperor you'd most likely enjoy this too.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Don't buy this if you're on a mac. You need Java 6 which hasn't received security updates since 2014 and it crashes every few hours.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Caesar 3, with better graphics, horrible UI, casual tier depth and unreliable logistics on basic buildings. I'd rather just play games that are 20 years old AND still better.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So I've been diddling around with this game for a couple of hours. I've played the first two campaign missions and the tutorial. This is actually a really good game. It's a cross between Stronghold, Banished, Anno, and Settlers, with some of the better parts of each attached to them. You have a plethora of options when building your city, and there doesn't seem to be anything completely deadweightish. Everything is necessary. It's pretty intuitive how it all works, with your little settlers…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →requested refund, see why below Ok so the issue is the graphics, they are awful. Hideous. It's not they are simple, I can deal with that. But simple and ugly, so ugly. Perhaps I would like this game, but not willing to try. If you can get past the graphics and like this genre of game then sure you will probably like it. Very reminiscent Pharaoh and Caesar 3. My dream is to have this style of game that moves forward in mechanics and depth and setting and graphics. Modern city builders abound…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →"Are they warriors? Mercenaries?" Aahz shook his head. "Worse!" he answered. "They're merchants.” ~Robert Lynn Asprin As we all know, the city building genre is not doing that well right now. Sure, there's still quite a lot of such games around and some of them even come with pretty interesting mechanics, but still, there's a big problem with them. Even though city building games started as some sort of sandboxes in titles like Don Daglow's Utopia, Will Wright's SimCity and Impressions Games'…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm a big fan of Settlers, and I like the impressions City Building series, which meant I want looking forward to playing Hearthlands. But it's such a drag. I'd say only play this game if you like: * Waiting for stuff to happen. Specifically for numbers representing good stock to reach certain levels. * Doing the exact same thing on each map * Knowing that there's a precise ration of primary:secondary buildings, but the game not always telling you, so you have to work it out with trail and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Modern-day version of Caesar/Pharaoh series. Very well done! :)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A Caesarlike citybuilder in a fantasy setting, but I found the building's logistics to be too big a pain in the ass to keep playing. There would be a stockpile with coal next to a smelter, and they would walk to the other side of the map to fetch coal . It's disappointing because I was enjoying it, but once you get to the campaign levels where your city gets much larger the logistical issues become too much of a headache.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Kinda fun, had potential but really unpolished. * Frequent crashes. That combined with no option to autosave more than once a year is a recipe for losing everything. * Crazy fluctuations of difficulty. In the beginning the game is annoyingly easy and nothing you do matters much. Until all of the sudden the enemy attacks with completely unproportional force and just "appears" inside of your base bypassing all your defenses. * Unfun to manage logistics, you have to be constantly turning…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is one of those times I wish I could give a game a yes and a no recommendation. On the one hand this game has some fun qualities. You build up your city and then you watch it grow. The best thing about this game is the instant feedback you receive when you're doing anything good or bad. Is your town prospering? Your houses get bigger and has a better look. Is your townsfolk leaving? You can clearly see a person leaving the map away from your town. It's just visually satisfying.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hearthlands seems fun, has all the potential to be fun, engages you for a while.. And then you realize that you are not having fun, you're just optimizing a pretty spreadsheet. You can't skip missions, so you're kind of stuck without a challenge for quite some time. I stopped playing after mission 4. Note that the performance is great, the atmosphere very well done, the animations are cute. It's just that the actual fun part of the game isn't there (yet?).
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very shallow gameplay, repetitive... worth maybe $1.99
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love city-building, resource production games and this game fits nicely into that genre. While it brings many interesting systems that are frequently overlooked in other games (including combat, magic, RPG elements, and world diplomacy), Hearthlands still feels too unbalanced at this point. Neighboring nations ask for too much (even on Very Easy) and will invade and destroy your city on a whim. Production chains are unclear and while there is plenty of information at your disposal, I never…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →buyer beware. absentee dev, after 3 years, finally confirms the game cannot handle mid to late level gameplay. from sergio, the games dev, after reviewing a requested savegame file: I've just got a lot of achievements:) I see some slowdowns every couple of seconds, but it's OK for such massive city:) And it's more or less smooth. I actually impressed with how well it works with so much stuff going on. It may be possible to make it run more smoothly by separating industries. For example all…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Triggers an anti-virus alert, but that may just be a false positive. After creating an exception for the game, it opens [occasionally flashing a bit of game-related loading screen graphics] and then immediately closes. There are a good handful of similar reports in regards to the game out there, with several listed fixes [adjusting various game files, downloading a certain dll file, updating nvidia drivers, running as administrator] in the various threads; However, the majority of affected…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not worth the full price. Get it on sale imo...gameplay is boring and no where near as entertaining as the old Serria games
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Its ok. But got bored each time when getting back into it. Though the core of it feels like Ceasar3 where you simply build and have requirements/tribute requests from the AI. No diplomacy actions such as allying or such that you see in other games of this sort eg. emperor, zeus. Since there are no alliances, you also don't have the option to have said allies aid you in battles or raid on your behalf. Need a neutral review option.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In its current state this game is not worth the price. It's a throwback to older games like the Caesar series including Zeus and Pharoah. Emporer: Rise of the middle kingdom. In the 19 hours of gameplay which was actually much less since I left the game logged in and wasnt actually playing, I've managed to master the mechanics. ***While enjoyable until more features are added or the price comes down by about half I am giving it a do not recommend rating. Additionally, I completed several…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I first installed this game quite a while ago when the Mac version was new on Steam and then uninstalled after a few hours due to a lack of features. Today, I reinstalled thinking I would give it a try and see what is new after all this time, but I get an error: "To open “Hearthlands” you need to install the legacy Java SE 6 runtime." Yeah, no thanks. Pass.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overall a solid city builder. Better army control mechanics would improve mid-late game a lot more. QoL things for managing the economy with graphs are missing, but micro managing isn't too taxing. A solid 8/10.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I am a big fan of city building games and this title seems to be quite interesting addition to the genre. I enjoyed food nutrition system (you can grow turnips but it will not be too efficient, so better to produce wurst using the same turnips). Production chains are pleasantly sophisticated, this aspect of game can be a bit complicated for players not familiar with titles that inspired Hearthlands (Zeus, Caesar and some aspects of Majesty), but I think those complications actually are a big…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a great game. I have been playing this on and off for about 2 years, and while it took me a good few hours to properly understand some of the mechanics, and tens of hours to properly solve every puzzle it throws in your way, it is a lot of fun to do so. To me this game seems to be mainly about the logistics of running a city; All of your stocks are represented by physical items, spread out over different buildings and storage yards. These storage yards can be configured very…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →tl;dr: Ignore the description which makes it sound like a Majesty game, if you are on the fence, it is indeed worth trying out. If you've played Impressions Games city builders and enjoy Anno, I strongly recommend that you buy and try this game. The first two missions (less than 1 hour) will help you determine if you will like this game or not. Tip: skip the tutorial and go straight into the campaign as it already contains a great tutorial. The soundtrack is great, the sound effects are retro,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So, my first impression is that this game is going to be very basic, and it was until I played it more. There is just enough depth to make this a fun game that involves some planning. It is a supply chain game, like you might imagine any style of game to be in this genre and in that it is very basic but it is also satisfying to maintain a good chain and dispatch of the challenges the game throws at you. At first glance this game disappointed me, but once I put more hours into it, it became…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →$20 for over 20 hours, SO thats a thumbs up from me. Is the game perfect? well... no... but its quite enjoyable in its own way. Im enjoying the campaign mode, its not overly complex and is just fun to play. No bugs, no crashes, enough complexity to hold my attention. If you like this genre of game, you'll probably be entertained for 20-30 hours atleast.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Requesting a refund for this game, the voices of the settlers are completely uninspiried, they sound like they're in a recording booth with terrible microphones and dont even want to be there themselves. The pictures on the store page are really missleading making the game seem like its something it isnt. They have barely any audio or video settings, not being able to change icon size or change sound settings for animals/people is kind of bad, the chickens are too loud, the pigs make very…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A delightful little city builder game. You can spend time in the mission mode or make custom scenarios if you want. The game has a really good tutorial. You can spend so much time in the fun tutorial and forget all about the other modes. Very entertaining game worth the price. My one grip I have is that it seems the Devs have abandoned it. Would love to see DLC for it.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a fun little city builder in the vein of Caesar, Pharaoh, etc as has been talked about by many of the other reviews here. The only thing I would add is the upkeep on military units is perhaps a bit too high. Some mission objectives require you to have 4 military units built which, despite selling every available item in the trade menu, required upkeep that was easily 10x my income. Some games encourage you to build massive economies with gold sinks like these, but you can only trade so…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hearthlands – A Blast from the Past Sergio makes a stunning debut on the PC with Hearthlands. You may be familiar with his work already under the company Artefact Games, a small indie mobile games development company, which he co-founded with Simon. Don’t let that fool you, as Hearthlands is perfectly suited for computer play. Hearthlands is a fresh take on the old city building genre of Impression Games’ titles such as Pharoah, Zeus, Empire, and Caesar. It doesn’t feel like a cheap copy pasta…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game looks, feels and plays like a browser / mobile game. Asking 20 bucks is ridiculous.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Positive: A good addition to your library if you were a fan of the Caesar/Pharaoh/Zeus/Emperor games. There's a good tutorial that will teach you the basics, and a campaign mode that slowly introduces more advanced gameplay mechanics. Negative: The graphics aren't good, but I quickly got used to it. The quality of the voice acting and the repetitive sound effects of some buildings and units are terrible and annoying though. I hope the dev updates the voices with better VAs and more speech…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is fun so far, but damn the chicken noises are loud and annoying. LIke, I have to put them in a corner on their own so that I don't have to listen to them all the time.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Did you enjoy Caesar & Pharaoh ? Do you want nice buildings and godawful characters and citizens ? Do you appreciate lunatic neighbours and stealing goblins ? Then Hearthlands is what you seek. Get back to 2002 game design right now for 20€ and forget about having your hand taken. You'll learn by making mistakes, sometimes after a good 40 mins of gameplay, and it ll be too late, because it's something you should have anticipated since the very beginning of the game. This is a small…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really liked the game, though corrupting influence of ANNO 2205 and its World Market felt too strong for my liking. But mission 4 step 5 has put an end to my joy. Whatever BS is written in the quest you can't complete mission with 4 squads. Not even with 8. By the time I finished creating 8th squad from 250 000 gold only 79 k left. I could probably have spent spent several days on speed 3 to accumulate gold and increase army size to 12 or even 16 squads. But it's not something I'd like to do.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →it is addictive and fun, a very enjoyable game relaxing but challenging......thats what i thought of until i found out this game is a copy of an old game by seirra entertainment called Emperor Rise of the Middle Kingdom from 2002 the gameplay, mechanics, and idea are all copied which, while still both games are great, makes Hearthlands less impressive than when you first it in action cause you realise oh its all copied from an old game, and for me its not right, there is a difference between…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game and Lethis-Path of Progress are functionally extremely similar. There's little need to have both and Lethis is better IMO. Both start you out with a pile of money and 90% of each mission is setting up a boring as hell grid city to get services to your houses so they upgrade so you have enough workers to get services to your houses.... I DO like how hearthlands does taxation. The higher the tax rate, the lower % labor participation in the workforce. So if you overbuild houses (and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you was looking for Majesty remake, look elsewhere. This game is overcomplicated and becomes boring very quickly. On a positive site - it has nice visuals and art, the interface is simple and the game can be entertaining in some parts. But not for long.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →For those of you who have played Pharoah and Zeus to the ground, this is a great next choice! This follows closely in the footsteps of those city building strategy games. It has some mythology (wizards and giant spiders to fight), but no gods to worhship (the gods in Pharoah and Zeus were a pain in the butt). Some of the other differences/improvements compaored to the older city building strategy games include the fact that your whole map can't burn down, the towns people are actually willing…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As a huge fan of the Sierra games, Master of Olympus, Atlantis (also Caesar's franchise) , i expected a lot from this game. This game sadly shattered a lot of my hopes for a good futuristic approach on these old gems. The AI is very cluncky, resources are not well balanced, the graphics are very poor, maps are pretty blank. Very disappointed after this game was not in early access anymore because I had some hopes for it. For instance i like the fame, magic, research concepts but that is about…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A good modern option to those who enjoyed playing games such as Caesar III, Pharaoh and Zeus.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Does the same thing many games much older do better. Nothing sets it apart other than one of the few strategy sim games on steam.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Playing it on Linux and enjoying the tutorial. there is allot going on and happening but seriously a great pass time.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game sucks,I have owned and played 1602,1503 but this game dose'nt help you get into the game. I wasted money on this one.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hearthlands, developed and published by Four White Cats, is a city-building and management game that leans heavily on classic design sensibilities while introducing a more relaxed, simulation-driven approach to governing a medieval-fantasy settlement. It doesn’t chase the complexity or spectacle of modern strategy titles; instead, it focuses on creating a living system where your role is less about issuing constant commands and more about shaping the conditions in which your town can grow. This…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Kept me up till 2AM playing. So if you don't want this to happen don't get it. Totally fun medieval city management game. But there is some kind of BUG with the SAWMILLS. The way around this is to have Woodcutters on a dedicated road NOT connected to your city with a warehouse at the end that will store your wood. From that warehouse make another dedicated road with Sawmills to connected to another warehouse to store your planks. From there make a road connecting to your city with the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Campaign starts with exact same thing like tutorial - so what is the point of it?. And second mission starts with: "build 48 houses". Some space between houses is required for decorations, so you might be going to place each of those buildings by hand. I will post an update if it ever gets better but I doubt it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →---{Graphics}--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ Paint.exe ---{Gameplay}--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It‘s just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Starring at walls is better ☐ Just don‘t ---{Audio}--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ Earrape ---{Audience}--- ☐ Kids ☐ Teens ☐ Adults ☑ Human ☐ Lizards ---{PC Requirements}--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boiiiiii ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unfortunately this game has some severe balancing issues, especially within the campaign. The first Northerner's mission is a nightmare. The quest guide recommends attacking a city with 4 squads to win the battle and conquer a neighbouring city. YET, 10 full squads (3 archers, 2 beserkers, 2 spearmen and 3 axemen) still gets defeated time and time again, loosing dozens of men, yet the enemy only suffers 4-8 losses. Then the defeated army returns home, requires payment to replace losses and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's only about white people ><
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A quirky but hugely impressive RTS If you like the RTS genre this is an excellent diversion. The city building bits are fun - and combat, whilst finicky, gets strangely compelling. If this is the work of one guy - it's seriously impressive stuff! A definite must-buy when on Sale.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I find it boring. Too few things happen even on full speed.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Works on Linux, thanks!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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