Thoughts after much play

[GuacBoy]

Having played Hamlet for around 25 hours now (and Don't Starve in general for around 300!), I'd like to say my thoughts about the game so far! Hopefully it can be of use, or at least thought-provoking.

Things that are awesome:

Pig towns are pulled off wonderfully. Fun to explore, fun to walk around with, fun to be in. I think the pigs could do with a little more interpersonal interaction, but it's generally really good.

Resources are fun to collect and crafting costs feel pretty fair in all respects.

It's fun to discover the bosses and great interacting with them.

Sound design is great as ever and I love the look of the fauna and flora of the rainforests. The vibrant colors are great!
Dungeons are punishing and fun to explore. 

I absolutely adore the focus on visual disruption, from the flowery sneezes, fog, vines and grassy outer thing in the deep rainforest.

General survival and gameplay feels smooth. There's a lot of polish to everything and the world looks great.

Almost everything feels fair and fun. Really great job!

 

Things I think could use improvement:
Due to the heavy parameters of worldgen in Hamlet (rainforest needs to have 2 ruin entrances, gas forest must be next to it, iron hulk area must be next to iron area (but has patchwork of other biomes), farmland must be close to spawn, etc.), as well as the relatively low size of each island, Hamlet's worlds feel quite a lot more homogenous to me compared to ROG/SW worlds. It also means there's a lot less chances for interesting, memorable world generations, nor much searching for anything in specific (heck, the game's Chester variant is delivered to you). In turn, this made me feel a little less excited about resource harvesting. Everything is immediately accessible, which means you have less exploration feelings when it comes to getting items or finding unique structures a la Slot Machine, Pig King, etc. Unique structures that you have to find are for the most part absent from Hamlet currently, too, and it all comes together to make exploration on the overworld feel lame to me.

Regular dungeons become as interesting as Tall Grass once you've seen all the room layouts. A resource for blowdarts and Tenpiece Oincs, nothing more - there's great room for more variety and memorable games here!

Snaptooth Flytraps feel a little too numerous, and they multiply quickly - especially once they get out of their home biome, which is easy due to how much everything walks around. I'd like to see more Mant Drones and less Flytraps, in my opinion - the Mants have more personality and aren't seen much.
Adding on to Mants, I'd love to see them doing something while outside of the hive - maybe gathering meat and bringing it back to the hive? Something to make them feel like a working society, as ants are quite hardworking creatures. (Gathering meat would also help lessen Flytrap overgrowth.)

Generally, biomes feel PACKED. Going back to ROG and SW feels jarring in comparison. There's so much resource squeezed into small areas that the clutter can be disorienting.

With how much creatures tend to wander, there's a lot less 'biome individuality'. It's rare to see a Beefalo in the middle of grassy terrain or a Merm in the desert, but almost everything in Hamlet goes where it pleases:
-Dung Beetles are easily displaced and can end up just about anywhere (as meat for the Flytraps, typically)
-Pogs follow the player and thus easily can go anywhere
-Pangoldens just wander around and get out of the Iron Desert easily
-Snaptooths are happy to leave the border in pursuit of meat and continue on from there
-I keep seeing lone Pig Villagers running around in peril in the deep jungle? I don't know how they get there, but they do.
-Spider Monkeys stay mostly confined, but they typically spawn close to the edge of the biome and it means their radius of influence is sort of annoying.

I think a part of this is that a lot of things spawn on the edge of biomes, because of the small mosaic area near Iron Hulks and the lower size of the world in general.

Compared to hayfever, fog has a lot less potential solutions. Pith Hat or Beetle Wear, and Pith Hat allows backpack, so it's the only full solution. Summer and Winter have all the temperature interactions available to them, and there's fans, nettle and all the other little cures to discover for Hay Fever, but only two items interact with fog slowness, and none with the visual obstruction. It's not a problem survival wise, but it gets repetitive.

The Roc landing feels terrible to die to. I understand now that the point is to stay still, and that it won't specifically land on you, but I still feel the feet could go down a little slower with a more obvious shadow for it.

Stealing right now isn't very solidly implemented. I haven't done much from regular pigs, but I've stolen the Deed and Security items often in the beginnings of my runs - in my opinion, taking both should invite at the very least some heavy Krampus hissing, so the player can make the connection between stealing and naughtiness. I'd almost say that stealing should be limited and unlocked by wearing an item (the burglar hat, maybe?) as it seems easily abusable.

Little Things:

-Pigs still rarely call Wilba an unpig when picking up plop, "IS POO, UNPIG?"

-The hitbox for houses is really big in some cases. Very strange, I made a post about it with screenshots.

 

I'll add more as I play more. If anyone has thoughts or comments, go for it!

[metallichydra]

the worlds is all the same, its quite boring sometimes
and no set pieces, except when a RoG set piece generates, which probably wasn't intended (tallfort on roc island, grave in tall grass field...)