The smell of ash and soot fill the air- the unforgiving heat enveloping your short form. Droplets careen down your brow, carving out lighter markings where the soot once clung. The bead of moisture gets lost in the dense scruff of your beard as you wipe the sweat away in an attempt to keep it from your eyes before raising the hammer once more.  Another swing, landing with a resonant chorus. You couldn't just hear the metal, you could taste it. Smell it. Breathe it.
Inhale- the hammer rises.
Exhale- the hammer falls.
CLANG!
Again.
The rhythm thrums like the very blood in your veins. Heat, strike, shape, quench. Sparks burst as your hammer meets metal- a short, beautiful supernova. You ache, every muscle rumbling in protest, but you endure. It's all a part of the calling. The pain,  that ache in your chest, the sweat of your brow. It's all muscle memory. Each weathered tool feeling at home in your grip, your trained ear quick to judge if the steel was cooling too quick. This was your livelihood. Your calling. And you're going to make the most of it.

Gather your resources and smelt them into useable materials. Nothing is simply handed to you for free.

Medieval Crafter: Blacksmith is a early access title by a small indie team at Compact Core Games. The current premise is quite simple to follow. The king has a dwarven smith in his service who has recently retired. A replacement is needed, and it's your lucky day. Learn your way around the disused forge, brining new life to web-covered grinders, benches, and anvils as you strive to satisfy the kingdoms inhabitants, as well as make a name for some local heroes- all while making yourself a very pretty penny. Time to grab that pick and get to the mine. Coal won't manifest out of thin air, and neither will your materials- though you may earn from as rewards from commissions or completed adventures.

The Hall of Heroes. Send your team on dungeon runs or lone adventures that will unlock new recipes, or get you some much needed supplies.

The gameplay loop of Medieval Crafter: Blacksmith is simple and straight forward. Mine your resources. Smelt them. Serve customers. Hire and equip heroes to go on adventures in the Hall of Heroes. Rinse. Repeat. At least, in the present rendition of the game. While presently far from complete, the loop is satisfying and fun, but feels to be lacking some aspects that may help offer longer term player investment. That being said, as mentioned, the game still is in early access with plenty of time to "Hammer out the Wrinkles" so to speak. That said, quite a few wrinkles there are. As fun as I found the game, after spending roughly ten hours in, I found some less-than desirable point on contempt, and I sincerely hope that for the sake of the game moving forward, are addressed.  

Not only are some of the NPCs just downright painful to look at... most of them are none-too-bright and will eternally walk into each other. 

The two main characters, yourself and the former smith have... mostly enjoyable visuals (though the permanently agape mouth is some slight cause for concern) that are simply outweighed by the entirety of the NPCs being... for lack of any better words, we'll say distractingly ugly. Poorly coded, poorly designed, and not fitting in anywhere, it's easy to break immersion with NPCs as ugly as these- not to mention the character art really doesn't match most characters. Realistically this is an absolutely small piece of inconvenience- I think the larger issue is, while the game play loop IS satisfying, I found myself wanting more. More meaningful quests, more to do in the forge, more to do in my own home. You come in to a bit of a run down mess- why can't I make it more welcoming? Also, if I can't self weapons out of my own home, why is my house marked as though it's a simpleton village shop? I wanted to upgrade and decorate, not just place weapon and armor racks. Haggling mechanics are not clearly explained, and while you can list items for sale outside of commissions, you have no control over your own pricing. Mine maps could really use some love, and traits while useful, feel fairly quick to get.  

While some of the design is to blame, some of the core coding is likely needing a tweak, as some of the issues go far beyond merely graphical or lack of implementation.

Ultimately  Medieval Crafter: Blacksmith shows a lot of promise, and scratches an itch I've had for a while. Frankly, if you're a fan of the smithing mini-game in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, you'll probably LOVE this title. And while the loop delivers, it needs some definitive polish to make it really shine, and be a game that manages to have a decent amount of player retentions.   There is a lot of love and desire here, it's a matter of will the developers address some of the weaker points? I sincerely hope they do.