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Description
The image above was acquired via Conan Exiles. This particular settlement is gone now unfortunately but in my own head canon it's the early form of the first settlement of the Ursan Kingdom described here: www.deviantart.com/startourstr…
And in case you're wondering where it's located in game, it's in grid coordinates 3H.

Name: Conan Exiles
Developer: Funcom
Platform: PC, Playstation 4, XBox One
Price-Base Game: $40.00

I'd only heard scattered references to Conan the Barbarian and had no idea what the Conan universe was about so it was kinda curious when a Twitch Streamer i follow decided to play it one day for his stream. As i watched the gameplay, it appeared to me like some kind of unholy merging of Dark Souls, Minecraft, and Fortnight. So as i looked into the game outside the stream it proved to be almost exactly that.

I still don't have much idea of the universe itself and luckily the game doesn't really require it. A person completely new to the Conan universe can pick the game up with ease (I know this because that's how i started out). But to give you an idea, the Conan universe is set in the fictional pre-history era known as the Hyborian Age (roughly 10,000 BC) and features cultural ancestors to the more modern ancient Greek, Norse, Roman, and other countries as the main nations of the world in this era. The titular Conan the Barbarian (who only appears in the very beginning of the game) is supposed to be a grand combination of brain and brawn, showing great strength and cunning as well as chivalry.

The game itself is an open world with a pre-established map and is fraught with danger. Almost any creature can and likely will kill you and fighting more than one person could mean certain doom early on. At the beginning of the game, you establish and name your character much like any other character creator, except your character starts out quite literally crucified to a cross (no, you are not Jesus. He wouldnt appear for 10,000 more years anyway) and are then rescued by Conan himself who knocks over your cross and frees you. He then disappears into a sandstorm, leaving you alone in the desert with not even a loincloth (nudity can be set from none to full...yes even uncensored genitalia for both male and female characters) and only a hide cask of water. From there you have to forage craft yourself some clothes and weapons to escape the desert while traveling north out of the Desert. The game establishes that your character, along with thousands others have been sentenced to exile for a series of crimes (which are randomly and humorously selected at the beginning of the game) and exiled to the "exiled lands" which consists of large desert oasis, badlands, an abandoned city, thick forest woodlands, frozen mountains, and a volcanic northern region. All exiles wear a bracelet on their arm that cannot be removed and will kill them if they go beyond the "Ghost Fence" (marked by a series of pillars with a semi-transparent green wall between them). Luckily most clothes obscure the bracelet.

Once out of the desert its a game of survival. Players must find shelter, find food, water, and learn to craft the items they need to survive and eventually expand. You have to deal with hunger, thirst, and temperature because you could find yourself starving to death or dying of thirst or dying of extreme cold or heat. There's also a weight mechanic so you can't wear or carry too much, else you end up over incumbered and reduced to a slow walk. You have an infinate inventory but it can really weigh you down...oh and unless you're a Server Admin, there's no fast travel. The construction mechanic is quite impressive and allows for impressive fortresses to be built, provided you have all the necessary materials. Some materials are very hard to find or are placed in dangerous locations. Plus you also have to contend with hostile animals and fellow exiles. If playing online, you also have to contend with hostile players. Combat is difficult and can be unforgiving, especially early on. I found myself dying fairly often early on until i finally settled down and began building my settlement. I found a nice spot on the banks of a river to settle down and from there i've built a whole town.

Another feature of the game is a little curious (and immoral) but quite good. This feature is known as the Thrall System. Any human NPC you encounter in the world can be knocked out and abducted back to your camp provided you have what's called a Wheel of Pain, a giant grindwheel that is supposed to be torture to the people placed on it and after a while the people placed on it are "broken" and become loyal slaves to you. However, depending on the type of thrall you capture determines what role they play in your world. The most common are fighters who will fight to defend you and your land. Most workstations such as the armorer's workbench, blacksmith's bench, campfires, and others have a slot for a thrall to be added which, depending on the quality of the thrall, improves that workstation in different ways such as accelerating the production speed or unlocking higher quality items that can't be manufactured without them. Fighters of higher level also are harder to kill. There are also entertainers who dance for your entertainment and provide health regeneration bonuses when near.

Conan Exiles, to me, is the perfect blend of Singleplayer and Multiplayer. You can play alone, play with friends, or play online with strangers. If playing alone, you can go a step further and name yourself Admin which grants a variety of bonuses, such as item and NPC spawning, God mode, and more. You can also set resource gain from harvests to exceedingly high levels so that resources that are hard to come by are acquired in much larger quantities. There's a ton more that can be done in this game but this is the bulk of it and I've not even gotten out of the desert biome. I've spent most of my time to building my settlement (shown above...I live in the tower).

As stated before, this game can be done offline as well as online which, to me, is a perfect idea for games as they tend to have much more staying power as even if the servers go offline, they don't turn into $40 bricks.
Conan Exiles can be purchased on Steam for $40.

Updated Review - 4-9-2020
It's been a while since I played this game. And in the time that's passed since playing it last, the game's expanded quite a bit and I've been able to delve a bit deeper into the game itself. For starters they've fixed a number of issues and added a number of features such as the ability to tame animals and use horses. There's still no fast travel to speak of outside of being an Admin, but there are mods that can circumvent that.

I am convinced however that Conan Exiles possesses the best business model for a game that I've seen in a long time, and is arguably how I would prefer to see games marketed in the future. For starters, you can play the entire game in vanilla and still have a very fulfilling experience. The DLC purchases for the game is cosmetics only. The weapons, armor, and building styles might appear new and flashy but in reality they're on par with the existing vanilla equipment in terms of stats, so you're merely paying for new styles and designs. Any new gameplay features though, such as the horseback riding update, is added for free. There is a DLC that accompanied this that added more of the same (weapons, armor, building materials) but ultimately does not give you an edge. You can't "buy power" as some would say. There's no overpowered weapon, armor, or building piece in these packs that doesn't have a vanilla equivalent that's just as powerful.

To me, this is the most ideal business model. If you insist on having DLCs or microtransactions for a game, make it strictly cosmetics that don't give players an edge, release gameplay updates for free as part of the base game, and don't allow the purchase of "power" or a special "edge" over other players. And make games that are designed for multiplayer, with an additional singleplayer/offline mode so that once the servers are offline, people can still buy and enjoy the game offline or on their own dedicated servers.

Description
The image above was acquired via Conan Exiles. This particular settlement is gone now unfortunately but in my own head canon it's the early form of the first settlement of the Ursan Kingdom described here: www.deviantart.com/startourstr…
And in case you're wondering where it's located in game, it's in grid coordinates 3H.

Name: Conan Exiles
Developer: Funcom
Platform: PC, Playstation 4, XBox One
Price-Base Game: $40.00

I'd only heard scattered references to Conan the Barbarian and had no idea what the Conan universe was about so it was kinda curious when a Twitch Streamer i follow decided to play it one day for his stream. As i watched the gameplay, it appeared to me like some kind of unholy merging of Dark Souls, Minecraft, and Fortnight. So as i looked into the game outside the stream it proved to be almost exactly that.

I still don't have much idea of the universe itself and luckily the game doesn't really require it. A person completely new to the Conan universe can pick the game up with ease (I know this because that's how i started out). But to give you an idea, the Conan universe is set in the fictional pre-history era known as the Hyborian Age (roughly 10,000 BC) and features cultural ancestors to the more modern ancient Greek, Norse, Roman, and other countries as the main nations of the world in this era. The titular Conan the Barbarian (who only appears in the very beginning of the game) is supposed to be a grand combination of brain and brawn, showing great strength and cunning as well as chivalry.

The game itself is an open world with a pre-established map and is fraught with danger. Almost any creature can and likely will kill you and fighting more than one person could mean certain doom early on. At the beginning of the game, you establish and name your character much like any other character creator, except your character starts out quite literally crucified to a cross (no, you are not Jesus. He wouldnt appear for 10,000 more years anyway) and are then rescued by Conan himself who knocks over your cross and frees you. He then disappears into a sandstorm, leaving you alone in the desert with not even a loincloth (nudity can be set from none to full...yes even uncensored genitalia for both male and female characters) and only a hide cask of water. From there you have to forage craft yourself some clothes and weapons to escape the desert while traveling north out of the Desert. The game establishes that your character, along with thousands others have been sentenced to exile for a series of crimes (which are randomly and humorously selected at the beginning of the game) and exiled to the "exiled lands" which consists of large desert oasis, badlands, an abandoned city, thick forest woodlands, frozen mountains, and a volcanic northern region. All exiles wear a bracelet on their arm that cannot be removed and will kill them if they go beyond the "Ghost Fence" (marked by a series of pillars with a semi-transparent green wall between them). Luckily most clothes obscure the bracelet.

Once out of the desert its a game of survival. Players must find shelter, find food, water, and learn to craft the items they need to survive and eventually expand. You have to deal with hunger, thirst, and temperature because you could find yourself starving to death or dying of thirst or dying of extreme cold or heat. There's also a weight mechanic so you can't wear or carry too much, else you end up over incumbered and reduced to a slow walk. You have an infinate inventory but it can really weigh you down...oh and unless you're a Server Admin, there's no fast travel. The construction mechanic is quite impressive and allows for impressive fortresses to be built, provided you have all the necessary materials. Some materials are very hard to find or are placed in dangerous locations. Plus you also have to contend with hostile animals and fellow exiles. If playing online, you also have to contend with hostile players. Combat is difficult and can be unforgiving, especially early on. I found myself dying fairly often early on until i finally settled down and began building my settlement. I found a nice spot on the banks of a river to settle down and from there i've built a whole town.

Another feature of the game is a little curious (and immoral) but quite good. This feature is known as the Thrall System. Any human NPC you encounter in the world can be knocked out and abducted back to your camp provided you have what's called a Wheel of Pain, a giant grindwheel that is supposed to be torture to the people placed on it and after a while the people placed on it are "broken" and become loyal slaves to you. However, depending on the type of thrall you capture determines what role they play in your world. The most common are fighters who will fight to defend you and your land. Most workstations such as the armorer's workbench, blacksmith's bench, campfires, and others have a slot for a thrall to be added which, depending on the quality of the thrall, improves that workstation in different ways such as accelerating the production speed or unlocking higher quality items that can't be manufactured without them. Fighters of higher level also are harder to kill. There are also entertainers who dance for your entertainment and provide health regeneration bonuses when near.

Conan Exiles, to me, is the perfect blend of Singleplayer and Multiplayer. You can play alone, play with friends, or play online with strangers. If playing alone, you can go a step further and name yourself Admin which grants a variety of bonuses, such as item and NPC spawning, God mode, and more. You can also set resource gain from harvests to exceedingly high levels so that resources that are hard to come by are acquired in much larger quantities. There's a ton more that can be done in this game but this is the bulk of it and I've not even gotten out of the desert biome. I've spent most of my time to building my settlement (shown above...I live in the tower).

As stated before, this game can be done offline as well as online which, to me, is a perfect idea for games as they tend to have much more staying power as even if the servers go offline, they don't turn into $40 bricks.
Conan Exiles can be purchased on Steam for $40.

Updated Review - 4-9-2020
It's been a while since I played this game. And in the time that's passed since playing it last, the game's expanded quite a bit and I've been able to delve a bit deeper into the game itself. For starters they've fixed a number of issues and added a number of features such as the ability to tame animals and use horses. There's still no fast travel to speak of outside of being an Admin, but there are mods that can circumvent that.

I am convinced however that Conan Exiles possesses the best business model for a game that I've seen in a long time, and is arguably how I would prefer to see games marketed in the future. For starters, you can play the entire game in vanilla and still have a very fulfilling experience. The DLC purchases for the game is cosmetics only. The weapons, armor, and building styles might appear new and flashy but in reality they're on par with the existing vanilla equipment in terms of stats, so you're merely paying for new styles and designs. Any new gameplay features though, such as the horseback riding update, is added for free. There is a DLC that accompanied this that added more of the same (weapons, armor, building materials) but ultimately does not give you an edge. You can't "buy power" as some would say. There's no overpowered weapon, armor, or building piece in these packs that doesn't have a vanilla equivalent that's just as powerful.

To me, this is the most ideal business model. If you insist on having DLCs or microtransactions for a game, make it strictly cosmetics that don't give players an edge, release gameplay updates for free as part of the base game, and don't allow the purchase of "power" or a special "edge" over other players. And make games that are designed for multiplayer, with an additional singleplayer/offline mode so that once the servers are offline, people can still buy and enjoy the game offline or on their own dedicated servers.