I will preface this feedback by saying. The near five hours straight I played the game were mostly enjoyable, but there were several issues that dampened the experience. I will try to lay everything out in an easy to digest and concise manner below.
Prevalent Gameplay Issues
Wood, Woodcutters, and the Charcoal supply problem:
At the moment in game, Woodcutters are extremely inefficient, cripplingly so. The amount of trees they manage over their area of influence is less than half of their usable radius. Each one consistently caps out at no more than 50-55 managed trees between grown and saplings. While not an issue at first glance, woodcutters only fell trees when fully grown, so only about 10-15 of those trees will be felled and replaced with saplings from morning to night, net gain of at least 50 wood per-woodcutter. This, again, doesn't seem to be an issue. 100+ wood is good enough over the course of a day for general construction and stockpile early on, assuming two woodcutter lodges. The supply spiral begins with winter and the need for charcoal.
Currently a single charcoal burner requires roughly two woodcutter camps to not run at a deficit on wood income. Relative wood stockpile equilibrium is only somewhat maintained at that ratio without including general construction costs (from personal observation). Now this is reasonable. The issue stems from how inefficiently charcoal is used. Each household requires four charcoal consistently replenished over winter, bakery's require two charcoal per-loaf batch, and charcoal is the most time consuming item for villagers to make. This consumption ratio is so intense. My current, and first, settlement has actively forced me to forgo bakery's, and by extension bread production, in favor of using six charcoal burners just to survive winter in spite of charcoal stockpiles.
At the current four wood = two charcoal per-batch ratio. Mandatory wood resource income is exorbitant past the first few houses, and this supply issue is mostly only exacerbated by the woodcutters inefficient use of less than half their usable work area for their forestry. As a result, for the two in-game winters I have survived. Both have required me to supplement my wood income from my four woodcutter lodges by cutting down a sizable swath of nearby forest each time. With the exponential growth inherent to the game, my settlement just shy of 200 residents would have required roughly 10+ woodcutters to survive the winter with only occasional trips to clear nearby forests for wood. By next winter, that number will likely double. Then the issue becomes 'where am I going to fit these 20+ woodcutter lodges to keep up with charcoal demand?', and my supply networks are fully functional since I leave at least 20 villagers unassigned for transport duty.
Not one to complain and move on, I have given some thought to potential remedies. The most basic one is reducing charcoal requirements across the board. Bakery's only requiring a single charcoal per-loaf batch, and either reducing the required number of charcoal per-household, or increasing how long it takes for each household to consume their stockpile of charcoal. You can technically use both. initial houses still require a large amount of charcoal, and cottages can reduce the needed number of charcoal per-family from four to two. I would very much suggest looking at the design philosophy behind the original Frostpunk games progression mechanics for insight. The other obvious remedy is woodcutters using the open area available to them to the fullest extent. I don't know what the current stoppage is caused by, but it could help to make them have up to three or four workers instead of two.
Food Production and the Ravenous Hordes:
This issue is significantly more simple than the wood. Food production past 100 residents becomes exponentially more difficult to supply adequate food stockpile for winter. As stated above, my current settlement ended its second winter recently with just shy of 200 residents. Over the course of the winter, those residents consumed over 3000 units of food. Six large granaries stocked to the brim with grains, and by the end of winter the food stockpile was in the 300's and plummeting. The reason I said over 3000 units is because during winters three fishing docks are active to help supplement food reserves, so the true amount of food consumed is well over 3000 units. The number of active docks required to respectably slow stockpile loss over the year of winter is a lot.
The main concern is how much of your budding nation is going to consist of granaries. Space may not necessarily be at a premium, but reasonably defensible space is. There will come a point where growth stalls out because food production and food storage have reached their limit within the relative safe zone the player can maintain.
Remedies are difficult on this one simply because I don't know enough about what the actual calculations are running in the background. My main idea is. Could a resident be given a -5/10% fullness reduction bonus if they consume some type of grain? It would still require a sizable stockpile but not quite as ridiculous an amount or upkeep during winter from the fishing docks.
Paper Mache Walls and the Main Street Massacre:
The walls are a well and truly beaten to death horse, so I'll refrain from stating the obvious. An actual issue is the lack of any true settlement defense beyond walls.
To make my case, I will recount the events of the Main Street Massacre. A raiding band came through. Walls were insufficient, and the archer towers killed all but a single skeleton. This singular skeleton proceeded to path onto the main thoroughfare of the settlement. Mr. skeleton then proceeded to brutally murder nearly 30 men, women, and children. All of whom happily walked up to Mr. skeleton surrounded by the blood and eviscerated corpses of their fellow residents.
The immediate remedies I can think of are making the MC, adventurers, and advisors capable of defending the settlement in pitched combat. Mr. skeleton wouldn't have made it very far if Neferu had blindsided him with a Hurricanrana. And while disoriented, the MC secured a grapple from behind before performing a Bridging German Suplex on Mr. skeleton. With Mr. skeleton down for the count, Astarta cast a spell that turns him, and his grid coordinates, into a new well for the settlement. jokes aside, I do think that those listed above being aided by adventurers would make the most sense for defending the settlement from a boots on the ground perspective, and gives the adventurers a reason to exist outside of speeding up ruin investigations. Something else would be all non-combat NPC's hiding in their houses during a raid, simple solution to the wanton murder problem.
Potential bugs
-Multiple settlers will pick up materials for a buildings construction even if they cumulatively exceed the required materials, and they will all walk to the building site with said materials even if the building was already built.
-Settlers stationed in guard towers will go home and sleep or eat during raids. If it isn't implemented already. A system that gives defenders a grace period for needs during raids would be welcome.
-Settlers rarely use roads, dirt or paved. They just don't use them 60% of the time.
-The materials stockpile is always empty, but all of the resources say they are stockpiled, so I'm guessing a building is being flagged as an infinite stockpile location on accident.
-The game may be aging people according to the wrong time settings. My current game is 'Summer 1, Year 10', but both Neferu and the MC are labeled in their 90's instead of 30's.
Positives and small requests
The general premise and meta plot are pretty interesting. I still haven't unsealed the temple, but what has occurred has left me intrigued. The BGM is repetitive after a while, but it's a nice melody, so I don't really mind much. The general meaty foundation's laid out well, just need a few balance tweaks here and there.
I know it was brought up above, but I do think allowing at least the MC and Advisors to help defend the settlement from monster incursions would be cool.
Neferu and Astarta have had good dialogue so far, and Neferu's story was both sad and sweet at the end. On that, you will be asked to implement a gallery of some description for the NSFW moments. Figured I'd warn you ahead of time.
Simple though it may be, I do like all of the sprite work and general visuals of the game. Some things in the over-world may be a bit bland here or there, but graphic touch ups are always something that can wait for later.
Adding keybinds so laptop users can zoom the camera in and out would likely help them out a lot with navigation considering the potential absence of a mouse.
On the topic of over-world navigation, some form of map would be appreciated. I spent a couple minutes just tracing the coastline because I lost my town when investigating inland.
A minor rework of a few of the tutorial missions may be needed. The main thing that would have caused problems for someone less versed in these game types is food. Getting the fishing docks for immediate food was good, but not tutorializing the farming aspect for people could cause problems for the uninitiated, or those who don't know the game is going to be a bit more difficult. Another one was preparing for the first winter, I never actually met the quota for charcoal before winter, but I kept the stockpile up so people didn't freeze, and didn't finish the quest until after winter was over. It might have just been a weird me thing as well, so take the example with a grain of salt.