Take the depth of Dwarf Fortress, add a bunch of lazy mages and update the interface to modern standards? That's Mage Tower in a nutshell. We're building something really ambitious - a world that you can build to your own whim, while carefully balancing resources, knowledge, and external threats.
The main reason of this review is to offset the completely oblivious, thoughtless people who do not understand what an "alpha" is.
Alpha's not meant to be playable, it's not meant to be finished in any way, it's not meant to be optimized, and it's not meant to be feature complete.
Alpha is the next step of a concept stage, (which is to test the basic functionality of the game or game mechanics)unlike the concept stage alpha is meant to develop the game, its mechanics, and everything else.
Alpha will be entirely incomplete, will not have a fraction of the features or anything else of the finished product.
In an alpha, -everything- is a placeholder until stated otherwise, then it's a likely placeholder.
No project is a conveyor belt, it can take a lot of different twists and turns depending on what ideas come up during the alpha phase.
Yes, it is a shell of a game, because it is AN ALPHA. If you do not know what you're getting into, and are somehow sad at spending money on an alpha and then find out you can't play properly, it's your own damn fault for being a twit.