If you know Terrafirmacraft it’s roughly that. Basically to even get to a point where you’re chopping down trees, there’s a few hours of gameplay trying to replicate fairly realistic early human technological progression. But it has a shockingly good late game with quests and dungeons and bosses. Due to the slower nature of the tech progression, and you being a relatively fragile creature in a shockingly cruel world, the game feels like it’s always going somewhere. There is always something you can be doing to prep in some way.

It uses a lot of diagetic UIs and in world crafting which I love. Modding it is as easy as clicking the install button on the mod webpage and it launches the game and prompts the install. I do suggest using some mods, even on a first play through, because a lot of them are just things that make sense, and often get worked into the full game over time.

A couple more game changing mods I’d suggest are rivers, wind, sailboats, and canoes. Basically anything that makes water a slightly more viable form of transport once you’ve got a bit of tech. The game has more or less accurate geology, so materials will only spawn in specific rock types, and those rock types only occur in specific areas due to tectonic plate interactions. This means you’ll often go on loooonnngg expeditions to find a particular material, and I find water transport to be a very balanced tool with rivers because you cannot sail or paddle up stream, but downstream is very fast. You can use this to your advantage in some ways, while still forcing you to portage your gear at other times.

Anyway, I love this game. Check out the comm for it! !vintagestory@lemmy.ca

There are videos on youtube that sum up main progression from stone to steel.

There are also other topics to learn, like prospecting for ore, leather making (for backpacks), animals handling, bee keeping (if you want lanterns), windmill building (to automate iron processing and as prerequisite for steel), and many more.

Survival hanbook (H key by default) have a lot of info and guides on game mechanics. Otherwise, google videos on certain topics.

It is fun to pass all these milestones and see how your small village grows.

P.S. As for storage, keep food and unprocessed animal hides in storage containers made from clay in cool cellar, bulk resurces (stone, ore nuggets, wood blocks) in crates and everything else in double chests that you can make as soon as you get access to copper (for nails and strips).

Some things like firewood, peat, bricks can be stockpiled right on the floor. Also you can lean tools to the wall or put them on tool racks for convenience. This also adds to an atmosphere of medieval building.