Recent reviews by Limesy

This game isn't horrible. It's janky and plays like absolute garbage at times but it also has a unique charm to it. I really feel like tuning down the scale of the game world and upping the quality of what was already in the first couple zones would have been such a boon. The world is like 80% barren, often having large sweeping fields with nothing there but resources and trees. Buildings are plonked in random locations to make towns/hamlets. Quests are very basic. The dialogue and grammar is terrible. In this day and age there are so many resources available (and some community members probably willing to lend a hand) that it's pretty inexcusable.
I really wanted to get into it but it's just too rough around the edges. I hope Gedonia 2 hones in on what felt lacking in the original.

It's fun for a while but there's just nothing that really shakes up the game play all that much. You can play one or two survival games and seen basically all the game has to offer. It's really disappointing because it has such a great premise but the implementation falls flat.
- Games are WAY too long on the easier difficulties.
- Factions really don't have much that differentiate them or make you play them differently. The cultist faction is the most developed in feeling different but unfortunately the way it does it is really counter-intuitive.
- The "Boon"s you collect after beating a horde night really need to be expanded to have a larger pool of options. You'll often see the same ones multiple times per game.
- The game feels like it is balanced around trying to counter a single enemy unit, the "Crusher" which will destroy your walls super quickly.
- Tech tree is super small and more than half the options feel useless/incredibly niche.
- Unit AI is absolutely disgusting at times.
- Several very annoying bugs. Heroes will use their ability sometimes with nothing happening but still putting it on CD. Units will slide/glide at times.

This actually pains me but I can't recommend Luma Island right now. The art is really cute. The music and sound design is *chefs kiss*. However, the game play is pretty lacking. It's basically just a huge busy-work simulator. You'll chop trees, mine ore, collect items to upgrade your tools and professions to progress to the next area where you'll do it all again. That's basically the entire game right now. The only reason I'm continuing is that I want to 100% the game and put it away.

It actually feels like the more you make progress the less you feel progress. Crafting times and costs start to increase drastically, prices start to hike up and the more you do the less it feels like anything is actually getting done. I just got to the last zone and my tool upgrades went from costing something like 16 000 to now costing 250 000. It's literally insane. Things take forever to actually gather because you've got to sit through things like trees falling over, bushes falling over, the tedious mine lighting and items dropping around what you broke so you need to now run around and gather them. It adds up like crazy when you need hundreds - thousands of a single item.

Decorating your farm, which could use some more flat land please devs, is absolutely yikers. You do not want to spend the materials half the time because they cost so much. You can't move the base caravan to make room for a new house. You have to manually destroy things, piece by piece, if you want to move things. If you accidentally hoe the default pathway you can't replace it in that style. You can only put sand over it which looks different.

The story and lore is just told to you by nobody statues that you find around the world. They don't just hint at it, they tell you word for word what the story is. I knew what was happening as the penultimate reveal to the story before I even got there. That is the most lame story telling. I hope it gets completely removed or changed because it is so horrendous.

The NPCs are flat, one dimensional nobodies. You occasionally interact with them for a quest or to hand them your profession upgrade but outside of that - nothing. Honestly, the few times you do interact with them they have too much to say about nothing that I just flicked through it all.

Professions feel half-cooked. All you do is craft items to sell with materials you've gathered. That is literally it. Want to be a baker? You'll sell baked items. Want to be a Blacksmith? You'll sell blacksmithed items. There's no real benefit to specialising in something.

I just really wish this game cooked slightly longer and had a more meaningful way of progressing through game. It was fun for a while but it needs a heavy coat of polish before I'd recommend it to anyone.

I played the game for a few hours before refunding. It was okay, I guess, but I couldn't help but feel like something felt wrong the entire time.

So many props (like chests, shelves, etc) were static and couldn't be interacted with.
NPCs and characters felt like they needed to be slightly more stylised than what they were.
The UI is pretty atrocious outside of the dialogue screen.
Quests that weren't the main story were literally just fetch/kill quests which is fine but they had nothing interesting about them, you killed some wolves to save some kid's bunnies (which is just flat out told to you). There's no intrigue, no thought involved, you just kill some things that you are told to for no other reason than being told to. The next person asked me to give her husband a beer because he wasn't talking to her. I did it. Literally nothing changed. What was the point? I didn't feel like I made a single meaningful choice once in the few hours I played.
Inventory is a hassle. There's a clunky bag system where you can put items into a bag and take them out as you please. The issue is that there's a heap of items in the game and you'll need a heap of each of them. Sure there's a stash storage but just add a few bag slots to my inventory. Why make me open and close another bag menu every single time I want that one thing?

It was fun for an hour or two but I don't think I could ever see myself playing past that or even finishing the game.

Okay, here's the thing. The tutorial/prologue sucks. It does a great job of teaching you core parts of the game but it's all locked behind a day/night cycle that's designed for when you are an adult and don't need to sleep. You'll be completing a few things per day, rushing to explore and then falling asleep just to do it all again the next day. It's hard to digest and I really struggled to push through it but... oh my god, does the game get better after.

The mini-games are some of the best I've ever seen visually and design wise. The shop owning is addicting and the game has some pretty interesting and unique approaches to the Farm/Life Sim genre. The farm decorating is so nicely designed, you can drag items on the tile it's placed on to move it. GENIUS. WHY DO MORE GAMES NOT DO THIS? The maps and art are beautiful and once you unlock some fast travel options it becomes so much less of a chore to explore and navigate them. I just really loved the way the majority of the game functioned and worked together.

BUT. It really feels like the game needs a balance update and some more time put into how the generational system fits with the rest of the game. I completed the entire game and achieved the majority of what I wanted to on my first character in the first year. It's a snowball grind and once you get one or two shops, the snowball is so large that you'll just avalanche into the later parts of the game. Grinding renown wasn't even somewhat of a challenge and the end-boss that completes the story was so easy and anticlimactic that I was a little shocked.
The generational system feels really jarring to use. You lose your entire family when you pass down to a new generation, only having the person you pick be the one to stick around. Everyone other family member disappears outside of seeing them in a shop occasionally buying something or sending you a birthday gift in the mail. We have a massive ass farm and I can't have a building they can live in and just exist still? I also feel like a new game+ mode would slot perfectly into this game. Bring back the evil every time you pass down a generation with some new stuff sprinkled in.

Anyway - TLDR; Push past the tutorial, the game is great after it. Some things could use a balance pass but you'll still have a great time. Your family goes poof when you pick a new heir.

Incredibly over-hyped. It's fun at times and I definitely see the appeal but it's missing incredibly basic functionality features and has huge path-finding issues.

You see those beautifully straight lines of Pals carrying things in the trailer? lol. The Pals get stuck on just about everything when doing tasks in your base. They get confused deciding on tasks to do at times. They will occasionally unlock themselves from the task you set them to.

Structures have really awful placement clipping so building on anything other than perfectly flat land is pointless. Some structures slightly float no matter how you place it. Placing the "home" for your base doesn't show you a preview of the area limit until after building it. There's some cute decorations but houses become very box-like because of the limited pieces available.

Enormous (and I mean, ENORMOUS) map with very little actually on it. The "Forest" area could easily be half the size.

Huge multiplayer issues and really basic functionality missing. If you want to see players on the map, you have to be in their guild and each guild can only have a limited amount of bases (one, to begin with). Crafting/building uses from ALL chests in the base area, even chests that are privated/pin coded. Just collected 100 wood and saving it for later? Yeah, sorry, your friend just built their house out of it.
Issues with losing player data and getting stuck connecting to servers. Very basic admin tools currently.

Edited on the 4.0 patch (still not full release).

Sandrock feels like it's taken two steps forward and one step back compared to Portia.

It's not to say that I hate the game, I've definitely been having fun. It's just not what I was expecting. Some of the mechanics are similar, some have been improved but there's also random filler put into parts of the game that is just annoying or strange.

The combat feels just as clunky as Portia. There is different attack combos on different weapon types that feel stiff and forced. Monsters now also have barriers that you can break to get some extra damage and daze them. It's just so awkward that combat quickly became incredibly monotonous. Oh and you can shoot guns now.

The early game is fetching piles of scrap that give you everything you need and more for most jobs and commissions. It drains your stamina incredibly quickly so that you have to order ridiculous amounts of food at the Inn or sit on a bench for a measly amount of stamina regeneration. The game even prompts you in the loading screen to order huge amounts of food. The only thing that really speeds things up is tool upgrades that unlock based on story progress. In Portia you could raise your attack stat to break things quicker but in Sandrock most gathering is locked behind "tool strength" with few ways to increase it, which I thought was a missed opportunity for gear and accessories.

Some of the townsfolk are frustrating. I'm sorry but I rolled my eyes at the stereotypes and unoriginal characters. You remember that overly camp secretary from Portia called Antione? Yep. There's someone called Pablo who looks incredibly similar, is very camp and this time LOVES FASHION AND GOSSIP. There's also the typical old lady tailor and a character that is basically Annie from League of Legends (bear and all) to name some others.
The social grind is now actually manageable. The story and game length are long enough that you will most likely befriend at least a few people before "finishing" the game.
Each of them give a bonus at different stages in the friendship like they did in Portia. However, when you get around to earning those perks, you probably won't need them because you are so far into the game already. It was the same issue in Portia. I'm half a year into the game and just unlocked a +100 hp bonus when I already have about 4.5k.

There's now a quality system with crafting that adds some depth to the workshop side of the game but it didn't actually feel relevant for most of the game, outside of wanting the most from your equipment or the occasional high quality commission. Tools, weapons, gear accessories all have randomised stats on it so you'd better pray for a good roll if you're hunting for some good items early on, or enjoy re-rolling them over and over until you get the one you want.
P.S The game doesn't tell you what random affixes/stats are even available on each item so you'll have to work it out yourself, enjoy re-rolling!

Tooltips are misleading, some completely wrong and a lot still have poor English. There's a luck stat. What does it do? Who knows because the game doesn't tell you.

There's trash everywhere in town. I cleaned up everything I saw and 2 days later it was worse than before. Let me build some darn bins so I can teach these townsfolk how to put their rubbish in it.

The environment is cool, albeit a little monotonous at times. There are also parts of the map that are just completely ugly. The desert has rocks that look okay from a distance but when you are next to them, they are a completely different style to the rest of the game. They literally look like big blobs of cheese.
The map is enormous for no apparent reason and not in a good way. There's so much nothingness in some areas. I had to set my time scale all the way down because traversing the desert to explore it took an entire day.
There's weird invisible barriers where it looks like there shouldn't be. The map doesn't match up with the world in some areas. There's gaps, seams and holes in some areas of the map.

The research in this game can still be frustrating. I'd been churning out research for new machines every day but because you can only research one thing at a time and it takes days to complete I got locked for a week in game on story content because I wanted to research the cooking stations. You can't queue research either, so you have to run over to the building every time you want to start a new research.

House decorating is an absolute shemozzle. You have very limited decoration options, most things don't match, adding multiple stories means multiple staircases which by default seem to take up 1/4 of a room. Moving buildings can send huge amounts of items from your machines/chests/house to your mailbox. Picking machines or chests up is incredibly annoying. Your cursor will auto default to the middle option most times which is "retrieve". Guess what happens if you accidentally click it? More items to your mailbox.
There's no pathing options.

Storage and inventory management is a mess. I wish luck to anyone who isn't a compulsive sorter by nature. You can quick dump items but guess what happens if you use up all of that item? You gotta find the box it goes in when you get another. There are HUNDREDS of items.
What's worse is that the bigger chests have pages, so opening a chest means you have to flick through different pages sometimes.
It seems like they didn't realise quite how big the game was going to get and just slapped on extra pages to your inventory and chests to compensate.

The museum is incredibly dull in this game. They should have literally kept it the same as Portia but open straight off the bat like it is in Sandrock. Apart from a luck necklace reward (which again, is not explained what it actually does) and a few social points with one person, I saw no point to donating things. I barely saw anyone in it and the only time I'd actually get social points from them admiring items, they were relics that I'd put on my house or in my workshop, not actually in the museum.

Load times can still be long at times and you'll have to enter a lot of houses and buildings because there are so many things indoors (restaurant/commission board/research/people/shops, etc). I can see this still being an issue for people with lower-middle range computers.

Despite all of this, Sandrock just has that juicy gameloop which they have really nailed. It feels rewarding to play and you always have something to do or work towards. You are constantly fixing or upgrading things around town. You are always earning Gols or earning hearts with the townsfolk. It's just solid.

There's also a story that is a little bit more cohesive than Portia. It's still got it's clunky moments but it tells it through cut scenes and is sprinkled in better portions. I will say that most smaller side quests weren't voiced, which is fine... but reading the dialogue with just the background music is deafeningly quiet compared to the main story quests. Please add some "hmm/ahh/okay" or at least the text noises that the rest of the game's dialogue has.

The UI is pleasant and readable most of the time. The talent/knowledge page has an awful description layout but it seemed fine other than that.

The ruin diving was a huge improvement. The dungeons are more visually interesting. Good enemy variety.

Farming is cool. Sand fishing is cool. I like both of them being styled a bit different to most farming sims.

If you are happy to wait I would recommend letting the game get a few rounds of polish but if you buy it now I'm sure you will still enjoy it. There's A LOT of game and you will absolutely get bang for your buck.

Probe is not the kind of game that I usually play, but I was pleasantly surprised after being told about it by a friend. It's got an interesting mechanic which makes you juggle a ball while playing a classic block breaker game. It's fun and challenging and only a few dollars. Keep up the great work. :)

I'm so torn between a Yes and No. I guess Yes if it's on sale for at least half price. No otherwise.

This game feels like it's missing so much. After finishing my first (and probably only) play-through, I was left feeling really underwhelmed and with an itch that felt like it was being poked instead of scratched. On the surface, the game seems to have all of the things that I was looking for but a few hours in I was already starting to see that some of those areas were incredibly bare bones.

Let me start off with character customisation... I created a character, put points into my skills and stats. Awesome. Felt unique, felt fresh, ready to take on Halcyon. Leveled up, got 10 points to put in skills. Cool. Leveled up, 10 points, another 10, another 10. This is where it lost me. I finished the game on level 30, that's about 300 points. I spent half the game with so many extra points, or often just putting them into skills I didn't care much for simply because they were there. I didn't feel at any point through the game that I really wanted to have a certain skill, apart from not being able to go through some locked doors occasionally.
Perks, more "meaningful" (and I use this term very loosely) choices that you get every 2 levels felt very unrewarding and mediocre at best. Non-interesting things such as flat damage increases, flat stat increases, slightly more slow-time. Didn't really notice any of them except for the carry weight increases. Boring, again finished the game with about 7 unused.
Flaws... a system where you accept a negative affect for a Perk Point. Accepted one, realised I didn't need the perk point, never touched them again. An entire system just wasted. To make it worse, the negative affects are also incredibly uninteresting. Most were just a flat increase to damage taken or -1, -2, -3, etc in a stat.

All of this was shocking to me. Playing on the hardest difficulty I literally never felt like there was a challenge or needed any of these boosts to finish the game especially since I'm not great at shooter games.

This brings me onto the next part, the Combat Gameplay... it's okay. That's it. It's got a slow time mechanic which is fun for a few battles and then I quickly realised that you don't generally need it. Enemies either fall over so quick or die to poor AI that I stopped using it half way through my play-through. Enemies are predictable once you learn their names (for example, a "Goon" has a melee weapon). The weapon selection is incredibly limited, but most do feel nice to use. You can mod them which doesn't really change anything up a whole lot since they are mostly just +% crit chance, etc. I honestly don't remember a single fight that was really that challenging or memorable. Even the last fight was so easy that I didn't even realise it was supposed to be a "boss" of sorts.

The gameplay outside of combat was mostly lackluster too. Dialogue does have some interesting moments but they are so few and far between. It felt like I was re-meeting characters from the Fallout series half the time. Companions? Bland. Didn't care for any besides the janitor robot... and it's a bleeping robot. Everything felt like it had no impact besides the end-screen cinematic, which again was predictable. Literally the only person I remember is this guy locked in a toilet that's covered in poop.
Most of the story lines felt rushed and there wasn't a single one that I hadn't half guessed what would happen or had me thinking that whoever I was looking for wasn't dead or dying. Side quests are mostly fetch quests. Main quest is short.
Had a moral dilemma on the first quest, felt like I was replaying that same moral choice for every other quest.

The difficulty of the game was just no where. The hardest, Supernova, apart from the beginning hour or two had no real challenge. Supplies are literally everywhere and money was a non-issue. It honestly just felt annoying to play. Companions permanently dying? What? Why can I not fast travel? I spent so much time just running between spots. It's like they've thought of all the things that are annoying and just slapped that on to try and make it harder.

Now, you might be thinking that I've only written negatives so far... but the game does have some good things too. 30 hours of play time and I haven't experienced a single bug. The game seems to be optimised decently enough. The landscapes (albeit being a little hollow) look nice and it's honestly a great atmosphere most of the time. There's just not enough to see.

The corporations and consumerism were fun, but there's just simply not enough there. It really would have been so much more interesting with more depth here, because it's one of the stronger parts of the game. A song or two for each and you'd have enough to spin a radio channel in the game to listen to. More jingles to listen to. More in your face advertisement. They all end up being thrown in the "evil" bin which spoiled the entire thing for me.

The hidden moments are great. Jumping up into little areas and crouching to find loot felt great.

There's quite a few dialogue options and ways of responding to situations which is nice.

Overall, I really wanted to like it but it's just so Meh. I rushed through the last section because I just wanted to move on to something else. Buy it or don't, you aren't missing anything.

Okay, also I forgot to mention but there's this weird collection mechanic that the game literally just DOESN'T TELL YOU ABOUT. You can find items which get placed into your companions rooms which are supposed to give some kind of hints at their personalities, I guess? BUT LIKE WHY DID I ONLY FOUND THIS OUT UNTIL HALF WAY THROUGH THE GAME? As a collector I was SO. TRIGGERED.

This is so rough and there's part of me that didn't want to leave a negative review. Someone had looked at my steam library recently and asked if I recommended this game because I had 300+ hours in it and I had to pause and eventually say no. Most of those were from being a tester, joining community events or getting inspiration to build some janky homes for the game.

It's fun. It's cute. I love that you can build and decorate your own home. It's got some cool expression with how your character looks and what weapons you use. The community is super friendly and welcoming.

But... the development process has just been such a mess. It's kind of shocking how many red flags that I missed over the years. I used to wake up super early and watch Kindred's twitch streams where I've seen so many of the old mechanics that were discussed and developed be scrapped, re-designed, re-shuffled, released and then re-designed, re-shuffled and re-released. It seems like there's been so much re-re'ing that the game has been driven to an absolute snail pace of development. There has been so many scrapped features dangled to the community, roadmaps released and updated... even Kickstarter had bug-catching as a goal and there's mentions of it now being scrapped.

I don't doubt that one day Kindred will finish the game but right now there just isn't a reason to recommend it to someone as an incomplete product. I'm really sorry Kindred + fam.