Recent reviews by Darthritis

born to phas, forced to work

I had to leave a party last night and when they asked why I was leaving I said "because I need to go home and f*$k a bear" and one person smiled and nodded knowingly.

Wow. What an utterly gripping, profoundly moving game. As someone with ADHD I often find narrative driven games tedious, and can get bored easily, but this game had me from the beginning. I finished it in one sitting. It's not a long game but what it packed into a couple of hours in terms of game mechanics, story and exploration is really something. I was so moved, and left wanting more. Such a beautiful game, the whole team should be really proud of themselves.


Edit: It's been 18 months and I still haven't stopped thinking about this game

I thought I'd just get a nice little game to kill a few hours. Now all I think about is Valheim. I've gone as far as to purchase the game for multiple friends and family members so I can make them mine ore for me and be my little errand boys. I started taming boars and breeding them, but then I named them after family members and found myself unable to kill them, so have dozens of pets I have to work tirelessly to feed. This game is taking over my life and I am not resisting.

Where do I even start. I finished the game in it's entirety and absolutely loved it. I went in expecting a calming, serene painting game, what I didn't expect was a rich, beautiful little world full of animal humanoid NPCs with quests, stories, personalities that completely drew me in. I loved exploring the island of Eastshade and foraging to brew teas, taking psychadelic mushroom trips and sailing around icebergs in my little boat.

It was a complete delight from start to finish.

Pros: Calming game, Beautiful landscapes to explore, crafting, fishing, painting, quests
Cons: A few bugs here and there, but nothing that intereferred with the enjoyment of the game

Fun point click adventure. The story is interesting, perhaps gets a bit out there towards the end but overall really enjoyable. Definitely got stuck a few times and had to look at a walkthrough.

Microinteractions are the most frustrating part of this game - however if you just buy some gold and purchase the versions you want the online experience is pretty great. Its intuitive, the almanac could use some work to be a bit more accessible when youre looking for rules mid game but the rest is fun. I am fairly addicted

This game was - there is only one way to put it. Brilliant. It was funny, challenging, engaging, witty, meta, just an absolute delight to play. I absolutely loved it. The puzzles were hard, but not so hard I wanted to give up (although I had to peek a walkthrough once or twice), the dialogue was well written. Just a concept well executed. Don't delay!

I'm so conflicted on writing this review - I was absolutely hooked on the demo and had been waiting for this game to come out for so long.

Pros:
- The artwork is STUNNING they have done an exceptional job at world and character creation
- Music and sound is excellent
- The writing is clever, witty and charming
- The UI is engaging and clean

Cons:
- It's very overpriced for what it is, its essentially 4 hours of gameplay max (I left mine running in background a fair bit and logged 5 hours total)
- The best bit was the puzzle solving on the locker and then that was it, the rest is more like a visual novel there is no freedom or puzzles after that which was really disappointing
- There are several laborious scenes where its just walking dragged out for ages, maybe to make up for lack of content?
- The story line was a bit contrived
- The inventory was useless, I kept waiting for it to serve a purpose or require some puzzle solving and I still can't figure out why it was included at all
- I got bored not using my brain at all

I'd say if this game was about half the price some of the issues could be overlooked, but overall it's a really beautiful, very short, visual novel with little to offer in terms of controls or gameplay. It had so much potential but the effort spent on visuals and story could have been dialled back to really find the "fun" and inject more of that into the game

I mean I've played 80 hours of this game so I must be enjoying it.

The story is really dark, the gameplay is great. Is it flawless? No. Does my computer sounds like a 747 taking off everytime I boot it up? Yes. Were they super lazy and just reused the same models over and over so I feel like I'm privvy to a glitch in the matrix? Absolutely.

The issues with the game are well documented, I've encountered many bugs. And yet I cannot bring myself to not love it :)