Recent reviews by Nova Nocturne

Completion time: 8.5 hours

"Farewell North" is a beautiful, calm gaming experience, with a touching story. It interweaves clever, unique mechanics with both game play and plot. The use of mixed/intersecting shaders to portray the emotions of the characters (Cailey and Chesley <3) is visually stunning. I loved that the developers included the translations for Scottish Gaelic in the game. I would LOVE a dub of the game in Gaelic as well.

Now for spoilers (don't read on if you don't want the game spoiled):

I freaking BAWLED at the ending. I just lost my own dog less than a year ago, so the ending of this game was like a punch in the gut (in a bittersweet, heart-wrenching, but brilliantly-executed way). I didn't realize it until the last island, and as soon as it clicked, I was begging to be wrong about Chesley being dead the whole time.

I should have seen it coming. Everything pointed to it from the very start. The fact that Cailey is reminiscently narrating the past events to Chesley, the overtly magical mechanics, the willow-the-wisps, the time-shifting, the FREAKING URN (seriously, maybe this was what the devs intended as a bit of a red herring, but I thought the urn was Shona's, not Chesley's, which confused me when I saw Shona's grave).

It was so easy to dismiss all of it as just "video game mechanics for the sake of the game" rather than indicators of the story (as I interpreted it, Chesley's spirit seemed to be guiding and encouraging Cailey by using the nature around her to open pathways and to drive away the darkness closing in around her). But no, the devs were SO intentional with how they interwove the game and story in a way that goes beyond a game. This was really an experience. One I was NOT ready for, but loved every moment of.

I really appreciate the ending of Chesley's spirit getting to run through the highlands. That, in combination with the music was beautiful.

I will begin stating I have been following this project since nearly its inception and announcement to be funding via Kickstarter. This is for all intents and purposes an early access prototype meant to glean feedback from people like myself. Do not buy this game at this moment, if you are expecting it to be 100% complete and ready to play. It is early access for a reason. Giving it a negative review for being incomplete after willfully purchasing it as early access content is ignorant.

I do recommend it full heartedly for those who are willing to pick through, nail down details that can be improved upon, and are willing to provide that feedback to the developers. I've played through the polished level multiple times now. I still feel like I have missed things, and each time I have played I've found something new.

Positive for the polished level:

The lighting is stunning and gorgeous. The mystical feel creates a sense of things hiding in the shadows.

I am quite fond of the footprints (even if they do get left floating in the air after walking on a seesaw-ed bridge).

The physics are doing quite well, particularly when dashing, the mouse feels light on their feet and even skitters around corners as if they are trying to get a better grip while turning. The barrels have a hefty weight to them, and feel like they are as tough as the real deal.

The foley sound design is strong, though it could be toned down in some regards. I do feel that in the situation of the polished Old Moss Creek level, due to fleeing the village being raided, the music might not be quite fitting. It may be too easy listening, and there is no sense of urgency.

The enviroment does feel more grand and larger than Sophia, your playable character, and being that you are a mouse, I feel that is more immersive. Needing to have your companions help you with moving things feels like it is a natural need when you are so small.

The character models as design for anthropomorphic mice is a nice mesh of realism and cartoonish design. Sophia's clothing is quite intricate.

Currently as of Dec 18 2017 for suggesting to the dev team for improvements, here are the notes I took:

Sophia has a gaping neck where the polygons are missing while crossing balancing points
The dash x and y sensitivity of camera needs to be linked to normal camera
The dash animation looks more like "skipping" than dashing, I may suggest bringing the PC's head down more when dashing to avoid it looking quite so uncomfortable to run on all fours.
I would like the ability to scroll the camera out from the character more.
When walking, the tail looks unnatural being held up like a crook; relaxing it to a position more for just balance would suit the movement better.
Control bindings for interact are affected when dash was moved to left shift. Went from E to Space.
Jumping animation is jerky and cuts between launch and landing spots.
Footstep sounds could be brought down in volume slightly.
Is the pit under the logs you balance on supposed to be pitch black? I might add some depth to the rocks to make it feel more like a hole and less flat.
"A" to exit dialogues/cutscenes is not working
Music does not start until about 3 minutes into playing. Is that supposed to happen?
I wish the camera was less attached to the PC where it causes massive amounts of jerking movement when running, jumping, climbing, and other such movements
I think jumping may look better if done from back legs to front then moving up to a standing position.
Make the item names in chests clickable to collect.
I cannot go through the items in my inventory. Are they supposed to be accessable once collected in this build?
There seems to be a secondary bounce after leaping across to the chest on the rock in the center of the pit that is part of the animation that is supposed to be like a skid or a slide? Perhaps it can be smoothed out so it is easier to calculate for. I keep accidentally jumping into the pit because of the animation.
For how shallow the water is, I feel there could be a reason added that it sends you back to the last load point (maybe it's super cold) adding an animation to this and providing that reason would feel less like the water is just there to be an obstacle.
The footstep decals float instead of being attached to the surface
Give Sophia a belt or rope to use for the zip line, using her paws looks like it hurts.

If I have more feedback for the devs, I will update this review as I go.

This game is far from what is advertised on the steam page now. Unfortunately I am not looking forward to future updates anymore either. The updates are happening such a nonsensical order that it is hard to fathom what the development team is thinking. When I first started playing this game, it was quite playable (other than server crashes) and you could play however you want. If you are new to the game, you will quickly find out that if you don't follow a very strict playstyle however, many of community will try to make your game hell to play. This happens a lot to what the players call "carebears" or players who don't KOS (kill on site) anyone who is the opposite of your diet category. The development team actively has been also trying to eliminate this aspect because they want the game to be as brutal as possible. And that is where the changes have started cropping up and causing issues.

Firstly, new models and such are added regularly, which is great. But they often are released extremely buggy, and loaded with issues. That's fine as well. It is an alpha game, so that is to be expected. The servers used to be sandbox specifically so that those bugs could be quickly found and taken care of. You could play immediately as any dino and developmentally that makes sense. With open access to any dino, all models and interactions with the gameworld would be tested thoroughly by the early access players. An alpha game should frankly have nearly all assests accessible as much as possible for those developmental reasons. But that is no longer the case.

Recently the development team thought it should add the progression type to all servers. This forced all players to queue up into a battle fest of something that should be implemented at the tail end of development, and now it is hindering the testing of the early access community. Logically you would think that all the assets of the game and play would be finished and polished up so that it wouldn't make testing and bug running so impossible. Then after that progression would be implemented. There have been many bugs, and with the continual crashing servers, progression doesn't make sense. You cannot save your progress, and so unless you have pure luck on your side, a ton of time to play the game, and no issues with the game crashing, you might achieve playing as one of the new dinosaurs.

If you have to play for hours to even start to test newly implemented gameplay, you waste so much time on not finding issues that would quickly become prevalent otherwise. For example: The Utahraptor is one of the newer models, but in order to play as it, you have to get through an hour and a half of playing other dinosaurs that have been previously tested and refined. So that is an hour and a half wasted that could be used testing the new dinos and providing constructive feedback. Not many people even have that kind of time to devote to a game, and then on top of that be expected to provide helpful feedback to the development. Thus the logical conclusion is that the progression system will only hinder the game's development at this point and it should be held off from implementation until all the actual gameplay is finalized. I have no problem with progression other than how it is implemented at this point, and that there is no keeping the points for all the hard work a person does in the game. Finally got that T-rex you've been playing for 12 hours to get? Too bad the server is about to crash. Everything gets lost. Progression is not something you throw in when your gameplay isn't even complete. It should be next to last before an official release as it just sets the game up for the actual final product.

But let me advise, providing constructive feedback has only been met by snark and degradation from the development team. Many other players can attest to this, thus I would recommend reading other reviews from the community. The illogical decisions made at this point regarding gameplay, and the way the development team treats their customer-base is so beyond comprehension. For these reasons and more, I cannot recommend this game at this time. Save your money, and hope that things improve farther down the line because the way this is going right now, I cannot see this game being a success.