Последние обзоры Laulajatar

It's Stardew Valley, what more is there to say? This is the third time I bought it, because I was too lazy to install outside Steam on the deck.

I like fantasy, I like tea, and I like taverns.

It's a VERY short game. The game is about two customers, and you only have to brew like 4 different teas, + whatever trial and error gets you there. I finished it in around half an hour.
It's a bit annoying that the (short) second part of the story is locked behind the same requirement as a hidden achievement. If I hadn't been looking up how to get the achievement, I would not have brewed every possible tea.

Unfortunately, I cannot resist those little stories, so I have no regrets.

It's exactly what it says on the tin: 100 objects hidden on a single screen. Some are really tiny and hard to see (that's the point, isn't it?)
I liked the look of it, and I felt like a bit of thoughtless clicking, so I bought it. Sure, there isn't much to it, and if I am quite honest, I don't think it's really worth it, but I knew that before I purchased it, so a negative rating would feel unfair.
Just don't be like me: I found the first 45 without realizing you can zoom in with the scroll wheel. Oops.

You move into the cozy little village Shimmerbrook as a researcher. Unlike in other farming sims, that means you don't purchase seeds/animals, you have to pick up a plant/animal/fish part, start researching, observe, learn how to forage seeds and how to tame the creatures, then grow the plants and bond with the creatures by fulfilling their needs.

Once it likes you, every creature has a different perk, from giving you bonus seeds when foraging plants, over finding mushrooms, over automatically fertilizing soil when planting seeds, over finding treasure, over…

Different plants/creatures appear depending on weather, location, season & time of day. Some plants only grow next to water, some fish only appear in caves at night. All creatures have multiple possible traits, for example needing a buddy to be happy, or being sheltered by a nearby tree. The more things you research, the more your rank increases, unlocking more things - like weekly fetch quests for villagers.

There's:

• Research (d'uh)
  
• Farming
  
• Fishing
  
• Mining
  
• Crafting
  
• Decorating
  
• Festivals
  
• Dating

Looking at it objectively, no feature is extremely deep (though I believe some will be expanded before 1.0). There's only a limited selection of decor items, no farm buildings, different requirements make large-scale farming tedious, and the fishing minigame is very simple. Dating is still getting expanded (no marriage yet), and crafting is rather limited, mostly things you need for research like different kinds of feed, bait, soil, and crafting stations. There's no cooking yet other than throwing a few basic items into a campfire to get a roasted version, and only a few equippable items as rewards.

But, at least for me, it all fits together incredibly well if you accept the research part as the main goal. There's just enough of a carrot on a stick I want to keep playing.

Shortly after release, I already put about 25 hours in and didn't even reach the first year's fall. That was before a lot of the content updates, so there's definitely enough to do for the price tag. I want to earn more money because I want to buy some furniture, and I need those recipes because and I want more sprinklers, and oh my, I forgot upgrading the scythe gives a chance of getting insects, I need insects, so I need more ore, two more days and my research is done, oh yay I reached the next mine level and can finally get sand, and why is it 2am?

Now to be fair, the gameplay loop is - as so often in those kinds of games - rather repetitive. Feed animals, water plants, forage whatever grows today, fish and mine, talk to some people, day's over. Especially feeding the creatures is tedious at the start, since some food items are rare, you have to hand-craft the food, and each pen only holds 2 servings.

But later, there's sprinklers, and feed crafting stations, and autofeeders, and also - creatures don't die. If you don't need the creature's perk, you can just ignore it (Sorry, Rock Salamander!)

As for the game world, it's incredibly cute, and the artstyle is minimalist but adorable. The town itself is by far the highlight - other areas have a bit much open/empty space. Speaking of maps, the mini map is great: not only does it show you the opening hours of each store, once you befriend people to a certain level, you can also see their position on the map.

In general, this game has so many convenient features. Excellent auto-stacking and quick transfer into chests. A bell tool to send creatures back into their pens. You can adjust the length of day and amount of energy in the settings (at the moment with no achievement penalty, though there might be one in the future requiring to play with default settings). Energy itself is on the lower side, but you're supposed to use food, not hoard it like a little raccoon as I do. Oh, and - you can save anytime, anywhere. Yay!

The controller support (and, therefore, the steam deck support) is great. Everything works, and what little hiccups there are I expect to be gone by the time it leaves early access. Cloud save between the deck and a pc work as well. The only thing missing is the 1200x800 resolution, which is really no good reason for an "unsupported" label.

I really love this game. Sometimes I don't want to build a farming empire. Sometimes I just wanna crawl in the dirt while watching a little bunny poop so I can pick up the droppings and figure out what it eats.

I'm giving it a thumbs up because it is a cute game that does what it promises.

But would I actually recommend it to anyone I know? I don't think so.

You clean up the islands, catch fish, plant trees and plants so you can trade in whatever you gather to buy more seeds and stuff. You can upgrade your inventory by cataloging all plants and fish, and buy upgrades for your fishing rod. That's it. It's not even very grindy, because you can just purchase auto harvesting objects, which all but turns it into an idle game while you wait for your currencies to accumulate.

There are a few minor quests - bring this fish and that, bring 10 coconuts, pay x amount of leafy currency - and the map is locked behind quest progress. The characters are adorable, the graphics are charming, I get to feed Sam again, and who doesn't want some capybaras in a boat.

Honestly, I wouldn't be half as annoyed if there weren't one missable achievement. You can travel by balloon and by boat, and at one point have to cross a bridge with the balloons to unlock an achievement before you repair the bridge. Which I didn't, so I had to start a new game at the end, and play for another hour, just to do that. Which is also the reason for my "meh" mood.

Bonus points:
- Worked flawlessly on the deck
- There's two fishing modes, an easy and a slightly harder one, and a fishing speed slider
- Capybaras

Without the achievement mishap, it took me under 3 hours to finish, which really makes this game only worth on sale.

At first glance, one might think it’s similar to Stardew Valley, and of course, as with all those type of sim games, there are some similarities. But, after having finished it, I have to say, it’s not, not really. The goals are just too different.

Most of all, this is not a farming game. It’s a “follow the red line to rebuild a town according to requirements while grinding for money and materials” game.

You meet new people, they move into your town when you build their houses, and along the way you unlock new structures you can upgrade. The world is rather small, your town, a few destinations you can travel to, as well as two randomly generated dungeon maps. Mostly you run around, raise skills and gather materials, to build and upgrade and unlock new stuff.
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• Stress free. There is no time, but every action costs energy. You can walk around, talk to people or decorate for as long as you want each day. Early on, the available energy might seem a bit low for all the things you want to do on a day, but there really is no downside to time passing. Later, you get a tool to have limitless energy.
  
• Character generation is basically hair and clothes, and a way to change them can be unlocked in the game. The only thing you’re stuck with is your name, skin tone, and the town’s name. The personality is, I believe, only used for the town square statue.
  
• I’m not sure it’s even possible to mess up permanently. Resources are technically infinite (if sometimes heavy rng based), and tearing down objects gives the used resources back. I guess you could cook with a rare fruit before you’ve planted it and hate yourself in the following hours until you find it again.
  
• This is very subjective, but I enjoyed the obligatory card mini game very much, once I got the hang of it.
  
• The game’s wiki is perfect, and has all the information you could ever want.
  
• You can shape your town as you want, raising hills or creating lakes and rivers. You need to fulfill the villagers’ requirements, but after unlocking the rewards, you can technically move their houses as well.

• There isn’t really a conclusion to the story. Which is kinda fine, I’m not playing this for the story.
  
• Similarly, the NPC personalities aren’t that deep. Every character has a couple of quirky dialogues, but they repeat constantly, are not subtle at all, and I think even the marriage dialogues are all the same.
  
• I spent the first I don’t know how many hours having to take care what I spend my money on, and it was fine. Then I reached 2-3 milestones pretty quickly and from one moment to the other, money was no problem anymore. Unlocking a vegetable that sells for a nice amount so I could get a few thousand per day - nice. Unlocking selling each cooked dish for 3000 no matter what, so I am swimming in money after a week - meh.
  
• There isn’t that much freedom. Every villager wants exactly one set of furniture, and their house at a certain spot, and exactly one set of objects next to it (as in, right next to it, touching it). You only have room for a set amount of vegetables, fruit trees, animals, namely three of each. In my opinion, it does give the game some structure and a tangible goal, but also lowers the replay value.
  If going for achievements, you should start the timegated ones (flower breeding, villager quests) early on.
  There’s three save slots, as well as cloud saves.

• Oh, the grind. There’s two different kinds: For items, and for achievements.
  
• For items, there are a lot of special items you can get while doing an action. Chop down a tree, have a chance of acorn. Most of those are fine, you can farm them by just doing that action over and over and over. Some are less fine. Super rare, super random, needs a wiki to figure out where they might drop.
  
• I spent a substantial amount of late game time just checking the fully upgraded (and therefore offering any item in the game) merchants each day. That’s not fun gameplay.
  
• There are several achievements that require you to do a huge amount of chopping/mining/fishing etc. The fishing one was the most obnoxious one. It took me half a (real life) day after finishing all the others just running around, fishing each spot dry each day, sleeping, repeat. And I already did do the fishing trip each day way before that, as well as catching every fish I came across in the forest and mine while doing the other ones.
  
• Keybinds cannot be changed. This was the main reason I did not buy it on desktop PC, because I hate that. It also didn’t like my controller/the steam deck much, not being able to move with the d-pad, and not recognizing the x button to turn chairs, but that was easily fixed with the deck’s configuration tool. I am not sure if the windows version has the same issues.

I bought this with two expectations in mind:

• I knew it was grindy, most of the reviews on steam mentioned that. I was actually looking for a game with a bit of grind, to brainlessly play a day or two before bed, making progress without having to think.
  
• I wanted to play it on the deck, where I knew I could rebind my controls.

Considering that, I did get exactly what I wanted. It took me about 50h to 100% the game (well… I got all the achievements, and leveled all the skills up, but didn’t bother maxing all relationships or dating all villagers or beating them in the mini card game.)

Things I wish I had known before:

• All recipes use two ingredients, but you can just slam the bar full and the game will prioritize undiscovered recipes with the ingredients you picked.
  
• There is a stat page in the menu, showing you progress on the “do x” achievements (I forgot, ok).

Anyway, I’ve already written too much, and if you’re into that kind of games, this is a good one.

I never saw the appeal of games like vampire survivors until this one came along, dressed like Diablo, and here I am, 50h later. It works great on the deck, except for performance issues when there's a ton of enemies or effects on the screen.

It's still early access, stuff keeps changing, the run time of 30 min (+ however much time you spend in menus and bossfight) is just a bit too long to be comfortable before bed, and certain effects are a nightmare, both performance wise and with the flashing lights.

None of that is stopping me from "just a quick run before bed, I need to unlock this achievement/farm some gold/try out some skills/kill some things."

I usually try to consider the spirit of the game, even if I didn’t like it, but this game was so bad on a technical level I wanted to rip my hair out 5 hours in, and the only reason I sat through 100% it all was that I wanted to uninstall it without wasting a single further thought on it.

It ran like crap, but that might be because I was playing on the deck/Linux. Unplayable in the current proton version, 45fps-ish on an older one. Lagspikes especially on the farm plot. Movement and interaction just felt so sluggish, I found myself pressing the buttons so hard, my fingers hurt. A few crashes as well, once when changing maps, once when accessing a menu, and several in cutscenes.

This is just a warning — don’t get this to play it on the deck — and has no influence on my decision to rate negatively, since it was not made for Linux.


It’s a game that implements some of the staples of “farming sims” — farming, animal husbandry, mining, fishing, gathering, marriage, a few quests — but somehow manages to have every single one fall flat. There’s a 40 plot farming spot, but only 3 crops per season, and one that always grows, even in winter. There’s no ingame indicator for how long it takes those crops to grow. There’s no way to improve quality. You can upgrade your watering can. You can have a few cows, chickens, and a horse, cows and chickens give 2 produce after being happy for a week or two.

You mine in a 5 level mine, getting 3 different rocks, which are then faceted, random chance, into 4 different gemstones. Fishing is another annoying minigame, even worse at the start, when every single fish costs you one hour. Stuff you gather, with a glass bottle or without, respawns too slowly to form a reliable income.
There’s no benefit to friendship, no dates to go on (other than hanging out on the festivals, I guess), and the last 3 weeks of my ingame year were the absolutely most shallow marriage I ever had in a game. I never saw my husband, even!

Other things that made this game super annoying, in no particular order:

The map is incredibly boring. Every road is straight, with a few bushes and trees peppered around, and there are barely any shortcuts. One from the ocean to the village square on non festival days later.

You can buy a horse, but it doesn’t fit the artstyle well, is tiny in comparison, and -replaces- your avatar. That’s right, riding turns you into a horse.

Villagers have no nameplates. I am bad with names. I still don’t know more than 5 names, 30 hours later. It made me not care at all about anyone.

Crops grow on watering, not overnight. Every time the crop grows, the character does a surprised step back. Every. Single. Time. On. A. 40. Crops. Field.

The inventory goes only up to 99, with no warning. There’s not many objects that are likely to reach that, but I probably lost a bunch of rocks when mining, because I didn’t facet them each day, and I had to reset a day after harvesting my 40 crops and realizing 30 of them ended up in the void.

The lockball minigame is one of the most infuriating experiences I ever had. I needed 33 wins to max out my stats (one achievement), and spent about an hour skipping days in year 2 to reach the lockball tournament again, because I couldn’t beat it the first year (second achievement.) I don’t even. It doesn’t make sense. I have no idea if the opponents bug out half of the time, or are supposed to do moves you can’t. It’s not fun.

Which brings me to the next point: All festivals repeat, forced, in year two,without any change. I had to sit through that shepherd story again, I had to participate in the dance festival, etc. At least the lockball festival threw me right into a rematch with the final opponent (I’d consider this a bug, but a lucky one.)

There’s few objects that can be put on the quick bar (it’s made with PC in mind, so why are there only two slots anyway). I had watering can and shovel there, I don’t even know if anything else other than the camera can be put there. I would have liked to put the brush/milking pail there. Or the diary. Or the village primer. Or any of the key objects.

I took one look at cooking and didn’t even wanna try it. Luckily, I didn’t have to: The cooking festival has no achievement, and all the food for the Rose Rabbit quest can be purchased on one of the market days in December and stuffed into that greedy little bugger in one go, if you use the wiki.

Which you should. There’s 28 dusk sprites, spawning at a specific location, for about 3h each day, each day at a different location. I thought I had them all, but I missed one, so I had to check every single location a second time. Without wiki? I’d rather rip my eyes out.

Gathering is a joke. 2/3 of what you are “gathering” would basically be stealing. You take fruit juice from someone’s fruit basket in front of the house, take alcohol and vinegar out of their homes, mix coconut milk with water to get “milk” (what are cows for again?), but can’t make hot spiced milk with real milk.

Luckily, outside of using it for gifts, there’s no real use for it (if you skip cooking), and I guess you can save a bit of money for the drinking 10 beverages event.

Money. At the end, I had like 15.000 of it (went a bit overboard with mining), and I had no use for it. I didn’t even sell what I was gathering because I thought it might become useful. Spoiler alert: Nothing was useful. A few items would have been good as gifts, but other than a diamond and a fragrant flower (I used lavender… or well, I guess I used my whole inventory) I can’t remember needing any of it for a quest.

Getting people up to 3 hearts can be done rather quickly, and there’s little incentive to go above that, except for the marriage candidate you choose. Which brings me to the next point: I absolutely despise the “to show true love you need to marry! To finish the game! :)” questline. Great true love, haven’t even seen my husband in my house a single time, but at least he sometimes feeds the chickens.

A few minor bugs were there as well; walking people are annoying to talk to because of their hitbox, saw a wrong sprite or two, passed out drunk on my horse and woke up still on my horse in a house, where I couldn’t dismount, because “your horse can’t hear you here.”

I know it’s been made in RPG maker which has limitations, but it still costs money, and that is better spent elsewhere.

While I am neutral about the story (I didn't like it, but I can see why people do), I found the gameplay too bad to give it a recommendation. It was mostly a walking simulator, with the faintest hint of platforming elements occasionally. The graphics were nice, but nothing to write home about.

- No useful settings, no way to turn the (repetitive) music down to hear the voices better, so I had to turn on subtitles.
- No way to save, you have to finish a level, which doesn't take much time it you play normally, but if you try to gather all the stars, it's a pain in the ass.
- No way to go back for missing things (finishing the game deletes the save) and there's no indication that you're about to leave an area.
- Most of the game is so overly bright, it's hard to tell if there's a collectible in the distance.

Usually I try to 100% my games, but I just cannot be bothered to play from scratch again, and run around in circles in a forest where everything looks the same, with no way to put the game down in between, hoping I can find the last star I need behind a rock or something.

It worked out of the box on the steam deck, but the screen at the start, explaining the controls, was super small, and vanished too quickly.

Well whatever. Normal HOG with mediocre story, stupid vanishing collectibles, a pointless bonus chapter and a forced replay to get all achievements. Not that a review matters anyway, because it has been delisted.