Recent reviews by Sannestia

I'm cool with this and all, and like supporting the developers but for goodness sakes... my entire life I've been able to wear hats (including cowboy hats) and not have my hair completely disappear. If you can't help the game work well without a 2k dollar graphics card can you at least give me my ability to use the skins I paid for without losing my dang hair? Other games can do it so not having the ability is bs. Honestly my 100% negative review is due to this small fact alone. You've been working on this game series for a decade, someone should have the time to figure out the hats + hair issue. Considering most of the bugs remain in ASA if you can even run it better than ASE then yeah maybe you shouldn't charge people for cowboy hat skins if they can't wear them without their character going bald. This applies to the future hats as well, they're all useless to me because I like my hair. In game, out of game, it's an actual thing in other games so I expect you to do better for 30 USD.

Update: I still don't have hair but have decided all in all that the pack is worth it. They need to fix the key art for the cowboy hat though, that's just impossible still. All in all I have enjoyed my time with the items given in BTT DLC for ASA and believe that if you like Ark and can afford it the DLC is worth the price for the content offered in it.

If you like Stardew Valley, Dinosaurs, and Animal Crossing - This game is perfect for you. It's very chill and upbeat plus honestly I enjoy it as an adult mother plus I can play it with my 5 year old son. The instructions/Tutorial is definitely all written out with no voiceover but I'm using it to help expand my sons ability to read and sound out words as well as teach him a bit about dinos's and just having a great time with it. The ten hours I have on my account at the time of this review is actually 100% in the game active and not afking on the main menu. That's how addictive and fun this game is.

Some of the instructions are a little vague, but between youtube and the wiki and just simple trial and error it's really not a big obstacle. My only concern right now is how much more time I will get out of this because I'm not sure if they're done with the game or if they plan to add more in the future but it seems like there's not enough dinosaurs to make this game super long-term. Then again I can't say either way because I'm not at that point.

If there is something I need to update after I get further into the game I will definitely do that here but as of right now there are no major complaints and I'm honestly impressed because it's been a long a** time since I've seen a game come out with polish like this that's still fun and it definitely is chill but not to the point that you're bored out of your mind because there's enough variety to keep you interested.

I don't think I've ever not recommended a game before but this one I have to say no to because I am assuming that if this is a prologue to the "full game" (which is actually looking like a chapter to chapter deal) I really do not like this as a game whatsoever. There are some pretty major flaws with this in general and I don't want to harp on the game too much because it is obvious that the developer did put care and love into even this free part from just little details (visually and audibly) for the interactions you can do with things as limited as the interactions go at least.

I know the developer worked hard to keep the UI at a minimum in order to keep the game less cluttered in general. I personally played this on 4k resolution which it is supposedly compatible with, but it's not tweaked at all for that setting. There was font smaller than newspaper text saying close at the very bottom of my screen (nowhere near the items you can see/interact with in your journal/collections) and I honestly spent an embarrassing few minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't close the pop-up items. The usual methods don't work, there's no 'X' to close the window and it's not even coded in to just add a simple method of 'escape' or 'clicking outside of the journal/collection area' method of closing anything. I finally saw the tiny message (on a 32 inch monitor mind you so being so small you can't find it is insane) because I almost quit the game right there. That was at the tutorial. The 'tutorial' isn't really one. It doesn't walk you through how things work, or what is going on really you just get plopped in with about 2 minutes of dialogue not really saying anything with a bunch of walking back and forth before you're told to check for something (which you'd think was a letter or something but it turns out it's your journal) which then gives you another few pages of text illustrating vaguely what you should do.

A lot of the stuff seems kind of forced together more than a game. Unlock typical puzzle games with intricate locking mechanisms or hidden messages and such there's not really that here. A lot of the "clues" for what you're supposed to do next are extremely vague when giving the most detail even, and instead of having things you interact with in the world like a typical 'escape room' styled puzzle game this one instead gives you a magical journal that someone else writes into after they somehow know you finished the previous hint they wrote in the journal even no one else is in the room. I think that it's a decent game for a free one, and I really hope the developer keeps working on honing their skills but considering most of the items are assets I've seen in other games, and are reused a ton in a not-so-creative manner in the game itself I would just recommend ample caution if you proceed to the "Chapter One" edition, especially at a price point of $9.99 which seems a little steep in my opinion especially considering you can get yourself something like "The Room" for only $4.99.

I would also recommend when you play this, do not use the maximum settings. For myself with a pretty good but not maxed out PC I had problems with stuttering and random FPS drops/freezing on Ultra quality video settings, and some on Very High as well. Might be a fluke on my end but the game doesn't seem to be as polished in that regard but it does not make the game unplayable in anyway. The more issue with playability is the UI on 4k monitors taking up 10% of the screen (and that's being generous)

I had a good time playing the prologue. The game doesn't have much challenge it's a simple and casual game with a little story to keep you entertained and in a direction towards some sort of ending which will be available in the full game. All in all if you don't have an issue with relatively minor things that could be fixed later on then there isn't really an issue here especially with a free bit of game given showing you if you even will like it at all. I can see that there was some TLC put into it and I had fun so as long as the game is at an affordable price point for you there's a very good chance you'll get the bang for your buck.

I had issues playing the game that were annoying but not game breaking. A lot of the issues I have are from my education revolving around design and UI/UX experience. I believe that the game could be a pretty decent and fun casual game in general regardless but I am concerned with the development releasing the game if it has anything in common with the prologue (which it should be just expanding from the prologue) but if you do buy it you take a chance on some of the things I encountered being never fixed at all.

1.) At least in the current version of the prologue the setting for the resolution did absolutely nothing for me. Tried different resolutions, my actual regular one, and even uninstalled and reinstalled the demo with no change

2.) People with double monitors sometimes prefer windowed borderless, or borderless so I would suggest that setting.

3.) A ton of my games I have to turn up in volume or down to 50% this one starts at 50% and I had my master volume at level one which makes me feel like the audio balance is a bit wonky.

4.) When pulling up the steam overlay without opening the inventory first the game ends up having the top part of the inventory continue the open/close animation as with the side scroll of the inventory area andtbs

More for the Dev(s) than regular folks
1.) The visual hierarchy, UI size and inter-connectivity with steam itself are pretty broken.
- The text is overly un-necessarily large in every section of the game and things that should be prominent like the game name on the main menu is fighting for importance over the just-as-large 'Play' text and even larger social media icons in the lower right hand side of the screen.
- The games UI has no settings whatsoever and is larger than any game I have previously played, but that might be because of the ability to set UI size is in those games themselves.
- Some things visually are helpful but not necessary:

- text over the information on how to interact stays through the whole game and is larger than the character model when not zoomed into the game
- extra large red icon and text stating a cool-down time on items that you hit the max number of interacts for harvesting of | which is not actually made clear in the tutorial instead that you can interact with something multiple times, or interact with it instead of just like chopping it down (in the case of a tree) which could be included in tutorial text over needing constant large interact here text on the majority of everything in game. Even the cool-down warning could be swapped to the icon with a much smaller size (at least 50%) for common UI sizes or 75% if it's being developed for more mobile phone usage.
- The settings for control keys takes up multiple pages because you can fit an abnormally large line of type in-between the empty spaces between control settings then there's the tiniest number at the bottom-middle section letting you know there are two pages which I actually missed at fist all together because that was so small and normal sized I wasn't looking for anything that font-size in general.
- Just in general too large icons of the item you equip/un-equip over the character which can be completely removed in my opinion since there's a color change for equipped items in the background when they're on. If you do have them for whatever reason then they don't need to be so opaque that they're literally almost invisible but sized twice as large as the character model so you don't miss them. A small item with no opacity over the characters head would suffice if you need to include that.
- the item ui in general is extra large by about 50% for me as well, and for some reason instead of being able to add the ranged items to the main bar I believe (can't confirm in the prologue) that they have a secondary bar above for the weapons, at least ranged as far as I had knowledge of, in a different bar even if you use the numeral keys for the main bar's equipping keybinds. (Extra piece of information that may be a bug... if you buy a bow from the trader the arrows are 100% free, I don't remember if there was a price before the bow is bought.

So far I'm completely addicted. Some of this game can be annoying but that's partially because it's an actual challenging survival game. It is quite realistic without going over the line to complete tedium itself. The game introduces you to things but doesn't hold your hand through everything in the game. You learn things to craft from the environment not just from a book and you can actually develop multiple skills and learn things similarly to even Skyrim where you can eat some plants to find hidden benefits or risks. This game has overwhelmed me with how instantly addicted I became to it.

Sorry can't write a review, too busy playing the game and having a great time.

This is amazing and fun.