Recent reviews by Archive of the Forest

Demo and Release Player Review:
I played through some of the Demos of this game with demo codes they sent me, and have played a tiny bit into the released game. I absolutely adore this game's atmosphere and play style. Playing the repeat games during the demos were even enjoyable because I just really love everything about it.
I love puzzles and board games, and so playing a game like this is a lot of fun, where you have to plan ahead while playing against others or solo on story creations.
The colors and textures are very pleasing to look at, the music is nice, the cats are adorable. You get to pet the cats while you puzzle together the quilts. There is also a cat creator to design your own cats and I love that too.

I haven't played much of the story yet as life got me busy, but I am enjoying how the story is going so far. The interactions with people and little quilts you make for them in puzzles are nice. I will likely update more with more comments on the story once I play more.

Highly suggest this if you like strategy puzzle board games, and also relaxing music with cats you can pet that walk all over your board

I got Donovan the Dog as my familiar. This was okay. Review of the actual game:

The game took me about 20min to go through as I did not rush things. The music is nice for background music. The color palates used for the backgrounds are nice. Nothing else is very good, due to it clearly being the work of AI. This is what is says in the store description about their use of AI:
"This game contains Audio and / or Artwork customized with the help of AI tools by our artists, derived from artwork we own commercial rights to use, or artwork done by our own artists in studio.
We pay our artists, and we DO NOT use stolen Artwork."
And while not stealing art is good, the use of AI still is not good. Not only is AI as a whole an issue due to what it inherently does with artwork, it also does not produce quality content. Some of this can even be seen in the photos shown in the store page, but breaking some things that I personally noticed as the game went on more directly:
- The initial forest you are in has vines and branches that make no sense for how vine and branches actually work.
- The next house, the "cozy looking cottage" has some visual issues the closer you look. The main cat talking to you has different number of toes/fingers on each hand-based paw, and its clear that it was designed that way. It's ears also fade/clip through the hat in an odd way.
- The flower on my familiar (Donovan the Dog)'s hat is very much not an actual flower and instead something AI cobbled together to sorta look like a flower.
- The cords holding the dog's cloak together don't align correctly with how cords and cloth work, as well as just having pointless bits that didn't make sense or look right.
- The hats on several of the random images in the AI image slideshow at the end of the game didn't make sense, had more than one angled brim in the wrong ways, and again ears clipping through things weirdly.
- In the AI image slideshow, there were a number of animal feet/paws that were warped oddly, didn't make sense, had differing numbers of toes, bear claws all mangled and warped, etc etc.
- Really the whole AI slideshow including the random catgirls wasn't great, and was extremely pointless
- The "thanks for playing" page's background photo was some AI tree with magic and a pile of coins in front of it. Except the pile of coins was clearly floating on a non-existent flat platform a little ways above the actual ground, and just didn't pan out well.

TLDR: The AI art ruins the experience by being what it is: AI art. Why would I enjoy something and think it was good if nobody could be bothered to actually fully make it and ensure it looked correct? The AI art was poor quality in the area of making logical sense with physical bodies and even plants and the ground.

Please do not use AI art going forward. I really enjoyed The Test games and would love to see more good content come from these creators, but if they continue to use AI for more things, I will be dropping all of their games going forward.

Fair.

My word is Fair. It does not match my other words, and it creates an interesting layer with the others.

I played the first two Tests quite a while ago, and felt I needed to wait with this one for a few different reasons with things going on in my life. The wait was worth it, and this Test rung true just like the others.

We are not alone. This has a massive impact. I am not alone. You are not alone. None of us are alone. We are here, right now. Together.

Edit, prior words were: Power, Understanding.

Power, Understanding, Fair
An interesting combination

Plays just like the board game, and both are a great game. A good amount of strategy while still being pretty relaxed. The artwork is beautiful and the ui is well done. A high recommendation!

Understanding.

Putting myself in other's shoes is something I've always been doing and fairly good at... I wish others would do it for me. Perhaps going forward they will, and I'll keep doing it as I always have. And thinking about what I say

Power. That was my word.
All in all, my end did ring true, but I don't know what to think of it.