Recent reviews by Villanelle

Beautiful, a near-perfect game in its category. Does exactly what it says on the tin - which is to provide a story-rich, open-world conquest with organic settlement development and thoroughly satisfying combat. My only quibble would be that late game becomes a slow grind, and could do with more fleshing out. However you will be hours and hours in before you get there, so I wouldn't let it put you off. Development have just added livestock, which brings your town even more to life, and have opened up support for modding so the possibilities are pretty much now endless for where this game will go. Improvements I would like to see are more character customisation options (I don't understand why these are so restricted to just white brunettes, but at least you can choose your gender), mounts and more late game interest.

Highly rewarding and addictive game, with an excellent balance of chill and challenge. The world is alive - forests grow and change, and are populated with wildlife and things to forage. Exploration by boat is really fun with different biomes to discover. It's got a bit of everything: crafting/farming, survival, dungeon crawling, skill tree, building, exploration, expansion with outposts and any number of settlements...and they've just added multiplayer. The farther you explore, the harder your encounters will be (and the better the rewards), but there's plenty to do at home to upgrade and prepare yourself. Having a wolf to help you in combat is awesome!

For me, it's currently lacking a few things that would enhance immersion but maybe these will be developed through further updates:
* a more customisable and better-designed main character that you can rename (I know it's 'Len's Island' but why? Why do I have to be Len? They don't seem to have any backstory so it seems pointless)
* NPCs - better dialogue and increased trading options when you level up the town
* deeper lore
* interaction with your pets and ability to name them
* camera zoom in closer/farther, the field of view is a bit too restricted right now.

Overall you can tell how much love and work has gone into this game and the developers seem to be really engaged (check out their roadmap if you're interested - the updates are coming fast and hot). Looking forward to future developments but I'm not lacking with stuff to do and discover as it is now. It's a complete game and performance is fine on my laptop, there is a tiny bit of lag sometimes during transitions but nothing that gets in the way of gameplay.

I'm 100 hours in and still plenty to do, so in order to contradict some of the older reviews on here, have no fear! There is tonnes of content. I don't think I'm even half way through the main story. I started playing after the 1.1 update and I think it must have added a bunch because the game definitely doesn't feel unfinished in any way. There are areas and objects that are still closed off - I don't know how many of them are due to my slow progress (I'm enjoying taking my time with it) or if there are still some things to look forward to with future updates. Either way there are several main quests and they all feel original, well-crafted and like they are leading somewhere exciting.

What I love about this game:

- It is gorgeous. The aesthetics are just so pleasing. I don't normally play this kind of game but I wanted something pretty and comforting and it delivered, oh boy did it deliver!

- The NPCs are, um, super hot! And you can date multiple characters at the same time if that's your thing. No gender barriers or binary impositions, this is 100% a queer friendly game. The cut scene dialogues are so well written, you can tell how much love and thought has gone into this game. I would like more dialogue options but that takes you into the RPG genre and this is, at it's core, a farming sim, so while there are some great lines, there is also repetition and you shouldn't expect as much depth as a story genre game. I wouldn't mind things being a bit spicier too haha!

- There are lots of options for things to do: farm, forage, fish, ranch, dive, mine, explore, romance, befriend, craft, decorate, collect and more. The variety means that nothing is too much of a grind. You can wake up and do what you feel like doing with very few time pressures, so its more relaxing than Stardew and I really enjoy getting lost in my character's world and what she'd like to do that day, and what her plans are for the farm. There's lots of unlockable content to decorate and improve your home and farm too.

- The respect for and love of nature. This game celebrates nature and you are involved in protecting and restoring it. A bit disjointed that you can catch bugs and sea life and eat them! But whatever, the main ideas are nourishing and beautifully implemented.

My one desire for future updates is to make pets more interactive. I think this is on the cards as you can tell there are some gaps in the content with them, but you can adopt two pets and interact with other animals in the game, as well as develop a ranch with more animal varieties that unlock over time.

Well now I know what my favourite game of 2021 is going to be!

Unbelievably ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good

This game looks so cute...and then you go and slaughter all your goblin neighbours and mine pirates for their sweet sweet hats and cutlasses. Ulrike, the cold-hearted Killer, is gleeful at all the violence while Leo is having a tantrum because he's subsisted on a sole diet of raw tomatoes all year. Old Christoph, who was lucky enough to live out his old age, digs his own grave so that Franz can finish taming Helen the pig before winter. Polish yer cutlasses - we will have meat and potatoes tonight lads.

It's surprisingly challenging; I leave a trail of failed colonies in my wake before I manage to get one somewhat close to endgame. Dumb fun for a lot longer than I thought it would be and actually, not all that dumb. There's not just one best way to play and in fact, that's probably what sets it apart from a lot of other colony survival games: it's not on the rails. You have freedom to choose your priorities and try out different strategies and play styles.

I'm writing this when its in Beta, so it's still quite limited, but it seems to be developing at a decent rate. After 50 hours I've only experienced one bug, which wasn't game breaking. Only major complaint at this stage is it turns my laptop into a furnace. Whinier complaint is that it needs a combat overhaul. The micromanagement can get real tedious and while there's the suggestion of tactical variety with ranged and melee weapons, it always ends up in the same messy dogpile, just making it that liiiittle bit more awkward to reach through the dead bodies for that ol' tricone hat.

I really love this game, it's got something really special about it.

The blend of RPG into a historical simulation is just lovely. I got bored with those Banished / Dawn of Man / etc type games because there isn't that emotional connection to a character and while I love strategy for its own sake, it becomes monotonous quite quickly. There is usually only one route to success in those games and it's just cold hard maths.

This is different. You can play how you want to, you can change your direction on a whim and the AI is constantly mixing things up. I'm quite deep into my character's game now and still learning new things every moment.

It's hilariously irreverent and icily sinister. The storytelling reminds me of Rimworld, just the right amount of absurd. Then a child dies of the plague and it's actually really sad and touching. You don't usually expect pathos from a sim/strategy game yet here it is.

Also - the crashes have been fixed! If you look on the discussions tab you'll see how active the developer is. Don't be put off by older reviews.

More than a game, this is really an artbox for anyone who wants to create richly detailed gardens, buildings and of course, zoos and wildlife parks. There is so much freedom in the building system, you really can build just about anything you can imagine if you are willing to put in the time. Dip into the Koali Zoo series on youtube if you want to get an idea of what's possible with some time, talent and patience.

However if you don't want to spend hours building, the game and the workshop are packed with blueprints that you can use.

The animals are so beautifully and realistically rendered. Frontier really do their research and go on field trips to speak to zookeepers and experts about the natural behaviours of each species, and find ways to implement this in the game, such as pack behaviour, shyness and inquisitiveness.

One of the nicest things about this game is the community, including the developer team who clearly love working on this project. It must have one of the friendliest reddit subs and the youtube content is endless.

New DLC packs and free updates are released four times per year and honestly, I get so excited every time waiting to see what the next pack is going to be, not just for the animals but for the new mechanics and construction pieces that are always added as well.

This is so exciting - the most D&D like storytelling I've come across in an RPG so far, even down to the squared battlemat. Like those written by the greatest of GMs, the script doesn't take itself seriously at all but clearly huge amounts of blood and toil went into it. I literally LOLed all the way through my first little campaign.

Very much looking forward to new chapters as it develops but there's already plenty there to make it worth buying while it's still in EA.

Just...thank god Planet Zoo is out now.

Lovely!

Relaxing to play while you have the TV on in the background or something...not much brain power required. Leave it on overnight to load up on dp (diversity points, needed to progress evolution and build biomes).

Hope the developers continue to add more species and biomes.