My Playtime: 11.3h (100% achievement, finished the game)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~3 achievements).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (~21 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.

Deiland: Pocket Planet Edition is an improved version of Deiland (my review). It fixes the most game-breaking bugs that the original has and introduces some useless feature that adds more to the playtime. Those who have the original game, including me, are allowed to request a key for an upgrade, so I might compare this with the original game a lot for reference.

Pros:
- A lot of features that you can do: farming, fishing, mining, and others
- Money can be obtained just by buying and selling items to different merchants

Cons:
- Some quests won't be triggered without fulfilling certain conditions that most people won't know about
- It's boring to wait for people to come to progress the quests

Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

No.
Although most bugs have been fixed, making it more enjoyable than the original, I still think some quality-of-life fixes need to be made, especially regarding the quest progression.

---

The visual is mostly similar to the original Deiland except for the character portraits, which are displayed in 2D instead of 3D, and the other skins for the planet based on the season that you are in. Although I prefer the original portrait since it looks more beautiful, the 2D version helps to emphasize the emotion of the characters better. I thought that some characters were very serious in the original and didn't expect that they can make some expressions in the 2D portraits.

Sadly, the story is one of the aspects that are not changed in the game. Although I liked the dialogues between the characters, the main story doesn't feel as polished as the side quests. Sure, there might be some background story for the threat you have to face, but the last boss area feels lacking and too mediocre for a finale, and the ending will leave you with confusion. Instead of finishing the game by defeating the threat, it ends after you beat the first boss, which is a minion of the said threat. There is nothing that is accomplished by the main character since the threat still exists, and the "final boss" doesn't seem to be important enough to give closure to the already weak story.

Gameplay
Deiland: Pocket Planet is a simplified farming simulation game at its core, allowing you to tend a small, rotatable planet while waiting for people to visit your home. A lot of simple activities are available to do, including but not limited to farming, chopping trees, mining rocks, and fishing. Some activities are locked at the beginning, which is only available once you have finished certain quests. Quests can be obtained from people who are visiting your planet, and although you can get most quests at the beginning, others will only be available once you meet a certain condition. Sadly, there is no way you can know what the condition is unless you already know it beforehand.

It can take a while to wait for people to visit, though. Those who come to your planet will also be randomized, and although it somewhat works at the beginning, it will start to be problematic once you have finished most quests and only wait for a few remaining ones.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2683521773

Despite the many activities that you can do, they still amount to nothing. There is no incentive to farm except to fill your hunger meter; items are only used as either food or material for selling. Even if you sell them, there aren't many items that you need to purchase with the money anyway, especially at the beginning. Sure, you might be able to finish quests more quickly like that, and that's what I did in my playthrough, but you also can finish most of them without spending money. The only things that kept me continuing the activities are the Steam achievements and my sense of boredom - once you get all the grindy achievements, you are forced to either mine rocks non-stop or leave your game running without doing anything until people come.

The newly-introduced season feature is just an unnecessary addition to the game. Crops and trees can only be planted in a certain season, and although each season only lasts for 7 days, you still need to wait for a while to finish quests that require you to plant them. This also limits what you can do each season, like planting a certain crop for profit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2683732046

The combat is still clunky. You can hit enemies with your farming tools, and although some enemies have a big hitbox, others are smaller, making it hard to hit without auto-target. You need to manually position your character to face the right way to hit them, and this can take a long time to adjust, especially since you need to reposition yourself a lot of times to avoid taking damage. Sure, you might be able to hit them with magic to make it easier, but magic costs crystals, an item that can be hard to replenish.

Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 9.2h. There are still some quests and 3 other achievements that I hadn't gotten at that time, so I continued playing until I finished them all. Unlike the original Deiland, no bug will prevent you from finishing all quests, and the problematic bug that happens when two people visit at the same time is fixed - I didn't have to reset the game several times for it. However, I admit that I still remember a lot of things from the original game, allowing me to finish the game quicker. I already know how to make money efficiently, and I did skip some quests that I remembered by keeping the items beforehand, for example. Moreover, I was also more wasteful this time, using money to buy most materials that are needed to finish the quests.

As for the difficulty, they are alright. The strongest enemies didn't come right away like the original so you don't have to die whenever enemies attack your planet at the beginning. You still need to learn how to fight without taking damage though or keep a lot of health potions in stock to prevent getting killed.

Others
Your character will move a bit if you rotate the planet. Some NPCs will also take off after you finish the quest, preventing you from doing a transaction with them. Lastly, the game still runs whenever a dialogue comes out. There is a thief NPC that is running away to steal your food, and you won't be able to fend them off if you want to read the dialogue if another NPC is talking. The same issue seems to affect the hunger meter when you are sleeping - you might risk being starved after sleep because of it.

Although most problematic bugs have been fixed, Deiland: Pocket Planet Edition still has some issues with its progressions. Some quests might be impossible to progress unless you know what to do, and waiting for a certain NPC to visit can be boring, especially with nothing to do on your planet. The developer seems to add the season feature to prevent this issue, but this ends up backfiring since you need to wait longer to finish the quests.

There don't seem to be any changes to the weak story either. I thought that the story was being cut because of the lack of development time in the beginning, but seeing that the developer has time to make this edition without polishing the story, it seems that this is the intended ending, after all. I don't think it's right to recommend such an unpolished game like this, especially since it feels "unfinished" at this state.

I was looking forward to this so incredibly much!!!, but in its current state it is just awful
Disclaimer: i'm a KBM user, cant use controllers for my life even if i want to. I was waiting so long for more of Chibig on PC, but this is just pain. I love the gameplay idea and overall look but i just cant enjoy any of it.

So first we have no actual keyboard-optimization, it will still show controller buttons to press in the first hour of playing (arguably the part of the game that most people will experience, so why not fix and polish it up for newcomers? do you even WANT people to touch this game???) and doesnt allow you to change any of the horrible chosen keys (Q to close? left and right switched when rotating the planet?? 1 or 2 to cycle through your tools or menu bars, not even chosing 0-9 what is this?? also you can basically throw out your mouse but buy some new spacebars because you will miss your target 40% of the time because of the overwhelming curvature of the planet making it just impossible to correctly access where tf you are and where you're going. This actually made me happy that we live on a globe with huge surface area so i dont have to experience any curvature.)
Additionally we got this horrible automatic picking up system, i'd much rather have the pickup choice from Summer in Mara, you have to stand on the item else it just wont register
Why is the tutorial so dang long, just let me have a fun little pocket planet away from civilization for a while and chill.
The beginning also just doesnt make sense, we just land on a random planet with nothing in our pockets, just grabbing berries once and then complaining about how we've eaten nothing but berries like we've been on this planet for ages (we havent. it's day 1), completely ignoring the fields by our tent and seeds in our inventory. Immediately we get a visit from some galactic organization of exploration being like "OwO wat is dis" allowing us to even do anything because our player character is apparently too stupid to add a stone to a stick to use the convenient farming grounds right in front of his nose.
Some of the models used just... dont work together. It's like some parts are from another game, i dont like this.
I immediately exited into the main menu after i realized that i cant access options ingame (why do that anyways.) and when re-entering it spit me out on day 3? I didnt even properly start day 1, excuse me?

I'm really happy they didnt change the character art as apparently promised before. So i guess it has that going for it.
The music is also nice. Basically the same as Summer in Mara so it's nothing new or really interesting, but very infuriating since it makes it seem like this game is supposed to have you relax... but you CANT because every key you press, every menu you open gives you pure pain.

I'm refunding it, and i would recommend not even touching it before they fix everything, which they most likely wont since this game originally came out in 2016 on consoles and Summer in Mara also has similar issues(horrible keybindings you cant change, still shows controller buttons to press...) that still havent been worked out(it hasnt even gotten a single Update sooo... i dont think this will be fixed)

As an avid player of the original Deiland, I can't say the Pocket Edition really lives up the previous title's name. It shares a lot of history with it's predecessor; but here is a few good points and bad points about this one.

-=- The Pros of Pocket Deiland -=-
* Same sensational soundtrack that was available in Deiland Original.
* Completed Storyline though I have as of yet done the entire game yet.

-=- The Pros of Original Deiland -=-
* Amazing soundtrack that you could zone out to. When you just sat there AFK, the music would swell so you could listen to it.
* Textures were amazing as was the artwork. It just screamed living storybook and scratched that niche perfectly.
* Full...Controller...Support. It actually claimed this and completed that claim unlike the Pocket Edition.

-=- The Cons of Pocket Deiland -=-
* It says full controller support; but many folks, myself included find their controllers do not work. My controller is an official Microsoft Xbox 360 Wired Controller and at the time of writing this review, does not work.
* Certain questlines may get bugged for no reason. For me, it was the Giant Pumpkin Quest for the Wizard. I had to literally delete my saved game and restart to fix it. This was about an hour of content in.
* Certain stretches of time in-game where nothing happens. Literally sat for 10 minutes {Long time in Deiland time which is about a full day} only to get no events including Rain, Meteorites, or Monsters. This was during the Winter Season.
* The Season System slogs the game down to a crawl if you get quests for a specific season that just passed. Meaning you have to wait 21 in-game days just to do the quest. An example being the Ank Poplar and Berries, seeing as you can only plant them in the dead of Winter.

-=- The Cons of Original Deiland -=-
* Unfinished story. They claimed the Pirate Island was completed, but it never was available in the Original game despite their claims.
* Huge memory leak. About an hour of raw playtime would yield about 2x as much RAM. Restarting seemed to fix the issue but it should have never been there in the first place.

All in all, I can say pick it up if it's on sale, but as it stands, I can't see myself sponsoring the new development of this game.

Deiland Pocket Planet (DPP) is the 3rd iteration of Deiland. The first was a mobile game, “Deiland, Tiny Planet”, the second was “Deiland” for PC (which I will call “OG” for future reference), with DPP being first released to consoles before being ported to PC. This port, as others have said, resulted in the removal of the OG from Steam entirely.

Initial release: Despite several delays, it is obvious they did not playtest this port. Multiple button prompts still showed (and still do) their console equivalents (most notably when exiting the game). It was also impossible to switch tools, see the quest log, or even open your inventory for the first few hours of release. Sure, they patched it after a few hours, but those glaring problems should’ve been patched well before release. There was also talk in the Steam discussion board of how several people who did the Google Forms that was for previous owners of the OG never got their keys, I was one of the lucky ones it seems.

Old problems: This game has many glaring problems, including those that I recognized from the original. Like how NPC’s lock you in dialogue when you’re trying to pick up something and due to the incredibly short despawn time, you lose said items by the time you’re released, especially if you want to try to read what’s being said. Combat is just as airy as before. Certain upgrades still seemingly do nothing. This includes the crystal altar and some tools like the bucket. Farm animals still spawn/could walk through the terrain. The achievements are also still bugged in that the crafting ones still require you to craft items individually so that way they’re counted. The last achievement, Prince, where you had to get all the other achievements, was also broken and ended up being removed entirely from the game as of now. When sleeping, meteorites can still spawn and destroy your base (made especially worse by how there's now 3 events that can happen while you sleep, further increasing the chance of this happening and making it all the more difficult to save your base). With how many of the old bugs are still in this “remaster”, I would not be surprised if certain 'goldies' from the OG are still around that I just didn’t see, like how enemies could walk off into space, making it impossible to ever attack them.

Finally, for most of the game, you still can only turn in a quest once per NPC visit. This needlessly draws out the game, especially when all but 2 of the possible NPCs that can come to your planet only do so randomly (the other 2 can be called at any time. Why is this not possible with the other ones?). What this means is that you’ll be waiting for two RNG events, one for the random event to be an NPC visit and another for the NPC to be one that you needed for your quest. Needless to say, this brings the game down to a crawl.

New problems: For some reason, you can no longer mass sell items as you could before. If you want to sell 100 stone, you have to press the space key 100 times. Hopefully, you have a macro or don’t care about contracting Carpal Tunnel :). They changed the movement speed mechanic, you move a lot faster sideways/diagonal than you do vertically for whatever reason. Some of the models have mesh clipping issues. Mun, the first NPC you meet, loves glitching down into the floor, more so on the two planets you can visit.

Story: There’s not even a skeleton of a story here. Sure, you piece together a backstory on a certain endgame NPC throughout the game, but that’s it. Yes, there are some tidbits of lore that you get from NPCs, but that’s just it, lore. The only parts of an actual story are the conflict and resolution, and even that “resolution” (i.e. the final boss fight) should’ve been part of the rising action. The final boss is laughably easy, I was able to beat them in around 30 seconds and even if you’re playing it for the first time, it’s not difficult in the slightest. This only makes that resolution all the more empty, as you initially think you’re at the halfway point and you’ll fight the final boss soon enough. Then the credits roll.

Questionable mechanics: This was probably present in the OG, but I just now noticed it due to DPP’s wonky launch, but there’s no reason to eat. None. Sure you’ll take some damage until you’re on death’s door, but you won’t outright die, not like death is that much of a problem considering how you don’t lose anything if you do die (unless it’s from a monster in which case some random items go missing). There’s a decent selection of potions that you can make, but there’s no reason to use (not including when they’re needed for the many, many fetch quests that are the side quests) them except for at the very end of one questline where you go to a certain moon. Other than that one case, there’s no reason to go invisible, big, use a protection potion, or use any of the other potions. Even health potions are arguably useless as you can easily just mass produce 1-2 crops and gorge yourself whenever you lose some health.

One of the main selling points of this remaster was the season mechanic. This mechanic, while maybe interesting at first, falls flat. All it does is lock certain crops and flowers behind certain seasons, needlessly extending the runtime more than it needs, especially if you didn’t plan ahead and now need to power nap through some season(s) just so that you can get that one plant you need for some quest. The new buildings added are also useless. Out of the roughly 6 added buildings, 5 are purely cosmetic. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re fairly pricey in their building costs.

This is probably going to surprise a lot of players, but there’s a debuff system. I only encountered 1 debuff in the entire game at 1 point at the very end it was on the endgame spaceship and I was fighting one of those unique eyebot monsters. I’m not even sure what it did as when I was running to the next enemy to test it out, it ran out of time and was gone. It’s not like I was never hit throughout the game asides from that one time, so it begs the question of why the system is even in the game if most players will never experience it. On a similar note of unique areas, there are 2 places that you only visit once. Both of these areas have 1 unique enemy each, which is a real shame considering the lack of enemy variety (sure, they added a few more enemies in DPP but still).

Conclusion: While this remaster does improve upon the OG, it is not by much and leaves much to be desired in the same way. It certainly is not worth the $5 price uptick from the OG, or even $20 alone. There are bits of a story here. But given the sheer lack of polish, endless amount of fetch quests, and lots of other useless mechanics, stay away unless they give it up for free again like they did the OG. I'm not saying all of this as someone who barely played the game. I 100%'ed both this and the OG to see if there was any replayability, anything at all to warrant getting this game and I could find nothing. If you want a game in space, see Starbound (even if it has its own set of problems). If you want a farming game that you can relax to, see Stardew Valley.

A mild thmbs-up. Should really be thumbs-sideways.

This is "Summer in Mara" (an earlier game from the same developers), but with easy combat and somehow without the fun. It has farming, crafting, building, and a small amount of exploration. The 3D world is competently presented and the graphics are fun.

Somehow the game didn't engage me. It was just a series of tasks. I finished it because I'd paid for it and because I was mildly interested in the plot. I didn't appreciate the combat (which I don't think I ever lost) taking my attention away from what I wanted to do. You spend a lot of time waiting for the specific people you need to interact with to visit. The game crashed on me twice, but it didn't lose much progress, and I bought it very soon after launch. With their previous games the developers have been alert to bugs and fixed them quickly. There have been a few improvements in the game engine since "Summer in Mara", and I did appreciate them.

If you haven't already bought "Summer in Mara", buy that instead. It's terrific. If you have, and want more like that, get this, but don't expect as much fun.

In general terms, if you have played old Deiland, this one is pretty much same, don´t buy if you expect something radical and new. Think of this as polished Deiland with minor upgrades. Otherwise pretty solid game.

Cash grab game. For those not in the know, there already was a Deiland game that they removed from the store to make people buy this instead instead of just updating the old game. The only difference is a season system which actively makes things worse since you have to wait for the right season to plant things. Even with Cheat Engine for 2x speed, this is still just a whole lot of waiting around for a random visitor to show up and hope they have a new quest for you. Or, more egregiously, waiting for the right monsters to spawn to get an item you need to finish a quest. Again, totally random what shows up and when. Need some bat wings? Better hope the next 10 monster events actually spawn a bat. This is not a 20 dollar game. This is a phone game, at best.

This game isn't fully functional. I emailed the developer because I couldn't complete the quest to meet the guy on the ice planet since nothing loaded in. I was walking on air with nothing around me. I immediately exited the game and went back in, but then I had to craft fuel to get back to the planet again. The same thing happened. I emailed the dev for support for the game and I was told this:

"We're sorry but we're not giving support to Deiland Pocket Planet at this moment, sorry. In case this will be of help, here's a guide of the game. Sorry for the bothering and thank you so much for playing our game, -The Chibig Team."

I also bought Summer in Mara. It's buggy as well. It seems this developer doesn't like to support their games. I will be removing Mika and the Witch's Mountain from my wishlist. I will also be hiding all of the games from this developer so I don't give them anymore of my money since they don't like to support their buggy games.

I don't see any difference from the original Deiland game, which was removed from the steam store some time ago. But I like such projects, they are great for spending time without thinking about anything and just enjoying the game

,
because it is rather boring and monotonous. The planet is very small and can be completely run through in half a minute. The game lacks a good soundtrack and interesting gameplay. Even Summer in Mara from the same developer is much better than this game. If you want to immerse yourself in ~40 hours of monotonous gameplay, then this game is for you. But I don't like it, so I won't recommend it

It literally feels like this game would be unethical to recommend to other players. This plays like a free mobile game that you expect to have an ad pop up every five seconds, but instead they just made it $15 and put it on Steam. I feel SO BAD because I tried to like this game, and I wanted to like this game, but it just felt soo unfinished and out of order in certain parts, it was just honestly really not an enjoyable experience.

*Potentially some mild spoilers, I tried to remain quite vague.

The only good thing I have to say about this game is that the artwork for the characters during dialogue and when leveling up looks really great and was interestingly done, all the characters have individual and well defined looks and themes. Also I loved Bom and Yuki, they were the funnest characters.

*BUGS*
There's literally so many bugs, I had to constantly wonder if they even had anyone play test the game all the way through.

Sheep sometimes leave their pen for you to go find them and take them back to the barn so you can get wool, however sometimes the sheep would fully glitch out of the game on the way home if it touched a chicken and I would literally have to restart the game to get it back.

I had monsters walk up into the sky and out of sight. Still gave me the "there are monsters that must be fought" with arrows just pointing up into the sky. No way to get them. had to restart the game since you cannot do ANYTHING ELSE if there are monsters to fight. Also this goes for the sheep thing too.

Often the nuts and fruits I shook from trees would just fall into the trunk and despawn.

During the final boss fight the boss stopped dealing damage to me.

*COMBAT*
This should have been my first red flag that this game is meant for kids. Enemies move SO SLOW and as long as you hit first and keep hitting they almost never hit you at all. There is simply nothing hard or complex about fighting at all here.

*QUESTS*
The quests were what got me through the middle part of the game, because there were a lot of intriguing lead ins, and I'd want to find out where things were going. Sadly pretty much every quest ended up being a let down story-wise, and it's truly such a shame because I think there were a lot of interesting ways to flesh out many of these story lines.
There were lots of times something would happen or be said that would intrigue me, and make me wonder where the story could be headed. But things were either NEVER mentioned again, or resolved in the most abrupt and boring way possible. This goes for every. single. quest. I kid you not.

*CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT*
There isn't any.
Every character, including the main character was completely static. Interesting stuff happens, everyone pretty much remains the same at the end of the day.
Only two characters have any "flaws" and they're the most interesting, but sometimes interactions between characters feel kind of random, like no one has a solidly defined personality, besides Yuki. She's reliable and fun with her interactions BECAUSE she's unpredictable. Everyone else is sickeningly positive, unless its towards one of the less "righteous" characters, then there's no forgiveness, lol.

*ACHIEVEMENTS*
I thought the achievements were weird. Very randomly grindy. like "plant 90 flowers" is one, but there's not really a good reason to do so many? That honestly would have been fineeee but not when you consider there's like two achievements related to the storyline, but randomly in like the MIDDLE of the storyline, and only for a couple of characters. Why not just have an achievement for each character when you've done all their tasks? The entire gameplay is built around doing these tasks for everyone (even though you are 10 and everyone else is an adult with a spaceship) yet not a single achievement is tied to 100% completing anyone's quests. It keeps track of the percentage completion the entire game for every single character, so it was weird that there's just a couple of achievements tied to very random points in VERY few of the quest/ story lines.

Certain things that should have been really cool, are completely anticlimactic and have no achievements tied to them.

The main story ends very abruptly, and I finished it before I 100% completed any one character's tasks. So if you beat the main boss, and you 100% the achievements on Steam, the story does keep going, but it just came out of nowhere, the ending, and it felt like there was a ton of room to build the story up better. It made it feel like the game fully ended in the middle of the game, if that makes sense, especially because after I beat the boss, it showed credits and kicked me out of my game to the title screen and I had to reload to keep going.

I like to fully 100% games I start when I can, so I do want to complete this, I do just wish it felt more completed as a whole. It is a beautiful game, the concepts are there, they just don't go anywhere and I can't get over it. So much wasted potential imo. Could have been fun if it had just been developed more seriously.