Losing my mind. Absolutely amazing. Thoughts from the last few hours playing the demo version.

[rixkey]

I found MadMorph's playthrough of the demo and immediately grabbed it up to play myself. I love it a lot and can't wait for early access to come out properly. It feels kind of like Rune Factory meets Stardew meets Watership Down meets Beatrix Potter. The game asks for feedback, so here is my mash of thoughts from the last few hours, with the caveat that I know this is just the pre-early access demo version! The pre-est of versions! It's entirely possible something I pick at might only be because of how early it is in development, so take anything I say with a grain of salt or even two! Overall I am definitely going to be paying attention and picking it up when it comes out on Early Access no matter what, so no matter my small gripes, the important thing is that the demo did its job perfectly!

Good:

Story, obviously. I would sing the current story's praises from the rooftops if I could. I love the entire premise of it. It's such a fresh and engaging take on being a community's sole farmer. Stocking up the town's stores in preparation for surviving the winter and the [spoilers]? I'm chomping at the bit just for that alone. The way this is introduced to us too, it all felt very good and natural. Of course they're giving us a free farm; they're desperate. The overgrown remnants of whoever lived there last, the realistic enough setting that of course no one else could pick up the slack: Who has time to learn a whole new trade? And then you come in, and maybe you don't know anything either, but it's better than nothing, so get to it? The fact the setting is realistic enough that taxes exist and need to be waived? The way this is dangled to tempt you to stay? I also loved the writing for the funeral, by the way. And that twist, dang.

I. LOVE the game art. The crops and the fish and everything? Gorgeous. I love how the crops growing in have different randomized art to them. It looks amazing. The environmental art also looks great - I don't know how it's done, but the way things like the morel mushrooms and cattails are obviously meant to be interacted with but still look like a natural part of the setting was very well done. The marsh is also very creative. Maybe the only thing that looks a little odd is the buildings, but I feel those will grow on me more over time.

Preserving food. The way I went head over heels for that drying rack surprised me. I want to dry everything, I want to smoke everything, I want to can EVERYTHING. Let me at that root cellar. Sorry, Theo, but I hope you like fruit jerky, because that's what I'm making. (Theo, local foodie, peeking around a tree, watching the PC lovingly place 5000 plums on the drying rack, sweating. RIP to your taste buds, buddy.)

Mining feels kind of new, but very intriguing. I also liked the fishing. I feel like it'll be very nice once it's smoothed out a bit over time.

Cutscenes.

The MAAAAP. I wish you could hover over the building itself on the map and gets its name instead of needing to run through the whole list, but that's nitpicking. I love it.

I love Theo, Percy, and Hazel. They feel the most fleshed-out so far, and I like what I see a lot.

Extremely intrigued by the setting and worldbuilding so far. Curious about how that might play into how the game progresses. I really like how it's not modern times, and the little hints of how all the different animals perceive each other and themselves interests me.


"Bad" (reminder that these are all personal opinions):

Movement feels kind of bad. [Edit: The following paragraph seems to relate only to the fox, which is the sprite I was using at the time. I went back and played with the rabbit, and movement and actions felt WAY better. I checked again with the fox just to make sure, and there was definitely a difference. Still not 100% sure why, but I think it has something to do with the fox's longer torso making the rigid posture more noticeable and maybe the rabbit having more dramatic effort animations?] Our sprite is very stiff and doesn't feel satisfying to move. It's sort of hard for me to explain why this is since I don't fully understand what makes game feel satisfying myself, but to try to explain: Compared to other games like this our sprite feels kind of...like a floaty wooden board, if that makes sense? I think it's the torso/shoulder area, maybe? Animations are way too stiff. This isn't as noticeable in cutscenes, I think, but when handling the sprite myself I definitely noticed it. It's also way too easy to get the sprite hung up on absolutely everything (the insurmountable obstacle of an ankle-high shrub...ten times in a row), which, coupled with the floaty wooden board feeling, and it can feel very tedious getting anywhere, especially in the marsh or the denser foresty areas. Maybe being able to hop small obstacles would help?

Map is too...quiet? For lack of a better word. Everyone is too far apart or the map itself is too big, but for all that it's gorgeous it feels kind of dead. I didn't really get a town/community feel to it. Everyone and everything just felt very disconnected from everyone and everything else, even in the more populated area around the general store. It makes wandering feel kind of empty and trying to find anyone sort of dull and frustrating.

The character portraits/facial expressions. The art in the game is gorgeous and the game sprites themselves are amazing, but for the most part the character portraits themselves are probably, in my opinion, the weakest point artistically in the game as of right now, which is only worth commenting on because these are meant to give us our strongest immediate impressions of the characters as individuals, and for the most part they're all just palette swaps of each other in the same static position with the exact same set of minimal facial expressions. Some of them are okay (Theo, a good chunk of the predators, Hazel), but most of them just don't look right (the ferrets and stoats are hit especially hard, I think). It's definitely got to be difficult conveying emotion with the more realistic animal designs (which I love, don't get me wrong), but in that case getting more individual and dynamic body language involved might not be a bad idea? Ears, tails, hands, mouths, teeth, eye contact/lack of eye contact, head depicted turned away or tilted or reared back, etc. Ears were sometimes used to good effect to convey unease, but only minimally, and for the animals that don't have them, it showed. The overly shiny eyes were doing a lot of heavy lifting, but they conveyed less emotion than was probably intended, in my opinion. (Except for Percy's excited shiny-eyed stare. That was extremely cute.) Everything about this could be highly personal though, and even the demo warns that some art just isn't complete yet, so again, just my opinion! I'm sure I'll get over it if this is how the game designers want it to be!


Petty Speculation (DEFINITELY personal opinions, and more excited speculation about what could be than actual suggestions. This is essentially where I get carried away, is all):

I understand that starter quests are a thing everywhere and usually it's just taken as part and parcel of the genre, but the way they're dished out at light speed - often on the day of a funeral! - in this game feels a little jarring compared to the far more natural and stellar introduction of the main story's quest. I feel like if these tutorial quests were introduced more in a way that ties into the overall concerns of the village, maybe that would help? Or at least in a that tells you a bit more about the quest givers as individuals and gets those social bonds kickstarted, or at least a little staggering or story padding around them to help with pacing and at least remembering who these people are. Like maybe there's a scripted event so that you're given an axe in the aftermath of the town vote where it's more-or-less confirmed you're intended to stick around because "I know you'll need to clear out some space on that old farm if you're to be growing enough food for all of us" but then follows it up with "but if you ~just so happen~ to have a bit of extra wood you can spare afterward, I'd really appreciate if you could bring some over. With Hazel/Rose's thing, I just don't think I'll be able to get to it myself. Don't feel obliged, though! I know you're busy." Kiind of the hook we already have, but a little more scripted into the story itself rather than just randomly occuring in the middle of the woods with a total stranger. Or the general store gives you carrot seeds for "free" for a similar reason - they've just been told you're intended to stock up the town's root cellar and they'd like to contribute, don't worry about it, dear - but then after a couple days you just ~happen~ to overhear a loud conversation about how she'd just love to make some carrot cake for that upcoming birthday but she's just plumb out, etc. etc. and the quest pops up in your journal. You know. Small town things. (AKA: When I say "don't worry about it" what I mean is "this is social mugging". Make a return on a kindness or you failed the social contract test and EVERYONE is going to know about it. Or something like that.) Just a bit more of an organic feel to the quests you have to do to progress. I'm just spitballing.

In that vein, it feels a little odd how quickly and how much of everything you're given by the local experts right out the game and expected to do by yourself (I'm mostly thinking about things like blacksmithing with the smelter, but I suppose also carpentry and ranching and such, especially with us also shouldering the materials supply and the meat production for the root cellar). Genre conventions, sure, of course, and I could be jumping the gun a bit since we haven't really had a chance to really do any of this or see how it plays out and I could be making up an issue that was never going to exist, but I don't think it would hurt if we were encouraged to lean a little more on the local experts, especially early on. Maybe having a rancher and a fisherman takes a huge load off our shoulders in keeping the town's carnivore's fed. Having a blacksmith gives us better options for our tools and a greater selection than we will ever have on our own. And if we want the really nice furniture or building upgrades, then we need that master carpenter to stick around and survive. Etc, etc. I'm just leery that too much self-sufficiency will take away from the story on the whole. Losing the town's specialists should hurt, I think.

UI is a little rough. The quest log in particular feels very cluttered and difficult to parse. The stamina bar and time tracker both feel very easy to lose track of too, though that might be a plus for some people.

Coming off Rune Factory 4 and Fields of Mistria, I'm probably just hyper-tuned to this, but if we could run into the villagers interacting with each other, that would be amazing. Even if we aren't privy to what they're saying, just sprite animations obviously intended to be in discussion with each other might help liven up the community feel in the future.

BUT AGAIN. Overall, I am incredibly excited for this game, just big shiny Percy eyes over here about it, and I want to say good job. I can't wait to give you my money for this.

[AcuteOwlStudio]

Feedback noted! And thanks for the kind words.