Maddmike Steam Curator

https://youtu.be/k91nH4uo-rQ

What is ‘survival’ if there is no danger? Calling Lightyear Frontier a ‘survival’ game feels like an oxymoron because you’re not exactly surviving anything. Try to drown yourself and you’ll just be transported back to the safety of shore. Throw yourself off a cliff and you won’t take any fall damage. There’s no concept of damage at all, actually. Despite this FPS perspective and a mousewheel stacked with things that look and point like guns, your goals are peaceful; and it folds that non combative style into a game that’s as tranquil as it is strategic.

Lightyear Frontier uses the rituals of tree-punchy base-buildy survival games to power an experience that’s part cozy farm sim part adventure game: and it’s a good one. A pretty good one, at least from what I’ve played.

This is definitely an ‘early access’ review for an early access game, and whether or not it’s going to sound like a recommendation is going to depend on which of Lightyear’s many genre labels you're here for. I’m somewhere between an enthusiastic “yes” for Lightyear as a strict farm sim and an enthusiastic “yes, but wait” for Lightyear as everything else it is.

It may sound like a superfluous distinction, but one that I’m making because Lightyear Frontier serves more folks than just your co-op “do creative stuff with your mates” types. I’m about eight hours into a solo experience that used farming as the means not the ends, and it was more fun than you’d think for a few reasons.

For starters, this Frontier is authored. These beautiful horizons weren’t made with procedural generation. This is a hand-curated world with discrete, named zones; each with their own non-combative fauna, flora, and materials to gather.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3191971519

They also house some secrets to find. Lightyear Frontier doesn’t prioritize narrative but it does give you just enough of it to provide the game some direction outside of just crafting stuff. Ruins imply there’s more history to the planet than it lets on, and mysterious doors seem to respond well to all the cleaning you’re doing.

In Lightyear Frontier, you play as a spaceguy who has found themselves crash landed—very luckily—on a planet rich in vegetation and poor in hazards. You quickly meet a satellite that acts as a literal north star figure coaching you through the experience, and you’ll slowly fall into the game’s routine of cleaning up the planet, which helps you upgrade your mech and your crafting potential, which helps you clean up the planet. There’s an almost ‘Powerwash Simulator’-like feeling to that routine, with no stakes predictable hosing and vacuuming happening between your farming.

I’m not embarrassed to admit that it might actually be my favorite part of the game: I don’t have whatever gene inspires people to make the kind of beautifully fenced and proportioned farmsteads like the ones you’ll see in the screenshots. The little crafting hubs I built were uh, utilitarian, but I am a sucker for vibe and Lightyear Frontier is a vibe delivery machine.

One of the most inspired choices is that these aren’t sleek anime mechs. What you’re piloting is closer to industrial farm equipment, both in its look and in its function. There’s a lot of inertia when piloting, you don’t turn on a dime and the cockpit actually takes more time to rotate than the legs, giving this illusion of weight.

Sometimes the mech is a bit more trip-happy than feels appropriate, but otherwise it gives the game a feeling of physicality that transports you to this world. You can see that theme bubble up in other ways, too: like how changing your mech’s limbs isn’t abstracted through menus but instead something you perform by magnetically removing and applying new limbs with your tools.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3191971746

I like Lightyear Frontier, so why did I only play eight hours? That’s where the nature of early access and reviews and recommendations intersect in some weird ways. As a farm sim and platform for creative building, there’s way more than eight hours here with a level of polish and production that goes beyond that early access labeling: and co-op extends that even further.

On top of having a story that’s still in progress, the biggest opportunities for Lightyear Frontier’s early access sit with resource allocation and samey objectives—specifically for the story stuff. The crafting menus slowly onboard you by dripfeeding you new crafting patterns whenever you first find their components out in the world. Sometimes that dripfeed isn’t drippy enough, though. There were times when I had patterns that demanded resources I hadn’t found yet which is supposed to spur you into exploration and finding that resource, but that exploration frequently feels aimless.

That sort of ‘craft whatever you find’ attitude just finds itself in contrast with major and obvious resource bottlenecks that exist in how the crafting is dished out to you, where sometimes lacking one particular item puts the entire crafting system on hold until you find it which could be frustrating.

The other low point is a recurring artifact acquisition objective. Ancient ruins scattered across the island house little secrets you can collect, and their collection is usually married to some of the more lore and story based aspects of the Frontier. From a gameplay perspective, they’re tedious. You walk around and grab identical looking purple spheres, and what makes this mindless busywork less fun than the rest of the games mindless busywork, is that it’s not tied into your efficiency increasing and crafting ecosystem.

It just feels a little divorced from the rest of the game, and that’s a shame because taking part in this objective gives little clues about the history of this land.


Lightyear Frontier sources inspiration from many different genres, and its level of completeness and polish is going to feel different depending on which of those genres you’re here for. As a creative sandbox and co-op farm sim it’s incredibly enjoyable. It’s got a comfortable no-stakes atmosphere, it’s got a beautiful look, and constantly reinforces friendly themes of Frontier exploration rather than Frontier subjugation.


But there’s also an early version of a cozy collection driven adventure here with progression and a story and twists, and the irony is that this base experience was both bumpy and promising enough to warrant putting the game down: there’s an actual ‘play it and complete it’ video game in here that I didn't want to rob myself of playing in eighteen or so months.

Therein lies the paradox of Lightyear Frontier and the paradox of early access. I think I recommend Lightyear Frontier, but I’m far more interested in the game it may become rather than the game it currently is—and my own personal tastes leave me in “optimistically follow” territory rather than wanting to eagerly play every update.

It’s a game that’s already good but when it’s at the cusp of greatness, I’d rather wait.

I just hope that greatness isn’t light years away.

Follow our Curator page, Summit Reviews, to see more high quality reviews regularly.

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/31028489-Maddmike/]Maddmike Steam Curator[/url] https://youtu.be/k91nH4uo-rQ What is ‘survival’ if there is no danger? Calling Lightyear Frontier a ‘survival’ game feels like an oxymoron because you’re not exactly surviving anything. Try to drown yourself and you’ll just be transported back to the safety of shore. Throw yourself off a cliff and you won’t take any fall damage. There’s no concept of damage at all, actually. Despite this FPS perspective and a mousewheel stacked with things that look and point like guns, your goals are peaceful; and it folds that non combative style into a game that’s as tranquil as it is strategic. Lightyear Frontier uses the rituals of tree-punchy base-buildy survival games to power an experience that’s part cozy farm sim part adventure game: and it’s a good one. A pretty good one, at least from what I’ve played. This is definitely an ‘early access’ review for an early access game, and whether or not it’s going to sound like a recommendation is going to depend on which of Lightyear’s many genre labels you're here for. I’m somewhere between an enthusiastic “yes” for Lightyear as a strict farm sim and an enthusiastic “yes, but wait” for Lightyear as everything else it is. It may sound like a superfluous distinction, but one that I’m making because Lightyear Frontier serves more folks than just your co-op “do creative stuff with your mates” types. I’m about eight hours into a solo experience that used farming as the means not the ends, and it was more fun than you’d think for a few reasons. For starters, this Frontier is authored. These beautiful horizons weren’t made with procedural generation. This is a hand-curated world with discrete, named zones; each with their own non-combative fauna, flora, and materials to gather. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3191971519 They also house some secrets to find. Lightyear Frontier doesn’t prioritize narrative but it does give you just enough of it to provide the game some direction outside of just crafting stuff. Ruins imply there’s more history to the planet than it lets on, and mysterious doors seem to respond well to all the cleaning you’re doing. In Lightyear Frontier, you play as a spaceguy who has found themselves crash landed—very luckily—on a planet rich in vegetation and poor in hazards. You quickly meet a satellite that acts as a literal north star figure coaching you through the experience, and you’ll slowly fall into the game’s routine of cleaning up the planet, which helps you upgrade your mech and your crafting potential, which helps you clean up the planet. There’s an almost ‘Powerwash Simulator’-like feeling to that routine, with no stakes predictable hosing and vacuuming happening between your farming. I’m not embarrassed to admit that it might actually be my favorite part of the game: I don’t have whatever gene inspires people to make the kind of beautifully fenced and proportioned farmsteads like the ones you’ll see in the screenshots. The little crafting hubs I built were uh, utilitarian, but I am a sucker for vibe and Lightyear Frontier is a vibe delivery machine. One of the most inspired choices is that these aren’t sleek anime mechs. What you’re piloting is closer to industrial farm equipment, both in its look and in its function. There’s a lot of inertia when piloting, you don’t turn on a dime and the cockpit actually takes more time to rotate than the legs, giving this illusion of weight. Sometimes the mech is a bit more trip-happy than feels appropriate, but otherwise it gives the game a feeling of physicality that transports you to this world. You can see that theme bubble up in other ways, too: like how changing your mech’s limbs isn’t abstracted through menus but instead something you perform by magnetically removing and applying new limbs with your tools. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3191971746 I like Lightyear Frontier, so why did I only play eight hours? That’s where the nature of early access and reviews and recommendations intersect in some weird ways. As a farm sim and platform for creative building, there’s way more than eight hours here with a level of polish and production that goes beyond that early access labeling: and co-op extends that even further. On top of having a story that’s still in progress, the biggest opportunities for Lightyear Frontier’s early access sit with resource allocation and samey objectives—specifically for the story stuff. The crafting menus slowly onboard you by dripfeeding you new crafting patterns whenever you first find their components out in the world. Sometimes that dripfeed isn’t drippy enough, though. There were times when I had patterns that demanded resources I hadn’t found yet which is supposed to spur you into exploration and finding that resource, but that exploration frequently feels aimless. That sort of ‘craft whatever you find’ attitude just finds itself in contrast with major and obvious resource bottlenecks that exist in how the crafting is dished out to you, where sometimes lacking one particular item puts the entire crafting system on hold until you find it which could be frustrating. The other low point is a recurring artifact acquisition objective. Ancient ruins scattered across the island house little secrets you can collect, and their collection is usually married to some of the more lore and story based aspects of the Frontier. From a gameplay perspective, they’re tedious. You walk around and grab identical looking purple spheres, and what makes this mindless busywork less fun than the rest of the games mindless busywork, is that it’s not tied into your efficiency increasing and crafting ecosystem. It just feels a little divorced from the rest of the game, and that’s a shame because taking part in this objective gives little clues about the history of this land. [h2] In Conclusion [/h2] Lightyear Frontier sources inspiration from many different genres, and its level of completeness and polish is going to feel different depending on which of those genres you’re here for. As a creative sandbox and co-op farm sim it’s incredibly enjoyable. It’s got a comfortable no-stakes atmosphere, it’s got a beautiful look, and constantly reinforces friendly themes of Frontier exploration rather than Frontier subjugation. But there’s also an early version of a cozy collection driven adventure here with progression and a story and twists, and the irony is that this base experience was both bumpy and promising enough to warrant putting the game down: there’s an actual ‘play it and complete it’ video game in here that I didn't want to rob myself of playing in eighteen or so months. Therein lies the paradox of Lightyear Frontier and the paradox of early access. I think I recommend Lightyear Frontier, but I’m far more interested in the game it may become rather than the game it currently is—and my own personal tastes leave me in “optimistically follow” territory rather than wanting to eagerly play every update. It’s a game that’s already good but when it’s at the cusp of greatness, I’d rather wait. I just hope that greatness isn’t light years away. [quote]Follow our Curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/]Summit Reviews[/url], to see more high quality reviews regularly.[/quote]