Recent reviews by AstralxMuffin

Started playing this game recently and im really loving it, sure its not perfect and the developer is providing a cute quirky game for free that honestly feels like it has so much potential because i think they know they might not be able to fix eveything, but honestly its very playable and worth checking out. Its been one of my first steamdeck games of choice and im slightly worried its going to be shorter than i would like, i like it so much! thank you for making this and i hope you make more games!

Barf rainbows! Eat creatures! force feed creatures into other creatures mouths! run about like your life depends on it! think FAST! move your hands faster........faster faster..FASTER FASTER FASTER ! warnning may cause zen like concentration, dry eyeballs and strained mouse hand. XD

Awesomely adorable fast paced puzzle game. well worth a try! cute graphics and designs, hilarious setup. much laughs to be had. Great way to quickly blow off some steam. great learning curve and teaching method through the campaign puzzles, advanced play accessible the further into the adventures you get, you will be surprised just how many tactics you can use by the end, lots of fun challanges and modes. Will not regret no matter how many hours you put in for your buck. Good fun must try.

Best puzzle game ever. Right up there with tetris.

Stardew Valley is where the heart lives.

Its like a very sweet western version of harvest moon and i've personally liked that. Its modernised its tropes and feels all that more familure and nostalgic in a way that applies to us in the west. It even has secrets, exploration and combat. it has clearly been inspired by games such as harvest moon, animal crossing and rune factory. If you like those games you will love this one. Well worth the price tag and more! The sound tracks pretty good to boot.

Its well worth getting friendly with the town people other wise its a very lonely life, farm life. They bring alot of character and charm to the game setting and will reward you for your efforts.

The combat doesnt have much depth, but its entertaining and compelling enough, less is more situation and makes crafting all the more relevant. Time is money.

The game provides two ways to play to completion, either live the humble life of a multiskilled farmer to complete the key objectives, or join and fund the evil joja corp so progression will be earnt through coin off the back of whatever specialisation you'd rather spend your time on. neat idea.

the game has a few secrets that can be a pleasant surprise too ;) theres more than meets the eye about this place...
this is no ordinary farming simulator.

The only negative things i have to say about this game are a few minor things like some difficulties using a gamepad and the lack of a full top view of your farm or ability to set placements for buildings whilest still on the farm screen (perhaps having to just go to robin to pay) as it can be frustrating at times. Perhaps even a reduced building cost if youve demolished a building or a simple 'move building' option and fee. Farms change as they grow. Many end up regretting their placements of things. Only thing really.
The game is GREAT fun, play how you want.

They recently added the option of starting your game on different farm designs, which wasnt needed but a welcome change for players. The makers continued support of the community has been amazing and hes gone above and beyond.

I cannot believe this game is still in development. It feels very complete. It is a MASSIVE TIMESINK. Micromanagement addicts beware this game will grip you tightly and do bad things to you.

This game is really well made. The UI is great and getting better. The AI is pretty well done, the priority system is pretty great as is for automating things and i love it comes with a switchable manul mode to deepen the priority setup.

The difficulty settings are excelent. Want to just focus on construction and reaching space or colonizing and trading? theres a mode for that, and it still allows you to encounter random good and low level bad events, want some raid drama still? just accept a prompt to help nearby refugees running from hostiles. Since the update i feel iv seen a higher number of related characters which has been entertaining. I like that during an established game you can change the difficulty settings when your ready to take on more challenges. I love how customisable this experience is.

This can be for anyone. Really new comer friendly. Entertaining events, character psychology issues and random self driven story. Great resource survival - colony builder and really great combat gameplay, lots of precision, lots of tactics, great controls, pleasant graphic style. Cant wait to see how it improves further, seems already done.

I absolutely love this game. Absolutely. Love. This. Game. It has wonderfully simple and beautiful quality aesthetics, a vibrant thriving modding community, micromanagment heaven and pleanty of tough achievements to keep you busy when you get into late game. You will forget to sleep. Timesink warnning.

Start a village in the beautiful landscape and help them hoard for winter, survive disease, and natural disasters, lay out lovely fishing/etc villages, stock up for trade opportunities, look after their happyness, try to reach a stable population rate. Try to fill the map or find out how large your population can get before all hell breaks loose! Rinse and repeat

The vannila game is a wonderful base game with lots of charm, it throws players right in with little guidance and is at its most difficult for new players at the start and new players first disaster event encounters. Once you find yourself a working stratergy and know whats possible and/or give into looking online for tips its easy breezy from then out, aside from difficult to manage population numbers which would be easier to maintain and plan for with adequate UI.

UI is something that could have been improved on its not bad but its not perfect, and a deeper level of stats available for the seasoned players would have been nice too.

Theres a level of complexity to the game hidden with little explanation, some call those things bugs or bad AI, but i read about them online as actual depth to the behaviour of the citizens and part of the stratergy game. The lack of explanation for these traits can cause unexpected problems for players who dont know to plan for them or understand them. Again the game could benefit from explaining things to players who dont want to discover everything for themselves after 50 hours of play.

Sadly its playtime really depends on the modding community heavily, it lacks little direction other than survival and once youve mastered that in the vanilla game and have tired in started new villages in different maps for the sake of eyecandy towns you find yourself looking around for "more". The modding community has done a fantastic job creating different scenario setups, themes and decorative packs, and interesting trade and commerce opportunities that really breaths new life into the game. Sadly and not unexptecedly adding mods disables the achievements so i recomend giving the achievement hunting a go before you let yourself loose interest and delve into the world of mods, because its unappealing to turn them off once your used to them.

I do agree with other commenters that the game feels unfinished in hindsight of playing it modded. But in no way let that affect the enjoyment of the vanilla game, perhaps buy at sale price.

TL;DR
Its setting is stunning raural beauty, early settler civilisation style, simple objectives, simple gameplay, lacks difficulty once you undertstand the game, could do with better begginer tips, vanilla game doesnt have long gameplay life but really enjoyable, Modding community have essentialy 'finished' the game and keep it alive long into the 300 hours. Lots of seasonal based micromanagement :D

Perhaps get just under 100 hours AT BEST out of base unmodded game from even an avid player.

Bought it for the chess: No, i thought this would be a fun take on chess but "this is not how chess works" is an understatment. You cannot pull off the kind of manuvers u can in a real game of chess here. The chess mechanics are limited. The queen is rediculously over powered and the AI knows this, because of this added chance to defend it means she can decimate the board with no consequences as she always wins if attacked by lesser peices, especialy pawns. Tactics are rendered pointless because of the games favouring for higher powered peices regardless of attacking and defending positions. The battle arena is too small. The king has been rendered COMPLETELY useless even more so let alone the controls which are rather clumsy, it is terrible for keyboard and only just tolerable with a gamepad. i found the animations to be rather anoyingly cartoonish but perhaps it was a design decision. The textures also arent that great but for cheap fun at a distant its passable, the texture quality is especialy noticable in the tutorial which is fairly usless as it only shows you how to use a knight. There really needs to be a mode where you can just turn it into plain old chess as this addition really turns it into a completely different game, and not in the good way, as well as adding more move sets.

edit: In hindsight, I think possibly the type of people who have enjoyed this game may have played it soley for the combat with just the aesthetic "theme of chess", cant be arsed to reinstall this to review on that basis. Was very much blindsighted by 'what i bought it for', but i cant see myself taking back my comments on the controls and aesthetic quality.

TL;DR

Bad controls, bad animations, limited combat, limited chess game, sub par graphics...
Players just coming for a quick bash and a lol may be entertained.
Heavily recommend trying the demo before considering a purchase.