A nice suprisingly cosy (despite your commiting ennumerable crimes and atrocities) game.

This game surprised me. It's a funny, lighthearted, joyful, and at times pretty challenging game about leading a little band of explorers around mysterious islands. There is a pretty impressive variety of encounters, including contact and trade with indigenous peoples, hunting, foraging, spelunking, looting, and resource management. As director of the expedition, you have the option of recruiting up to four NPC companions (human, animal...and otherwise!), each of which bring their own unique benefits and drawbacks to the team. There are a ton of unique weapons, equipment, accessories, etc. for your characters, plus various survival provisions you can choose to allocate resources for before you step off the boat for each excursion. Combat is standard turn-based fare - simple but fun. This is one area I think that could use some real polish: making combat look and sound better using legit animations and sound effects with a little more oomph.

All in all, this game was pure comfort food for me. It's cozy, charming, quirky, creative, and *fun*. Beware: hours can melt away while playing this game. It gave me serious Civ-esque "one more turn" syndrome!