Recent reviews by irish_vampyre

I really enjoy this game, it's somewhat like an early Conan Exiles but with no monsters, just jungle creatures. The conscription methodology is a tad more ark-like, you knock them out and leave food in them until they are ready to join up. The more interesting aspect of the game is the way the mask works. You level your character, your mask, and your mask awareness. You can upgrade the mask to raise rate you gain individual skill proficiencies like mining, logging, cooking, etc... which raise as you use them and leveling the character itself gives you ability points to go towards things like strength, perception, agility and so on. The mask level doesn't seem to have too much of a function beyond locking you out of upgrades. The map is massive, unfortunately the ruins you explore for gems to put into the mask upgrade tree are very much cut and paste and extremely boring. The combat with other humans is more difficult and entertaining but it's very rinse and repeat as well. There's a lot of animals and the only real change from animal to animal is if you run into a very glitchy one like the anaconda who can shift into and out of attacks without enough visual cues so you have no idea when it's safe to attack.

My biggest annoyance though is something I only just learned. The character you make will be crippled with terrible level (proficiency) caps and no way to develop traits like your new tribesman. You will probably think, like I did, you simple have to upgrade the mask to open up those new caps and gain traits but nope. You basically have to abandon them, even though they just sit there when you possess your other tribesmen so you effectively lose a worker. You find a tribesman with skill caps you want, and traits you're after and just swap characters. You can, at some point, redesign their looks to suit you better but it, for me, is really rubbing me the wrong way. There's a lot of better ways to do this and none of them were used. It's slowly been making me not want to play the game since I learned that.

I like the game overall but why even bother letting me make a character and level it up only to discover that it's just a potato I am using to move on to taking over someone else? If they change that I'll probably spend all my time playing but if they leave it that way I am probably going to stop playing in the next couple of weeks and check back later only to completely drop the game. Hopefully this review will let you in on that fact early and you can detach yourself early and enjoy the game.

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The above was my review before playing the game even more and witnessing a lot of the worst aspects of the game.

My current opinion is that these devs aren't listening to their community, updating at a snails pace, and that they reached into the survival and companion game genres and borrowed a lot of the best features but did zero research on the most hated aspects and features of the games in question. They, subsequentially, made every single mistake possible and defend their bad choices regularly.

I now regret buying the game.

This is just one of the many issues facing the game but makes a very sincere point through the many ineptitudes foisted and implemented into the game:

At around level 20 you will gain access to dungeons which you will be able to gain the parts needed to build personal portals (It's a big map, portals are a fantastic add), despite having those pieces you will not have access to other materials needed until around level 30. Ok, annoying, but sure. You will finally be able to build the portal and place it... BUT not use it? Why? You need to defeat the 3rd boss, viable to defeat around levels 35-40. FINALLY you get to use the portals to get around the map right?! Yes! BUT no mounts, no items, no deployed tribesmen... You have to be alone and butt naked to fast travel to another base on the map.

So you get the portals that would be incredibly helpful at level 20 when you begin to really start getting into the map but can craft it until 30, can't use it until 40, then it's utility is complete garbage.

EVERY SINGLE SYSTEM, particularly the leveling, has this problem. The things you NEED come about 15-20 levels too late and then have major failings. The early game is very open and offers a lot of flexibility but only because you aren't capable of much. Once you get to a point to need versatility and functional options all of the utility and viability drop away to reveal a husk of an idea.

It's still early in the game's life, maybe these Devs will start making better decisions and offer a better future to the game but historically speaking with these types of games the changes come so late that they are attempting to resurrect the corpse of a game that HAD potential, not to strengthen and improve the game early enough in it's life to let it thrive.

I can no longer in good conscious recommend spending money on this game as money is the only thing anyone seems to understand anymore. I hope to be proven wrong but time and time again I've watched this play out and games fall into obscurity.

First, the game at it's heart is fantastic. It's missing something and it should have been a single player or coop game but the general feel of the game is fantastic. A lot of the characters are memorable and fun, The skills are fun to play with, the art style is very relaxed and very enjoyable. Unfortunately that's about the end of where I can praise it.

The issues I have with the game come down to 6 core problems:

1) This game WANTS to be a multiplayer/MMO.

It is very much NOT those things. In fact, the other players in the world really serve no other purpose than slowing down the servers. There's no cooperative gameplay. You can coordinate opportunities like setting down bait to lure in bugs to catch and you can ask about things in chat but otherwise the feature just serves to disappoint. If this were scaled down to singleplayer with the opportunity to play together with friends in coop, visiting one another's places and helping with quests, it may in fact have a good footing for the future. Right now, this is a core component of the game that completely fails to miss the mark.

2) There is NO challenge.

It's actually an entirely separate point I am going to start with here but the only real challenge is waiting, ENDLESSLY. Like literal hours and days, for simple resource enhancement. There is no combat unless you count chasing around animals that only run from you. There are no puzzles, no real secrets, the quests are all fetch quests, the relationships are fetch quests, you aren't asked for any skill, talent, or to discover mechanics and use them wisely, it's barely even a point and click. It's painful. We need places to go where things put us to a challenge. It could be minigames for cooking and resource gathering, it could be puzzles to gain access to loot and cool places to explore, it could be discovery by testing and accomplishment. It has none of those things.

3) Tedium is NOT content.

ONE MORE TIME, for the people in the offices with no real understanding of gaming! TEDIUM IS NOT CONTENT!!! EVER!!! To expand on the beginning of the last point... A lot of this game's "Challenge" comes from being VERY heavily time sunk. Takes like 8 hours to build a house you had to wait well over an hour to collect and create resources for, takes literal hours for things to grow, takes hours and hours for resources to be made, you can't stockpile well because even though items stack the NUMBER of items in your storage counts against you. Think you'll be smart and build more resource refineries? Wrong, there's a cap. Think you'll just gather some of someone's favorite gifts so you can build up that relationship? Wrong, they change weekly. Think you'll spend some time experimenting with what you can put INTO a refinery? WRONG AGAIN! You must spend all your time finding things to sell at abysmal prices to get money to buy new recipes. What? You thought the process of sticking ore into a box and waiting for hours to get a few refined metal was going to be the same from copper to iron? IT IS! But you can't figure THAT out without spending a bunch of money on recipes to do that! It's all just tedium. AND WHY do developers add in tedium like that? Because they lack content. If you have to wait and wait and wait for small things then later when they actually add the content you won't even have noticed that they wasted your time so they could stall until they implemented it. Except we do notice, we hate it, there's even a word most of us hate for it, The Grind. A little grind is to be expected, nothing comes for free and if it does it's JUST as boring but if you push the grind beyond a fair sink for gain then it's just disrespectful of the player(s) trust and loyalty. This game apparently thinks we're both stupid AND not worthy of a little crumb of respect because that's all it does is waste your time. By far, this and the lack of challenge are the reasons I don't really enjoy playing despite the potential bursting at the seams.

4) External Server Nonsense/Bugs and Glitches.

This is also an extention of a point, however this extends from point 1. There's a developer fad lately with wanting to hoard the playability. What do I mean? They want to treat games like MMOs and take away running the games they make locally. This game and Nightingale are prime examples at the moment. Neither really has a reason to do so as the multiplayer is VERY poorly implemented. What that DOES do however is leave you at the mercy of connecting to an external server for playability reliance. What to get on and play a little? Better look forward to those load times. Want to hop on in the middle of the night because you can't sleep? Better hope there's no server maintenance. Want to simply play the game? Well I really hope you enjoy the teleporting animals, NPCs, bugs, and the ENDLESS glitches where you can't throw things or get stuck in an animation because of server lag. There's no reason for the external server thing with games that aren't heavily reliant on multiplayer or MMO experiences. The state of things in Palia is abysmal. I really wish certain devs would learn the limitations of their game and really be honest about where those games belong. If this game was singleplayer and coop a lot of the minor issues dragging down the game would be gone nearly instantly. Yet, here we are.

5) The World is VERY small.

Because this game takes on a very simple and content-less form the maps are very small by comparison. You'll think that your reward for keeping playing is the ability to explore the world but you're wrong again. See how the reward carrot for being a good little rabbit is vanishing with each point? This one really explains itself. There's a good chunk of map to play with but when it's the only reward you get at all it's lack luster in an incredible way.

6) Storage.

We talked about this one previously but it is BY FAR the worst part of EVERY SINGLE SURVIVAL game. Ark FINALLY got it right, to a degree. But survival games are INCREDIBLY reliant on stockpiling... Nay, I say hoarding. This game is no different. Money is capped, items are capped, ammo takes up a LOT of space, drops come in large packs with and without qualities, some resources are going to require a MASSIVE dedication of time and allowance. The storage boxes each increase the stash which is shared, one box gives you access to everything and the refineries pull from it which is nice to FINALLY see someone getting that part right. However the part they get wrong is that the storage amount is so ridiculously low that if you DARE stockpile more than a couple resources then you'll just get a metaphorical kick to the face. But wait! Each chest raises the item cap though, right? Just build more chests! Oh, you silly, naive comrade... If only it were so. There's a storage box cap, you don't get to do what the game demands of you. Be punished, repeatedly for playing and be thankful.


In short, this game has serious potential but the devs are failing it. They probably won't listen, or listen far too late, and it'll ultimately fail. I hope I am wrong.

At this moment, 04/16/2024, even for the price of free, this game just isn't worth it.

So this is a wild ride, buckle up.

First and foremost we're going to get into my criticisms. These aren't insults, just feedback based on my gameplay.

1) Directionless. (HUGE)
So my biggest issue is that there's a bunch of light dialogue directions but besides some odd closeness with a girl that looks a lot younger than my character and a girl who hates me for... apparently just existing? There's not exactly a lot of heart in the story parts. It feels like playing an old school flash game in that way. I feel like the dialogue, story, and general emotion of the game could use some real love. I hope there more to come on this.

2) Only Potions... EVER... (important)
I get the idea of leaning into the potions for progression and simply getting things together. The issue is that the trap kiting and not having even basic tools to defend yourself with feels incredibly tedious. I don't recommend weapons or even tools however. I don't see any reason we can't work in a spell system where you have a very basic smash, push, or slash invocation and a mana bar which we then use potions to refill that bar and perhaps even use certain potions to temporarily give those basic invocations an element. It would allow for things like mining, defending yourself, and looking for solutions a little easier and open up paths for puzzles as well. What I can say though is that the system of potion only isn't really making me enthralled to the game, especially when I can only carry 10 of any one potion and I have to go all the way home to to the last random place I saw a cauldron because I accidentally use a potion type I needed.

3) The Cat. (minor)
I am finding the cat more of a hindrance than an ally at the moment. It has a very annoying habit of moving exactly to the spot I am trying to interact with, making me pet the cat and not grab the thing I want. I admit to attempting to kill the cat so far on several occasions out of frustration.

4) Grandma (minor)
This one sort of feeds into number one but especially grandma feels very estranged and critical. It's more like I am meeting a potionmaster that I had written and she was expecting me and while I am well received it is still with a critical eye. This relationship, I admit, is really jarring and off-putting for me.

5) Voice Acting (very minor)
There isn't even a sound to give you an idea of the speaking character's voice or feelings. There's no minor words said to give you a glimpse into the relationship, and obviously... The characters aren't voice acted at all. Even if it was just a little Hmm, or ahhhh. Maybe an, "I see..." occasionally when a character text walls me. It could offset the feeling of the text wall to a more jovial and appreciated conversation. If I didn't have it the world doesn't magically end tonight but one of the unsettling and less comfy aspects of this game is the silence.

6) Collision Boxes (somewhat important)
More than once I have gotten stuck because a weird thing I can't walk through or an enemy that's less than a 3rd of the space of a doorway blocks the entire thing somehow. This is a very simple not so fun aspect of the game.


Now that we're through that we have some things to consider: This is the Dev's first game ever and she loves this game. I believe that we'll see updates and patches to smooth out the rough edges and issues that arise. This for me is a powerful thing and at least matches the damage of the above criticisms. Here's a few things that aren't as expansive as they could be but are done very well:

1) The Potion Crafting System.
Each potion is made of 3 ingredients and those ingredients have an element assignment. When you use an ingredient it adds values to the overall mix of the potion and the potion type and strength are determined by the overall elemental contribution of the 3 ingredients. That mean we get to explore a little. Unfortunately there are only 4 elements so besides going high in certain elements there's not a ton of things to do to explore potions but explore the potions you, very much, can. Unfortunately this is a little punished by some of the mini side quests along the way giving you recipes you may already know. The great part, this could get a little expanded on and make for a fantastically intricate and fun system, it's already kind of fun.

2) Exploration.
The game highly encourages you to explore and revisit areas for materials. It even offers the occasional puzzle. The puzzles are cozy and so they aren't very difficult, which I feel at least SOME of them could get a little bump in challenge, however the game stays true to its relaxing roots.

3) Dying.
So dying sucks. Any ingredients you've picked up will drop unless you hit grandma's place to bank them. From that point on your inventory builds again and if you die before you hit home again, you lose it. Period. So, because that's a very punishing reality why do i say that the game does this well? Because the ingredients are abundant. You can find them everywhere and once you know where to look for a specific ingredient you can always go get more. You essentially lose a little bit of inventory progress. It's frustrating to lose your inventory but death deserves some form of significant penalty and this system is very harsh but you don't actual suffer all that much. Bank often, bank hard, mind your health.

Overall, in any other world, I would call the game very mediocre except that the developer of this game has a passion for this game and she's working very hard on fixing anything she's overlooked. Her enthusiasm and work ethic are really what has me sticking around and having a lot of hope for this game.

The biggest, major downfall of this game is the terrible external servers. Loading up can take well over 5 minutes and sometimes longer than 10. Loading between realms can take 1-13 minutes (so far). You're just playing and enjoying yourself? Nope, connection issues. No internet? In a storm? Bad connection, none for you. The recipes aren't offered as well as they should be, the grinding for materials can be absurd, the community, when you talk about it on the discord, are a bunch of toxic CODGamers who tell you to get over it and, "That's what video games are these days." They don't even have basic inventory icons for all of the items so you get a ridiculous number of items that are all these big stupid "N" stamps. A lot of the items are super heavy and the packs do allow for a fair bit after you get through the majority of the released game but you still end up in this 0.05 mile per hour walk anytime you have to move a lot of things around or, god forbid, you'd like to move. Speaking of moving... What to build a nice big home with decorations? Better give up on that, the build limits are so low that you'll run out 1/2 way to 3/4s the way through. There's also item limits. Placing items to beautify little corners and dress things up? Better watch out. This is to say nothing of the foliage growing up through the foundations of your home, the fog filling it up so even with tons of lights you still can't see anything, there's no paint or dye so no house or outfit beauty. Want to just chill in your favorite casual wear and have a friend over? Too bad, the enemies laser-lock onto you and destroy your home from underneath you while you lose all of your strength because for some reason this game went with the severely outdated gear score "leveling," and let's also be clear that having someone else in your realm tends to leave the little mini sever unstable. Let's also take a moment to remember that if you take your time farming movement speed materials for your backpack that you won't gain any benefit from it because for some stupid reason, even though we're in a game of magic and gear score leveling, all of the equipment only allows for certain attributes to apply to certain pieces, so F*** your farming and care that you put into that jacket, you can't have a strength buff on it! Your shoes? No! No weight benefit for you even though nothing tell you that, you just have to waste your materials which you cannot get back! Also, let's SPECIFICALLY leave out the base gear score for all of the new recipes you get so you could just be making something worthless because you have no guidance.


Not everything is bad. The story is pretty good and then exploration is fun (until you realize they are remixes of the same zones over and over), some of the puzzles can be fun, and even though the gear system went with micromanaging inventory items to build your equipment out of things with multipliers that may or may not matter it can make for magical moments when you get it right. You can press E to pick up individual pieces of loot or hold E to pick up all loose items in a radius around you! That's honestly amazing.

The game has potential but I am officially done making excuses for it. They've done about 90% of this game wrong, 7% of it standard and unremarkable, and 3% truly awesome innovations.

My suggestion, in this state, it'll be a complete waste of time and energy to play this game. I regret I put so much time in. The game is in no state for stable play, at all.

Cons:
- A bit buggy at times
- Limited Quality of Life content
- Limited scope even if it has broad capabilities
- Moderately bad control mapping and limited options to remap with

Pros:
- Gorgeous, extensive world
- Great character and creature design
- Nice attention to detail
- Fun game
- About 130 or so creatures to find and love
- Silly yet acknowledges the realities of a world like this
- As an early access release it is arguably more stable and complete than a lot of AAA titles these days
- A great future and promising updates ahead


So where does this leave us? Well my experience is that for all the "We hate AI influences and they basically copied pokemon!" talk the creator only used AI to generate art as an inspiration for things he made, meaning he'd generate a piece of AI art to get ideas. None of the creatures in the game are truly AI. Did he basically copy pokemon? Absolutely. Let's not pretend though that pokemon had a unique concept though. Digimon, Tamagatchi, and Pocket Creatures all spurred in the fascination with creatures that were bound to you. Pokemon made a more popularized variant but it's hardly original and for all the talk of Palworld basically copying pokemon designs you don't hear those voices speaking in criticism of the way pokemon stole it's designs from Dragon Quest. Frankly if Pokemon and Nintendo manage to shut down Palworld then I won't rest until the makers of Dragon Quest leave pokemon a smoldering ruin of hypocrisy and greed.

The simple truth is this: Palworld scratches an itch that the fans of pokemon have been craving for decades. It has similarities, yes, but Palworld is very much it's own thing. It acknowledges the dark side of a world of monsters with no baser animals. It communicates the day to day life of people in a world like this. Dare I even say that the game seems to have a touch of an isekai feels to it as well, the way the opening starts you off. Pokemon had an opportunity to make a game like this in their own niche, they didn't. They chose to just make 70 of exactly the same game and force feed it to us. Palworld had a different take on the concept and it has taken it's step into the world and we welcomed it with open arms. For me Pokemon died out nearly a decade ago. It had produced all it was ever going to be capable of and this new take on the genre is refreshing, fun, and filled to the brim with potential.

I already have over 200 hours on record and the game hasn't even been out 3 weeks yet. The cost of $30 is very, very fair. I highly recommend playing Palworld. It might have a feel of pokemon but it's very much what pokemon could never be.

The game is great in terms of lore and story the problem is that all the mechanics are counter intuitive and the big decisions you are going to make warn you what you will do in the same way if I told you you are going to cross a river if you choose this option but then I shoot you with a cannonball killing you and your parts are scattered on the other side of the river as a result.

If you don't mind a painful slog through the game repeatedly to get the actual playthrough you though you were choosing because the misleading options crashed your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd playthroughs into cliffs and volcanos then you'll love the game.

Watch a playthrough on youtube or read a guide. The reality is you're just along for a random ride while you do your best to decypher the insanity the devs think is common sense. It's not a terrible game but it's not something I thought I'd grow to hate either, but I do hate the game as a game. Based purely on the game itself I can't recommend paying more than $12 for this game. If the mechanics were improved, explained better, and the options to chose from gave you more idea of what your character was ACTUALLY going to do I'd say the game had $20-$30 of value, without that stay away unless there's a BIG sale on.

This is written on Christmas, 12/25/2022, and at this point I paid the winter sale price of $20. For the price of $20 this game is worthy of the cost. It's a survival-like. It's got elements of the sims to it and a creative mode feel to the world though you have to earn a lot on the way. As a survival game it falls flat, as a game with progression mechanics they are bare bones and almost unworthy of note. The characters are beautiful but have a few voice lines and all of their conversation is text which is a shame. All of the things it tries to be and provide end up a little lack luster and not quite there yet, some things are stunningly neglected.

HOWEVER. This is a game in progress. That's expected to some degree and though the game needs a lot of work and love, and in my opinion a great deal of mechanics and visuals reworking on the gaming side (as opposed to the Disney and aesthetics side) it's a very fun game that will fill you with nostalgia and memories that will make you want to turn on a Disney movie.

I'll be honest, if this WEREN'T a Disney game, if this game were new and in this state, I'd say wait and see where the game goes because it fails. However it IS a Disney game and they have a rich cast of characters with a history we know and love and so some of the ground they fail to establish and provide in the game is given a major bail out.

So if you are looking for a great survival game in a rich world of gameplay. Wait. It's not there yet. If you want a great survival game filled with nostalgia and wonder buy it, particularly on sale because it's not there yet and I don't think this is a $30 game even with the Disney armor. $20 is a VERY fair price as of the time of this review and it's SHOULD only get better from here.

If you're just a Disney obsessed 90's kid who wants to shout character names as you find them, you don;t need this review, you're just looking for affirmation of what you're going to do already so get the game, it'll give you that opportunity.

So here's the thing. This game is fun and pretty great but it's still VERY new and it shows. Adding to that the DLC practices here are very off-putting and I blame no one who will not support it. I'll get to why it's so bad in my review.

So we'll start with the good:

1) The game has been shown a lot of effort and work to building the world.

2) The areas are pretty cool and exploring and unlocking new areas is interesting and has some degree of story design.

3) You do have a companion in the form of a dog and it actually does helpful things.

4) There are a lot of NPCs in town that have their own personalities.

5) There is some degree of mystery to solve in each new wild area.

6) For so early on in its Early Access Release, the content's pretty good and fun and there's enough of it for a very decent start.

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Now, the critical and the bad and I am sad to say that there's going to be a lot, however do try to remember that this is early on. As of writing this I think we're 2 days out from the Early Access Release. So, take this with the knowledge that things should improve.

1) So let's get the big thing out of the way. The DLC is a MAJOR thorn in my side. It is, so far as I can tell, only cosmetic. The problem is I haven't seen ANY cosmetics in the game so far at 6 hours into a game that has about 10 hours of content so far. Your home is run down and very destroyed looking and you have the world's most crack-house relatable decorations to work with and there's only like 3 pieces. I haven't yet bought the house upgrade but frankly this is a major issue for me because it's not like the content isn't there, the dev simply decided to drop a wall of DLC that totals far more than the game to get it all. Seriously bad practices and it has me on the fence about how much I am going to recommend this game.

2) So to essentially house most of my further critique and negatives this is going to be the crux of the matter. This game takes a GREAT DEAL of inspiration from Stardew Valley. From the 2am pass-out clock, to the gift giving to NPCs (although there's only one item you CAN give as a gift) to raise friendship, to the monsters in the resource gathering zones, getting a set of starting tools that you need to upgrade... As you go through the game you'll get tons of Stardew vibes and it's not a surprise at all. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but the problem is this game doesn't live and breathe the way Stardew Valley does and the features it draws from are very poorly mimicked and just feel contrived.

3) The story feels very railroaded. As I go along I don't get any kind of choice in anything. The story is written precisely the way the dev wants and you don't get an option for dialogue, in events, you don't get any kind of input. You're just here to ride the rollercoaster, fun, highs and lows, interesting and exciting at times, but ultimately, if you tried playing this game a second time there'd be no point. Your experience will be EXACTLY the same.

4) There ARE a lot of NPCs in the town and they do have their own personalities. However, their script and events feel very cookie cutter. None of the characters really feel alive. They are there and things go on but they aren't a part of a living world. I expect this will change as time goes on but none of the characters make me yearn to know more about them. None of the characters seem to have much depth. One or two events to far show some characters as favorites who got a little more personal story to them but ultimately the characters just aren't very flesh out yet and it shows.

5) The quests, in my opinion mind you, get really gorram annoying VERY quickly. EVERYONE seems to want me to do 100,000 things for them and it's all getting the most annoying materials in the areas I can gather from. You can only get 3 of a certain item per day? Well expect to need like 50 of them JUST for quests that do NOT reward you with anything close to the effort you put in and sometimes no reward at all. I've said it a million times and I'll keep saying it: Tedium is NOT content. A grind that forces hours of work doesn't make your game have hours of content. The biggest problem with this aspect though is the game is literally about you being a potion maker and maybe 10% of your time and quests put any real focus onto it. You are reliant on people becoming ill for potions which removes them from the world until they recover and it's like once every few days that someone needs a potion at all with the few story exceptions and those aren't very exciting which leads well into point 6...

6) The potion making is boring. The game sets up a grid of boxes and each ingredient has a certain number of boxes in a shape (tetris shapes essentially) and you have to work through your ingredients to find shapes that fit your current grid. If you've ever seen someone play Cats Organized Neatly, I wouldn't be surprised if the potion making is a literal clone of that puzzle system with the exception that there's no life at all to it and while it can have the occasional challenging puzzle it's about as thrilling as writing an essay. There is no ingredient preparation or researching ingredients to discover properties. The potion making, the bread and butter of the game concept, is a dud. It needs some serious thought and effort put back into it.

7) Gathering ingredients is probably 45%-50% of the game and sadly that's another place that this game falls down the most at. There's no RNG to it at all. Everything from trees, to herbs, to monsters, all the way on down is static on the map. If you find 4 lavender bushes in your forest, that's all you'll have every single day, they grow every day, and they will ALWAYS be in exactly the same spot. Every. Single. Day. No gardens, no attempting to grow or search for them. Just a mindless slog into the wilderness to the same spots on the map to get the things you need. Find 3 monsters with a thing you want, well good news for you, they'll spawn in exactly the same place every day, forever. The one exception is to do with your dog once you max its loyalty meter and the nodes for it will appear in the same few places but so have slightly different placement. So RNG but still in a few VERY specific areas anyways.

8) Sort of revisiting this but a different aspect. Your house and clinic are complete garbage. No the decorations inside. Hell you only get to decorate your bedroom in the main house, there's no decorating in your house or clinic at all. I am talking about the outside though. Even when you pay for a carpenter's upgrade they still look like abandon buildings from the Russian hillsides. You can't work on them. The carpenter YOU PAY can't fix it. Maybe there's a town restoration quest at some point that fixes them up but honestly I loved how run down they looked early on. I thought I was being given a chance to make them look good again and have equipment made to improve conditions in my workshop, home, and clinic. That's not the case and it proved to fail me in a HUGE way.

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In summary: The game is fun, even now, but it needs a lot of work and if you're wondering if you should get it then I'd have to say yes, but with low expectations. If you're expecting Stardew Valley from this, you're going to be angry and refund it. If you're just expecting a fun game with a neat vibe and a future that could prove to compare to Stardew as it stands today but is currently just at its primordial ooze state, then this is a great game for you.

I am writing this review on 7/20/2022.

At this moment the game is a lot of fun but it's very basic. A lot of what you can do and what's available is very simplistic and many of the prestige upgrades are simply visual, not functional. There are some actual function upgrades involved with prestige 2 but not really above that as far as I can tell. You only get paid if you complete grants (mini-challenges), get loans, or completely rehab someone or else finish their sentence entirely. You get money at the beginning of the month sometimes but it's very inconsistent and as far as I can tell there's no way to chart it for a simple breakdown. Visuals are pretty good but the actions staff and prisoners can take are very limited. The biggest problem I have is that at random times, most often if you have speed turned up, the sprites get stuck doing things, trying to sit down, trying to get a tray of food, trying to drink from a water fountain, otherwise trying to interact with something... This causes them to just stand there doing nothing instead of filling needs and they lose happiness, eventually raising conflictivity, and none of it is your fault. It's just a bug that completely ruins the game. If you're unlucky it happens at a water fountain and then you have a queue of people losing happiness and raising the chances of them getting violent. It doesn't happen often unless you hit x3 speed which seems like an easy work around except it's not because the way you gain money and handle things is to get pieces in the mix via buying equipment or staff and then wait, so you're very likely to speed things up. No one gets into hyjinx you can watch or have conversations you can goof off to. There's no microdecisions you can participate in and no interpersonal relationships to watch grow. You sit there doing nothing until you have money again, so you max speed, then the bug hits and you begin having issues in your prison that you really can't fix very easily. Half the time you have to sell and rebuy whatever's causing the issue but a $750 piece of equipment for you to buy only sells for $90, there's no undo button.

Editing buildings to expand is a pain in the rear because you can't just "Build New Building" and attach it to an old structure to expand, nor can you demolish small parts of the building to get rid of unused space (because there's not telling what you're going to actually use at first so you have to go big to figure it out), for that matter you can't move rooms around inside once placed which all just makes creating interesting buildings very difficult and pointless to try.

This game has tons of potential to be an amazing sim game but they have a lot to iron out and they need to give it some serious TLC. Ultimately though they've already got DLC out so that's probably just that. I hope they do some work to improve the game and get rid of the game destroying bugs but right now I can't recommend it, at least not for this price ($30 USD at time of writing, plus $10 USD for the DLC).

If they update it and get things working well, add some fun options and features, iron out the bugs, I recommend this game entirely. As it is I'd only have paid $15 for the base and DLC had I known ahead of time. Wait for a serious sale.

It has its glitches and it bugs. It has problems and balancing issues. HOWEVER. This game is consistently fun and enthralling. For very nearly any idea you can dream up there's a way to accomplish it and for those few things that you can't, there's a mod for that. The community and game are bound to bring out the best and most creative parts of any player's mind. Yes the game can feel overwhelming at times and you definitely need to bring your thinking cap, but it's well worth it. Keen has difficulties at time synergizing with player desires, but it's constantly trying and working to improve the game experience.