Very cute, but very short and simple game. My only real complaint (aside from minor issues with the UX design) is that I wish there was more to it; you're given the option to stick around after completing all of the quests (sort of an "endless mode", if you will) but unfortunately there just isn't much reason to. None of the NPCs will talk to you once you've wrapped up their quests and they all remain more or less static in their spots. There's nothing else to spend leaves on (except for destroying and rebuilding various plants/etc) and the fog cannot be pushed back any further so there's nothing else to explore. Since all of the fish can be caught regardless of conditions (and there are no conditions - weather, time, or otherwise - to speak of), and you've likely already filled out your field guides, there's just....no real reason to stay. If, even setting aside everything else, the NPCs at least chatted with you a little bit, or seemed to be moving around and doing things, or there were additional endgame means of improving or customizing the islands, it would make it feel more rewarding to stick around. As is it feels like you're just sort of stuck, stalling on ending the game. UX/UI issues - aside from, as mentioned by others, the fact that sometimes there are unintended interactions (dismounting while trying to fish being one of the main ones), it is often very unclear what is happening or has happened or what needs to be done. Not being able to choose which items to give to Luna to sell is not ideal, especially when it means you may accidentally sell the things you still need for your field guides. Fortunately the game does not auto-sell anything you need for quests, but it's not actually clear that it's doing that, so I was rather stressed during the first half of my play through trying to catch the right amount of the correct type of fish I needed before my inventory filled up and I needed to sell things to get rid of them. On which note, the turn-in system for quests is also convoluted and confusing. In your journal/quest log it indicates the number of items needed in two ways--the amount you have turned in, and the amount you have in your inventory that have not yet been turned in (displayed like: (+1) 0/2 ). This is particularly confusing because the dialogue provided when you go to the appropriate NPC to try and do a partial turn-in is "Return to me when you have everything I need", with no indication that them item(s) have been removed from your inventory. It reads like a rejection, so for a while I assumed I just couldn't turn things in until I had the total amount required on hand at once. Tweaking the dialogue to be a little more user-friendly and flavourful, such as "Great! A few more, please?" would solve this issue while also allowing each individual NPC's personality to shine through, as currently they all say the same thing. The quest indicator in the top right corner is also not super helpful for the amount of quests you have running at a single time; only a few of them can display at once and it can get confusing and/or tedious fast having to re-open your journal just to poke through it to try and find what you're supposed to be doing at any one time. It also isn't super clear at times what some things mean. Sam gives you the ability to "fly between islands" but zero instruction for how to do so or what that even meant. I started looking around for some kind of new structure, and when there was none, figured I must have just run into a bug/loose end or somehow hadn't done something right. It wasn't until I accidentally stepped off one of the islands while trying to harvest something that i discovered the balloon abilities at all--and this was after finishing all of the quests to completely upgrade them. The fact that you can remove plants/etc is also unclear at first; i ended up restarting my game initially because I wanted to set things up less haphazardly and didn't realize I could actually destroy things for a 50% refund. It's also incredibly unclear at first what the leaf indicators in the planting menu mean in terms of plant output vs. cost--and for fish, there doesn't seem to be any kind of indicator whatsoever for how much currency each type of fish can net you, except for the briefest of moments when you're selling it before they vanish, which is hard to read and harder to remember. It would be nice if the fish in your inventory indicated how much they could be sold for--and if the fishing hole lists actually gave the name of the fish instead of just the cropped icon. All that aside....The game is also in a sort of strange limbo between "idle game" and "active game". It's trying to be both and succeeding at neither very well as a result. It's kind of silly that folks are complaining about having to wait upwards of half an hour (?!) for their lumber to tick up, when it took me a matter of minutes--I just spammed the 999 leaf bird nests on every island. Which, I had more than enough leaves to be able to afford that because after setting up a few of my islands with a significant amount of water goods and leaving capybara houses on each one, I had a constant, steady stream of passive leaf income throughout the entire game that meant there was zero challenge for anything. The most time consuming thing was just having to wait for/manually pick the various fruits needed for certain quests, because the keas won't harvest anything you need for a quest (which is helpful, but also--UX wise--not indicated and had me deleting kea nests early on because I was worried about them sniping things I needed). This is, however, again part of why the endgame didn't feel particularly satisfying; there was nothing really to work towards or for and I had thousands of lumber and leaves piling up for no real reason or use. Having some additional structures or tools you could work towards with those currencies would be really nice and add a feeling of accomplishment to the end of the game. Nonetheless, I do recommend this game as a cute little one-shot. Being that it's been out for 4 years I doubt the devs are going to return to this to do more work, but it would be nice if they chose to flesh it out further at some point, and I think it'd be well worth it. The art is beautiful, the world building is compelling, the characters are charming, and it's a gem of an indie game with a lot of potential. For $8, the amount of content is more than fair, to be clear. But with a little more meat on the bone it could be worth a lot more. P.S. for anyone who hates stardew fishing or just finds the fishing in this game frustrating....just switch to "relaxing" mode...it's fine, it's fun, it's mildly challenging without being annoying, if all you want is a cozy relaxing game where you get to do stuff and don't want to get bogged down with the fishing mechanics, the mode is there, and it's really nice that the devs included it. Anyone warning people away from playing this game solely because of the "Challenging" fishing mechanics really needs to go touch grass.
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