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Snooze Cruise posted:I'm really surprised by how charmed I am of it, though maybe I wouldn't be as much if I wasn't comparing it to portia lol. I was the same way minus playing Portia. It took me five or six hours before I got sucked in but I've been playing it almost every day since it hit ps5. Even characters I started off not liking really grew on me.
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Dec 3, 2023 06:03
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Snooze Cruise posted:Sandrock is pretty good so far! I am surprised the amount of people who recommend turning down the speed, I feel like I get a ton done in a day, but maybe I am just used to these types of games? Feels way more lenient than Rune Factory, it only really felt tight before I got the sleep upgrade but I picked that up in like no time at all. It's one of the steepest improvements between sequels I've seen yeah. I bounced off Portia hard and Sandrock grabbed me near instantly. It's just so much more charmingly written and well designed. It's also one of the few of these games where I'm having real difficulty trying to decide who to romance because there's so many good options. Venti, Nia, Unsuur and Mi-An are all frontrunners but then Elsie and Grace got character development so they're good too. And part of me wants to romance that dork Burgess just cause of how consistently funny every scene he's in has been. Not to mention that disaster Catori.
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Dec 3, 2023 07:34
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Sandrock also does something unique I don't remember seeing in any other game. There are a couple of characters that take the initiative in asking you to be their SO.
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Dec 3, 2023 07:38
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Jack Trades posted:Sandrock also does something unique I don't remember seeing in any other game. Yeah that blindsided me and is cool. Also also just cause a character is romanceable doesn't mean they stick around. No interface spoilers in this game. The above complaint about Coral Island lacking interpersonal conflict and relationships REALLY does not apply to Sandrock.
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Dec 3, 2023 07:47
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A Sometimes Food posted:It's one of the steepest improvements between sequels I've seen yeah. I bounced off Portia hard and Sandrock grabbed me near instantly. It's just so much more charmingly written and well designed. The game also makes you feel like absolute dogshit if you flirt with someone and then reject them when they confess their feelings to you. Oh my god Venti I’m sorry, but my heart belongs to Mi-an
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Dec 3, 2023 08:50
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I'm your pwimawy demogwaphic!
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Dec 3, 2023 11:44
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Jack Trades posted:There are a couple of characters that take the initiative in asking you to be their SO. It took me a while to recover from Unsuur's method of doing so. It was weirdly unsettling going around his house with that commentary. He's great (we are not marble eaters!) and it's really funny in retrospect though.
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Dec 3, 2023 15:57
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Okay, so trip report after a fair bit of time in Coral Island, and overall I'm very meh on it. On the one hand: it does all of the Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon stuff, you build a farm and upgrade a house and have coops and barns and raise animals and save the town from a nefarious Evil Corporation that wants to move in. If you've played Stardew Valley to death and want to try something that has the same formula with some stuff modified so it feels new, this exists. On the other hand: when I say same fomula, I really mean the same formula. All the same mechanics as Stardew Valley - hoe ground, plant seeds, water ground, upgrade tools by going into a mine for four colors of ore (orange/white/yellow/purple, but here they're "bronze" "silver" "gold" and "osmium") which you take to a blacksmith and pay money and lose the tool for a day or two and now the watering covers 1x3 or 3x3 and the pickaxes knock out rocks in fewer hits and yadda yadda yadda. Sure, sure, it's the "formula" but when you get a broken english note in your mailbox telling you to come to a place in the woods where an animal is running a shop selling you hats and furniture based upon which achievements you've unlocked... it feels less like a "formula" and more like a "lift and shift". Then the festival has everyone contributing food to a communal stew where the important politician from some larger political body is showing up to judge the community on how it tastes based upon what you personally threw in. And there's a community board where people post requests for things you can grow or find. It makes a lot of it feel like a very extensive mod rather than a separate game. Now, it does have its own mechanics and direction - it has undersea diving and in theory an entire undersea town and community to meet, but the way you get to that town is by using your scythe to clear out trash the way you do grass on your farm, and that is the only thing you do and you have to do it a lot so I've only just gotten to the first cutscene where the merfolk are introduced as existing. And the Jumino-equivalent in this game seem to be a very Polynesian/Indonesian set of spirits who have their own thing going on, but again, you have to get halfway through the 160 levels of the mines before they actually start doing things. And the mines are boring in a very literal sense because they've copied the mines from Stardew Valley except they've reduced the number of enemies to about 4 per level and massively reduced the "break the right rock to find the hole to the next level" or just increased the number of rocks or both because you'll be lucky to get through 15 levels of the mines on a full day, and that day is spent clicking a lot of loving rocks to break them. The thing that really kills me, though, is just how bland and poor the writing is. The only characters that come across as having distinct personalities are the people who are clearly jerks; 75% of the characters are just very undefined nice people who don't really have opinions or direction and just ask the player a lot of questions or comment on the farm so that there's nothing they reveal about themselves. There's a lot to criticize about Stardew Valley's writing, but the characters in it at least felt fleshed out and distinct in a way that these characters don't. I have no idea what Coral Island is trying to say about its characters. There was a "friendship" cutscene I had with the mayor where I saw him carrying a box in the rain, I offered to help, he gave it to me, he opened an umbrella over us both, he thanked me for helping, and then the scene was over. I've seen two cutscenes where the last person to speak says some half-joke and then everyone around them laughs as the camera rolls upwards. These scenes seem like a lot of work to set up, and it's just weird how uninteresting and slightly disconnected they are! Anyways. If you're the type of Stardew Valley player who never interacts with the town, it's probably fine. Otherwise, I really think this game is just not worth it, and you should look at Roots of Pacha if you need a Stardew-Valley-but-different game.
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Dec 6, 2023 05:47
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For the third time I've reached Spring 13 in Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town and lost interest. RIP. What a bland game.
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Dec 6, 2023 08:28
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skeleton warrior posted:Anyways. If you're the type of Stardew Valley player who never interacts with the town, it's probably fine. Otherwise, I really think this game is just not worth it, and you should look at Roots of Pacha if you need a Stardew-Valley-but-different game. Thanks for writing this up! I think I'll maybe try it when it's in a bundle. I think you will enjoy My Time at Sandrock as a palate cleanser.
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Dec 6, 2023 11:24
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Megazver posted:Thanks for writing this up! I think I'll maybe try it when it's in a bundle. I absolutely will not, because I enjoyed it as a precursor!  Yeah, the complete contrast between the well-written, distinctive, interesting, and changing characters in Sandrock is just an absolute turnaround from the bland "please project your wants onto this blank romance template" characters of Coral Island and maybe I'd be overall happier if I'd done them in the other order, but at least I still have Spirittea to jump into, and all buzz about that one is good. But thank you for the recommendation, I do very much appreciate it! 
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Dec 6, 2023 13:36
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Can you play Dikum purely co-op? And generally how is it / how is it for a co-op experience? I heard comparisons to Animal Crossing and Stardew.
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Dec 21, 2023 20:32
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Craftopia is $14.99 anyone give it a shot? The reviews are mostly positive on steam
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Dec 23, 2023 20:09
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Cross posting from a different thread that I didn't realize I was in and thought it was this one: Sandrock is on sale this week, finally got it. This game does so many things right and I Love it. I can't believe it took me so long to find out crafting from storage was available by default.
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Dec 25, 2023 16:12
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Umbreon posted:Cross posting from a different thread that I didn't realize I was in and thought it was this one: There's also a dedicated Sandrock thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3879828&pagenumber=53#lastpost But yeah, it's great.
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Dec 25, 2023 16:16
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I tried to play Lego Fortnite and I think it would be fun but going from the Sandrock inventory/storage back to absolutely no conveniences was too much. It's a shame because building huge houses out of Legos with friends is pretty fun
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Dec 25, 2023 18:23
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I'm 13 hours into Lemon Cake and I don't recommend it. Why? It's very grindy, and the loop isn't that fun. It looks like: 1. Do preliminary cooking and hoard all the finished products you can on the (very limited) number of surfaces. 2. Open restaurant. 3. While the restaurant is open, run frantically between refiring ovens, baking, customers, cleaning, and (in the later game) tending the garden that produces ingredients. 4. The restaurant closes. You get your money for the day, which can be saved over several days to buy features that make the restaurant less grindy: seven extra storage surfaces (bought individually), wood that burns longer, better brushes for your livestock, sprinklers for the garden. After you have enough recipes, you twiddle the menu to get the highest profit balanced against the smallest number of ingredients. 5. You go to sleep. I'm not enjoying myself. You probably would, if you like race-against-time games like Cooking Mama.
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Dec 30, 2023 19:41
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There is a lot of devs who try to make cozy games about cooking, but cooking never actually struck me as very cozy. Like, have you read Kitchen Confidential or watched any Gordon Ramsey? That can be entertaining, but it's not *cozy*. Cooking minigames are usually just fiddly busywork and games where you're a professional chef are usually pretty stressful.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:10
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meanwhile touhou mystias izakaya is getting a 5th dlc in the future.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:16
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Yeah, I've never been able to enjoy service games that aren't Recettear clones, the real-time pressure elements make them feel way too much like actual stressful work that I would want to be paid for.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:17
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Tree Reformat posted:Yeah, I've never been able to enjoy service games that aren't Recettear clones, the real-time pressure elements make them feel way too much like actual stressful work that I would want to be paid for. How's Travellers Rest if anyone has played it? It's something I was considering getting on the sale but yeah, I'm concerned the real time elements will make it too stressful for a cozy game. Honestly I'd prefer a Stardew Valley type where all you had to worry about was stamina/energy/time units/etc instead of having to run around on a real time clock too, if anyone has suggestions.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:20
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Bremen posted:How's Travellers Rest if anyone has played it? It's something I was considering getting on the sale but yeah, I'm concerned the real time elements will make it too stressful for a cozy game. Littlewood isn't really as similar to Stardew as it seems on the surface and it's a little simplistic for my tastes, but time passes based on a stamina bar that's only used up when you take an action and I've enjoyed it as a very chill, before bed kind of game.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:23
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Megazver posted:There is a lot of devs who try to make cozy games about cooking, but cooking never actually struck me as very cozy. Like, have you read Kitchen Confidential or watched any Gordon Ramsey? That can be entertaining, but it's not *cozy*.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:30
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Megazver posted:There is a lot of devs who try to make cozy games about cooking, but cooking never actually struck me as very cozy. Like, have you read Kitchen Confidential or watched any Gordon Ramsey? That can be entertaining, but it's not *cozy*. the professional chef industry is a twisting warren of absolute psychopathy this is why good restaurant games feature preternatural savants who can just skip most of the actual cooking work, like Mystia's Izakaya, or do it all for you, like Dave the Diver Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Dec 30, 2023 |
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Dec 30, 2023 20:39
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Megazver posted:There is a lot of devs who try to make cozy games about cooking, but cooking never actually struck me as very cozy. Like, have you read Kitchen Confidential or watched any Gordon Ramsey? That can be entertaining, but it's not *cozy*. that's being a professional chef, which is an entirely different world of hell! which is why most chef-as-a-job games are full of stress and time pressure home cooking is chill as heck imo though, but the problem with video game cooking is it can't simulate how wonderful your house smells 
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Dec 30, 2023 20:42
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Real farming isn't very cozy either
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Dec 31, 2023 01:45
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As I come to the end of Spirittea, I'm starting to think that it's a little too long in the tooth. There's just a little too much of everything and I feel like if they cut a few things the devs could have focused a bit more on deepening various aspects. For example: there are too many characters. You could easily cut four or five and you would barely notice - in fact, some of the characters are seasonal and I didn't even realise they weren't living in town anymore because they were so forgettable. Four entire characters are teachers at the local school, which is an incredible bit of redundancy. There are no actual child characters, the kids at school are just npcs you can't interact with. The school itself is this massive building with nothing going on in it except that's where the teachers live during the day, and you can't hang out with them because they're working. Plus there's a principal and a school nurse who work in there too. Idk all in all it feels like a total waste because there's no characterisation that comes from them being teachers, and no events relating to the school, and you don't know any kids who are in their classes so there's no relationships there. Characters in this only receive really limited characterisation so I feel like cutting some might have given more room to expand on the ones who are actually interesting. Eg, please get rid of the character who calls me "new kid" and only talks about streaming. She's boring. It just feels like there's a lot of mechanics that are in there because it's a "Stardew-like" when they don't really work that well. Seasonal bugs and fish are an annoyance more than anything because nothing else really gets affected by the seasons. Cooking is a massive chore because you have to buy 90% of the ingredients from the shop (which has a random assortment of ingredients every day so you might have to wait a week for the pork you need) rather than gathering them or farming them. You can plant seeds but I only found that out by googling how to get a certain plant because I am 20 hours in and it is never tutorialised. Then when you have the ingredients you have to tediously look at the recipe and pick out the ingredients and choose the right method rather than any kind of intuitive UI. I still really like it overall, but there's just a few things that have started to grate on me after playing for a while. The spirit quests have all been really fun and inventive. They're obviously where all the best writing and gameplay is concentrated, and I wish you did get more spirit interaction after you unlocked them.
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Dec 31, 2023 02:32
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woke kaczynski posted:Littlewood isn't really as similar to Stardew as it seems on the surface and it's a little simplistic for my tastes, but time passes based on a stamina bar that's only used up when you take an action and I've enjoyed it as a very chill, before bed kind of game.
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Dec 31, 2023 12:33
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I think it was discussed a while back, but did Craftopia turn out to be fun? It's 40% off and though Satisfactory has it's claws in me pretty deep, this game did look pretty fun.
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Dec 31, 2023 21:28
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Saxophone posted:I think it was discussed a while back, but did Craftopia turn out to be fun? It's 40% off and though Satisfactory has it's claws in me pretty deep, this game did look pretty fun. A few updates have come out since I last played it, but my experience has been that while the game does have some enjoyment in it, that wears off quick due to jank. The models and icons in the game are a hodgepodge of cheap asset store art with varying styles, there is little rhyme or reason to progression, no concept of balance, etc. And the automation aspect is cumbersome, building factories is painful for little reward. There are tons of recipes for things that seem to have no purpose. Honestly I feel like the game lacks any cohesive vision, so I got bored quick.
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Dec 31, 2023 23:03
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archangelwar posted:Honestly I feel like the game lacks any cohesive vision, so I got bored quick. quote:We have imagined what would happen when we combine our favorite video games altogether. I guess this goes back to me being weary about games that promise too much, thanks to Spore which convinced it me it was gonna be the last sim/rpg hybrid id ever need.
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Jan 1, 2024 04:03
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Arsenic Lupin posted:On the other hand, a game where you occasionally sneaked out the back and did blow with the dishwashers would be a novel addition to the market. are you thinking what i'm thinking? that's right: crossover of overcooked and disco elysium. let's go baby
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Jan 5, 2024 23:14
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Very late but I've played a bit of Traveller's Rest. It's very cute but ends up feeling a bit time-pressurey, without there actually *being* time pressure, if that makes sense. The way some people feel Stardew to be a bit tense, I find TR to be tense. Can't say why. Maybe just too many balls to keep in the air.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:03
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Traveller's Rest feels very time pressured. Not only does it want you to spend a lot of time waiting tables and tending bar, time doesn't pause while gathering or crafting outdoors or visiting the neighbors. I still like it, but it's surprisingly hectic.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:08
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With coop it would be perfect, except the way it totally disrupts one person playing when the other has a menu open kind of kills a very menu heavy game.
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Jan 6, 2024 08:13
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Just finished what will end up being my last session of Forager. It's cute and looks like it has a pretty wide selection of skills. I got up to 25/64~, but man, the grind is real around this part. I'm not sure if I didn't go down the right path or something, but I'm just running all over my islands, smacking trees and after a full circuit, I really don't feel like I've accomplished much. Add in the fact that one of my bottlenecks is hides and apparently there really isn't any good way to farm them until you're even further along specific upgrade paths or you've stumbled across certain map sections. Mid-game feels a bit too much of a slog for me to continue on, especially since everything is so random, that when I clear out a section, by the time I circle back to it instead of going: "yay, more resources." it turns into "sigh, now I have to clear it all out again."
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Jan 6, 2024 23:35
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i started coral island and tbh what skeleton warrior has said is correct but i'm also greatly enjoying the game because i don't interact with the village unless i have to. the only reason i talk to villagers when i see them is because i am compelled to Raise The Level. i'd also played stardew valley to death and had been looking for something new that was similar so that is a bonus for me; the setting and more asian/polynesian elements also appeal to me more because well... i love stardew but it is pretty white. but i just want to chill and grow crops, so the story/cutscenes/writing isn't that important to me. i also really enjoy the various types of male bodies in the game because i'm so used to things being the opposite. (i will also add that i had been playing sandrock but stopped because while i enjoy it, combat is a big part of that game and i just want to farm and chill - it is a good game though, and i definitely plan to return.) however even though i enjoy coral island, i'm definitely noticing bugs here and there. i'm lucky in that the game hasn't crashed on me, since when trying to look up fixes it seems people are struggling with more serious errors and crashes, but i also have a pretty beefy computer. it's also very grindy if you're not into that, but i just put on youtube or a video like a documentary that i can have playing while i just go about my in game business. i also have adhd though so that's probably why. my other issue is that i feel the game was rushed for a christmas release, because although i just recently bought it, i'd been keeping my eye on it through EA and the .5 build update was in september right before announcing the full launch in december. i'm definitely wondering if there had been behind the scenes pressure to release before christmas. however if coral island isn't really clicking and you're looking for a stardew valley-like game, i definitely second the recommendation for roots of pacha.
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Jan 7, 2024 00:20
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tildes posted:With coop it would be perfect, except the way it totally disrupts one person playing when the other has a menu open kind of kills a very menu heavy game. They claim they fixed that in Traveller's rest, but we haven't tried it again since. Splash Attack posted:however if coral island isn't really clicking and you're looking for a stardew valley-like game, i definitely second the recommendation for roots of pacha. Roots of Pacha is a fine game, but it is, sadly, not a farming game like SV. Farming is the least efficient way to make money, or pretty much anything else, that I found in Roots of Pacha. Despite the game telling you that your job in the tribe is to farm, all other activities make more money for the same time investment, frequently several times as much as what you'd make doing farming. Farming is something you have to unlock, so it takes a while to figure this out. Yes, I was annoyed when I discovered this. Especially since farming tools unlike slowly so I gave it a good long try to see if farming ever became a reasonable way of progressing and it never does. At least the dancing social interactions are fun the first time. LLSix fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 07:17
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Eh, farming is really not that bad, but you do absolutely have to process the food first. It also starts out kinda crappy, but half the point is that you're slowly breeding better versions of each crop to make them more and more profitable over time.
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Jan 7, 2024 07:33
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The thing about Coral Island is it's just not finished yet. There's a lot they're planning to add this year, so I've only played a few hours of it while I wait on them to release that stuff. 1.0 is far from fully featured and was clearly rushed out of EA. It's a bummer because it's pretty chill to play on steam deck.
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Jan 7, 2024 07:35
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