[b]My Playtime:[/b] 12.6h (unlocked everything in the chest)
[h1]Intro[/h1]
[i]Autumn[/i] is an idle game that teaches you how to relax. You'll wait throughout the seasons until the trees shed their leaves and collect currencies to either expand your territory or buy collectibles.
[b]Pros:[/b]
- A lot of collectibles
[b]Cons:[/b]
- Confusing tutorial
- Idle time between actions is too long
- Game-crashing bug when you want to buy Quotes
[b]Specs[/b]
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
[h1]Should you buy this game?[/h1]
[i]For an idle game, it has too much action. For a non-idle game, it has too much idle time.[/i]
[hr][/hr]
[h1]In-Depth Review[/h1]
[h3]Visuals[/h3]
[i]Autumn[/i]'s visual was made to somehow look like a drawing, with a dominant color of green and a shade of sun. The background changes every time you start a new game, all having the same style as the other assets. They look pleasant to the eye, although the UI might look cheap sometimes.
[h3]The Game[/h3]
[i]Autumn[/i] is a game of relaxation, a game of self-discovery. It'll force you to relax and empty your mind with the relaxing music. At first, you might be angry—or that's how it was for me—since there is nothing you can do in the game. This is the first step that you need to take to get used to the game. Just like how addicts have a hard time stopping, you'll get something similar to a withdrawal symptom of doing a lot of things. And then you can start to relax, appreciating what the game has to offer with the relaxing music.
It's a game where you need to wait. Trees are spawned randomly in the area, and you can plant more to fill the screen. Seasons change, which are denoted by the circle on the top-left, which also shows how long you need to wait until it goes to the red color—the autumn season. In [i]Autumn[/i], falling leaves—which will only happen during autumn season—will turn into currency, in which you can use to expand your territory, use certain items, or spend it into the shop which will allow you to plant more trees, buy items that has a certain power, or buy some texts for you to read.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=745833357
The territory that you played in is limited. However, the game doesn't save what is happening on the screen—it only saves the collectibles that you have. This means that you don't have to worry about running out of space to plant trees, especially since dead trees don't disappear unless you use a certain item. Yes, trees can die. Each of them has a certain number of years to live, and once it reaches that amount, it will wither and turn into a dead tree. They serve as nothing but an obstacle to planting more trees.
Among all the relaxations, the game also has some minigames. There are 2-3 rocks spawned in each playthrough, where you can click to spawn the minigames that will reward you with some collectibles. It's the easiest way to get them, although the pricey ones will only unlock after you solve the difficult ones. There are three types of minigames: a Tower of Hanoi-like minigame, a sliding puzzle, and a unique one where you need to match the color on the screen based on the given template. However, all minigames except the first one tend to be buggy—the sliding puzzle can be unsolvable at times, and there are even some occasions where the game doesn't grant the collectible after you finish them. I ended up exhausting the Tower of Hanoi-like minigame to finish my collections.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=744334736
Collectibles are plenty. Besides the type of trees and some unique items, three types of collectibles will help with your relaxation. Quotes will give a short quote of someone else, Inspirations will give a story, while Teachings will give you a wall of text of Hinduism teachings related to relaxation. You can obtain them either by purchasing them with your currency or by doing the minigames. However, buying them will be expensive since the price will increase every time you buy one.
Despite all of that, the game seems to struggle in explaining how it works. There are a lot of signposts that tell you what to do when you start the game for the first time, but it can be hard to understand what they mean.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=816183262
[i]Autumn[/i] starts from what looks like a relaxing game into one without identity. At first, you'll question what to do in this game since it forces you to do nothing but wait. For me, it means that I should just idle it until I get some currency, where I usually leave the game unattended longer than its intended time. However, at this point, the numerous collectibles that I get annoy me, to the point that I don't bother to read them all due to their number and the wall of text. Moreover, since you need to restart the game several times to gather the item through the minigames effectively and solve them, the game ends up losing its identity as an idle game since you need to invest a lot of time for that.
[b]Length and Difficulty[/b]
I finished the game in 12.6h after unlocking all collectibles. It isn't hard to beat since you just need to restart a new game and idle in that spot to get some currencies, although you need to do several restarts to find a good starting position. Plus, the game revolves around grinding and waiting—you'll need to wait and collect a lot of money to buy the collectibles, and there are a lot to collect.
[b]Issues[/b]
At some point, buying Quotes crashes the game. The game is also buggy on some mechanics; sometimes, you'll get a reward upon completing minigames, and sometimes you don't. Lastly, planting trees has a chance for it not to spawn even though you already planted it.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
[i]Autumn[/i] is a game of self-discovery, a game of relaxation. Except that it asks you to wait for too long. All of it might suggest that this is an idle game in disguise, except that it doesn't have a lot of things that you can do while waiting for the autumn season to come. I know, the game is supposed to help you relax, but there are surely other ways you can achieve this rather than implementing it like this. At this point, the game becomes something that lacks an identity between an idle game and a non-idle game, with nothing positive to offer except for the relaxing music.
