Drake Hollow

I hate to give this game a thumbs down but the more I played it the repetitiveness of it got to me. There is little variety in content; the only things are main story and grind/farm, that’s it, but I will get depth. To start off, the game is simple to master, it is an easy and a simple casual survival. All you got is a HP bar, you do got sleep, water, food and entertainment BUT for the drakes. What are the drakes? Well they are the little creatures you see in the screenshots. They have those 4 requirements as well as a HP bar, however I never got saw one getting low HP so I dunno what happens if that reaches 0. Like I said the game is easy, and it wasn’t hard to keep the drakes in check. More about drakes; they got 5 maturity stages, from kids to teens, adults, mature and elders, all start as kids when you find them on the map. How you find them? It is easy, you can just wander around from island to island OR find a lighthouse, this will highlight drakes on the map. So, what exactly use they have? Well, when you interact with them they give you Charms (which is a resource) and restore your HP, but you can also have HP restore items, also sometimes they will give you a random item as a gift. So, about the interaction, it might be cute, but I eventually hate it, mainly cuz you gotta wait for those little ♥♥♥♥♥ to finish up whatever they are doing, like eating, walking on the fences, drinking, using the entertainment facilities… so only after they finish their animations you will be given charms, HP, etc.. Interacting uses the E button, and the same button is used to interact with various camp facilities, so when you fill up the camp and try to interact with them then you will see frustration. Anyway now onto the camp itself. The building mechanic is simple, press C, scroll around and select your building, make sure to have enough resources and place it down. The limits of the camp is the island itself, but what I hated is the slots. Basically you got X slots to limit how many buildings (facilities) you can place down, this slot cap is determined by camp level, as well as unlocking different buildings. To increase camp level, you gotta mature the drakes or find new ones. Here is the problem, the slots are very limiting, so the more drakes you got, the more facilities you gotta build, but there are limits because of the slots, so you gotta destroy existing buildings to open slots, build better ones which you unlocked with camp lvl, and so on and on (PS. If you mature a drake they will also need more water, food, entertainment), and personally I hated this cycle, constantly with each camp lvl having to destroy some of my existing stuff only to build new ones, and re-arrange stuff around cuz you unlock things like electricity, water connections and other things you gotta accommodate. To put it simply, this gets tedious. But one thing I did liked is the fact that you can exploit the dumb enemy AI, all you gotta do is surround the camp with the cheapest fence and leave only a gap opened, the enemies will not even try to take the fence down and will just go to the gap, which you can crowd it with defense buildings, I used Bunkers and they just teared through the Raid waves. Raids are occasional enemy waves at your camp, not hard at all if you follow the fence tip. Things will get even easier if you automate the requirements for the drakes, like lobster farms for food, so you no longer need to run back and forward to give them food. Now for the enemies. At the end of the first chapter you pretty much seen them all. That’s it. I won’t give much spoilers but even the final boss of the last chapter is the same as another type of enemy you encounter before. And if I mentioned enemies I gotta talk about the combat. It is no fluid but not janky either, there are instances were you got the “wait for animation to finish b4 you can block/dodge” but with how easy the game gets, especially towards the end when I had vampire buff with a fast weapon I cannot complain. Buffs you get them from drakes, they are permanent but you can switch them around. Weapon types are only 3, 1-hand, 2-handed and ranged. Another minus is that ALL 1 handed weapons behave the same, and all 2-h the same, the only different ones are the ranged ones. Another aspect of the gameplay I wana touch on is the movement, the base movement, for me, it felt too slow, so grab yourself the +sprint move drake buff to make your life easier. But I did liked the fast travel system, it revolves around connecting way-points. The points, you connect them together to form lines which you use to grind on. They have a certain range, so you will end up covering the map with those points. Now for the story, there ain’t much to it. It is divided in 4 chapters, each corresponding to a season, you start in spring and end in winter. Like I said, there are no side stuff, just follow the main story, and ohh boy, it ain’t good, but it is simple. Basically you are the good guy isekaied to save the drakes. One of the chapters I really hated, all you gotta do is find a note and then jump to the next ch. Passing a chapter means the world will (I think it’s random) re-generate, old stuff will go, new ones will appear, so if you wana make the most use of it, make sure to rescue all drakes in ch. before moving to the next, some have neat buffs, everything else is just resources you can find in all chapters, don’t even bother unless you are starving for resources. I can ramble all day but I’ll end here. Now I did only played it as solo, so it might be fun as a co-op, but the repetitiveness and lack of content just didn’t do it for me, and I am sorry cuz it was enjoyable for about 1 hour, so the elements of a fun game are present. So if you end up playing it in co-op it could be fun but even so, only grab it during huge sales or bundles.