Eastshade

Literally the most relaxing game I've ever played (so far). If you enjoy completing all the side quests in open-world RPGs even if they don't involve combat, or if you're similar to me and like to take your time exploring the environment and noticing all the little details in a game, then you'll for sure enjoy Eastshade. The best way I can describe it is like Skyrim but only the side quests, and instead of fighting anything, it's solely getting to know interesting characters and chilling otherwise. It's a genuinely cozy game, and while some games in the "cozy" genre are actually quite grindy, you really don't have to sweat at all in this one. The fact that the creator of the game is also a former triple-A 3D environment artist really showcases how important the scenery itself is to the whole game; it's very tranquil. There were a few minor bugs but I encountered nothing game-breaking at all, mostly just slightly humorous glitches. From what I've looked into in the devblog, it was mentioned that the folks who worked on the game were unsure they took the right route by going with animal characters instead of humans as they're a bit uncanny looking due to being "not stylized enough". However, I think it adds character and uniqueness to the game tbh (although I would have enjoyed it regardless). I've also got to take a moment to appreciate the fact that all interactable characters are fully voice-acted, and they did a very good job with that as well! Great voice acting, great music, quests that don't feel repetitive, and memorable characters. An overall great hidden gem of a game that deserves way more attention. It's really an experience you'll remember for years, as the whole thing feels like you took a vacation to a strange yet beautiful island in some kind of fable or storybook.

Many people have pointed out that a game about a painter has little to do with the player actually painting. But it's so much more than that. I loved the quiet, slow exploration of this world and its people. Yes, you can eventually unlock fast travel or travel around faster with a bicycle. But even after unlocking those, the world was so beautiful and whimsical, I didn't want to go too fast. And I think that's the point: to slow down and notice the little things, to appreciate them, to savor them. And when my only quest was to leave Eastshade, I felt truly sad. Because, yes I could boot the game back up again and restart. But I'd never have the joy of experiencing this game for the first time again. So no, this game is not about actually putting color on a canvas. It's about experiencing the world through the eyes of an artist; Slowing down, experiencing beauty in little and big things in the world, and trying desperately to capture it, only to fall a little short because it's the experience that's matters.

I really wanted to love the game, but...I was expecting a visit to an inspiring peacful world, where society is based on different principles than hoarding wealth. I imagined an interesting ecosystem, where the inhabitants would create mutually beneficial webs and live in balance with the nature. Sadly, I've found a very static, shallow world, where NPC's feel like MMO quest givers. Also the premise of being a painter and your main resource being inspiration sounded great on paper, but didn't deliver IMHO. You don't paint in the game, you photograph.

Just want to get some issues I had out of the way. The game did crash and break a couple of times. The game has an auto save feature so usually it was ok, but at one point I lost about an hour of my first exploration of the Tiffmoor Bluffs as the game didn't auto save, although my re-exploration was faster since I knew what to do (I was more annoyed the auto-save never triggered despite doing multiple significant things). From that point i did manual saves more often. I also had times where I would get physically stuck (fixed by reload or teleport). Sometimes things would visually get stuck in weird ways, fixed by a restart. Also the games performance isn't too great, but I was sort of able to work around this. So there is some major jank tech wise and I think it's important to mention it, but I want to talk about the game itself now. To me this is a masterpiece game. I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Things I read were walking simulator and like Elder Scrolls, but without combat. I've never really gotten into a Elder Scrolls game and I'm not always a fan of walking sims. To me though, the game actually reminded me most of games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild; specifically the parts where you're exploring a town and solving problems for people and the parts where you're traveling the open world and come across stuff. These things are actually my favorite parts of these games, so having a game doing just that was cool. This is also essentially a photography game which I also really love. The main quest simply involves capturing 4 paintings for your mom, very similar to the "Captured Memories" quest in Breath of The Wild, one of my favorites. The way the game paces the exploration is great. Kind of like Zelda games, you start simple, stuck in a small town area letting you slowly get to grip with what the game is going to be like. In this game that was the town of Lyndow you start at. You are told of a big city and there's an open space in between, but for me, I just stuck to Lyndow until I felt I figured out everything there. Right off the bat I met a kid wanting to help her paint and the game smartly uses this as an opportunity to teach you about gathering resources, crafting canvases and making paintings. It felt natural and also helping out the kid felt nice. A nice bonus was that the kid mentioned a painting the inn keeper wanted. This wasn't marked as a quest, but I was curious to try it anyways and it actually worked. There is no handholding, the game has no ui indicators telling you what to do (minus some hints in the loading screen), and everything is naturally explained. The abandoned tower quest was my favorite here. The voice acting and dialogue is amazing. In games like this, sometimes you feel like you're doing a fetch quest or being told to go somewhere. The game almost never feels like this. The game doesn't have any major game altering choices, but because the characters are likable, you naturally want to do whatever pleases you most and the resulting dialogs themselves and the consequences to the people is what makes the various quest have some weight. I always felt engaged because it didn't feel like I was going through filler dialogue. As mentioned already, the game isn't handholdy so you also don't feel like the game is talking to you like you're an idiot (The Thief at Sinkwood Inn quest is a great example). Sometimes it was imperfect, usually with some dialogue not making sense after completing a quest, but it was more good than bad. In this game you are kind of slow. There is progression to how you can explore which feels nice. Stuff like being able to teleport, going through cold, getting a raft and some more. It's cool when you get some of these items and realize you can go to new places. The walk itself which you do a lot feels kind of slow, but I realized I didn't mind it. The game is beautiful. If you're able to, I recommend enhancing this aspect as much as possible. I used Windows Auto HDR for high contrast visuals and Nvidia Smooth Motion to get high fps (helped with the games performance not being great). Coming across and walking through Tiffmoor Bluffs was magical. Boating around the island felt so freeing. This game also knows when to kick in the music. Once again with Tiffmoor Bluffs, it plays this Ghibli style music and I felt like I was in some kind of forsaken land. I took tons of screenshots because of the beauty and the clean hud made that even easier. When I got to the end, I started feeling sentimental about my whole journey coming to an end, but I also felt fulfilled exploring the lovely, dense world. The game hit me hard right at the end too and it made the choices I made that much more worth it. I felt like I was leaving a home and friends. It would have been cool if you could go around and give one more farewell to everyone you met. Overall, this will be an experience for me to remember.

idk. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. But I think more than anything else, just the lack of a real main story is what kind of was disappointing in the end. Leaving Lyndow disappointed me because it was just a taste, just a hint of a story. It was like the first 30 min of a walking simulator. So I was expecting Eastshade to be a walking simulator but with more meat to it, more of a real story. Instead it's not really much like Leaving Lyndow at all. Leaving Lyndow was totally focused on the main character leaving lyndow and everyone's reactions and opinions to that. It hinted at a larger story, but it was just a short vignette. I like the idea of Eastshade, but in the end it felt like a bit of a chore, i think the quest design and writing was not quite up to the task of supporting an open-world walking simulator. I love walking simulators, often when I play a really good RPG I wish it were a walking simulator instead, since combat in games is so boring. So Eastshade should have been right up my alley, but for me it felt a little too directionless. I get that that was the point, but having a really strong main story thread that pulls you in would not have detracted from the relaxing open-ended atmosphere in any way, in my opinion. Also, a lot of quests felt very difficult without referring to an external guide, I'm also kind of stupid, so it's hard for me to put the pieces together. And a pet peeve of mine is when you get a quest in a game, but you don't yet have the tools needed to accomplish the quest, but there is no way for the player to know that. Like for example, if there's a quest to help find a dropped object, it seems like if I look around I should be able to find it, and it's not intuitive that I would need magic glasses or magic tea to be able to find a normal mundane dropped object. Anyway, that's just my opinion based on my impressions from the trailer vs what I experienced. At first I was really drawn in, but then after the honeymoon period it just didn't seem quite like what I was hoping. I would love to see more games like this, but with a bit more focus on the story itself. And then just some things that I might enjoy in a game like this would be things like, 3rd person, companion characters or party members that travel with you, and the player character having a voice. I'm not saying that Eastshade should have had those things, I'm saying that in the future it could be interesting to see more of these kind of adventure games and maybe some of them could be 3rd person, or have companions, and such. Eastshade was fine as a solitary first person game, my issue with Eastshade is mainly just the lack of a strong story to draw me in.

Very cozy, wholesome experience. Mostly a walking simulator through beautiful landscapes, with simple quests and a little bit of crafting. The only point of criticism that I have: You can't pet or interact with the cats.

i really want to like this game because conceptually, it sounds really nice. the environments are pretty, but i find every single character insufferable as well as a good chunk of the mechanics. maybe it's just not for me.

This is a lovely game with beautiful landscapes, plenty of wonderful, funny and touching interactions, and relaxing music. I really enjoyed it.