Emberlands: Desktop Village

I feel bad not recommending this game, because it's not a bad game. I just don't find it fun. This is definitely a capital I Idle game, which sounds like a silly thing to say, but there's lots of idle games that are much more involved than this one. That's not a bad thing, just a matter of taste. I tend to play idle games more actively, which is probably part of the reason why I bounced off this one. The game really forces you to keep your village small, to the point where it feels like I can't experiment or try out new buildings because that would use up space and capacity. Capacity, which you have to spend to place (non-decorative) buildings, rapidly became a huge kneecap for me, especially with how expensive it gets so quickly. As I write this review, it will cost me 64.9k wood to get more capacity. My little helper can carry 55 wood in their backpack per trip. Ignoring the time it will take for them to fill up their backpack, they will need to take 1,180 trips to upgrade my capacity once. I have 9 (non-decorative) buildings placed down. That is absurd. At this point, gathering wood is pointless. Getting tickets and spinning the lottery wheel is the only thing worth focusing on. Though I saw the lottery wheel on the store page, I wasn't aware of just how dependent the game is on it. I don't really like RNG in games, so I usually don't engage with RNG-dependent mechanics. However, since the lottery is the only way to get buildings and upgrades, tickets are the only thing worth collecting. It's the only way I can even consider gaining more capacity. Because it's completely random what buildings and upgrades you will get (unless you spend 8 tickets to buy a single building, which is never worth it under any circumstance), it really doesn't feel like I'm making consistent progress, which is unusual for an idle game. Time spend waiting for a ticket may feel worthwhile or worthless depending on the result. Even getting new buildings often doesn't feel good, because I don't have the capacity to deviate from the most optimal strategy, and the most optimal building is usually the one that's already fully upgraded and I've built my island around. I'm just sitting there, waiting for a ticket, so I can spin the wheel, try to win a bunch of wood, and spend it on more capacity, so I can place more of the same buildings. There's a couple other gripes I have with the game (for example, I think you should unlock the meadow cliffs when you unlock the meadow ground, the puddle when you unlock the stream, all the street layouts at the same time, etc.) but they're not what's stopping me from having fun. I'd like some freedom from the capacity shackles, and some way to spend resources directly on the things I'm interested in (again, ignoring the absurd 8 ticket catalog price). I'm not against having a lottery system, but I want it to feel like a bonus instead of a roadblock. It's possible the game just isn't meant for a more active playstyle. It does encourage inefficiency on the store page, but there's a difference between encouraging inefficiency and making efficiency unfun. At first, I really enjoyed decorating while I waited, and built a huge island over time, but now it just feels empty. I've created all these spaces for buildings I want to place, but don't have the capacity to. I think the most fun way to play this game is to, essentially, treat it as a fancy screensaver. Create a tiny island you like to look at, and then ignore everything else. Watch your little helper walk around the screen, but don't worry about what they're doing. Don't even think about the numbers for a second. That's not how I like to play my games, but maybe someone else does.

I really like that you can build as little as you want, leave it completely running itself, and still progress! Not into sandbox building myself, but its very refreshing to have an idler actually be idle. I can just enjoy the sounds and music while I occasionally peek at my tiny, adorable, ineffecient village :D

I don't usually play / use desktop games, so I don't have many tools to compare it with others. But I bought it anyway because I liked the game it comes from, Into the Emberlands. Beyond looking nice, it doesn't consume as much as I feared, less than 400 megabytes of RAM, and between 6% and 20% of my 3060, depending on the graphics option. Other than that, it's a classic idler game, gathering resources, applying upgrades, and unlocking new parts for the village using tickets in a roulette wheel. Beyond this one, which I use to read books and other things “without stopping playing,” I recommend not overlooking the other Emberlands game. [quote] [i] Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44959158-Critiques-Sans-Frontiers/] our curator page [/url] to discover more worthy little games like this one. [/i] [/quote]

Incredible cozy game, that will be on your side when you are working. Seeing all the cute little Knacks hanging out on your second screen makes work just way more enjoyable :)

This is one of those games where the answer to, do I recommend this as an idle game is an easy yes, followed immediately by but. Overall rating: 4/5 I play a lot of idle games. Like, a slightly concerning amount. Over the past year alone I have played and 100%ed at least eight of them with a few unfortunate casualties abandoned along the way due to the dreaded time and resource inflation spiral. The good This game is really cute. Genuinely cute. The art is lovely, the colors are vibrant, and there is a surprising amount of visual variety. Everything feels polished and pleasant to look at while it quietly lives on your desktop. Mechanically, it works beautifully. The UI is clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate. I ran into zero technical issues, which already puts it ahead of a shocking number of games in the genre. The gameplay was clean. Watching the little Knack wander across the screen collecting resources while the village does its thing in the background was really satisfying. It feels alive without being distracting. The three loadouts are also a fantastic feature. Being able to test new builds without dismantling my best setup scratched that experimental itch perfectly. More idle games should steal this idea immediately. The mid The lottery system did not bother me at all. I know it has had some changes based on community feedback, and whatever they did seems to have landed in a good place. I never felt stuck or brutally punished by randomness. Resources flowed at a reasonable pace, especially when leaning into a maximum efficient playstyle. The bad When I say bad, please remember I still gave this a 4/5. This is more missed opportunity than rage uninstall. My main issue is that I found what felt like the perfect maximum efficiency configuration very quickly, and then that was it. Nothing I unlocked afterward meaningfully improved my setup. New tiers did not feel better, just different. Different visuals, similar or sometimes worse efficiency. Across biomes, I kept arriving at nearly identical builds because there simply were not stronger options to justify changing things up. In terms of raw output, I only found two builds that could consistently push into the 3m+ per second range. After that, experimentation felt less like discovery and more like rearranging furniture in the same room. I would have loved to see more progression in power rather than variation in appearance. Better tiles, more impactful synergies, or deeper puzzle like mechanics could have added so much. Imagine boosting tiles that could themselves be boosted, cascading effects, or more layered interactions. With the sheer variety of items already present, the system feels like it is begging for more complexity. It is entirely possible there are nuances I missed, but I am one achievement away from full completion, so I feel reasonably confident in my assessment. One more tiny negative. There are little voice lines the knacks say randomly and one of them mentioned stealing our credit card information. I know it was a joke but it rubbed me the wrong way. In this world where its something that happens so frequently i just didn't like it. Final thoughts This is a good idle game. It is charming, polished, and genuinely enjoyable to have running on your desktop. It just misses that extra spark that would have pushed it into perfect desktop idler territory for me. With a bit more depth in build diversity and progression, this could easily be a genre standout. As it is, it is still absolutely worth playing, especially if you appreciate relaxing, visually delightful idle experiences.

Just startet playing it but this is a beautiful little game with a great atmosphere and a well needed deceleration. It's worth it's price and I look forward to keep on playing it.

Randomally found this on Instagram and I enjoy it very much. The atmophere, the lovely artstyle and just some cozy tasks on your desktop. So far I can't stop playing it. Let's see how long it'll be motivating, but for now, I only can reccommend it.

Do not buy this game if you want to save your time and money. It’s extremely buggy, and it genuinely feels like no one is actively maintaining it. The tutorial is completely broken. You can’t read it or access it at all. I reported the issue to the developer and asked if there was a working tutorial somewhere because I actually wanted to play the game (it's so cutesy!). Their answer was for me to “experiment” and “discover” things on my own. When I asked if they planned to fix the tutorial, I never got a response. It really seems like they’re refusing to acknowledge the bug and instead insisting that the game is meant to be figured out blindly. LOL. If that’s the case, why have a tutorial in the first place? If you want a functional game or any kind of developer support, look elsewhere.

I can fullheartedly recommend this game! I don't play that much idle games and most that I did play didn't succeed in convincing me to play them like an >idle game<. I always just played idle games 'actively' in a couple of longer sessions until I was either "finished" or burned out. This game is the first one that actually works for me like it's probably intended to work. A game that sits next to me, does it's thing, and every so often there is something to do. Like a desktop aquarium. And whenever I want to I can be a bit more involved, send my little knack (mine is called Goober) around or reshape and decorate my cute little village. The artstyle is so incredibly appealing. Every tile, building or piece of landscape feels like it's breathing and alive. I also really enjoy the pacing. It's not too slow but after having this game active for 30 hours it's also not like there is nothing more to unlock. I don't even have unlocked or seen a quarter of it's content from what I can see. Awesome game <3

I wish I could give a neutral review, cause it's a visually very cute game. But my god, the grind to max all achievements is painful. With the game being fully hands off idle, there's basically nothing you can do to actually speed up any of the in-game processes. I don't mind fully idle games, but I generally expect them to be shorter experiences that are easier to complete and max achievements on. It's not fun waiting 50hrs for a totally idle game to be "finished". You're bottlenecked at every turn by extreme price jumps every time you upgrade your little guy or buy cubes to add more production plots. Right now it would cost me 1.5million wood to add 1 cube and it takes 2 cubes for the good plots, upgrading my guy's speed would cost 20billion ember. The only viable setups seems to be min-maxxing fields/autofields/farms and trolls/troll shamans, which leads to every farm being identical because none of the other objects produce nearly the same amount of ember even when fully maxxed. The little guy moves far too slow when it comes to gathering wood and the wood doesn't spawn in with enough frequency. That's with me having the little guy pretty upgraded. I wish the lottery wheel didn't waste "upgrade" stars on non-profitable plots. There's absolutely no point to the basic land plots being upgradeable other than to unlock some ugly garish gold variants. They don't improve production or add anything other than pissing you off because you wasted a lottery ticket. And it's either use the wheel of misfortune or spend 6-12 lottery tickets per upgrade, and you have a better shot with the wheel because at least you sometimes hit the random prize and get a bunch of resources or extra tickets. Overall, as someone who has played a bunch of idle games and is always looking for new ones, I can't fully recommend this one just because of how grindingly tedious it is while not offering any actual gameplay loop.