[h1]FoxMania: The Quest To Review All Fox Games On Steam![/h1]
[i]Conditions for inclusion:
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[*] -The player character must be consistently a fox; the fox must not be merely a skin or a character option
[*] -Must have 100% working Steam achievements
[*] -Must not be a visual novel
[/list][/i]
[b]Game #44: Fox Simulator[/b]
This early access game hasn't been updated since 2022, and that was only to add a "photo mode". Before that, the last real update was in 2020! (If I had a nickel for every time an early access fox game added a photo mode just before getting abandoned forever, I'd have two nickels, but it's still weird that it happened twice.)
So, this is a really basic "Don't Starve"-like game. You spawn as a fox in a forest, about 10 different kinds of animals randomly spawn in the world. It's not much of a "simulator". Predators don't chase other prey, or anything like that. You wander around and hunt the animals, eat berries, drink from weird water fountains in the forest floor, gain experience points, and try not to die. That's really it. The only overall "mission objectives" are to kill a certain number of every animal, which I'll admit was somewhat enjoyable.
For the first hours of the game, you'll just be hunting rabbits, about a hundred of them. Remember chasing MIPS the Rabbit in Super Mario 64? Imagine doing that for 1-2 straight hours. You have to make a choice between depositing each rabbit into your den, which gives EXP, and eating it, which restores your food meter. Weirdly, there's a leaderboard for number of small prey creatures deposited into the den, but I can't imagine a more pointless waste of time. Someone cared enough to hack in a top score of a hundred million.
Biting a rabbit is annoyingly precise, and the fox has a lot of trouble attacking animals right next to itself. You have to move away and turn around, and by that time the prey has probably bolted away. Thankfully, hitting level 4 makes you an adult fox with longer legs, and you get a major speed boost which makes hunting prey much easier, but it takes a big dose of patience to get there.
If you explore around, you might find a desert biome with its own set of creature spawns, and a mountain biome that's super bumpy and empty, which honestly feels like you're not supposed to be there.
You can get other animals to infight, like bears, which gives lots of food and sometimes lots of EXP, so that's pretty fun.
You can get a mate by finding another fox in the forest and sharing your food with them, and have a kid with them. There's no reason to do this except for the achievements, since they do nothing but follow you around everywhere, get in the middle of all your animal fights, and get themselves killed. Though, it is interesting that you can have multiple mates at once.
I'll admit, for this kind of abandoned early access game, it's the best one I've seen yet. Quite above average. I had some fun exploring the world, stat grinding, and figuring out how to tackle the harder animals. Unfortunately, it still gets a downvote for a whole list of complaints:
[list]
[*] -Bad optimization. Stutters and drops frames whenever you're near the desert. Stuttering can cause the mouse to suddenly aim in a random direction. Awful for when you're trying to fight something.
[*] -It's missing so many effects. No music, just some looping nature sounds. Hardly any animal sounds at all. Bears don't growl, birds don't squawk, nothing makes a sound when it attacks you. Everything's just so eerily silent.
[*] -Combat is just terrible and janky in too many ways to describe. You can miss biting enemies by running inside of them and biting through them. They can bite you back from several feet away. Many enemy attacking animations are so subtle you can barely see them. There was certainly an annoying skill curve in overcoming the jank.
[*] -The drinking mechanic is pointless. When the thirst meter is low, you find a water fountain in the forest and drink as many times as you want. It only becomes a problem if you try to explore outside of the forest for too long, since only the forest has the water fountains.
[*] -Lots of silly glitches. Animals often get stuck in a loop of infinitely attacking a corpse. Animals can spawn on top of you while you're in the middle of an animation. Dead animals can respawn dead, including your mates. Scorpions spawn underwater. I once cloned my child and got the clone stuck in my mouth, where I couldn't put it down and couldn't eat anything until I restarted the game.
[*] -Again... it starts with over an hour of just hunting rabbits. I hope you're [i]really[/i] bored, or smart enough to figure out how to get bears to infight.
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But hey, at least all the achievements work for this one! I got them all in about 4 hours, and had some silly mindless fun along the way.
Like the other Early Access fox games, I get the feeling this one's seen the last of its updates, but I'm glad I got to experience it. Recommended only for the most patient and hardcore of fox fans.
3.5 / 10.
