Hollow Island

Great indie game that came a long way, I think the devs are still releasing content for it. I can only describe it as a mix of little farming, town building but more action that other stardew-like games. The bosses were interesting to fight and trying different tactics to find the best and fastest way to defeat them was highly enjoyable. There are no skills in the game but you can make a "build" by crafting different armors and weapons, so you can be a magic user if you craft robes and wands, melee with swords and heavy armor and ranger with xbows, muskets and hides. Its very versatile and super fun to find your own playstyle! The farming/town building aspect of the game is a little below average but still entertaining, expect this title to deliver more actinon and exploring than comfy farming and NPC love shanenigans. I loved the dashing aspect of the game while shooting at things, it was super fun. You can 100% the game in a week or two, exploring the whole island will make the time go super fast. Dont get overwhelmed by the early game it can be confusing but the forum and the guides will help! Its a good title and a very good value for their asking price, I really hope you support the devs on this one! I'll give Hollow Island 8 sneks out of 10 albino gerbils.

Eight minutes, that's gotta be a record. I bounced off for two reasons. First, the jank. The animations are incredibly stiff, the attack cancels if you stop holding the button in the middle of the attack (never saw that one before), and even simple things like talking to NPCs and opening doors just feel... wrong. I ended up talking to people multiple times without realising it and messed up one dialogue by selecting an item. Mind, this happened in the first 8 minutes of the game. And two? There's nothing enticing here. It looks incredibly drab, which is forgivable if there's some kind of interesting hook or such. Sadly, there isn't. There's no ease-in, no lore, no story to pique your interest, just two rambling old men. If even such simple things are unappealing, I don't want to even see the more involved stuff.

Ролевая игра с крафтом, садоводством и открытым миром. Интересно погулять и по выносить монстров с этого игрового света. Игра не требовательна и цена адекватная (со скидкой всего 66р). Управление простое, но к бою надо приноровиться. При атаке, нужно удерживать зажатие кнопки мышки. При быстром нажатии, все удары будут уходить в молоко, даже если вы стоите вплотную к монстру

Too amateurish: controls feel clunky, the level design is very bad (sometimes forcing you to backtrack on long distances), stamina regenerates too slowly and the combat is not fun at all with weird controls (you have to hold the attack key to make an attack, if you release it too early, it will cancel the attack). When you build roads or a farm or water, the game doesn't autotile (using the proper graphics to show rounded corners, T-junctions...). Instead it forces you to select each tile on a tileset. So let's say you build a twisted road, you can't just dig the ground and let the game decides where to display a straight line or a rounded part, you have to manually do it, I've never seen this in a single game, it feels like I'm doing the job of the game. Also, I'm not sure of what I'm supposed to do. The game description says no hand holding but that shouldn't mean "no clear goal(s)". Let's take Dark Souls as an exemple, it doesn't hold your hand but it does tell you to ring some bells and a vague idea of where they're at, or Valheim that simply tells you "kill those bosses, here's where the first one is, good luck". I didn't play for long but was already feeling like I was grinding. It takes forever to get the resources to build anything and your character is very slow. Another exemple of the lack of polish is the mouse cursor, it's an arrow that points to the upper-left corner, but actually, the bit that does point is the bottom-left corner, very annoying with planting crops. It breaks my heart to bash an indie game like this one as it seems a lot of work went behind it. Devs: polish your game, rework your combat and give us clear goal(s) (it doesn't need to be hand-holding and can be a very vague one but players usually need something to work towards and feel like their actions make them progress in the game).

Very relaxing, despite active combat without pause. In terms of all the genres represented, ARPG, Base Building, Crafting, Fishing etc, consider this game a light snack of all of them. Just a delicious little taster, a break from the autistic heavy and complex alternatives, the kind of food you eat on a hot day. For those looking for intense hardcore progression, you wont find it here, but for those looking for a game that doesnt rush you at all, allowing you to take on all challenges at your own pace with no time gating or schedules besides those you yourself make, have a look. Its pretty good :)

This game is honestly a steal for $10. It has a lot going for it and you can tell the developer put heart into it. Not for everyone but if you like quaint little adventures I can't recommend this game enough.

This feels like a really cheap game where some programming student decided to try to make his own version of Stardew Valley. I played for less than 2 hours before I entered a cave and it had no exit at all. I couldn't walk back out the way I came in because there was no exit there and I couldn't dig through any of the walls because my pick was not strong enough. I tried to dig every piece of wall in the whole cave, dug up every rock in the cave except a few that my pick was not strong enough to dig, did everything possible and there was no way to leave. I paid two dollars for this and I feel like that was too much. This is the kind of game you get for free on itch.io.

By no means Hollow Island is a perfect game. But given the price, and the very generous demo, I think it's safe to say that it's a good purchase. Give the demo a go, you can easily decide for yourself, no strings attached. Some features are refreshingly casual, you can repaint tiles for free with a shovel, later unlock the same option with carpets, for no resources and only for cosmetic effect. My little pixel artist heart really cherished all the decorating options there. At the same time it's painstakingly slow, you can't just use it as a paintbrush, you need to oh so very slooowly pull it through your screen, otherwise it will miss a lot of tiles. This duality is everywhere in the game: nice, refreshing (yet familiar) features, however some aspects of them falls short or unbalanced. No need to water crops, however after cooking some meals and stocking up on them, the crops are not really good for anything, but unlocking NPCs, which would be a fun reason to keep farming, but even then you just buy a few animals because each is worth dozens of crops in food value, so crops after early game are not worth bothering with, except for aesthetics. Each NPC you recruit needs a food value in your town, but there is a lack of villagers so you'll unlock all measly 6 very fast, and their wares are not really worth it anyways. They also hang around the village pillar thing, instead of their houses, so ALL of your maps/houses will be empty and lifeless, while all 4 merchants will stand on the same spot. But all of them buy all your stuff, so if you could put them all around in your settlements, it could be amazing. Not enough furniture and no need to decorate NPC homes is a thing. It's a missed opportunity. The exploration, the 3 "classes" (aka clothing types) and the bosses in the game are something I can't complain about. There are again not too many of them, but damn some are really hard to beat, it was fun. I just wish there were more like the late game mechanical boss, with a proper dungeon and door opening/dungeon mechanics. The drops from the bosses will be used for a long time, so they feel rewarding, something even AAA titles forget is important these days. Creating outposts so you can respawn next to a boss lair, or your mine, so you can keep gathering that next ore is also fun, but again I wish it wasn't just a tent in a cave, or an empty single house with a few plants and animals, but some furntiure, decor and NPCs as well. But after you decorated your 2nd house there is not much will to decorate your 3rd and 7th, you just drop a bed in there to respawn, maybe a chest, done. And eventually a teleport. Sometimes I was a bit annoyed by the lack of features or unbalanced things. But overall I really had a lot of fun (I'm at 17 hours and 100% achievements) for the price of a movie ticket basically.