Hollow Island

Hasn't been updated for over a year. The devs have blatantly abandoned it after pocketing the money of any of us that bought into their promises. -edit 22/5/2023 The dev has released a demo and has provided a couple of fixes. So ...try before you buy.

if you're looking for a new exploration/crafting/mining thing, this is pretty good overall. I would've liked a casual difficulty without any death penalty (see below), and since it wasn't immediately obvious to me: hold lmb to attack and use tools, clicking does nothing. and mine the monoliths after grabbing the stat upgrade. there's a steam guide with all the info you need but I recommend going in blind and figuring most of it out yourself, more fun that way. pros: - difficulty settings - rebindable controls - separate volumes, resolutions, brightness, contrast, saturation - save and exit anytime, periodical autosave plus when leaving an area - no hunger/thirst - no tool/gear durability - instant crafting, hold or shift-click for more - decent default inventory size, mostly big stacks - storage can be renamed, auto-stack, loot all, stack-splitting - mining, chopping wood and combat don't deplete stamina - don't have to sleep but can skip nights and restore hp and stamina - simple farming (no need to water, just plant and wait) - non-annoying fishing (click, wait, click again) - can have your own settlement for extra income, animals, etc. - great exploration, lots of hidden stuff to find - the entire surface can be rid of enemies with copies of an item, then toggled at will - saves are easy to edit to bypass some tedium (see below) - has generous demo - $10 is a good price - nice music cons: - easy mode still takes away all money on death (medium also items, hard equipped gear as well, they despawn after about a day) - text display with annoying typewriter effect and sound (separate keys to make it appear instantly and continue, holding mouse only speeds it up) - combat is not great and enemy spawns can get out of hand fast - enemy ai is questionable but I like cheese, so it's not all bad - saving during a boss fight resets their health next time, as I learned to my cost - you respawn with very little hp and very slow regen, sleep doesn't necessarily restore it all either - health potions have a long-ass cooldown - sprinting is unnoticable, dash is faster, both use slowly recharging stamina and dash has an annoying sound - there's a pause menu but opening inventory, crafting, etc. doesn't pause the game - can't craft from chests - there's an anti-freeze potion and a rare item drop but nothing against fire - anti-poison is only via a rare drop or a helmet from boss drops, breaking the set bonus if used with other armor pieces - money is really hard to come by and everything costs a fortune - some cooked food sells for nothing (1 herring: 40 copper, soup made from 3 herring and a bottle: 1 copper) - tokens and settlement stuff could be explained better, they're way too resource-heavy to experiment freely - merchant items often only show names and the ridiculous price, can't tell what they do and if they're worth it (e.g. the fire and poison talismans for 2.5 platina are ♥♥♥♥) bugs (mostly cons): - fire acid only removed obstacles visually once - got stuck in ice every time after freezing to death but could move around normally after respawning - sometimes I got a speed boost after a respawn, no complaints about that - speed shenanigans happened during the final boss too, finished the fight with 1100%(!) movement somehow - food/potion buffs keep ticking away while the game is paused (cooldowns after healing don't) - the settlement info screen stops the player character and nothing else for some reason despite the lengthy cons list, it's a fun little thing when it's not frustrating (some enemies were a pain for a while). after about 20 hours I edited the save to skip hours of grinding/waiting for cash and some resources. the game's long enough as it is, plenty of content, and I wanted to try the settlement stuff, which turned out to be really neat. also checked out the expensive special items from npcs, most of which I wouldn't have use for anyway.

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.

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

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.

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 :)

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).

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.

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.

The animations are incredibly badly done. Why the attack cancels if you stop holding the button in the middle of the attack bugs me. Simple things like talking to NPCs and opening doors are just weird and clunky. Not for me.