Into the Emberlands

A very cute and cozy game with a very simple but engaging gameplay loop. I would like it more if the roguelike elements were a bit more central to the game but overall it was a ncie little game.

This feels kind of like kicking a puppy (I mean look at it, it's SO cute!) but having beat the game, I'm pretty sure I wasn't having fun for a lot of my time with it. My metric for a good game is that you enjoy most of your time with it and a bad game is one you can stop playing without any regrets. Into the Emberlands is jammed awkwardly between the two extremes in that I felt like I wanted to see it through but was mostly bored to mildly frustrated while playing. It's so close to a good game, but even at ten hours I kind of wish it was shorter. The pace is painfully slow once you get your feet under you, with no option to speed up movement. Death is punishing (you lose all your items AND a percentage of your permanent upgrades), but recovering from is never hard, it's just a slow, tedious process of building everything you had back. There's no incentive to take risks, so you play cautiously and once you're used to how each biome's resources are acquired, it's just a slog. There's no storage in your town besides throwing things on the ground, which you can't do with any tools, so inventory management is also aggravating. If you leave anything on the ground when you upgrade your town, it's gone. There's no incentive to work ahead/push to get late-game resources, because you can't use or store them until they're needed for a quest. You only need things from three of the four biomes, while the fourth is a wasteland with seemingly no point to it. Even the ending was anticlimactic, with the very end being what I assume was a DLC/Sequel tease that felt kind of like, "Oh you saved the world -- jk lol." If you're really patient and want something extremely low-key where you just see quest, do quest, repeat, you might enjoy this. For anybody else, unless they do some kind of quality of life update, I really can't recommend it.

Fun clicky game when I found myself too sleepy to use my keyboard.

I went into this game with 0 knowledge, searching for a cozy game. This 100% exceeded my expectations. At first it is a bit rough, and I struggled to find my footing, but once you expand your resources, it becomes extremely manageable. LOVED the art style, loved how much was included, can't wait to see more content! 10/10 cozy <3

Honestly, not my kind of game. I usually like cozy games and roguelites...but this game was not cozy, which is more of what I was expecting. I didn't find much joy in grinding resources to then potentially regenerate the world since I couldn't find a way to get another axe. What I did like about the game was the sound design and art style, but it wasn't enough to keep me playing.

Chill, cozy game. Took me 17 hours to beat. The graphics are pleasant. The gameplay is essentially point and click, with collecting, crafting, and trading. A great game for playing while listening to other music.

It is a small relaxing game, slightly buggy but you can easily finish it in a day or 2. I don't think there is much replayability because by the end of the first playthrough, you would have explored most of the biomes, characters and items. Bug 1 : Some achievements didn't pop, small issue but could trigger completionists. Bug 2 : After progressing quite deep into the game, somehow a certain resource did not spawn at all. I spent 10-15 minutes walking around but couldn't find it, got confused, check online and seems like there is a chance of such a thing occuring. The only way is to reset current progress and regenerate the map. I wanted to stop there and then because that means I have no idea if the bug will reoccur and reset my progress again. Decided to continue and the resource spawned properly, never encountering the issue again. As for the penalty from dying, I didn't die once because of all the other reviews making me super vigilant about it. I ended up reaching the max amount of steps by halfway through the game. I wish there is a QOL to tell you that you can't upgrade some attributes anymore but the option remains because you lose some if you die. If you grind a bit in the beginning, then you just snowball into having so much resources, the challenge later is to choose which item to drop. As what another reviewer highlighted, you can keep items on the ground only for the current quest, once you are ready to progress, remember to pick them all up. Overall, the game is too light to have any impact, if that is considered a downside. I don't feel like I played much of a game, even though it was okay while I was playing it.

tricky in its resource management , but the walking is way too slow tho it does give you a chance to change your mind steps-wise i guess. still its pretty dull , i expected more of a story when i played the demo years ago .