Lovely Weather We're Having

This game changes insignificant things about a small isometric world based on your local weather readings. Maybe if you're uncontrollably curious about extremely minor aesthetic details, you'll love this game. Every time you boot this game up will feel like Christmas morning. For the rest of us, you could get a better experience by just going outside and talking to your weird neighbor in real life.

It's basically a "what's up" simulator where you poke around a virtual neighborhood of silly sort-of-people for maybe 5-10 minutes and then you're done. The magic is everything they say, and the appearance of the environment, changes a bit along with the weather. So if you check in at night, or on a hot day, or when it's snowing, you'll find different people or people will talk about different stuff. You don't play it in long bursts, you just sort of come by once a day to see what's up. Helps that the game is very charming visually and has some fun, silly dialog. I show off some of the stuff you can do in my video of the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2AYwtlV76Q

This game just doesn't have enough content. You can walk about and not really interact meaningfully with anything. You can't interact with your dog that follows you about. There's a bicycle which you can walk into, some rocks and things which make interesting noises when you walk on them. A hilltop to walk up, so you can walk along rooftops. It doesn't lead you anywhere interesting. There are NPCs who will say about 2 lines of dialogue to you. Then you turn around and talk to them again, and they say something else. But in total, it seemed like there were about 4 things they would say, each. Maybe it was due to the weather that they hardly had anything interesting to say. It was sunny and cloudy, early evening. One NPC gave me an idea of something I could do... and I did try.... but I don't think it's really possible to jump. All you can do is walk off things. The in-game map is very small. After 8 minutes I felt like I had exhausted all the content in this game. After 19 minutes, I felt certain of it, so I resorted to the super secret cheat code. In the instruction manual (YES! Games still have those!) there is a super-secret code that lets you toggle debug things. I would not normally touch such a thing, but... to be honest, it makes the game a lot better. It lets you zoom the camera out, and walk faster. You can also ruin the "exploratory" experience and alter the temperature, time of day, and weather, to see how the game changes, meet different NPCs, see a few different things to run into. After 26 minutes I felt like I'd seen everything the game has to offer. I really wanted to like this game. It has the potential to be something like a micro Animal Crossing - but without the hurtfully judgemental neighbours. (Or the fashion, or collecting, or money... but mostly this was the potential I thought this game could offer). But.... it all just feels too shallow for me. It needs more content. All this game did was make me want to play Noby Noby Boy on PS3, which has a very similar art style, and is also more-or-less goal-free... but has more interesting content to see every time you come to play it (though no dialogue), and gameplay which involves eating and stretching, which are two of my favourite pastimes.

I think most of the negative reviews are a little over the top and maybe went in with the wrong mindset for this game. If you're looking for a game with goals that's meant to be played for hours on end, then this isn't the game for you, no. However, if you enjoy chill games, short bursts of play (such as the recommended 10-20 mins) or have a tumblr, you'll probably like this game. It honestly just reminds me of amateur art but I mean that in the best way.

This is a super cool and very relaxing indie game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys games such as Mountain, Meadow, and Lovely Planet.

This game is like a weird, rubbery mash of Animal Crossing and Miffy. It's bizarre, it's colorful, it's quiet.

I want to love this game, for its quirkiness and unique setting (something reminding me of 1980s / 90s children's shows, Where the Wild Things Are, and a Spongebob-ish universe...) but beyond Lovely Weather We're Having providing for a few laughs at its strange settings, funny character designs (the dog that follows you around inparticular, with his goofy smile...) and some amusing dialog (including a character lamenting / loving being kicked in the face and asking you to do so again as it's the only thing he has in life, more or less..) the game does little to provide any direction where you are to go, which fits the game's somewhat nitrous oxide/innocuous feeling atmosphere, but doesn't make for a very engaging game experience overall. This game's retail price of 7.99 is very high, once you realize that there isn't anything to the gameplay beyond wandering through the forests, fields, and neighborhoods and occassionally exchanging a few lines of dialog with one of a handful of NPCs. In the game's description it mentions the weather in the game reflecting your actual location, which I never saw much variety in, whether as a result of it being clear days here, having some kind of location service/recognition switched off (??) or just having not tried to "play" the game enough. All of that aside, as a feature, if that doesn't affect the gameplay beyond only an aesthetic change, I don't see it adding much value to the title overall, beyond a kind of cool visual 'app'/technology. If the game at least made an effort to conveying some kind of narrative or sense of progression and wasn't quite so experimental / abstract of an experience (and had a lower price point in lieu of that..) then I might recommend it, but as-is, on sale, all-in-all it amounted to what I expected of it: Some funny / nice / weird settings, without much to do.

It's like Pokémon Go but without Pokémon and without REALLY leaving the house. Took me eight minutes to see everything. Buy it at 90% sale. Even better: Don't buy it.