Research Story

J'adore, un stardew valley dans un univers plus fantasy. J'aime tellement ce côté lié à la recherche! Les personnages me plaisent bien également. J'y joue au clavier souris, car je ne trouve le contrôleur pas suffisamment optimisé. Le jeu à pas mal de contenu et en débloque encore l'année 2. Un grand merci à la traductrice (non officiel mais ok avec le dev) pour le français!

I've been playing this game for the past week and I'm having fun playing it. I love that you can set it so you don't pass out at a certain time. I like that the prices for food is pretty reasonable. Making money isn't too hard if you collect stuff every day and mine a bunch. It'll be nice when they release relaxed mode, but it's pretty dang relaxed already. I love that I haven't had to fight anything. I don't think every cozy game needs to have you battle every step of the way through the mines, or exploring. I love the cute little creatures and that they have a rare form I can hunt for through the seasons. Sometimes feeding them all is hard. It'd be nice if the food bowls didn't cost as much, or getting the stuff to make them was easier. I had to make four pens of chickens and foxes, and have a full field of quick growing veggies for most, but fruit is harder to get. It takes longer to grow fruit and the bushes don't replenish that fast, so food is a bottle neck. For rare items I think you should lesson the ingredients. Like fruit and grub bowls could need 1 ingredient like the fish bowls, eggs, and meat do. I like the npc's, but when they're going places they always brush you off and act like you're bothering them. It makes it hard to befriend them when they give you the brush off half the time you find them. I don't even know if you get friend points when that happens, they don't seem like they want to talk to you at all. Maybe I'm too early in the game and they get friendlier as you get closer, but I don't see it fixing how they react when going places. I forget to not talk to them when they're walking. I think it's awesome that other npc's give you hints on what to give people. Like the brother mentioning something his sister likes. I like that it's pretty easy to figure things out, like researching. You get item drops from critters and can get fish parts. It tells you where to go to do the special research. I don't get people saying it they didn't understand the fish parts research. It's obvious you have to put it in your research slots to research it the regular way. If it's not put there how are you suppose to find where this fish is located or what bait to use or anything that shows you what to do. You have to put every research item on the magnifying glass, so why wouldn't you have to do the fish part? If you didn't have to do that, they wouldn't return the fish part to you. Instead it would disappear, like when you research a flower. I love that you don't pass out from lack of energy, you just get real slow when on the not passing out at 2am setting. It makes it more relaxing for me since there's so much to do in a day and so few hours. I can run around all day talking to people and looking for day creatures and stuff, then run home and drop off stuff, then go back out for night creatures or mining. It's great. I like researching the animals, but the plants are a bit of a pain. They take a long time, and if you plant them wrong they die...sometimes they die even if you plant them right. Like I got cave plants, put down the fertilizer they needed and the sunshade, and they still died. I have no idea why, and the notes don't tell me. Maybe it was a bug, but for a plant that takes 12 days to grow to only die on day 8 is really frustrating. Especially since they clog up your research slots and you can only wait for the plants to grow, or clear it and start over later if you need to research something else. I think the plant frustration is really the only thing that I dislike about this game thus far. It really goes to show that a good dev makes all the difference for these games. I've played quite a few newer cozy games and most of them lack the soul a game made by passion by a dedicated dev. You can tell who's in it just for the money, like Starsand Island for instance.... Pretty, but shallow. This game reminds me more of SDV, in a good way. It has that same good feeling that SDV has, and it's satisfying to make progress. SDV never held your hand and forced you along a guided path. It let you learn and discover for yourself. When did people start hating discovering things on their own instead of jumping to some wiki or forum every time they can't instantly think of a solution. If you want a mind numbing game go play starsand. If you have half a brain that you want to use, you might just like this game. Also, it's called research story, not farming story, so yeah, stop expecting it to be.

In a lot of ways this game was exactly what I was looking for, a lovely little cozy routine game with a fun little twist (the research aspect, which as a lore nerd I love) to make it fresh. However I will caution that the npc social aspect is lacking. It compares poorly to its peers in characterizing the townsfolk, there just isn't enough varied dialogue for me to have much interest in them. I'd love to see an update with a bit more "story" to this Research Story, but for right now it's still a fun little romp and I adore my farm/research zoo.

Summary: If you like Stardew Valley, you'll like this one; however, I think it shines brighter when it starts focusing on its own mechanics. ------------------------------------------------ As someone whose experience with the life and farm sims begins and ends with 500+ hours in Stardew Valley, this game is immediately familiar, as the SV similarities are pretty blatant. It includes some very welcome QoL fixes (THANK YOU for letting me grab more than the last item I put into the delivery box), but it also adds some new issues of its own, such as having a day cycle that feels much shorter. I could fill paragraphs going over these small changes, but my point is that a lot (A LOT) of mechanics feel straight outta SV, for better and for worse. The main original feature is the researching, which has you pick samples of things you find around and fill a checklist of "investigative" actions to do in order to create a report, which you submit in order to progress the main story. It's pretty cut-and-dry, but has enough variety with the different sample types to keep it fresh; plus, it requires decent trial-and-error to optimize the research focus along the rest of the responsibilities in and out of the farm. And the progress is very tangible, which is very satisfying. The one thing that I'd like to see improved are the villagers. Their designs are pretty neat, sometimes, but I feel their personalities a bit flat. I don't really feel compelled to develop a friendship for any reason other than the level up mechanics, which is a shame, because there was, clearly, a lot of care put into their backstories and the overall world-building. Their character just needs a bit more bite. In the end, I did enjoy my time with Research Story. It's exactly the type of dopamine-filling collectathon that I wanted, and I was actually surprised to see how many mechanics it adds on top of that. But not all those mechanics share the same level of polish, and it's pretty easy to see.

This could be an enjoyable game, but unfortunately it bets too much on artificial playtime padding. It satisfies the itch of "unlocking" and "leveling" with a farming/ranching/mining/foraging/adventuring (puzzle solving) aspect, but they artificially padded the game to seem much more expansive than it is, so you have to grind through several of the same seasons needlessly, when it could (and SHOULD) be doable in a year. You are restricted in your research slots, but some of the plants have ridiculous requirements to research them, like 12 days growth time in a 28 day season. Before you can plant them or rather "learn" how to extract seeds, you usually have to "research" them though by looking at them (several times, sometimes in different areas) while they are still growing wildly (surely no one has ever done research on a plant that has been plucked already, that is unheard of!) and if you are unlucky and for several days none of the needed plants are growing anywhere, you might not be able to finish the research during that season, since not only the growth times are unacceptable, but also other factors play into whether the plant lives or dies, like whether it grows close to water or dies in rain (???) and so on... (And all of those are not based in reality at all, they are just wildly made up and do not care to teach you ANYTHING about the real world, which - for me - is usually the fun in playing games: Learning something that could actually help me in the real world or at least is viable information...) As if all of that wasn't annoying enough, while the map is ludicrously small (so lesser likelihood of you encountering animals or plants you need for research in the wild), researching things is restricted to three samples in the beginning. So, when I started researching a spring plant, but wasn't able to finish it within spring, I was thinking to myself: Okay, let's rush the Greenhouse then, so I can finish my research there and open up that one research spot for one of the other 100 things you need to research within a season. Nope. You cannot research samples in a Greenhouse, because that would be contraindicated to their ridiculous made up rules and would let you finish the game before 100 hours which apparently is a no-go for developers nowadays. You need to quickly learn which animals are actually useful to keep (chicken) and which are not (sadly, sproutkitten...), because upkeeping your animals is another thing that artificially pads playtime, because they need to be fed, but to feed them you also need to plant plants or go forage, but you cannot buy seeds and you are completely dependent on the stuff you forage each day for seeds (IF you learned how to extract seeds, that is...), but then some animals also need seeds to eat, so you cannot plant them and it is a really tight budget you need to come up with and have a "production" chain of which animals "feed" other animals with their products (eggs, meat) and so on. You cannot just keep the animals you like, because they do nothing for you in your production chain. If you want to keep them, you need to rush another building for them to lie dormant, but all of the stuff in this game is kind of expensive and between planning what to plant, which animals to feed and what of your measly produce you can sell for money.. Don't even get me started on the ridiculously low stamina you have for each day. You can fell about three trees and then you are done! That is when you haven't even made room for your crops or the pens for animals.. And remember, you cannot just go to sleep for stamina, because you also need to finish your research before the end of the season.. Meaning you have to buy expensive food or forage for measly stamina refills. (Some stuff gives you 1 (ONE) energy.. AWESOME!) If you happen to not arguously eye your stamina (or the obligatory sleeping time that should be abolished from each and any simulation game...) you are being robbed of your money, even if you happen to pass out on your own land. And you will still feel exhausted the next day. Another "game mechanic" that should be abolished. Why would someone forcefully enter my farmland to rob me of my money, just because I took a (coerced) nap under the stars? It is none of their business??? So much for wholesome community... Why is it full of criminals?? Then there are shiny (oh, pardon me, "shimmering") animal versions in this game, but they serve ABSOLUTELY NO PURPOSE at all; they don't give better stuff, they don't have better perks, they don't love you more or grow up faster, they are literally the worst, most useless pallette swap in any game ever. What's the point? Oh, and then there is the always absolutely irrelevant aspect of "romance" or "socialising". I could not care less. The design of some of these characters is TOO DAMN WOKE. And again, there are the usual tropes... Why would I go out of my way to befriend a character that is constantly rude and dismissive? I don't care about his (or her or it, can't quite tell with the green skin colour) sob story from the past where he once was called a frog or something and now is sooooo soooooooooo weary of other people, because he was hurty-wurty... I DON'T CARE. GO F RIGHT OFF THEN! At least this game doesn't deal in fantasy pronouns or other psychological issues, but you are still not allowed to customize your character in any meaningful way, so very ill people in real life do not get a tamper tantrum that they have to choose a very real one of the two genders and cannot act like they have been born devoid of any humanoid function. If this game goes on sale and costs about five Euros, you can buy a way to satisfy an itch in a way, but it won't be satisfactory. More like drinking Kölsch, when you could drink an actual beer.

Its a fun game! Its good to jump in and play, there are some new and interesting mechanics and some I would love to see expanded. I would love to see more interactions with the critters, maybe a bit more fanfare when completing bundles, and perhaps easier ways to keep all animals fed (you dont HAVE to keep them fed but I wanted to and it became a chore fast) I do really love the character designs and the story is interesting while also doesnt feel like it takes ages to complete. This is a game I knew i wanted to get all achievements if possible to really call it done and that is fully possible.

I'm only writing this because another reviewer brought up the achievement rate for this game as '50%' and '44%' as a telling and strong indicator of the how many people value the game. This had a strong impact on me initially, but I decided to look into other games, and lo, behold, StarDV, achievement rate for most things, below 50%, past the first few basic achievements, below 20%. The flagship of the genre. CoralIsl, approaches 50% for a few. Even a huge game like Fallout, a shockingly below 60% achievement rate for the basic initial achievements, and well below that for the majority of items. I stopped after about 15 games. Note that some games have ridiculously easy first achievements with high ratings, like Icarus with an 87% rating for 'pick up a stick, stone, or piece of grass' or something such. Crimson Des has one up in the 70s. *shrug* Some of the other comments in the review have merit, but.. This isn't a useful statistic, and is being misused in this review. Unfortunately comments are disabled so was unable to respond there directly. Does it matter? *shrug again* As for my actual feelings about this game, Research Island... neutral. I played once for a bit, and it still has a way to go, so it's on hold for me. The devs are very active with regular patches, so hopeful for this cozy game, but it is already 'released', so... ?

打发时间可以的

Super cute and the research element adds a new element to the farm sim formula

This is geniuenly the best game on this planet, anyone who isn't playing this is wasting their life