I waited for someone to make a game like this for a long time, essentially it's a map generator with a scattered narrative - so it's a sandbox with various visual modifiers, but also it has hidden narrative progression with optional exploration features. I love the idea of games that focus on exploration, but not like the game exploration, more like a simulation of going into unexplored territory, the idea is there, it just needs more features that are fun to discover.
The concept is great, and I actually think the basic features of the game are made well, I like how you sandwiched the game with some chill aesthetics, such as dropping from the jet and having a very nice quest book to track the progress. However, it kinda lacks the actual essence, it's not very rewarding to find things, mainly because the so-called "points of interest" do not have much going for them, you just walk 20 minutes in one direction just to find a generic object or an empty room. On top of that, even early in the game you will run into the same things over and over, despite having all of those randomly generated seeds, the actual amount of unique content feels very small. With that said, you have to make it fun and rewarding for the player to actually find something, perhaps you could convert some of the "POI" into bigger locations with more visual assets, they need to be fun for more than 1 second.
It can be a little confusing at first, but essentially you make progress by completing random tasks such as walking, taking photos, and exploring more islands which gives you more money. In the store, you can also purchase the location of the next "note", so once you completed some random objectives you can find another part of the narrative. All of these things sound good in theory, there are many similar games that do it really well, but right now the actual tasks that you do are very boring. For example, when you are fishing in this game, all you get is a weight #, no pictures, no variety, and you can apply the same standard to pretty much everything in this game, the game is barebones when it comes to exploration features. Normally taking photos of animals in a game like this can carry the game by itself, but in this case, the animal models are pretty awful, and there are not that many interesting animals to look at.
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) As far as generating the seed and the basic gameplay features, I actually think the game has a solid foundation, I like some of the aesthetic choices you made with the music and the overall presentation of the experience. The book works nice for tracking, and I like the whole Jet dropping. All of the ideas are there, I like that you have a hidden narrative in the game, and I like that you can do all these random things, it's just that the actual content that you find is not very fun to look at or explore.
(+) There are some nice real-time visual features, you can play around with colors and such, the actual map generation is limited with the settings, but you can unlock some custom options.
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
[u] Content/Points of Interest [/u] - it just feels like you didn't put enough effort when it comes to actually finding something cool, like I don't know, have more fun with it, put a sea monster event or something, make some big ruins with platforming sections, just not a phone stand you know, not an empty office room that I found 5 times already. It feels like the game is a bit too empty, even once you unlock the map features there is just not enough to look at, it needs more content, more things to look at, more things to interact with. On that note, it would be nice if the notes were surrounded by some custom-made locations so you can actually see that a person was there before.
[u] Other [/u] - for the fishing, you might want to have some actual pictures of different fish and perhaps even some rare fish or rod unlocks, not just text numbers, you know, it's pretty boring. It would be nice to have some navigational unlocks in the store, maybe you can buy a helicopter or something and then buy more fuel once you run out, a ride perhaps. You need to have more fun with your game, it has a nice sandbox going for it, but it's just not rewarding to play and explore.
[h1] Overall Thoughts: 5/10 [/h1]
I love the idea of this game, and technically it has all the things that I want, it's just the actual hidden content in this game is very meh. Like the whole RNG thing and the basic UI features are all fine, I think the game has a solid foundation, you just need to make all of the optional things and exploration more rewarding and more playful, it would not hurt for this game to have a bit more personality with the events, it could benefit from being more playful and interactive. Right now you can play it for several hours and all you get are some generic objects, you need more random and fun things to interact with.
[code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
