Starseed

I love that you are alone on the planet, no annoying people to have to make friends with, just plant and tend to your crops, it's very relaxing. Then add on upgrades, and you have a winning combo.

I love early access games, as finished games tend to be overwhelming for me; whereas, I can continue to play through updates which is a bit more my speed. This game is very promising, but I honestly think the devs should have waited a bit to push it out. My biggest gripe right now is once something is placed, it cannot be moved. Only destroyed. When I realized I wasted 2500 on the drone collector by placing it down in a spot it was useless in, it broke my heart. And also took forever to make enough to buy it again. I ended up making a new seed (what the planet saves are called) and was able to produce much more items and make money quicker. A solution for the devs is to allow placement in a small area, and not free range OR the ability to pick and move things around. In both seeds, we have forests unlocked and they're literally empty. Unless I haven't found what's there, or the point is the build there? Home station at the moment is used for collecting wood and seeds. And to my knowledge, the mines do not populate more rocks/resources. We can only get more from the drone stations with the ginormous resource nodes located at the hub or the mines. I HATE that I have to exit out of my game to the main menu to spend points for upgrades and to my knowledge, some (if not all) of the upgrades only activate after creating a new seed. For example, I unlocked apple seeds which my seed (planet I reside on) does not produce. The store I buy items from will not sell me apple seeds unless I create a new save, which we can only have 2 at a time. The store "refreshes" every like 400 seconds or something, but once you buy the seeds, you can't buy any more. You can only get seeds from foraging at your home area. There's no concept of seasons or days by the way. Every second ticks from day to night and you don't sleep. The planets are all different and there's no character customization which really blows. We have the option to choose from a different variety of players and they're all labeled as lazy lol. What I think would be better is choosing a personality trait that has the different variations, while still allowing customization. We also have zero furniture so the only decorating (to my knowledge) is the resource stations where we produce items. Right now, it's mostly cons because it's infuriating that there's no story line or anything. Literally, I'm just a work horse at this point. It's relaxing at the very least.

If you enjoy the cozy gaming vibes, do not sleep on this game. Waiting for updates and full content is understandable, but do not sleep on it. I came across the developer on Reddit and quickly wanted to pick the game up. I started over a few times while I slowly started understanding what to do in the game, as well as figuring out what starting items are the best to buy starting out. When creating your file, you select a planet (not sure what the point of this is yet as they all seem the same but based on what I've seen, I feel this could change later on!) You also choose whether you want to have your priority be food, materials, or research. From your hub, you do have a little area to expand and find new items. What you can choose from here I did notice changes based on what you choose for your priority. As you go along, you unlock orders. You use a transmitter to send those items to Global Inventory. Your Global Inventory is in the main menu and you collect the rewards from the orders (you can also track orders here so you can keep tabs on them in your game). These points are used for upgrades and I am honestly surprised how many upgrades there already are. On your global map, you have your own home where you can find materials and have a nicer planting area. There's mines and forests, though I can't figure out what the forests are for (maybe future content?) I have been absolutely craving something that is truly cozy. Not having to worry about NPC relationships (even though I like those) is a nice change. I really love that there's no combat. Some days I am just too tired for it and nobody seems to want to do combat in an interesting way anyway. This game has really ticked my boxes. Moving between the different planet seeds I have going is a lot more fun than I expected. The soundtrack is also just so pleasant to listen to. Almost makes me think of To the Moon. It's beautiful. All in all, highly highly recommend this game and I am so looking forward to updates. In the meantime, I will be causing traffic jams in space fulfilling my orders.

I will start with what I like. 1. The music is quite nice and relaxing. Soundtrack is available to dl on steam as well. 2. Not having to worry about interacting with people, I always wanted to get away from everyone. Onto things that I don't like. This is EA though, so these can be solved. 1. The sheer amount of waiting around doing nothing. While waiting, you can mine...until you mine everything. That's it. 2. Crafting things needs something like a recipe tracker. For me to craft anything, I had to create a simple spreadsheet for it. Without that spreadsheet, I would have to constantly enter a menu or a building to see the recipe. Overall, it's decent, still needs quite a bit of work, but I did 100% the game in a little over 3 hours, even though steam refuses to give me 2 achievements. I would like to recommend it, but it is very limited, so don't go in expecting anywhere near a completed game. I look forward to the next update. Reviewed on version 0.132

It's a fun and relaxing game. The type of game you can leave running in the background while you're doing other things or sink hours get really deep into it, growing, improving and optimising your farm so that you can complete quest and improve your characters. So it's kind of a mix between a cozy game like stardew valley and a factory game like factorio. The art style is really adorable but the best part has to be the awesome soundtrack. Right now the game is early access but it's already great fun and judging by the roadmap, there's a lot of potential for new features. And for that price it's great value. Looking forward to the updates and full release.

A Rare Kind of Comfort Game Starseed is a peaceful farming game with a quiet charm. Plant crops and smash minerals and slowly build your farm - without rush or attacks. The visuals and soothing soundtrack make you feel right at home, perfect for unwinding with a hot coffee. If you love relaxing games that let you grow at your pace, Starseed is a little gem worth the try!

for the price it seems fair, maybe ill come back in a year !

Game does not feel ready yet. When the game comes out of early access, I'll try it again and might change my review at that point, but right now, it doesn't feel like the developer has "found the fun" yet. A lot of the game loop involves waiting around for queues to empty so that you can issue new orders, which is reminiscent of those free mobile games like Township or Farmville. However, the pacing is off and there's way less to do and way more waiting around in Starseed compared to those games.

Looks very promising.

Please note this is a review based on Early Access up to the point I played it and streamed it. I also have a supercut of my streams you can watch to see how the game works and decide if you want to get it now or later on Youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Mq4B3AnBI The game mechanically runs well and everything does what it should. I did find a couple bugs but the developer was kind enough to fix them already (props to heartsynth for that!) It plays sort of like a combination of Stardew Valley w/ a nod to the bones of a Factorio-style game mixed with AFK gaming. You definitely get that lonely feeling and the music fits with it. There are the basics of mining and farming, along with a few machines for producing items that are more advanced. This allows you to build more machines and setup a network of production of the available higher-end items. Fast travel is built into the game allowing you to visit parts of your respective planet. There are a few odd unlocks and a starmap to let you get resources not available on your planet normally. There is also a nice touch of your profile having multiple seeds (aka worlds) in which you can share certain advancements and achievements as well as offering three progression lines. Due to it being in Early Access though, the game is limited right now in scope. 20 hours in and I'm pretty much doing everything I can do and have hit the end of the currently-available content. Having unlocked everything there is, the only real thing to do at this time is to refine how quickly I can improve efficiency. Also there are several parts of the game world that are empty or not ready for use yet so you can see future content sections but not access them. The AFK-style parts of the game leave people the option to step away if they have other things and can easily come back without missing anything. However, I do really enjoy this game, enough that even with the limits I'm scribbling down ideas to try a new profile and test some theories about things. I do see this game being a solid entry into the farming/building/factory section of the gaming world and look forward to future content updates. If you enjoy Early Access and like to support developers while they improve their product, this is a solid buy. I don't find the $11.99 USD price tag to be unreasonable considering the potential this game has (if you're skittish maybe wait to see if there's a sale later on). I recommend it on that count, but again do be advised that this is a very much work-in-progress.