Wildmender

В роли последнего человека нам предстоит навести порядок в засушливом аду. Минимальная цель – выжить, промежуточная – наладить контакт с божествами, максимальная – возродить природу во всём её великолепии. Посетить предстоит четыре региона – пустынные дюны, безжизненные солончаки, отравленные каньоны и морозные горы. Почти вся природа погибла, оставив после себя тоскливые пейзажи и мёртвую растительность под лучами безжалосного солнца. Выжить удалось лишь немногим видам, кои мы будем высаживать вокруг возрождаемых родников. Потребности у растений различаются, плюс они заметно влияют на окружение, а ещё доступно выведение гибридных сортов. Прокопка каналов, строительство изгородей и защитных алтарей – тоже на наших плечах. Помощников немного – три жабы, броненосец, несколько светящихся зверьков и призраки, которые будут делиться знаниями (прокачкой). Для быстрого перемещения по пустошам придётся разблокировать многочисленные порталы, также помогут вещи вроде грибного зонтика и воздушного плаща, но истоптать всё равно предстоит ни одну пару башмаков. Врагами выступят злобные фантомы, их придётся изгонять зеркальцем, огненным амулетом и ещё парочкой артефактов с разными принципами действия. Резюме: добротный садоводческий симулятор выживания.

It's a great game and you can tell how much love they put into it, but it feels like they ran out of budget mid development and did what they could with what they had. The gameplay loop is essentially digging out trenches to move water around and make an oasis. You plant stuff near water so it can grow, and things grow you can expand further out. There's a lot of upgrades to have more water, different kinds of plants, biomes, defenses, etc. It's got a basic crafting and survival loop; you have to manage hunger and thirst, as well as some status effects later on in the game. I loved all the different plants and the variants you can find and grow. You can do a lot of beautiful gardening. There are some building elements, but it's mostly limited to walls and some decorations. It's disappointing that you can't actually make buildings or at least restore the existing ones in the world. The entire time your "house" is a tent and you don't really get anything else. The optimization is really lacking for mid to late game, especially in multiplayer. If you have multiple players in different areas and build a lot, the game starts dropping frames really badly and it does not get any better the further in you get. The game has story "cutscenes" that are nothing but a black screen. Even very important storyline elements are nothing but a black screen with subtitles. There's no voice acting, no visuals using any of the game's assets, just... a black screen and text. It honestly felt really cheap that a fully released game still has something like that, which I wouldn't expect past the early stages of early access. Ultimately I do recommend it, but it feels lacking in polish despite the obvious love that was put into it. I still really enjoyed my experience, and I think that's why I'm critical of it; I think it deserved more polish than it was given and I wish it fully lived up to its potential. Definitely worth picking up, especially on a sale, but there will be some jank and weird bits as I've described above.

A very fun game but clearly unfinished. I'd recommend buying when its on sale. What the game does have complete is very fun and addictive, It's just a shame the mid to end game falls flat and the combat isnt fully fleshed out. I have put in 75 hours, mostly trying to get all the different plant variations and perfecting my garden how I want it, so Its definitely worth picking it up in a sale

I'm 10 hours in, there is something good here, and I'd like to keep playing one day, but I'll just write down all the things that were bothering me that made me stop playing: - You need to eat and drink a lot. - You empty your water bottle after a couple of sips because it's apparently tiny. - You refill water at local springs, which you're constantly running back and forth from because... - ... the game is about replanting the world, but unless you plant near the water you have to manually water every plant yourself with your tiny water bottle. - ...you can shape the ground so it forms small flows that water your plants for you but... - ... even though you can carry what seems like a just tear drop of water in the bottle, refilling it seems to suck up gallons of water, so much so the water level of your spring visibly drops each time, which takes the water away first from your carefully dug streams for the day, meaning you have to manually water them anyway. - Your goals, objectives, food, upgrades and ingredients mostly come from growing plants. Your primary goal is regrow the world with more and more plants. - More plants means more running around with your tiny water bottle. - Plants are vulnerable to everything. - You CAN in theory build walls to protect plants, but... - ... the walls themselves are vulnerable to everything too, so you're just passing the work on. - ... the walls are ugly which seems against the nature of the game - ... the walls use an uncommon ingredient so are hard to build enough - ... the entire point of the game is to grow your garden, so you would either have to constantly adjust your wall position constantly to fit the garden anyway, or wall off small parts of it. -... and enemies can spawn inside walls too, and can ruin your ground which needs a very specific ingredient to fix which you may or may not have. - Plants drop ingredients constantly, which also constantly degrade over time, so you have to... - ... decide which ingredients you keep for food, carry for crafting something, store for crafting something later, put in the compost bin on just leave on the ground to spoil and... - ...you'll have just enough time to decide this before the next batch of ever spoiling ingredients drops on the ever growing, ever vulnerable garden you're planting. There was no way to preserve anything in the 10 hours I played, and even things you craft like potions spoil. So, I found myself worried about my hunger and thirst, worried about how much water I had left, worried about the distance to the nearest water source, worried about which water source I should actually use, worried about which plants to have near the water, worried about if the waters is in the right place, worried about watering the plants not near the water, worried about weather and environment damage to myself and the plants and things I've built, some you can't repair until you unlock something, worried about remembering where to put the most important plants, worried about the next batch of ingredients and what to do with them, worried about the ingredients and potions I have on person that are spoiling, worried about ingredients and potions I have in storage that are spoiling all the while worrying about attacks by enemies that spoil bits of the garden and all before just trying to get five seconds to myself to get away from the garden to explore and finish quests to find items that are needed to grow/improve not just your current garden but to start other gardens everywhere else! I'll say, this was the default mode, and some things can be turned off, but the default mode is the game as intended, was I not supposed to play this mode? Because there is an ever increasing workload as you plant and plant away, it simply has to be that you have to learn to let some things things fall through the cracks; it would literally be impossible to manage everything. The issue is, as much as that is the idea, with the way my mind works, and possibly yours too if you looked for this game, it's entirely unsatisfying to do so, and you're always worried about everything above to some degree, even then worrying about what to let fall through the cracks. I felt the game was just constantly pestering me, and mean everything seems to need your attention all the time or you or your structures or your gardens die, which each mean more work to get back on track. This game reviews positively, so perhaps your ability to enjoy it is tied to your ability to let things go. What the game has as a positive pull is the central mechanic of wanting to see the world changed through your work, but I found it genuinely irritating, and it's not just unsatisfying it's actively stressful, which is the opposite of what I got it for.

I played it with my girlfriend. I like the way the nature grow and how it looks. The game can be quite repetitive, but there's some unique mechanics that make the game memorable!

I had some trouble at the start of the game adjusting the settings so my device would run it better. After that I got the hang of the game and enjoyed it. The fact that there are a variety of quests, directions, and the open world game play has a semi-foolproof directory is great. I enjoy games that I can go at my pace and direction and Wildmender turned out great for that. I am currently on the end game quest but am finishing perfecting the rest of the world before I finish it. Seems like it would be enjoyable to share with a good team as well, I did not test the co-op.

TLDR: A lovely casual open-world crafting and gathering game that brings you to midgame quickly to allow for a more decoration-based late game. --- Pros: -Beautiful, if you enjoy the art style from the store page. -Offers fun traversal options early enough by following the main quest -Combat is straightforward and forgiving -Greatly rewards planning (skill/memory upgrades and garden layout) -Has a great system of cosmetic clothing to dress up how you'd like Cons: -Does not allow user to select hot-bar layout and auto assigns tools to 1-9 (afaik) -^which also makes it hard to get detailed info on items for stat comparison. -It's possible to make some upgrades obsolete due to quest reward and gear overlap -Some late game mechanics such as cultivating seed crossovers are not well explained -No preview for item unlocks for some skills Tips: -Investing into trinket creation and trinket equip cap is a good QOL move -In the early game, keep around 3-5 acorns on hand, but plant the rest as these are a type of end-game currency -If you plan on making an aesthetic large garden, plan your water irrigation early on. There's upgrades later in the game to make terrain manipulation, water sources and general water movement easier, but early game a North, South, East and West straight line irrigation isn't the worst thing, or a serpentine water path is good for dense spawling gardens.

There are definitely a few really cool ideas that I'd like to see in other games, but as a package, I don't recommend it. There's a lot of jank, and

Wasn't gonna review this game either way until I got the Windwalk ability, a literal actual game changer. What a fun game. Terraform a desert while playing an expansive open world adventure. Meaningful upgrades. Unique settings. Hardly any of the usual trappings, and it absolutely benefits from it.

Poorly optimised, hits 78 degrees at 720p with everything on minimum, 30 fps, and very sleep inducing.