Forager (2019)

Fun at first, but this has major, major grinding-for-resources-design (several thousand worth of wood piles) It's similar to many games (and borrows elements from them) Such as Binding of Isaac, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Cladun X2, and more. The trouble beside the grinding is the inventory space... You can research vaults, but even then its annoying, and with the vaults researched its really a pain (i didnt know how to do that at the time)

The progression in the game is not bad and kinda neat to add variety. While you forage at first, you eventually hunt and farm (similar to Granddaddy Minecraft) Later, the game turns from a simple crafting & gathering game into what is like a SHMUP in the late stages. Another pitfall is all resources randomly regenerate and you cant really farm a particular resource you need that easily or efficiently (everything else is in the way, and you really just want to clear cut your way through it all.

Interesting game with some good ideas but has its pitfalls. There isn't really an ending or endgame... You can do runs in a time trial place called 'the void' (Minecraft inspired) but that's all it is... This is a free form construction game like Factorio where you are making production for the sake of production and no other purpose. A lot of stuff in the game doesn't even seem necessary... like the nuclear powered building upgrades.

Ah well, it was fun for an evening for several hours. I recommend enabled cheats to get through the grinding and let you play through the actual tasty bits of meat in this game (the puzzles, temples and dungeons... and boss fights!) grinding for metals and upgrades to your gear is just not it, chief.

I really liked Forager. In the core, this is just another of the million survival sandbox game, but its unique art style, interesting mechanics, ton of side content and progression is just great.

You start as an empty little character with a pickaxe on a tiny island and that’s it. You cut down some wood, mine some coal, some stone, kill some Slimes and fill your inventory with flowers. After a while, you can build furnaces, crafting tables and unlock more recipes. You collect coins by killing enemies and mining gold, and can buy more plots of land to explore. You collect, mine, kill and improve, and eventually, you got a whole imperium of islands, automated resources, and income at your disposal.

Forager keeps you hooked up for hours. Not only because of the urge to build more stuff and the resource collecting to progress further, but also because of the many extra content you can do besides building and collecting. There are many islands with unique dungeons, puzzles, mini quests and large quests that reward you with various items and strong weapons when you complete them. Some require hours of scavenging items and resources, some can be completed in an instant.

There are many bosses you can defeat which are all fair. When high enough level, you can buy or create sigils that can summon them again, letting you fight them once more. There are also traveling merchants that let you buy very rare items and materials.

When leveling up, you can spend your skill points on various building upgrades, economic upgrades or combat upgrades. Eventually, you unlock everything, but at the beginning, it is wise to choose the right skills to make your progression go smooth.

Then there is the Void, which is some sort of endgame (although you already completed the game as far as possible). The goal here is to progress as deep as possible by defeating all enemies under the time limit on each map. This is easy in the first ten maps, but becomes difficult and chaotic later on.

Speaking of chaotic, this is the only problem I have with this game. If you stopped playing for a bit, and come back later, you return to your imperium, only to forgot where everything was, how you configured stuff, what you were working on at that moment. When you practically beat the game already, the amount of stuff, animations, areas, enemies, etc. is just massive and very overwhelming. Normally I just started a new game and tried to understand everything from phase one.

When finishing the game, you get some crazy strong weapons like various magic wands, that destroy almost everything on the map in a few shots, it is just madness.

In the end, I loved Forager, its progression system and just scouring the different island in search for items, and can play this game anytime, just for some casual relaxation.

Definitely recommend this one.

"A Dopamine Farming Simulator" | Forager | VGBC Podcast #27 (REMASTERED)

Forager was an awesome experience, and it took the best parts about the farming/crafting genre and condensed it into a fast-paced resource building game. The game is easy to pick up and put down, and the gameplay loop of crafting resources, unlocking areas, leveling up, gaining skills and perks, is incredibly addicting.

• Year played: 2019
• Playtime: 15-20 hours
• Completion level: 100%

I'm a completionist and an achievement hunter at heart, and I love a game that gives me lots of things to unlock, collectibles to gather, and achievements to complete. Forager is all of that and nothing more. It's the most pure collect-and-gather-and-craft game out there, and I loved every second of it. You start on a tiny square island where weeds and crops and ores occasionally pop up. You gather these, craft things out of them, and eventually earn enough coins to buy a new map tile. That new tile might have more different things for you to collect, or a puzzle to solve, or an enemy to kill, or a dungeon to explore, or... well, you get the idea. One tile that you encounter early on in the game has a museum on it containing exhibits that need to be filled, which will always keep giving you something to work towards.

It's the perfect loop of gather, craft, unlock, and repeat - with no story or cutscenes or anything else to get in your way. If you like hoarding stuff and crafting things and unlocking achievements, BUY THIS GAME.

Game Summary

You start off on a small island surrounded by water. This is a resource management game where you mine and harvest the land to create more efficient ways to work the land, create more advanced materials and machines, fight enemas, and make money. As you progress you use the money to buy islands around you, adding to your explorable world. Many of these islands have puzzles/quests to complete.

Review Portion

Let me just start by saying I'm a sucker for adorable/stylish games. I'll forgive quite a bit if I enjoy looking at it. This factor definitely comes into play here. The game is one where almost none of the parts on its own sound very appealing, but it all works together to create an addictive game play loop of gathering and creating. Some islands present puzzles, NPCs with fetch quests, and dungeons with puzzles and a boss which all help to keep the game from feeling too monotonous. Even the NPC fetch quests are often for items you don't have or haven't even seen, which encourage exploration and experimentation to figure out how to obtain those items. There is also a level up system with EXP gained for nearly every activity as you progress. Each level grants you a permanent stat boost as well as a new skill that help to streamline resource management or open up more options. In game achievements also help keep a feel of progression as well as encourage you to explore all the game has to offer.

Like most clicker/resource management games, it feels most tedious in the very beginning and towards the end. Realizing one item you don't currently have and is slow to gain can bottleneck your progress. Despite this I think the game keeps a pretty good pace throughout with minimal slogs. The bigger problem for comes with the end, which is largely nonexistent. For all the sense of progression with dungeons, bosses, unlocking the entire map, the game just kind of trails off. Once you've done everything there is to do there's no fanfare or ending, it just keeps going. This is especially frustrating when paired with a few glitched or missable achievements that mean you can not realize until it's far too late that you won't be fully completing the game without playing over from the start. A short ending animation or even just credits after which you can keep playing would give a nice sense of conclusion to the game.

Summary

I have a hard time judging situations like this. I thoroughly enjoyed my time, but the lack of a satisfying ending really affected my experience. The lack of any sort of satisfying ending made my time with the game feel much less meaningful. I would recommend it to anyone who likes this style of game, but grab it on sale for 20 or under.

Personal Score : 8/10

"Objective" Score : 7/10