Beat from xbox game pass core starting on Medium difficulty. I really liked the various options for game starts, especially the custom mode. I would have turned off loot drop on death, turned on menu pause, and toned down or eliminated hunger, thirst and item degradation. Despite that, I chose the most authentic experience, and it was not too bad with being able to save at any time outside combat. So I never had to deal with dropping stuff on death, but the loading time to recover from deaths and other misfortunes was incredibly bad. The game really could have used optimization improvements for all loads after the initial game load.

I chose to play as Pete and liked his nerdy RPG commentary. The early game was fairly uneventful as I built a simple grass walled base around the first field station. I had abandoned that base by the time I found out I could have chopped down dandelions to get weed stems, meaning the door and window were not completed while I used that base. Ants kept coming in to steal my cooking food. I just killed them. I had trouble staying hydrated and had to drink a lot of dirty water, but cooking weevils and aphids was no trouble. I had a set of clover armor, stone axe, and stone spear as I followed the main quest to the tripod mite cave and oak tree. I set up my main base right outside the oak lab with a bunch of storage baskets, a lean to, and workshop. The deciding factor was the wonderful infinite clean water source inside. I did not see why I could not build inside the lab. I explored the cave inside, including running past the red soldier ants to explore the old ant nest and find what loot I could. At this point I was getting a little annoyed at my lack of progress towards better equipment. There was all this stuff to bust and it just so happened that I did not realize I could make a stone hammer. So I started smashing stuff, getting my first milk molar power ups, upgrade stones and acorn supplies. I made a full set of acorn armor with weevil shield and resolved to defeat a soldier ant to make a better club. It took many attempts to kill my first soldier. I made more spears to throw and it was about learning the enemy patterns to block properly. The soldiers did either a single hit or a 3 hit combo, so all I had to do was block long enough to know which was being done. I hated the block mechanic where the shield could only block so many hits before I was stunned and dropped guard for a few seconds, because this bar did not reset while backing away avoiding hits for a while. The black ant shield much later introduced this meter slowly decaying while not taking hits, so it was okay as a mechanic to encourage using better shields. I did finally make the red ant club but it was 2 handed and slow, so was not really an upgrade. Blocking with a 2 handed weapon did not reduce damage by 100%, so 1h + shield was far superior. In hindsight I should have been using a stone dagger because daggers were among the best weapons in the game. Daggers, swords and spears were fast and could attack constantly until stamina was depleted. Axes and blunts had a 3 hit combo with a delay before being able to attack again. They also did far more damage on the 3rd hit, strongly encouraging tanking any hits to ensure that 3rd hit, and occasionally stunned enemies.

With 10 throwing spears I could defeat more powerful enemies, such as orb weavers, stinkbugs, bombardier beetles and fireflies. I made my way to the hedge and got lost just before the lab because it was dark. God damn night time. I eventually found a safe way to jump down and built a basic lean to and cook fire on the branch near the ground. I had to make multiple trips up to eventually find the lab, and come back several times to farm berry leather. I failed horribly at a mixer, built some walls by the pond to help kill stink bugs, made a larva blade (which was by far the best tier 1 weapon), and later found the rotten larva blade, which I did use up and toss. By this point in the game I had a mosquito rapier, spider chest armor, ladybug leg armor, firefly helm, and tier 2 axe and hammer. The larva blade and rapier were the best weapons, until I killed a wolf spider and made a fang dagger. I still threw spears, and used the axe fairly often for weaker enemies. I upgraded my gear as far as I could, though not the spears. It was very annoying that upgraded weapons had to be replaced into quick slots. Wolf spiders were tough, largely because they broke the pattern of all enemies thus far by sneaking in a 4th hit after their 3 hit combo. That got me a few times until I learned it, then it was a matter of hoping my shield bar did not reach full during a multi hit combo, as I had a high chance of dying from poison. I found it best to keep wolf spiders at range to encourage them to do the single leaping attack. I healed myself using the passive regen from food and bandages as needed, and made a canteen for water.

The next goal was the pond lab with all that underwater limited oxygen nonsense. This was when I made that stone dagger to harvest stuff from underwater, since the spider fang would not do it. At this point I was getting very annoyed with the limited inventory and how much different stuff I had to carry, especially the different types of tools for harvesting. I made the basic diving head and later flippers, then managed to save scum my way to the lab while only drowning fewer than 10 times. There were a lot more drownings and barely surviving by 0 to 1 seconds, until I looked up online where the fuck to find the sunken bones needed for the sensible diving helmet. Yeah, this entire section could have been much better designed. And the giant fish that was a 1 hit death if it noticed me. I found the rotten bee spear but it was more awkward to mix that with my stone spears than to only use stone ones.

Then I made a gas mask and went to the haze. I absolutely hated the infected enemies and their explosions. Very cool concept though. The infected larvae were a terror and killed me so many times with that damn point blank explosion, so I threw spears as much as possible. The infected ladybugs were tough but I could evade their artillery shots by hit and run. Eventually I had explored the entire haze and had to look up how to get into the lab; through a broken water pipe. I left that place with a ton of fungus for making bombs but the limited ingredient was red ant eggs. I had finally figured out how to use the resource scanner so I used that to find the red ant nest and make periodic egg snatching trips. Mostly I just ran past the ants, but I did have a huge fight against over a dozen deep inside the nest. I didn't want to piss the ants off too badly after the orb weavers and larvae attacked my main base. I hoped that helping them kill a wolf spider at the entrance to their base would win me some brownie points. I enjoyed getting the enemies to infight, just like old school Doom. Wolf spider vs ant lion, ladybird vs wasps, fire ants vs roly poly, etc.

I found a fairly secure place under the sandbox with a lot of mushrooms growing that would make a good base. I just put a lean to there. It would not take too many walls to fortify but there was no source of fresh water. While exploring around the sand box I found a sickly roly poly and could not figure out how to kill it. The bastard kept rolling into a ball and healing all damage I could do. With that kind of outrageously unrealistic healing, they could easily defeat wolf spiders or a swarm of ants; maybe even an entire colony. Which brings up the gamey combat mechanics. I highly doubt real insects do 3 hit combos, and that so many do leaping attacks. I doubt roly polys and ladybugs hit with their bodies. Orb weavers should spend more time in webs, and much less time walking around chasing stuff. Also seems like an oversight that the big ones lack poison. Then ants would fight more cooperatively, with flanking and grabs to immobilize targets for easier kills by allies. And water fleas are herbivores so I would not expect them to attack anything. In fact I expected tadpoles to be aggressive and dangerous. The noises made by the bugs were very unrealistic, though I can appreciate the audio design for its ease of identifying and locating enemies. All enemies were extremely difficult to cheese because they could all jump, easily bypassing most terrain.

I went around the entire perimeter of the sandbox and could not find any way up. I explored the garbage pile and failed to find the inner area with the entrance to the black ant nest, despite trying to follow their workers. Instead I gathered a bunch of clay and built a staircase out of clay foundation, and I absolutely loved how I could use engineering to bypass a lot of platforming. Later I switched to half clay foundations. Ladders could also be used but they were far more awkward to set up and climb. While it would certainly be realistic to build high stairs out of clay, it was not realistic at all to be able to place them barely touching with no support from below. Still who would want the tedium of gathering enough clay to make it realistic? So I killed a bunch of ant lions, explored the sands, and got up onto the castle for some sweet loot. Then the sun rose and I was not expecting it to be a legit desert with heat damage. I did make a lean to in the shade by the outpost and had to drink nasty water to stave of death from dehydration. I had planned to rest until nightfall but drinking that water tanked my hunger, so now I was at risk of starvation. I thought I might have to die and respawn for the first time, but I managed to get out alive by sprinting from shade to shade and gorging myself on mushrooms in that base spot.

I made an ant lion greatsword and headed for the sand entrance to the black ant nest. This place was a confusing slog and I really wished the game had a mini map, or at least dungeon maps. I had to leave and come back 3 or 4 times. Once was to make a full set of black ant armor thinking it would make me friendly to them like the red armor to the red, but it did not. I did try to avoid killing the ants in hope of not pissing them off too badly, but they went to wanting me gone as soon as I reached the bottom, so that must have been scripted. I got stuck here because I did not notice the bomb crack on the glass. After considerable wandering around I had to look it up, then go all the way to the red ant nest to swipe eggs for more bombs. For fuck sakes. I had not yet found out that the truffle mutation made my unarmed attacks create explosions on enemies. Then I fought the assistant manager boss, which took several attempts. The main problem was screwing up the platforming and taking absurd amounts of laser damage. Eventually I mastered that and owned the boss with my level 0 greatsword. I was tempted to leave again to upgrade that sword but didn't need to after all.

Now with the assistant manager card and black ant chip, I went around collecting the optional chips for sweet loot. I had to look up how to get onto the picnic table. I had previously found the shovel held up by a cracked rock way before I had bombs, and failed to keep notes. Yes I probably should start writing this stuff down. I also looked up where to get the 3 keys for the 3 treasure chests I had found. So with a bunch of sweet new recipes I went on a crafting spree. From upgrading my light helm, aphid shoes and gas mask I realized that upgrading also fully repaired items. From then on I waited to upgrade until repairs were needed. I also learned that highly upgraded items had to be repaired with glue, though that could be made from all kinds of things and was handy to carry around. I lacked the fancy resources to make most of the new things. All I could make was the salt morning star, mint mace and crow crossbow, though first I had to make the harrowing journey to harvest charcoal to make the oven. Since I didn't have much fire resist yet, I could only survive running in to smack the charcoal once, then healing up for the next smack. I randomly found a thistle plant so I could finally make arrows and stop lugging around so many spears. Would have been useful early on for the spiked club and archery.

The first thing I did was try to kill a roly poly with the morning star, given it exploited 2 weaknesses; nope still not enough damage. I got up into the middle yard and explored the charcoal wastelands of the tipped over bbq. Those hot coals, and all the batteries left in the open, made me realize it had not rained for months. Hmmm, I highly doubt those coals would still be hot but it was a very cool and unexpected environment. I saw no way to get higher, and lacked the heat protection to go near the bbq, so I went to the ladybird larvae nest. Damn those bastards with their tricky moves and high damage. I was kiting them out of the nest and hiding on top of a leaf to snipe them with my bow. This was a fun and mostly effective strategy but sometimes they could get up. Eventually I wondered if they were respawning, so I decided to press into the cave. This was a painful slog with several deaths and reloads due to how many enemies were in there. Fighting 2 at once was extremely difficult. I had to carefully snipe pull them with the crossbow, use the rapier for health steal, burst them down before they ran at low hp, and stand around waiting for my bandages to heal me up. Eventually I emerged into the upper yard, and was immediately attacked by an adult ladybird. I decided to explore west towards the bbq and noted that was a much faster way up. I found the sword in the charcoal bag and tried to cheese the event by sniping from too high for them to attack me. No way was that going to work, and I got my ass kicked fighting in melee. At this point I realized I could lower the difficulty in the menu, so I set it to mild and still failed. I left it on mild and liked that difficulty better. The game was still a challenge, but less nail bitingly so.

I wanted that sword, so I farmed ant lions until I had a full set of heat resist armor. With that, the mint mace, insulated spike as a trinket and eating enough mints and spicy candy to unlock defensive mutations, I tried the event again. Nope, still too hard. I was not able to beat it until much later when I had 5 mutation slots unlocked and maxed barbarian, so I could use that with guard dog, fresh defense, cardio and buff lungs. Meanwhile I kept the ant lion armor on and upgraded it every time I needed repairs as a long term strategy to help with the sword event. Then I explored the rest of the west, and started fighting termites and ox beetles. I had a lot of fun making the beetle and larvae infight. Eventually I made my way to the termite nest and already had the best axe before delving into the nest proper. The nest was intense with a high concentration of enemies; sometimes fighting like 4-5 at once. At one point a wolf spider appeared in the nest and helped the termites kill me; WTF. From then on I could hear the spider in the walls so I guess it was a glitch. I harvested splinters and found a tunnel blocked by three. I only chopped the middle one, which proved very useful as the termite king could not fit through, allowing me to safely snipe him with the crossbow. Cheese for the win! Afterwards I had to go and farm ox beetles to get the best hammer and finally be able to harvest the ultimate stone, which meant I had to clear the whole termite nest again. I could also harvest rust so made a rust spear, which was good for under water and flying enemies. Then I found my way onto the shed porch and finally got lint. It annoyed me how much I had to go back to base to drop off loot; damn limited inventory. At least I set up a zip line above the pond scooper to make getting up and down faster. It took some doing to get it at the right height and angle. I had to put it at a weird squish angle on a clay foundation.

I then explored east of the shed and encountered fire ants. They were disappointingly easy; they should have had poison and/or sizzle. I finally found the pine cones needed for the best crossbow and the magic staves. The mint staff kind of sucked as it was short range, the spicy was kind of like the acid glob shot by fire ants, and the sour staff was like the BFG. I still did not have enough materials to make better amour though, so I cleared out the stump lab, and went to castle Moldorc. I found my way to the top of the castle but could not jump onto the roof even though it seemed like it should have been possible. I built an absolutely ridiculous clay staircase up there, and even continued all the way to the top of the torch where there was a moth. I had mostly been using the +defense -attack trinket, sometimes switching to the biotech trinket for converting food into hp, until I found a sour damage trinket from a sour candy; 1% drop rate. That thing was awesome.

I did try the coal katana event again and managed to dominate it with unupgraded mint mace. Since I no longer needed the ant lion armor I made a set of roly poly armor for ultimate tank mode. Then I decided to complete the mixers, starting with the sandbox. I had already completed the easiest one near the beginning without fortifications. Though by the time I got down there it was daytime so I went to the haze instead. I tried it without fortifications but failed. Then I built a wall of palisades because dandelions were readily available, and easily beat it. I did beat the sandbox one first try without any fortifications but the thing was one hit away from being destroyed because of the area damage on their burrow attack. The hedge one required some basic grass walls. Then the one by the bbq had ants and mosquitoes though I was expecting the hot larvae. I put down some basic grass walls and had to stand on top of it to fend off the mosquitoes. The upper yard was a pain with tough enemies everywhere, so I expected the last mixers to be very difficult. I had been stockpiling mushroom bricks every time I returned to base. The 2 mixers vs ants and roly polys were not too difficult with simple mushroom walls, though they broke through the one at the lawnmower. It was a heroic last stand with me taking the place of the broken wall segment for the last 30 seconds or so. The lack of variety was disappointing. The Moldorc mixer was the most difficult by far. I figured there would be tiger mosquitoes so I built high; clay foundation, then mushroom wall, then half mushroom walls above that so I could go high enough to put roofing. I was making clover roofs until I tried stem floors after running out of supplies. So much easier when stuff was made from only 1 thing. I was not expecting ticks, so this event took several attempts as I adjusted things. The ticks tended to destroy the clay and get under the walls so I should not have put that foundation at all. I left it but added a single wall piece inside where they kept breaking through, another perimeter wall of mushrooms, went back to base to get a repair tool, then another trip to upgrade the coal katana to level 5, and activate the tick mount for bonus damage. I found out while reading up about armor effects and mutations about the damage and defense bonus from the flower bed. I had been ignoring my base for all this time, only building the absolute bare minimum; no walls or roof at all other than blocking off the entrance to the wolf spider lair under the oak since raids tended to come that way. I built a bunch of random stuff just to get coziness to level 5, including a fireplace on top of a root with parts hanging in mid air on the sides, a basketball net on a root where no one could play with it, a hot tub on a rock slightly above the base, and mounts and stuffed bugs strewn wherever. I did at least put the mounts for the more dangerous creatures on the leaf which sheltered much of the base, so I could find them more easily. I had no idea mounts and stuffed bugs provided temporary buffs or I would have made them sooner. I never built anything fancy after maxing out coziness, and was still using the basic storage baskets. I don't care about aesthetics, only spartan practicality. Of course I went to the black ant lab to open the special door, but was not impressed by any of the loot. While I was down there I also plugged the weed killer and got up onto the house porch, which was a waste as only a feather was up there. It did make me wonder where I could go with my floating stair cases. Could I get on top of the house or over the fence? Surely there must be invisible walls at some point. I did not want to put the effort into finding out though. It was a good thing I waited so late the plug the weed killer because infected enemies started appearing everywhere, including an infected wolf spider spawn inside my base! I put down some spike strips where it spawned and don't know what happened to it the last time it spawned as I did not kill it.

Next I finished up the main quest, heading under the shed, which was a fairly creepy place. I found the pipe with scarabs and killed them with bow, which was definitely the place to farm them since every other time I seen them they quickly fled and vanished. They reminded me of the twinkling twilight basilisks of Dark Souls. I had no trouble with the Mant boss, and was a little disappointed when I finally found Dr. Tully because he was a dumb head in a jar. How did he get his body back during the ending? The story would have been more interesting if he had succeeded at transferring his consciousness into a mant, with him being the mantsterious stranger. He was also very annoying with how often he got in my way while platforming and shooting. I beat the director, and the final defense event using simple mushroom walls, though they got through the walls at point C and nearly caused me to fail. Perhaps additional walls and some spike traps would have been useful.

The only thing left to do was defeat the optional bosses, beginning with the broodmother. Had to watch a video to find out where to find the recipe to summon her, and while I was in the area I built clay stairs to the top of the birdbath. Seemed like the legit way up there was to build a zipline to attach to the one already there, but I hated exploring the confusing hedge without a map. The boss herself was easier than a black widow, which was by far the most difficult regular enemy. I barely survived the first widow I fought, though they were not too bad with blocking and health regen from barbarian. I later built grass walls outside 2 widow lairs to trap them for cheap ranged kills. I had to kill the broodmother again because I used too many parts to make the mother demon helm, which had just as much protection as the roly poly while being medium armor. The other demon pieces were not as good. This time I used the coal katana instead of salt morning star. While I did kill her a lot faster, I also took a lot more damage, showing just how awesome shields were. I made sure to replicate the other boss baits that required parts from another boss. Next was the mantis, which was a much more difficult fight where I actually had to use a few healing items. I didn't read the strategy beforehand and thus did not know I had to move to avoid certain attacks. Next was the wasp queen, though I first had to figure out how to get inside the big bin. I had already built clay stairs to the top to see what was up there, and had already pissed the wasps off to wanting me gone, but never got the cutscene. That was probably because I never bothered to sleep, instead relying on my firefly helm to operate all night. After researching online, I destroyed 3 wasp nests, got them wanting me gone, and immediately slept at a lean to I put at the coffee maker specifically for this purpose. This worked. Wasps were the most annoying enemy because of their tendency to stay too high to hit with melee, using extremely unrealistic ranged stringer shots. I often had to hide under or behind stuff to get them to fly close enough. Ranged duels were not good because only shields could block poison. I cleared out the bin and easily defeated the queen. She was more difficult than the broodmother but not as tough as the mantis.

Then came the ultimate final battle against the infected mother, where I pulled out all the stops to prepare. I fully upgraded my salt morning star, full set of roly poly armor, and the mother helm. I made a scythe of blossoms and fully upgraded it with fresh to exploit her weakness, only to find out way too late that it was a 2 handed weapon. My autosaves for the wasp queen were overwritten so there was no take back. I had already used a lot of raw science to dupe scarab shells and was nearly out of mint shards. While it would not be impossible to make another max fresh weapon (I was looking at toenail scimitar for only slightly less damage than the scythe, or tick sword for life steal), this blunder upset me almost enough to not want to play anymore, especially after repeated failures against the boss. I made a lot of smoothies, including an attack boost and lots of antidotes. I made the ox beetle meal for max hp and damage resist, and took every granola bar and healing sac I had. On my first attempt I got her to phase 3 50%. Subsequent attempts got a little better until I identified the issue that was causing me to fail. The stacking damage resist debuff from being hit by explosions eventually brought me to the point where all my healing could no longer out heal the damage. So it was more a skill issue about avoiding the bombs at all costs. I adjusted my mutations to take off poison resist (since it was useless against venom), mom genes to help with damage and distracting adds, and switching mant stranger for cardio fan because I was having trouble maintaining enough stamina to keep up the offensive. For the attempt that succeeded, I switched my shield solidifer trinket for the sour damage, and used the scythe for 2 phases to burn her down asap, for less chance of being hit by bombs. Then phase 3 was about using my trusty salt star as usual, but only in 2 hit combos, being a bit more aggressive, and moving out of the gas clouds so I could better see the bombs. The infinite bomb weapon made from her parts was interesting, though I would have to dupe or fight her again to make it. I think a mounted head and stuffed body for the buffs would be in order, but at this point I soloed the hardest thing in the game so I am done.

Final score: 93%, 109 days, over 2200 kills, 400 perfect blocks, 120 grass harvested, 0 deaths. Best weapon by far was the salt morning star with ladybird shield. The rust spear was my secondary. Even though I never made the toenail scimitar, tick sword, or widow dagger, I am sure they would all be excellent. I did not find the staves all that useful compared to archery, but at least they did not require ammo. I did make the sour battleaxe and tiger mosquito rapier but never used either in battle. The axe did chop faster than the termite axe. I also did not bother to use elemental arrows, instead just the basic thistle and later splinter arrows. I do wonder if the bard bow would be worth using over the crossbow. My mutation sets were: A; tank mode with fresh defense, spicy defense, barbarian, corporate kickback, shocking dismissal. C; same as A except switch fresh for poison resist. B; explorer, merteen, daredevil, cardio fan, and buff lungs for zipping around on my aphid shoes. I also used thief and hauling hero here on occasion. D; offense mode with barbarian, cardio fan, buff lungs, spicy defense, and shocking dismissal. Though I swapped out for ant killer or guard dog as needed. I spent my first milk molars on healing rate since the biggest limitation I had early on was recovering health; I put it 1 point below max. Then I put 1 point into mutations, max hp, and max stamina, then maxed mutations, then got hp and stamina to 1 below max. There were some huge diminishing returns for that last point. I ended with 4 unspent molars and did not spend any in hunger/thirst since that was so easy to manage. I ended with 3 unspent mega molars and had all 3 categories 1 point below max. I am sure there were plenty of well hidden molars still left to find.

This was a fun well crafted game that felt a lot like a Fallout game. The entire plot easily could have been a vault tech experiment, despite the extreme improbability of the same scientist inventing shrinking, AI robots, mind controlling explosive fungi, and the mant . The world, exploration, combat and enemy AI were all excellent. I am not really into crafting and survival mechanics but they were very well done here. Some good things that particularly stood out: the options for setting up the game, supposedly being able to switch back and forth from singleplayer and multiplayer, fired ammo being highlighted with big icons for very easy pickup, glowing loot outlines, and the hot storage button to automatically dump and sort stackable stuff into storage containers. There were a lot of user friendly and time saving features in this game, but there were also some glaring omissions. The biggest problem I had was crashing, which was almost a daily occurrence. Loading saves was obnoxiously long. The limited inventory made exploration more time consuming than necessary, especially given all the tools you needed to lug around: multiple melee and ranged weapons, axe for chopping, hammer for busting, shovel for digging, knife for underwater chopping, diving gear, explosives, food, water, healing, light source, gas mask, construction materials to bypass platforming, and other items with valuable functions. It did not take long to fill up on loot, which meant frequent trips back to base, which was made even worse by the lack of fast travel. There really should have been infinite inventory or a way to send stuff back to base without interrupting the fun gameplay. And instant fast travel between the labs, if not also every field station. A few other things that annoyed me; sometimes I could not use stuff in storage to repair my gear and had to painstakingly look for the stuff in all my storage. A way to automatically move items from storage to personal inventory by clicking on it in the crafting or repair UI would be handy. The game did not allow menus to scroll up from the top or down from the bottom. This was most noticeable in the inventory screen since the cursor started on the left side and I could not simply press left to warp to the far right of the screen to get to my equipped items. The game also wasted my time by having certain crafting recipes take time, like silk rope, cooking and high end oven stuff. Who wants to stand around waiting, especially in a singleplayer game? The day night cycle annoyed me with how frequently and long it was night time. It should have been real time so I could actually play for hours on end without it getting dark. That probably would have encouraged me to sleep in the game. Sleeping also significantly depleted thirst and hunger while also advancing the spoiling of food, so sleeping felt more like a penalty. The enemy factions and base raids were lame. It was only ever a small number of enemies that were easily defeated, rather than an epic threat. But how would the bugs ever know where my base was? And many of the factions imply far greater intelligence and social connections than exist in reality. I can believe that ants, bees, wasps and termites would make war on enemies; they do that in real life. But spiders, mosquitoes and ladybug larvae? I don't think so. Falling damage also annoyed me. I could even kill aphids by knocking them off of grass leaves. In reality such tiny creatures would survive falling from any height. Since a human being that tiny is science fiction, the physics could go either way. Another issue was the lack of info on what some item and mutation effects actually did. This was hidden on the left side of the mutation screen, and it was not readily apparent that I could move the cursor over there; why I had to look up stuff online. And lastly, navigation was more difficult than it needed to be. Minimap, detailed area maps showing where you have and have not been, compass directions on the main screen, and infinite custom map markers should be mandatory for any game with movement. If the game had these quality of life improvements I would easily rate it a masterpiece. Still an awesome game though.

8.2/10

This is really neat and I'm totally digging it thus far. Despite being fairly in depth, it's extremely easy to understand and quick to learn how it works. Everything is super intuitive and I say that as someone with a fairly severe learning disorder.

My only real issue - and this is an issue with Obsidian more than anything - is this bizarre obsession they have with eating and drinking. Wish I could turn that off. I'm on "Mild" difficulty. That only halves your hunger/thirst instead of removing it as an issue altogether, which I feel it should. I don't understand this obsession Obsidian has with this concept, but whatever. It feels manageable in this at least. Now, to be fair, you can outright disable the need to manage your hunger/thirst, but it might possible disable achievements as well, I don't know. It's not exactly clear what does and does not disable achievements. For instance on loadup, when choosing gametype between regular, creative and whatnot, it says everything outside of regular disables some achievements or all achievements, and so presumably that includes custom games. So I'm not really certain.

I do feel bad killing insects though, as someone who loves insects lol