Once, i suffered a severe psychosis, and got prescribed major medications that put me in a dream-like state for a while before I could adjust. And, when I took my first dose, for, like, 3 days straight, I played this game. I woke up in the morning, I'd start it, I'd play it till midnight without a break, go to bed, repeat. Felt like I was this little blob guy. It was fun, this game kinda saved my mind and helped me through the toughest time of my life
@@PatFagan Worry not! Joe has announced on his Patreon page earlier, the Witcher video should be out within two months. Even if it delays a bit, it is unlikely to be six months long. Plus, he has an unpublished video in making about My Time at Portia.
"Just like in real life if you work yourself through starvation your character self cannibalizes a heart's worth of health for about half of your total energy bar"
That does technically happen in the human body. Once we reach reach a certain threshold we start expending stored glucose and fatty cells [calories, exercise, and stuff]. Past that it does get to the point where the stomach eats away at itself resulting in you slowly and painfully dying.
"I didn't like it. Yet I still found myself glued to the progression loop." I am extremely catious about every single game that I would describe like that. If that happens, I know that Im just scratching the completion itch, and actually not enjoying the game. Im wasting time with it and I know I should choose some other game to spend my time with. Im not a kid anymore and gaming time is more precious to me now. Even if I wanted to scratch that itch, and I do sometimes, there are games that do not feel like junk food. With a gameplay that supplements the experience by a progression loop, and does not focus just on the loop itself. When its just about the progression loop, it feels like the developers put in milestones in progression just to stretch the gameplay time. Good progression uses the time between each loop to space out introduction of new mechanics in order for the player to become acquainted with them, or to let the gameplay feel seep into you, before giving it a twist to make it fresh again. There is a difference between a game like this and classic Diablos for example, they dont do JUST the progression loop right, there is so much more. The gameplay itself has memorable, worthwile moments. Id rather eye that new DLC for Titan Quest than this. Thanks for the video.
@@1996Pinocchio true. I guess self imposed limits are important here. For me if I know there's no "end" to a game but I enjoy playing it I limit sessions to 20-30 mins... Hard because those games r usually addictive. If I don't really like it but wanna see more of what it has then I give an limit on total playtime, like let's say 5-10 hours.
*shows a hallow knight costume* "Not enough soul." Anyways, great video as usual. Your videos are always interesting to watch even though I haven't or will never play half of the games you talk about, that's just how interesting they are.
Got super excited for a sec thinking it might be an epic length review/analysis.. but y'know what, short and sweet videos are pretty great sometimes haha
Sato i was thinking the same lol That huge Witcher series critique is going to be enormous though and that’s what i’m waiting for. These short/filler vids will do for now.
Thank you so much for making real reviews, so I don't have to waste money and time on games that I'd hate. It's refreshing, to say the least, with a reviewer who focuses on the core gameplay loops and not the aesthetics and details. I often put down a game thinking "Why do people like this?", and then it's always comforting to come here and confirm my sanity :))
I'm so proud that someone for my country made a game that has been recognized by important companies and journalist all over the word. It gives me hope that we can always do better
Part of the fun I had late game was using lighthouses to make litteral trillions of dollars by stacking boosts, not really useful but it was kinda cool figuring out how to do it, good review tho, definitely earned a sub
I think it was intended as an idle clicker you only pay for ONCE. It works pretty damn well with this in mind. Or it's just that mobile Elder Scrolls traumatised me.
My problem is that it's $20. With Hollow Knight being 15, Terraria being 10, and Factorio being 20 when I bought it, there's just better stuff to spend your money on.
@@afriendofafriend5766 Hmm, I'd rather say HK is criminally underpriced, but yeah, I'd also agree Forager would feel better at 10-15$. Still, get on a sale and it's a solid game.
I've been interested in this game for quite a while, mostly because it's developed in GameMaker, which I've personally been using for some time to attempt to make games. I picked it up on Friday and "finished" it within 19 hours. So much of what you've said is spot on. I used the keyboard and mouse, which may have improved my experience to a degree, but I was still unable to move things around the inventory (a minor annoyance). While I enjoyed the game a great deal, it did get to a point where I was just making things to be able to make more things. After a certain point (very early) there is almost no challenge. Certain items, like the skeleton skull that makes them ignore you, just completely trivialize large parts of the game. This would be fine if there was some other, more daunting, threat that needed your attention, but there isn't. The biggest problem I see is that the game very much needs an antagonist. A big bad boss that you're working towards fighting. It needs a reason to get to the insane levels of power that you end up gaining. I was entirely expecting the final dungeon to unlock some final boss. Instead, I was given another level up orb, and nothing happened. Eventually I just ran out of things to do and stopped playing. This left me feeling like I had accomplished nothing.
Dude you are what I've been looking for your content has been constantly appealing your voice is calm enough to keep me chill when I'm playing games and human enough to not make me zone out your content isn't like 10 min and I can just put on a longer review and use it as I would a podcast I'm very glad that I've discovered you and I'm very surprised you don't have way more subs
I absolutely agree with your review/assessment of this game. I bought the game and played it till the "end" (all islands acquired, tools upgraded), yet I can surely say that I did not like playing it almost at all. Out of those 10 hours spent with it, two or three were kinda enjoyable (dungeons, solving riddles, getting something game-changing for the first time) - the rest felt like eating chips does after a while. You just keep going, not really knowing why, keeping yourself occupated, yet somewhere deep inside resides the unpleasant feeling, a little voice telling you that this is really a big waste of time and you should kinda stop. Not to mention that the amount of content does not justify the exaggerated price tag (e.g. Stardew Valley or Terraria offer ten times more for half the money). Glad I am not the only one.
I know you probably won't see this but thank you for your honest videos, i like how you give these games a chance. I super appreciate how you don't give a "this is a 5/10" not worth a buy or a an opinion that discourages buyers but simply lays out what you view as objective flaws or things that could be improved on. I remember watching your hollow knight critique for the first time and deciding to buy the game myself (thank you btw) and i tuned into your twitch around the time of persona 5 and danganronpa. I had a pretty biased opinion on what Danganronpa would be as a game but i genuinely enjoyed watching you experience it and even nitpick over plot points and characters being a little too oblivious for story points. I just wanted to say i really enjoy your format for these videos and thank you for your content.
I own it, both my wife and I love it. I'd say $20 is a bit high but not by an amazingly large amount for what the game does. 20 hours is about right, however I found it an extremely engaging 20 hours, and it's worth mentioning I personally have a hatred of "incremental" games. You also have to consider there are going to be post release updates to expand on the parts they "dabbled" in, and the fact that this whole game was created by one guy. You should consider reconsidering.
As a student with no disposable income, 20 dollars is INSANE. I buy most of my games from Humble Bundle, usually at "pay what you want" level (AKA 1 dollar) or the "average price" ~6 dollar level. The only ever exception to this for me was Minecraft, which I bought in beta for 15$, but only AFTER playing the game for hundreds and hundreds of hours on a pirated version.
i love incremental games. I seriously dont know why, but its extremely satisfying to get to the max set of gold, or the highest level, or have the biggest factory, or the most cookies, whatever. Once you get to a point where you know you cant grow anymore it feels like you've made it. The second you said "its like an incremental game" i went to steam and bought it. After work today im probably going to be up until early in the morning, and i honestly cant wait
Great review, really liked how you were upfront about it early on. You made a great case and great example, helped me to decide to get this or not on sell, full price, or skip all together. I'll check out your other videos, to see if I'll subscribe or not, but so far so good!
I had a lot of fun in this game my 2nd time around. I did a small island challenge where I made a world with only 1 island purchase (reloaded to get the costumes) and then created a small town with decorations and pathing and made it real pretty and I had a WONDERFUL time unlocking everything on my island where my only means of getting money was trading at the shops.
"This is the only way to level mid game" You could just roll the sacrificial altar for the giant 3 levels for 1 heart instead, I got about 12 levels towards the end that way, sure I spent a few more hearts on useless rolls but it still ended up being quicker. Also the aiming isn't much better with KB&M; the hitboxes for certain things like the wooden planks that let you walk on water were especially hard to destroy, mainly because I found out its easier to hit things that are below your character instead of above, for some reason. Increasing the range at which you can hit individual things with your pick would have been a good QoL upgrade.
Thank you! I've been kind of iffy about buying this game and I'm glad to see you have made a review of it! I'll wait for it to be like $5 at most if it ever gets that low
This video was the best way to finish my run at this game, i knew exactly wat i was getting into, and still threw 2 days at this game, but hearing someone echo my exact feelling about this game out loud was de push i needed to just quits this game before it consumed my soul... 10/10 time killer/waster, would definitly not recommend
Mr. Anderson, you did it. I hope you're happy, because I am proud. I know you've been struggling with making shorter scripts because how how in depth you go into games, and I know this game was just and indie game with a high price, but I know you could have easily made this 20+ minutes with how many examples you wanted to prove your point with. You cut this down to what was needed, entertaining, and kept you sane. If you can keep this efficiency, I think both you and your community would still love your work, and probably love it more. Again, great job.
Coming here after recently buying Forager myself and the meal analogy is pretty spot on. I'm enjoying the game quite a bit but it's because I bought it with the sole intent of it being what I like to call a "junk food game." Something I can just zone out with for a few hours after dinner while listening to a podcast or watching a stream vod. Sometimes that sort of junk food can just really hit the spot.
Great analysis Joseph, the demo that was available through Humble Monthly started really well and made me want to buy it, but the price tag left me wondering if it was worth that much.
I agree with everything you said. A couple hours into the game I found myself staring gormlessly at a forge working to make gold bars so I could mint coins so I could actually have more content because the banks were too slow to purchase new islands regularly, which I needed so I could find the other resources I needed to build things (BONES IM LOOKING AT YOU) so I could progress. Cute game at the start, but it utterly lost me at that point where I was no longer madly scrambling to get things done and instead sitting and waiting because none of the other gameplay was compelling enough to engage in.
Awesome review man thanks, it was super useful also this is the 1st time seeing a video of your and new to the channel. So guess i'll look at your other video's see if anything catches my eye. :D
I want to thank you Joe, with all of my heart, for your work and effort you put into your materials. As someone with severe depression, I barely do anything in my life that doesn't revolve around wanting to commit suicide. But staying at home and watching your videos for the past few months has really helped me in ways I can't even describe, I just feel them. Thank you sir.
I know what you mean, same here. Things like this and certain podcasts I listen to make such a massive difference, more than any medication I've ever had.
Hey, here's how you get tons of exp and cas 1. Take the observatory skill, the exp when selling skill and the enhanced range skill (all of them are in economy) 2. Place in an area as many observatorys as possible 3. Dig thousands of sand 4. Sell the sand for money and exp
The game is really great, just pure mechanics and 'style', fast and fun. And yeah, it would greatly benefit from some kind of ending/credits screen goal.
"This game is like (...) factorio" What? Really? Doesnt look like it" "Spoilers ahead" I dont care, I wan to decide wether to play this or not. "The goal of the game is to not play it anymore and have it automated" *stops the video and buys the game*
Something to note is that you can VERY easily stumble onto a relic that *forces* you to make a choice (at least, I couldn't not make a choice) pretty early on that can give you a FREE DROID and 10 EMP grenades (worth about 100K). I had this happen twice to me pretty quickly into the game and it completely broke any kind of progression I might have had.
I've been waiting for witcher for so long, but now I've dived deep into from software and hollow knight, thanks to Joseph. So much so i just want the sekiro analysis and super dont care about witcher 3. I dont like witcher 3, I'm sure Joseph and I will relate to what's wrong but also appreciate what's done right. I'm now just excited to see the inevitable sekiro video, I won't lie Joseph I'll be shocked if you aren't planning one Edit: .....I still want the witcher vid tho.....I need to feel validated that I'm not the only one with big issues with the game, and Joseph will be more articulate than I
I'd like to see you expand on your opinion about the idle game genre, now that you have set some ideas on this video. I'm looking forward to watch this topic more...explored
I love the food comparison you made, i just sorta finished eating a cake i got for christmas. It was sort of tasty but after i ate the last bite i felt not so good and i dont feel like eating the rest of it ever
I would love to play an incremental game that grows each time. Like Spore with the cells, organism, town and civilzation but incremental. A Katamari Damacy/Forager/Factorio/Spore game.
I stuck with the gamepad too for it as, like you said, the game inadvertently encourages it from the start. Bad move but i was too stubborn to switch to keyboard after starting with gamepad. And with this control scheme the hitboxes and aiming are very janky. Its a game I remember enjoying at the time, but cant bring myself to go back to (and even somewhat regret buying at this point, despite the developers charming story - theres plenty of people where he used to be, its hard to be as ecstatic about his game being as popular as he is). That all said I do appreciate that you progression in game does unlock little bonuses on the games menu such as comic strips and concept art. Featuring (good) fan-art on the front screen is a good move too. I imagine fans get a real kick out of it and its nice to see a developer support the efforts of the following they've created.
I am a big fan of idle/incremental games, cookie clicker is always running in my browser. But complexity is key and I usually skip any outright if there's no prestige system, if you want to see just how complex they can get check out anti-idle on kongregate. But this one sounds simple to the point of tedium. Maybe updates will change that.
Hey! I just found you channel today through this video. While I do agree with the vast majority of what you said, especially it being 20 dollars, I do think you might've missed some stuff. This is pretty long so I'm sorry. To be fair, I've only played the game for 20 hours in one save file, but here's my experience with the game; First, I didn't think leveling up was a problem at any point, though that might be because it wasn't my central focus. I never used a spirit orb to level up, but I did use another method that I'll touch on in a bit. As far as I can tell, you felt the level requirement skyrocket at around lvl 40. I went full "red" path (I guess you could could it smiting but yeah), and at that point, the factory producing stuff made me cruise through levels. Once I found the crafting experience pillar, it got to a point in which making a single electronics would fill a fourth of my xp bar. By the time I wasn't gaining levels as fast, I had already gotten everything useful out of the skill tree. Funnily enough, I didn't mess with scrolls or potions at all until very late game, and when I was 2 levels away from max, I found out Sage Scrolls gave a really good bit of xp. I used like 3 to get the 2 remaining levels, and still had around 40 on my vault, so I suppose that's another way to gain good amounts of experience. Leading off this last point, I find it kind of sad you didn't mention any of the magic stuff. Sure, it can be very lacking and underwhelming when you leave it off till lategame like I did, but I think if I had used scrolls a lot earlier, it would've made the play experience a lot smoother. Finally, another way I found of leveling up: the sacrificial... table(?) in the hell biome. I'm sure you experimented with it at least once, and probably were discouraged by the options, since some of them are really bad, and the price was extremely high. However, some perks are insanely good, which I guess also makes it really unbalanced. Once I discovered the table, I mostly used my spirit orbs for health and would sacrifice them later, ideally aiming for "Termination", which gave you a droid and a 10 EMPs (another kinda disappointing part of the game, since by the time I got it it didn't really matter, I was one shotting mobs anyway), or... Insanity I think was the name of it, which leveled you up *3 times*. There was also a perk that gave you a bunch of potions, a bunch of scrolls, money and gems, and a permanent damage up, that at the very least was exchanging the health upgrade for a damage upgrade. I can see that you mostly went full, uh, "green" path, which probably makes the play through really different. More on this, I think our playstyles were very different. At no point where my islands so cluttered, but that is because I didn't have many to begin with. I held off for the most part on getting that many, and focused on managing the resources I already had, building stuff over all of the forest tiles and a 1 or 2 of the other biomes'. I do think I might've wasted time, delaying the progression, but at the same time, I built shrines early mid game and discovered the colonialist buff, which cuts land's prices in half. Then again, I didn't use my shrines the moment they went off CD, and probably wasted a lot of time just doing resource gathering, or just messing around, trying to figure out a cute way to organize my stuff. The moment I found out about this game, I figured it would be right up my alley. Because of currency exchange and whatnot, the game is around 10 US for me, so I decided to buy it and try it out. I had a lot of fun with it. As I mentioned before, I clocked 20 hours into my save file, and got all achievements on it, as well as developed other (I'd like to say) cool things around the world, like filling every tile with dirt, made a tile of "uber" shrines (like 20 shrines all in the range of 4 nuclear power plants, making the CD like 5 minutes), same with fishing and pretty much all of my crafting stations, though I always went for a good looking design rather than an effective one. Finally, I would like to touch on the energy problem. You probably noticed how I didn't mention using any spirit orbs to increase it. Well, I did use 1 or 2, but thats because I didn't really find myself with energy problems. Again, kind of a my playthrough thing, but the one potion I did mess with in the early stages was Ana's Delight (the pink one), which greatly increased both animal spawnrate and their drops, so once I finished going around my islands spamming e on chickens and the buff ran out, I had 300 eggs to fuel me for most of the early mid game. Eventually I got Revitalize, and killing a single demon would fill my energy bar completely, so even food was pointless. So yeah, I agree with your points, since I can see most of the issues you had on the video clearly, and while having different experiences because of the different paths is a neat feature, you having to go through all that boring constant clearing and having to wait on your banks is really bad design. Personally I never left the game running afk, and it's a shame you were forced to. Plus, the controller experience, as far as I can tell, being trashy compared to keyboard and mouse is just... bleh. Anyway, this is really long as is. For my money's worth, I'd say it was a pretty good deal on my case, and with the upcoming stuff being added, I'm happy with the future the game has. Waiting until more stuff is added and/or the game is on discount as you said is the best bet probably. Uh so yeah, thanks for reading all of that. Really liked the vid. As a side note, did you check out the Extras tab in the menu? It shouldn't really change one's objective opinion about the game but it's still a very wholesome story, heh.
Kinda interested to hear your thoughts on Factorio. It is def a game that can scale a lot more into being big, and can be played without AFKing and still having plenty to do. I think this is fundmentally because rigging together 30 or 60 items is pretty cheap for the early game, and your production capacity easily gets more than than the cost per set-up for everything besides fancy modules.
"crusaders of the lost idols" is the best clicker game i have found, so far. it adds a lot of strategy to the clicker formula. with tons of potential progression. it is one of those games that get played for a hour. left open for another six. then played again
@@cornpop2630 I mean you don't really have a choice in some cases. It is actually quite inspiring how he made a game that decent just by himself at the start
It turns out the fastest way to progress is to stack lighthouses, as each one multiplicatively increases drops in a radius. With a high level shovel and a dozen or so lighthouses, you'll get millions of items, which you can sell on the market for loads a money - and with the xp for sales perk you'll reach max level in no time. If you want to get really silly, a small island surrounded by a screenful of lighthouses will get you quadrillions or quintillions of loot.
Hey Joseph, long time fan here. I always enjoy your content but i am curious for one thing, there are so many famous mainstream games that people would like to hear your opinion about them, like for example Nioh, Days gone, Resident evil 2 remake, Red redemption 2 and many others but instead you choose some indie games that most people dont even know about. I am not complaining, its free content and its your channel after all you run it like you want ,not the fans. But i am just curious about the way you choose your games for reviewing. Thanks for the free content and for the great work as always.
You should do more short reviews like this. It would be nice to see some reviews of games that don't need like 30 minutes of review time for story and gameplay each.
I liked playing this game honestly. It's pretty good. I actually went and got all achievements because I just kinda wanted to do that. One thing I have to say, though, for an incremental game the end of the game is kind of weird. As you get richer and richer, you also want to upgrade the last of your stuff. Personally, I had a lot of issue just getting the bottled oil and plastic I needed to make some of the late game stuff. It just took a really long time. I almost felt like optimizing the world for getting the resources I needed, but I didn't really care to do that. I was mostly just having a few factories produce what I needed instead of dozens. I feel like that wouldn't have helped me too much anyway. What really bothered me was getting some of the gear. Like unlocking boots and gloves. Or the Magic stuff. I focused on other areas first, which locked me out of other content. Which then later became kind of useless when I did unlock it. Not to mention getting the Archeology stuff was incredibly hard. I really wanted all achievements so by the end of the game I literally filled in all land and used the Deliberator (spelling?) to remove land so I could put in fishing nets. Because I still needed a few of those items to upgrade my last gear. Also never crafted any spirit orbs. I used most of them to get all the skills as quickly as possible. Maybe I did all of that the wrong way, but it made me get to the end very quickly. At which point all I needed was the last few pieces of upgraded gear.
I found ways to get around actually needing to Idle for just about all the end game resources to the point that I ultimately didn't feel the need for banks, would likely skip them in subsequent playthroughts. The game also has some very creative ways of leveling, but once you get all the islands, I pretty much agree with everything in this video. The loop gets a little stale as you are upgrading just to be more efficient. I will say this... I could see some appeal in trying to speed run the thing of sort. Trying to clear all the islands in as little real game time possible.
I had no problem with gold. Farmed xp by building fish nets and tearing them down (then switched to torches), got all the coin skills, markets, mining lasers and mining upgrades, upgraded my coin purse and the thing that increases resources per mining to half way, got a blessing of doubling coin gains (or a potion, don't remember), then I just sold all my wood, stone and got like 250k+ coin and bought all the isles. Maybe I misremember, but stacking coin gains and selling is how got insane amount of gold easy.
Thanks for the review, definitely not getting this one. Was curious but this review killed it for me ( In a good way, this wasnt sarcasm if it comes across that way xD )
"The goal of Forager is to not have to play Forager anymore" is really a good summary of how I felt about the game with the exception of the unique stuff (puzzles/dungeons). It's funny, because automation in games isn't always like that. In Factorio, the goal of the game is to automate science, but it's also to automate science faster and faster, which means there's always more for you as the player to do, even as your factory continues to do more and more without your intervention. But Forager isn't really like that, because there's a limited amount of stuff to really do. Honestly there are pretty much two main fun things to do in the overworld part of the game: buying land and upgrading gear. And buying land is pretty broken as the speedrunners have already shown.
