Dinkum Reviews

Animal crossing in AUS. Very fun, if a little shallow in some places.

A really fun game, very fun art and game play!! the new updates bring so much new items to play around with, and there's always something to do!

This game is like a cross between Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. It has all the cozy building and farming with just a bit of combat and danger. It's a great balance with a fun theme based on Australia.

Lots to do including combat, boating, sea diving, gardening, selling, fishing, cooking, hunting, mining, deep mine mining, crafting, building, landscaping, huge map, tons of islands. So much to do and explore!

The top review right now has a massive number of reactions, and a decent number of comments, and for good reason; the truth is that Krafton as a company sucks, and James should have taken more care in who he threw his weight behind when it came to his game. To clarify, I refuse to touch this game in any capacity since the partnership with Krafton, for the following reasons: While James is still the developer, any further purchases related to the game have the money split between himself and Krafton - that's how a partnership works - and I simply don't believe that every small indie dev is a divine gift from heaven and should be treated like their work is pure gold. I am not of the opinion that giving Krafton money is a sensible decision just because some other guy I don't know would also get money at the same time. Even just continuing to be a player, outside of Krafton's tendency to take as much personal data as it possibly can, will make their numbers look better to stakeholders - and I'd just rather not be part of that. Krafton treat their employees poorly, operate as a ruthless business (perfectly predictable) and have an *incredibly* dodgy record when it comes to data acquisition, retention, and privacy. I appreciate the average bot knows only "world bad, suck it up buttercup", but some of us are actual adults with fully formed prefrontal cortices, and throwing your own online safety - as well as your moral values, if you've bothered to develop any - under the bus because... idk, gotta lick those boots somehow? I guess? farm some online clout with a sick burn and a clown award? is just sort of silly. Krafton is valued at US$20B. If you think they're just "helping out" a small indie dev, then I'm asking you to politely consider the alternative; that they see an opportunity to relentlessly expand their market influence, and James Bendon is just the latest to fall for it. But that's his business now. Notice under that review, by the way, the comments are talking about all kinds of "sides", and... whatever. They're clearly bot comments that mostly aren't referring to the review, and considering the sheer number of them it's entirely possible Krafton bought those comments themselves as part of their role "marketing" the game. What kind of real human being asks someone to turn their review into a positive one? That's literally only done by a marketing team. But I digress. As an actual game, Dinkum is... a 6/10? At best? It's fine, never quite grabbed me the same way titles like Animal Crossing Wild World or Stardew Valley did. The need for manually clicking every interaction, the way progress felt pretty slow, the *horrendous* gameplay loop when mining - it was cute, sure! fun for a bit, definitely not a "bad" game by any means, but I never found myself thinking "I can't wait to play Dinkum again!" All the mechanics are just a little bit too tedious, all the challenges just a little bit too simple, all the systems just a little bit too unpolished. I probably wouldn't have bothered leaving a review and would've just quietly dropped the game, content that I at least gave it a go, and unphased that I never really explored anywhere close to everything it had to offer. I can definitely see what some people have fallen for; I think if it'd been a little more ironed out I would feel a lot more sorrow leaving it behind. But oh well, probably for the best all things considered. Only buy it now if you're fine with the direction that Krafton will guide it. Dinkum is a perfectly "Okay" game, with a dev that decided to partner with one of the most reviled contemporary publishers you can find.

This game is a exercise in frustration. Everything is so poorly balanced. Tools degrading and breaking is super annoying but becomes expensive and a hassle to balance. Do I need to purchase a couple back ups in case the shop is closed when I need one? Ill use copper ore to upgrade them but they last only slightly longer. Copper ore becomes increasingly rare so I purchase the deed for the deep mines which costs 250k. After 3 days waiting in game the mine is finished. Now you need to buy a one day license to go under ground for another 30k. Get that and go underground, completely pitch black. Guess I should have thought to bring torches or buy the flashlight for another 10k. Randomly agro a alpha croc, kills me in the town, respawn the next day and the croc is still in the town. Villagers ask for things that are impossible to provide. Oh I need flour, should have had the money on the one day the travelling guest that sells those seeds was there, planted 10 days ago and then had the money to buy a mill to make the flour. So many things are locked away by the RNG nature of visiting guests. Maybe you will have the money to buy things when they visit, hopefully they dont ask for a really difficult request to try and get 1/10th a heart up each time. I was 45 days into a playthrough and still hadnt got one of them to move to the island, so if you run out of seeds, or a hoe or animal feed you are just completely screwed. I bought this game well before the subnautica 2 debacle also. That alone is reason to not purchase this game from Krafton, This whole game feels like it was purchased and just pushed out the door before it was balanced and ready to go

Very fun game, but it has a really big flaw: there should've been a save button that allows you to save the progress, or wait out the night. I was playing multiplayer with my friend, and I forgot to bring my sleeping bag over while being stuck on the shop purchasing quest. With the shop being closed at night and the late night stage not progressing, one of us was forced to quit the game and lose the progress he made over the entire day. That was a really annoying experience.

It's like My Sims and Animal Crossing had an Aussie child together. There's a grind to it but its quite relaxing to play nonetheless. The dialogue does get a bit repetitive from NPCs but this doesn't put me off. Some tweaks could be made to the lighting transitions between times of day but, again, this isn't incredibly off-putting. I wish there was more bugs and fish! I imagine the game will only get better and more in-depth with time. For a single dev game, it is very very impressive.

It's animal crossing but better in every way and with a little stardew mixed in. Not nearly as grindy, more customization, more depth to gameplay, terraforming, non-fixed camera, hunting, mines, etc. Crafting doesn't take a ton of resource so you can spend more time being creative which is an excellent design choice. If you get bored doing one thing, there's always another mechanic you can try out instead. For the price, this game is a steal. Such a great cozy game. My only gripe is that the environments/biomes are kinda ugly. The game really only comes to "life" when you start to truly decorate and create your town.

This game allows you to have fun with others. You can find an adventure in every single direction. Building structures, digging in the ground, camping out! You start as a tiny civilization and sometimes it's fun to try to live off the land, but sometimes it's funner when you have all of the power of the game in creative mode. I like creative because I can make my world how I like it and my friends can help me with it. That's my report. -age 9