Research Story Reviews

I'm a big fan of games where your main objective is to finish collections, and that's the entire premise of this game. The music is pleasant, the critters are cute, the art is nice, and the game loop is simple but engaging. I've started a fresh file with each major update, and I'm still not bored of playing in early game. There's no over long tutorial or a lot of cut-scenes. You can pretty much jump right into playing. As I'm writing this review, it will be the first time I've played the game into the second year, and there are still critters and plants I haven't found yet. I'm not sure what will happen once my research is finished. The NPCs and Romances are apparently still going to be built up, but right now they're considered complete. Daily dialogue is a little lacking, but the NPCs definitely aren't the main focus of this game for me so I don't feel like anything is lacking right now. I won't be too disappointed if it's mostly a background feature in the end, and getting to know the NPCs better would probably be something I personally leave as "post-game content". Managing a large amount of critters and crops can definitely take up a huge amount of time if you aren't good with streamlining/automation, and I definitely don't excel at it, so there's not much time for me to hang out with any NPCs unless I limit myself to 8 active critters. Other players that are more efficiency minded probably won't struggle with the work-life balance. It isn't a deal breaker for me, I've been enjoying trying out different play styles while doing research. If you like relaxing games that focus on collecting, this is definitely a game worth playing. If NPC interaction and romance is a make-or-break game feature for you, maybe look into others opinions who also put a lot of value on that feature. For me, the main game is fun enough without it.

Great game, distinctly different from the other farming sims through the emphasis on research and checking out every plant and animal. Crafting, mining and farming for profit are still there (and they are nicely done), but are means to the end - collecting all the data about different species you can encounter, which is a huge plus from me - it's a nice spin for farming sims to keep things fresh.

This game is a hidden gem! The gameplay loop is a lot of fun without being too grindy. The art is adorable, the research mechanic is unique without being too difficult, and the creatures are so cute and I love collecting them. The controller inputs took me a little while to get used to, but I still would highly recommend this game for any cozy farming sim enjoyer

Absolutely adorable game, full of many QoL features I always hope to see in cozy sims. The soundtrack is simple, yet incredibly pleasing, and the pixel graphics are detailed without being overwhelming. Very fun and addicting, it's already one of my favorite games! Can definitely feel the love that was put into making this game, and I'm excited to see what may come in the future :)

YES YES YES! 10000% YES GET THIS GAME! For my full first impressions check out youtube https://youtu.be/FIY5bVRMXGs Super cute and fun game, draws on various elements of other farming sims but has its own unique take on it :D so all my harvest moon and story of seasons peeps GIVE THIS GAME A SHOT! you will not regret it. The research aspect is interesting and adds and extra layer to the game :) theres fun things to explore and learn and some interesting farming mechanics! READ YOUR JOURNALS PEEPS!

This game is a hidden gem... I'm sure plenty of people will overlook or pass by this game because on its surface it looks a bit unsophisticated or "old school" in terms of its GUI and graphics. But it really is quite a gem in both game-play AND story. It is definitely not just another farming sim....though it does have some of those same core elements. The research and collection aspects help make it less repetitive and more interactive and interesting. The multiple mini games also add interest and entertainment value. I found myself, very quickly after downloading and playing through the demo, jumping back to Steam to purchase and continue playing. PROS: The collection system is clever and well implemented and kudos to its creator. It makes the "research" being done even more of a pay off than just the crops and/or products that result. And its much more in depth than it looks at a glance. The creature traits for examples. Or the various traits and requirements for planting and growing crops. Even "pets" are implemented in a new, unique way. I am also enjoying the quests and main story (though I am writing this before completing it) quite a bit. CONS: The graphics are a bit simplistic and sometimes interfere slightly with easy of game play (some small layering and repeating graphic issues as one example). Lack of explanation/instructions on how to proceed with some of the quest puzzles and mini games. I understand the creators likely wanted players to feel challenged to "think outside the box" of more traditional farming sims/cozy games which I respect - but in some spots I think perhaps better lead up or explanation is definitely warranted. SUMMARY: Overall, this game is a very pleasant surprise in an often overdone/typically implemented genre. I have yet to come across any real bugs or deal breakers and the game is still holding my interest after over 40 hours of game play. (Stopped and restarted a few times.) I'd definitely give this game a go if you like cozy games, farming sims or similar. It has several clever twists on old, overused systems and a few new ideas implemented that make this game well worth the bucks and the time spent on it imo. Kudos to its creators!

The reviews had me hesitant, but I've ended up enjoying this game! A more simplified Stardew (kind of?). The stuff you do is more complex with things like not being able to plant and grow things until you research them first, but I feel there's less to do overall. -The townsfolk are very shallow and have practically no depth, but I still like the orc man enough to romance. -I'm only in Autumn of year 1 and I'm already sorta OP. Everything's automated, I've finished every puzzle except for the one that requires a winter item, I've already got the Green House and the first house upgrade. All my tools are gold. -The quest system is sort of pointless to me because you get like 3 quests in the beginning and no more after that lol Very fun game if you like to just run around and worry about yourself lol

This one is really fun! I love how they actually dare to do some things differently, with plants having requirements that make your layout almost a puzzle when trying to plant lots of different things. Chamomile for example will wilt if you plant them too close to water... and that's an early one! It drops you pretty much in the heat of things too, with a huge amount of things you can do and severe limits on your time. If you're used to doing everything every day all the time, this will drive you insane. But it's not really meant to be played that way, you can putz around and just focus on what you want - giving you a ton of options isn't meant to overwhelm you, its meant to give you options to pick from. You don't lose anything for not going mining one day or not foraging everything the other, or what have you. I've liked it quite a bit, but you definitely gotta tame the minmaxer in your soul or you can drive yourself up a wall.

I can feel the developer's love, careful thoughts, and hard work poured into this game. It deserves much more love and recognition. • The art is so very cute • The dev is very responsive to bugs and listen to players' suggestions and is active in the community • The game has options that can adjust in game day's length, whether the game will make u faint at 2 am or not, whether you'll faint if you used up all your energy or not, and you can even adjust your base energy right from the beginning. • The game will also start with three slots of your bag open so you'll be able to forage and explore freely without worrying about stuffing your bag full for the first few days. • Save anywhere and any time! Though you can only have 1 slot file per playthrough Now for my bit long yapping: A unique twist in the farming sim genre; instead of being a farmer, you are a researcher moving to Shimmerbrook with other fellow researchers to research the phenomenon of new abundant floras and faunas that suddenly shows up in town and around Shimmerbrook. The game offers new mechanic that hasn't been seen in the genre like how us as the researcher have to research the plants if we want to farm/cultivate said plants; no seeds in the general store at all means we have to forage the seeds in the overworld. And with each plants having unique requirement to grow (that can be referred in our research journal as we observe them with their samples), it adds a twist which for me, personally, has been fun to play and tweak around. For example, mints can only be cultivated near water source (and you will see that mints DO only shows up near rivers lakes etc in the overworld); chamomile will wilt if near water source; and a certain fruit plant will wilt if you're planting it in the wrong weather. For creature taming/ranching, we have to collect samples fallen from the creature, observe their behavior, and then tame them by bribing them with their preferred food that you find out after observing them. Each creature would have different personality traits such as petal-lover (they would be happier if near full grown flowers), veggie-lover (just like petal-lover but for veggies), timid (they would be happier if away from predator creatures), and other unique traits that when combined with the farming, making it have a puzzle like element when you're designing your farm. Some may dislike that they are forced to design around the limitations, but I feel like it's a little fun way to play around the design that's not really hard and demanding (you can ignore their traits np if it feels overwhelming for you). Not to mention the produce that the tamed creature will give you would help you forward with your plant research, making them interlinked with each other. The fishing mini game is fun and not hard at all, though I hate having to look for bugs to get bait, so for the first two weeks of the game I could only limit myself to fish only when necessary:( though as you progress (upgrading scythe and your fishing pole, shaking trees), it'd be easier to get bugs for the bait. The mining is very chill, with [b] no combat at all [/b], which is something I appreciated. Though you'd find elevator only after going a lil' bit deep in the mine and also you'd need fuel for it, but I'll take anything as long as it's not combat to be fair. The NPC sprite is cute and their sprite is gorgeous. It's unfortunate that they repeat their dialogue often BUT the cutscene has been fun and I really like how they warm up as we got closer. Since I've just been playing for only the first season of first year, I'm looking forward to more interactions. (Having reverse proposal mechanic is also something I'm happy to see and very looking forward to!) And I love that we can hangout with townsfolk, not only the romanceables!! All in all, the gameplay is addicting. I find myself to play just one more day in game to mine/forage/fish/just plainly continuing my research. I've been having a blast and I believe I will continue on having a blast for a long more time playing this game :) Now for the cons that's not really a con: • You'll have to [b] read. [/b] And I mean, read carefully what the tutorials and hints tell you to do (for example, when the game tells you to refer to your research journal, you go and read carefully whenever you want to cultivate/tame/catch something). The developer has poured a lot of thoughts in giving us players hint in game and also the tutorials, but sometimes you can miss the simple things by not reading the tutorial/game info carefully or just plain miss it. Though the wiki and community is there to help you • For new players that just gets into farming games, things can get overwhelming. Especially since this game encourages you to be curious and do things on your own (like you are supposed to forage stuffs right away, fafo, and socialize to unlock things). But there's no time limitations and penalty for quests (except for the one on the job board I think?) so you can take your time to play. Very chill. • For player who has played other farming sim genre, the control can sometimes be... a little clunky. Just because it's different from some of the other farming games (like for keyboard and mouse players, you need to press space to change inventory hotbar instead of by scrolling mouse). But you'd get used to it sooner or later. • We have to hoard hoard hoard. The game encourages you to be a self sustaining independent strong researcher. You can buy some things but the cost would definitely adds up... Fortunately for us our bag is big and recipe for crafting chest would be introduced early. This will bring dilemma of which things to sell though so you'd have to plan ahead. • A bit of a grind fest; you'll find that sometimes you'll need tons of woods... and coals.. and ores... And you'll run out stamina quickly even if you adjust to have the extra stamina. This problem can be negated by planting lots lots lots of chestnut trees and proceed to shake those trees to get chestnuts and then roast them over the fireplace. Sure it's only +3 energy but having 999999 of them? Not to mention cooking doesn't use stamina. The only limitation is your sanity. I hope my review will do this game justice. As I said above, you can really feel that this game is a project full of love, thoughts, and hard work. I hope, if you're still on the fence on getting this game, this review will help you to decide.

I am currently obsessed with this game! The moment the character customisation popped up, I literally SQUEALED because of how cute it is!! It also has a TON of customisation for your character in terms of hair styles and colour (Not so much for clothes, but you can barely see your clothes so that isn't very important), as well as some noticeably black hair styles which I was very impressed with due to how small scale your character is! (important to note, I am white so do take my opinion on that with a grain of salt as a black individual may feel otherwise) The map is a little small, but I'm still in spring of year one so I don't know if more areas are unlock-able. That being said, they did a fantastic job of filling the map and I really appreciate being able to fully explore the map for forageables every day. I don't think having a smaller map is any type of downside, in fact I think it makes it much easier to find the NPCs and forage. The fishing mini game is probably my favourite type of fishing mini game in any cozy farming sims as its very simple and easy, but there are still differences between each fish so you can learn the patterns! Some may see this as a downside, but as an avid fishing hater in most games, this game has made me love fishing! Now my favourite part of this game is the researching (as it's probably the largest part of this game). It is so much fun trying to do all the tasks and unlock the ability to actually farm certain crops, fish certain fish, and tame the creatures! I also really appreciate the ability to cancel researching one thing to research another, but when you go back to research the first thing, your progress is still saved. Especially in the beginning when you only have 3 researching slots. All in all, I highly recommend this game. It's adorable, and truly unlike any other farming sim! I love creature collector games and I love how this incorporates that aspect. The pixel style is adorable, and the character designs are some of my favourites (Teagan my beloved..) According to the wiki there is also romance! Though I haven't gotten there yet lol.