My Time At Portia
Is it Stardew Valley or another Harvest Moon clone? No! Will you enjoy it if you liked them, however? I’d say there’s about a 97% chance that you will. Let’s see why…
You have a house near a city. You harvest natural resources (the usual suspects: axes for trees, pickaxes for minerals), you can farm….wait, can? Not have to? Yeah, farming isn’t the central point of this game. Just like how in Stardew Valley, farming was necessary and crafting is optional (but highly recommended and you’re limited if you don’t), the same holds true here. You can farm, but you really must craft. After all, that’s the point of all of those mats you’re collecting. You fulfill orders, charm and insinuate yourself into the good graces of the locals, and likely eventually marry and reproduce with one of them (or adopt, if you’re the same gender)
– Real player with 506.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Life Sim Open World Games.
This is an incredible game and the best Early Access game I’ve played since Grim Dawn. I’m 70 hours into this game and it feels like a complete product to me. There are 0 bugs thus far. It is well optimized.
I played some Animal Crossing back in the day on Game Cube and while it had its charm, it felt limited to me. It certainly didn’t pull me in the way this game does. This game has so much to do and much more depth to it than I was expecting going into it.
There is a social aspect with the folks around town that is a mini-game in its own including play dates, gifting, and completing crafting assignments, mini-missions, or mini-games like exercising a pet pig. Reaching certain friendship levels unlocks bonuses like store discounts and gifted items.
– Real player with 288.9 hrs in game
World’s Dawn
Put on a bikini top and went outside and everyone found it offensive!
At one time i got bored and i was like fakku with the clothes and went on outside with the bikini top on a hot day and everyone was like uhhhh looks like you got wrong side of the bed today! man that was funny in the game! the game surprises you with so many bits at unexpected times.
Now to the overall review: first of all i’d like to say that I have not played stardew valley, I heard its quite simillar to this so i cannot do a comparision. But with the time i had with the game it was pretty amazing and enjoyable. It’s very casual but you are under the clock so it’s half time management and half farming simulator. The story is about you who come from nowhere with a cute doggie, a man named paxel (a very harsh NPC). He brings you to a very beautiful village for a new start. The village has a rough history where there’s no rain and no crops can grow, with the power of appeasing the guardian deities of the village, it’s your job to restore the village and bring back the villages who left.
– Real player with 58.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Life Sim Anime Games.
Now that I have completed the first year of this game and effectively achieved the “ending”, I feel as though I’m qualified enough to write a comprehensive review. So, I’ll start with the pros and cons.
Pros:
⚘ Cute, homey pixel art befitting of a down-to-Earth farming game such as this one. Dynamic and detailed scenery that changes based on season and time of day.
⚘ Plenty of diverse characters to make the town feel alive.
⚘ Many upgrades and secrets to be had in this game. House, barn, and tool upgrades to make your life a lot easier. Secrets that can enhance your experience and provide you with new information about the world.
– Real player with 42.8 hrs in game
Circadian City
I love this game although it is obviously very early access and still got some problems, but overall I enjoyed playing it a lot.
Here is a video I did for you: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZP6dZ6oCR0Mwi0Lx2ggo1g
You can not really compare it to Stardew Valley although it might be a bit inspired by games like that.
Also you can see that the developers put a lot of heart into it and the background story as well as the NPC characters are already very unique although I expect them to still add a bit more text to some to show more details about the different characters.
– Real player with 91.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Life Sim Pixel Graphics Games.
This is not a beta disguised as an Early Access title. This game really is early access. It is pretty rough around the edges with incomplete content, bugs, and balance issues. I’ve got 3ish hours in and don’t think I’ve gone 5 minutes without noticing something that felt wrong.
But the game is still really good even in its current state. The gameplay loop feels new and is interesting. Some mechanics feel more complete than others, and those feel and play great. It looks like many other games we’ve seen before, but there is enough of a new spin on this one to make it feel unique.
– Real player with 32.1 hrs in game
Echo Beach
Echo Beach is a building-sim country-life RPG for one or two players!
Echo Beach is where you spent the best vacations of your childhood: golden sandy beaches, awesome arcades, zen tranquility and friendly faces.
No one is quite sure why people stopped coming but soon Echo Beach was a shell of its past days.
You have answered the call to return to Echo Beach once again and return its former glory with your building skills.
Features:
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Rebuild the town of Echo Beach. Use town resources, new skills and marvelous machines to return your favorite vacation spot to its former glory.
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2-Player Building. Invite a friend and work together to get the town up and running. You can be a little competitive too…if that’s the way you wanna go!
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Buff Your Skills! Learn new abilities in four skill tress: Wood, Metal, Stone and Social. You decide what you want to work on and what abilities your player should start with.
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Run for Mayor. Get to know the towns people and one day win the town election.
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Explore the depths of Echo Beach. The mines don’t just contain vital ore, zombie mini-bots roam the levels…guarding the secret at the end of the world!
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Become a Ninja? Does Echo beach have a secret Ninja community? Who knows…
Man of the World
It is possible to become a famous musician, take part in medieval battles, earn a fortune from trade, become a thief of women’s hearts or an avid duelist. The game allows you to do all this.
The Isle of Elanor
The Isle of Elanor is an open-ended role playing game. It features real-time combat, a strong focus on player choice, and a High Fantasy narrative. The game borrows mechanics from Dwarf Fortress, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Stardew Valley and the Witcher Series.
You wash ashore on The Isle of Elanor, the last bastion of humanity remaining in the world. You retain only fragments of your memory – your origins are a mystery. The people of the isle are puzzled by your inexplicable arrival.
The situation on the island is grim: many people are poor, destitute, and in some cases close to starving. There’s social strife and division. You’re given a small plot of land. Can you help humanity survive?
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At the highest difficulty level, the game is meant to be challenging. If you’re not careful, you will starve.
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Select skills and attributes to determine your build: a tank, melee fighter, or a ranged attacker? Or choose a build that doesn’t specialize in combat.
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The Isle of Elanor is a game about player choice. What type of home to build? Who to befriend or who to make an enemy of?
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Set in an imaginary period of the Earth’s past, it’s a world that borrows elements from both Midgard and Middle Earth. The peoples of Middle Earth (humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc) appear in the game.
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Complex combat mechanics featuring single-handed (quick) and two-handed (long-range) basic attacks, skills (magic), and the use of a shield.
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Build workshops near your home and hire townspeople. This is more than a farming, fishing, and mining game. In fact, your home isn’t necessarily a farm. You can create an industrial center where you manufacture pottery, or craft weapons and armor.
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Hire townspeople to perform the mundane tasks of watering and harvesting your crops.
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Become a part of the community. Give food, items, and jobs to needy townspeople. Watch the townspeople prosper, or decline, along with the home you build. You will face the consequences of your actions.
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Deep branching dialog options. Learn about the people and the history of the island.
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Features a realistic geology model. Stone occurs in sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic layers. Some types of stone, ore, and jewels are available to mine only in certain layers.
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Just a few of the types of stone: Bauxite, Cobalite, Granite, Gypsum, and Olivine. When you craft an item out of stone, the item retains the properties (color, weight, value) from the stone. The same mechanic applies to items crafted from wood.
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Factional alliances. The non-player characters on the island are grouped into factions. Most NPCs have families. Your relationship with one family member affects your relationship with the other family members. There are multiple towns in the game which also form factions.
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The Isle of Elanor can be played as a management game, akin to Dwarf Fortress, where you juggle the complexity of managing your employees and selecting Industries to specialize in.
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The townspeople of the island change over the course of game. Their appearance, happiness, needs, and skills evolve as the island changes. The townspeople have crafting skill levels that improve over time. Townspeople change their clothing based on the seasons and their financial wellbeing.
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The pricing of items in the game changes over time. There is a supply and demand mechanic. The more that you sell of an item, the less it is worth.
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Features an extensive main plot line that occurs over three chapters, all recorded in your journal.
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The guiding principle behind the quest system is consequences. Quests result in small changes here and there to show how the world is changed – for better or worse.
Big Farm Story
I’ve never left a review for a game, but i felt i should leave one for this game. Firstly, I actually enjoyed this game. With that being said, i do think it has a lot of room for improvement. The biggest issue being the cost of crops vs what they can actually be sold for. I found that 90% of crops could only be sold for maybe 5-7 coins more than what it cost to grow them. And even certain crops say they make more when sold in the market, the difference is maybe 3-5 coins more than if they were just sold normally. This is also a common problem with other profitable items. There’s hardly any real balance, which makes it hard to make any real money even after grinding this game to a pulp in 60 hours after it’s release. The second issue i found with it, is the lack of actual story line. It’s a very slow progression to get anywhere, and then when I got to Chapter 6 I found myself saying “That’s it?” There’s not much to the characters either besides doing quests for them and earning friendship tokens, which just made it… boring. In terms of uniqueness, it is a very basic, linear story. Not really much to it. The MMO aspect was different though, but also random? I enjoy the idea of it, but in actuality the only real play ability with other players is visiting their house, and planting Friendship hummus to get more friendship tokens. Besides that I found it to be almost pointless and more of an inconvenience when trying to interact with quests in the town center. With all that being said, something about this game kept wanting to play more. It is similar to Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon, so it is an overall very mellow and easy game to play. I found it to be very stress relieving because it is so easy to play and get along with. I also believe this is developers first PC game after focusing on more phone games, so it definitely has the phone game feel. Which all the more stresses the fact it has lots of room to improve. I would absolutely come back to check it out after some larger updates in the future, but as of right now I feel I’ve finished everything that is worth accomplishing in the game. I’m excited to see where this game ends up in the future.
– Real player with 59.0 hrs in game
Big Farm Story is a cute farming game still under development so I’ll be a little bit patient with the current game’s flaws. The story starts off like most of the farming games, you receive a letter from your grandfather asking you to take over the farm because he has something else he needs to check on. Once you arrived at the farm, you find it in a bad state after the recent storm, but your neighbor’s son Benny offered to help you. Your mission now is to find out where your grandfather is.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2361237597
– Real player with 16.2 hrs in game
Kynseed
It’s good so far.
Updated for ‘Hag & Slash’ Update
Fair Warning:: There are dark themes, and some mature references in this game.
Pros:
Extremely Ambitious game:
Kynseed is a LIFE SIM, not just a farming sim. the goal of this game is to give the player options to specialize in any available niches of the character’s life if the player wants to, with each being in-depth in their own stepping stones. This includes farming, business owning, combat, domestic life, animal breeding, crafting, player-character/spouse/worker/offspring skill and stat improving for even better experiences in those areas, etc. They’re implementing a lot of in-depth and unique features for each (check their roadmap in the official site, and the Discord.)
– Real player with 170.5 hrs in game
I’ve put a lot of hours into this game (especially for being an early access title), so it’s pretty apparent that I would recommend it.
I’ve read through some negative reviews and I can see where they’re coming from with some things, but I think it’s entirely accurate to say that Kynseed is worth the price. If you’re wondering whether you can get $10 worth of content, I’d say yes! The game’s value will increase with time, so I think it’s worthwhile to get it while it is so cheap- and you’ll have the added advantage of already having progressed through some major early events and having hoarded resources.
– Real player with 111.5 hrs in game
POLYGON: Life
Life Simulator. You wake up, going to toilet. Make a breakfast going to work and come back to home. This game is game which is your real life :D Its really worth to play you need to check it.
And also its just a early access its gonna be better in future :)
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
While I appreciate the fact that this is in Early Access, the issue I have is that there is almost no content.
The systems that are there: walking, interacting with like 8 things in the game, fixing cars with two clicks…work.
Honestly, if there was more to do, this might be ok but for now it is just completely vacant and pointless.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Castaway Paradise - live among the animals
I’ve had my eye on this game for a while, given it’s so much like Animal Crossing. In fact, that’s what people are constantly comparing it to. I was excited to get it on sale for like five bucks, but…that excitement didn’t last long. I had most of the island unlocked within a day of playing, and after that, things get very repetitive.
Pros:
- It is a lot like Animal Crossing, which is nice because it’s a familiar gameplay mechanic. You run errands for the other villagers (quests,) catch bugs and fish to sell (or donate to the local museum,) and scavenge fruit and washed-up shells.
– Real player with 31.6 hrs in game
Pretty fun and addicting.. being a fan of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon games I’m thrilled to see a game like this come to PC.
The game has room for improvement, yes, and it may not be everybodies ‘thing’ but I’ve been hard-pressed to pull myself away from it.
There’s something about Facebook and Mobile games (not calling this game one) that I like;
sounds weird but I always liked the ‘feel’ to them, but at the same time I hated the microtransactions.
So this game is perfect for me because it has that feel but without me needing to worry about spending any (extra) money haha.
– Real player with 22.8 hrs in game