NUTS
Nuts is a fantastic little game with fantastic art and sound design. I played the demo when it was released and immediately fell in love with the look and feel of the game. The best way I can think to explain the extreme appeal of this game to ME is that it feels like you are occupying a liminal space. Like you are on the threshold of two planes of existence. From the desolate bus stop that you initially arrive at to the wide empty forests with these strange little squirrels being the only living things besides yourself… it’s strange, perhaps even a bit eerie in later chapters, but overall peaceful.
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Nature Mystery Games.
I feel like I am the perfect audience for this game—I love Firewatch, Gone Home and almost all first-person adventures / walking simulators. Recently I’ve enjoyed Call of the Sea and Old Gods Rising, despite their flaws. But Nuts left me very unsatisfied.
The success of a game like this rests on three things: The game world, the puzzle mechanic, and the story. Ideally, all three would be great, but usually one of them is weaker. So, Firewatch has an incredible game world and characters, but weak puzzles. The Witness has an incredible game world and puzzles, but no real story. Sadly, Nuts has an incredible game world, but the puzzle mechanic and plot just did not work for me.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Virtual Aquarium - Overlay Desktop Game
Do you love fish and have your own aquarium but it is not enough for you?
Or maybe you can’t have an aquarium and would you like to?
This is the perfect hit on your part!
Virtual Aquarium: Overlay Desktop Game is the game for you!
This game works as an overlay above all windows - so you don’t have to distract yourself from the current activity to watch your fish look, grow and get wonderful colors.
Main features of the game:
The game is displayed as an overlay above the windows.
Everything happens no matter what you are doing. Your beautiful and colorful fish will swim on your screen and make your time spent in front of the computer at work, school or at home more pleasant.
Interaction with fish
By clicking on a fish you can check its name and species.
Many species of fish
There are over 20 species and over 100 subspecies of freshwater and saltwater fish in the game.
Beautiful colors and fish patterns
The fish in our game have wonderful vivid colors, as the fish grows its colors become more vivid and more expressive, thanks to which your virtual aquarium allows you to beautify your screen even better.
Graphic effects
The game has various graphic effects that will introduce you to the world of your own aquarium even better.
Additional functions
AUTO START - Your aquarium will automatically greet you when you turn on the computer.
GAME MODE - the game will go into hibernation when you start another game in full screen, which will ensure full computer power.
With the help of keyboard shortcuts, you can easily operate the basic elements of the game.
Read More: Best Nature Relaxing Games.
Hike
Hike is from MorningShift studios a single Indie Dev. This is his second game, the previous one being ‘Work Trip’. Like before his target audience is mainly those who are interested in easy achievement farming or an easy difficulty walking simulator.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a ring of indie Devs that are all too willing to give a thumbs up regardless of the product produced, doing each other a favour. On top of this there are dozens of curators who simply copy and paste misleading reviews simply in the effort to get more free games. I mean seriously … You compare this to ‘Fire Watch’? ‘Dear Esther?’ are you serious? Your curator privilege should be revoked and given to a gerbil.
– Real player with 4.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Nature Relaxing Games.
I’m giving this a Thumbs Up to support the developers and because I see what they were trying to do here, but my true feelings about this one are Mixed. Hike is a short interactive experience where the point is to go camping in the woods, explore the place, and relax. I hesitate to call it a game because there’s almost no game-like objectives here. Sure there’s some jumping and seeking and exploring, but those aren’t the point of Hike: the sole purpose of this is to be a walking sim in the woods, to get a little lost, to look around. That’s it. There’s no real replayability once you’ve experienced it once, except maybe to get all of the achievements because one’s sorta easy to miss. The visuals and music are both quite pretty, but it’s obvious that this was more supposed to be a general demo of what Morning Shift Studios can do with the Unity engine. In fact, you’ll probably know based on my description if Hike is for you or not.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Pocket Plants
It’s a pretty simple game but I see how it could appeal to some people. Find a plant, water it with multiple trips to the water source, level the plant up to the required tier, place the plant in its new home to lift the fog, do this until the vine is all healthy, win the level. The game is easy to break if you press random buttons, check the video for gameplay and said breakage.
It’s very relaxing and simple with no fear of failing as long as you read the tutorial the first time because there is no going back. It’s free and if you like caring for pants, you should try it. The level design is my favorite part of this game because it looks like an artist made it- there are some pretty cool visuals and even the forest is aesthetically pleasing. The music fits the relaxing theme, too.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
Unfortunately, I could only get the game to run once. Every other time requires a combination of pressing the escape key and opening task manager to see anything beyond a black screen, which immediately goes back to black when trying to play. Hopefully this is just a bug, but I could find no way to report it. From what I’ve seen, the music and graphics are wonderful and I’d love to play more, but… shrug
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Campground Owner
Campground owner is very suitable to your needs.
I recommend picking a map with more land then water. You can pick seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall).
In creative mode, you have unlimited cash. I almost always do creative mode. If you want to put anything on the map, I’d recommend that. There is also a survival mode where you have to earn money. You can get that from campers.
If you like to speed up time, press 1(slow), 2 (medium), 3( super fast).
You can’t put different camper’s tent, chairs, grill, or camper together, or it will show the camper’s gear red.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Fun game for some time, I really like being able to place the items of campers down myself in spots that give the most money, and it’s fun trying to get all stars and see money go up.
There are some downsides though, some quality of life improvements that I would like to see.
Once a camper is placed, you cannot see info about them, like with how many they are, how much they’ll pay or for how long they stay. You can see this when they ask to be placed, but still would be nice to keep track of the stay’s duration.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Under Leaves
Under Leaves is a hidden Object game pure and simple. On a map of the world you are given many different locations, each location is a different stage to complete all related to different animals indigenous to the location on the map. Each stage is beautifully crafted. A real work of love! The fact that each level has a certain color scheme give it a certain style but also makes it surprisingly challenging, just enough to keep my interest through the whole game.
Pros
- For those who likes the extra challenge, there’s 29 achievements. One for each stage and one extra for finishing the game without help.
– Real player with 4.9 hrs in game
Relaxation Mode is cranked up to 11 in this simplistic watercolour hidden object game.
You start off on a world map with 21 dotted circles on it. Each level is associated with an animal from that region, and as you complete the levels the map gradually fills with pictures of these animals.
You’re introduced to a level by clicking the X on the central animal, which then shows you a speech bubble containing several small icons of the objects you’re looking for (small animals, seeds, fish etc), and the number of items to be found. The overall canvas is split between 3-5 screens, and as you find/click the objects you move on to the next either via the white arrows, or by dragging. You can zoom in and out by double-clicking and then drag the screen around to inspect each area of the panel. When you find the final item you then report back to the main animal whereupon there’s a very short animation of baby animals appearing, plants growing or a shoal of fish swimming by. And that, ladies and gentlemen, describes the entire game.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
FISHERY
This could be a very lovely game, I cant recommend it at this point, but I have high hopes this could be getting somewhere.
What I like:
The style is lovely! The fish and plants are stylized to a point to make it look artsy, but you still recognize every species, it is realy beautifully made.
The animations are very cute, the fish chase each other, nibble on plants and decorations, I love it. :)
I like that the fish are breeding and the babys are realy cute.
What I dont like:
I played with one tank for 63 ingame days. In that time I had 3 adult platys and a ton of babys.
– Real player with 21.6 hrs in game
I’ve been keeping fish for a long time and it has been my dream to find an, detailed and good fish keeping game. Over the years all the fish keeping games I found were either very old or abandoned. But fishery might finally be the game. It has many things already added so it’s a perfect early access game. It does lack a lot of stuff. But it is still good enough to provide you fun until new updates roll out. Fishery already provides the things you would want in an aquarium game. It already has 18 fish species that are for now mostly freshwater and it has 17 plant species that come in different sizes and variants. There are lots of decoration items that help you create the aquarium you always wanted. There are around 10 substrates. I think they can add more into substrates. Such as different substrates being beneficial for different situations. Or they can just add more substrates or even substrate mixing. One of my favorite features of fishery is the plumbing system. Not only it is unique but the idea of being able to hide all the filtration and heaters an all that stuff is amazing. And lastly something no other game has (At least from what I’ve played.) breeding. So far there is a single gamemode. Sandbox. But a career mode is coming. I would say if you so far like this game consider a few things: First it’s early access so there is a possibility you might not find the content you need. Second the game is slightly more detailed for some people. Third if you love saltwater more there aren’t many fish or plant variants yet.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Leaf Tree
Relaxing atmosphere + pleasant/challenging puzzles
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
This game has potential if it was developed upon, Took me a total of 1 hr and 16 mins to complete. Not bad.
I would recommend the game if you have a spare hour and honestly just looking for something to pass the time.
Some things i would add/change if i was the developer;
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Pause screen (Instead of hitting ESC to pause instead closes the game)
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Mute music only button, I think the sounds are good except the music. Found that annoying.
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Make the “Level Complete” stand out more.
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Allow level replayability.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Paperbark
This is already one of my favorite games of the year just because it’s such an enjoyable and relaxing experience. Now, there is a part where it does seem like the cute little wombat is in some serious danger and while I won’t confirm or deny that or what happens, I will say I was still very happy with the outcome of the game.
My favorite part of the game was trying to find all the little bug collectibles. There’s birds and stuff to find, sticks to break, flowers to eat, dragonflies to catch, etc. Lots of good little stuff here to keep you or your child busy for a little while. There are some neat little hidden achievements that I really liked as well.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
If you’re a normal person, like me, you’ve probably spent a good deal of time wondering what it might be like to live the life of a wombat. Well, friends, I am pleased to inform you that your time is at hand. For the low one-time price of $8.99, you too can now experience life as a member of the esteemed family of Marsupialia Diprotodontia Vombatidae.
Slowly plodding through the forest, foraging for tasty grasses and flowers, Paperbark lets you immerse yourself in the idyllic existence of this majestic creature. You’ll instantly get caught up in the excitement as your wombat slowly emerges from his burrow and sets off through the forest at a leisurely pace. Snuffling about for food, the thrill of adventure is thick as Mutton Broth Soup as you encounter various insects and birds on your journey. There are even occasions where you must summon all of your ferocity to claw your way through small piles of sticks and other challenging obstacles, highlighting the dangers these valiant warriors face as they fight for survival in the harsh Australian wilderness.
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
The Lost Legends of Redwall™: The Scout Act 2
I will admit, after playing Act 1 on release, I was very doubtful that Soma could continue their franchise. The gameplay was very buggy, as expected from a new developer, and it got so frustrating that I couldn’t stand to play the game anymore.
Fast forward a couple years, and to my pleasant surprise, Soma used their lessons learned from Act 1, and it shows here in Act 2 (They even vastly improved the gameplay through patches in Act 1!). Though there are some glaring bugs in the gameplay and level design, they’re much less plentiful than Act 1 was upon release. Most notable were the lack of collision object which would allow you to fall through the world. In general, Soma are really applying themselves in making a great game with a great story for any Redwall reader.
– Real player with 31.8 hrs in game
If you liked Act I, chances are you’ll enjoy this one too. The gameplay is essentially the same and, even if it isn’t groundbreaking, it has the same charm and character as the first instalment. There are new characters with plenty of personality, including one based on an actual character from the Redwall book. The artworks are lovely as before and the soundtrack is great.
Also I’d like to give the devs, Soma Games, some extra praise: though these Redwall games are sometimes a little buggy, Soma really make the effort to correct as many glitches as they can. They actively facilitate player feedback with a bug reporting option on the menu, and week by week they’ve been steadily patching as many issues as they can. A committed developer is one worth supporting!
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game