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  • svgAug 14, 2019News

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    It’s medieval. It’s pretty. It has good music. It’s…gridless? Foundation is a city-building simulation game on PC. We’ve probably all played them, and they tend to be different variations of the same thing. But Foundation is a little different, right from the start. It operates on a grid-free system. And the monuments you place are not pre-designed…you make them yourself. So your town can look different from anyone else’s.

    Innovative…

    To allow them to create the game they wanted, Polymorph Games started by making their own game engine, which they call Hurricane. They also hired composers to give their game the beautiful soundtrack you can hear in the video below. It’s clear that Foundation is a labour of love, and that Polymorph Games is serious about seeing their vision come to life just as they envisioned it.

    So, what does the game being grid-less mean for you, the player? It means that the way you shape your city, and the way it grows, will be organic, not snapped-to-grid. Foundation appears to be a much more natural, personal experience, compared to the standard city-building sims. We love that you can even get up close to the people of your town, and they all look like real little individuals whom you can watch going about their daily lives.

    You can also take part in quests and events, which are often part of larger scenarios. Depending on how you manage your game, different scenarios, with different quests associated, can be triggered, giving your town a different story each time you play. (Unless you always play the same way!)

    …Yet familiar

    But Foundation isn’t so different that lovers of the city-building genre won’t have enough to love. The familiar exists here, too, with resource-managing and ensuring that your population grows while keeping the villagers happy and healthy.

    Foundation has been in Early Access on Steam since February 2019, and is still receiving regular updates and improvements. At this point the game appears to have less than about half of the content they mean for it to have upon completion. We do not yet know when the full release will be, or if Foundation will become available on any other platforms after launch. The estimate for now is to have the game in early access for about a year, so if you aren’t the type to want to help shape a developing game or squish bugs, keep your eye on Foundation in early 2020! Foundation is currently available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. The game is also available on GOG.

    If you like unusual takes on the city-building genre, then check out our coverage of Before We Leave, a city-building game that takes place across the universe.

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  • svgAug 12, 2019Reviews

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    Littlewood is an adorable pixel simulation game is created by solo indie developer Sean Young. Customize everything from your avatar, to the town, to inside the homes! We previously had a chance to sit down with Sean Young and ask him some questions. If you’re interested in that interview, you can check it out right here. We’d also like to thank him for providing us with a Steam code to beta test his game before his Early Access launch June 18th, 2019! See below for our review and gameplay footage!

    You’re Already a Savior!

    When you first meet the only two characters in your village, they already know who you are. They call you the Hero of Solemn that saved them all from the Dark Wizard. However, you do not remember who you are so we assume that the Dark Wizard has wiped your memory. I find this to be quite a nice and refreshing change to the farming simulation genre to have such an interesting story to uncover other than the typical one of you moving in and restoring the farmland to its forming glory. It also sparks some great conversations with the villagers.

    Dalton talking about the Dark Wizard

    Building & Maintaining Your Town

    Every once in a while when you speak to your friends, they’ll tell you that the next day they will have something for you. These great ideas are blueprints for buildings or decorative items to help make the town a better and visually-pleasing place. Travelers will start to appear and ask if they can move into the town but you must first build them a home to interact with them more. This reminds me of Staxel although there’s no need to physically build the homes piece by piece but rather you must gather materials. You can decorate your home of course, as well as the homes of the villagers! Some villagers need to be found by exploring different areas and pushing the story along.

    My house

    As for the other buildings, every one of them adds to the things you can do in your town. For example, build a Tavern and you can cook with your crops and make dishes for the villagers. This will reward you some money (dewdrops) if they buy the dishes. Most importantly, you need to build a Marketplace to sell your foraged items, fish, or bugs. You can even sell those nasty weeds that will occassionally pop up all around town! Every time you build something or “clean up”, you can go to your Office, once built, and get the town appraised. You can even do your mayoral duties by adding some decrees/town wishes ‘a la Animal Crossing: New Leaf’.

    Tavern and cooking

    Events, Activities, Quests

    The Town Square (which includes a glorious statue of the Hero) is where you’ll go to take part in events and some mini-games on specific days that you can view in the calendar. There’s a fun little chicken-catching game you can play in the Spring but other activities are still a work-in-progress. Next time I will be better at winning some items now that I’ve remembered you can and should run. Adding a Quest Board to your town gives you even more tasks to complete by fulfilling the wants/needs of your villagers and getting extra rewards. Another way to please your villagers, make a desk for their home and read their requests for their living arrangements.

    Chicken Madness event

    Every single action you take, including chatting to the villagers, will take up some “stamina”. At first I thought my day was just progressing on its own, but as it turns out, it will become nighttime when you reach your max amount of energy. This is a new way of doing things that I find a lot more relaxing because you aren’t as pressed for time. You can take your time building and walking around without worrying that the clock is ticking. You can do quite a bit in a day and also not have to worry about needing certain things in specific seasons to progress the game.

    Nighttime

    Getting to Know Your Villagers

    At the start of every new day, you can check out your mailbox for rewards from the villagers based on your level gains with them and through leveling up via tasks such as mining, fishing, woodcutting, etc. Aside from those pretty handy rewards, I’m not sure what other advantages there are to gaining more experience but it may be too soon for that.

    Mailbox rewards

    You can talk to the villagers every day and sometimes even compliment them or “Hang Out”. By hanging out with them, they will follow you everywhere and occasionally award you with extra items that you are currently working on gathering. The developer has confirmed that there will be a romancing option with all of the villagers so I can’t wait to start courting! I’m personally thinking Ash, the hard-working miner, is the one for me.

    Hanging-out with Ash

    There are so many interesting characters and I’m looking forward to having more conversations with them once they are more fleshed out. Without giving away too much, there’s a witch with magical powers and a half-orc character. Therefore, there are supernatural elements to this game. Look forward to upgrading your Air Balloon Platform so you can access new places and meet new people!

    Meeting Zana the half-orc

    Once you’ve unlocked the ability to travel to other areas via the Air Balloon Platform, you can immediately access a forest and a mine once a day which is filled with trees and rocks respectively. This saves you from having to keep a ton of trees in your village unless it’s for fruit. My favorite part, when you use your tools you can use them automatically! Meaning, no more scrolling through all your tools and having to equip the right one. For example, if you have an axe, just walk right up to the tree and go for it.

    Air Balloon Platform

    Traveling to Different Areas

    Every time you collect the ‘fruits of your labor’, you can always use those items to grow more of the same thing (if you have the required amount). Have a bunch of apples? Grow another apple tree. Have tons of the same crop such as carrots? Use them to plant another batch in your garden plots. Gardening is quick and easy and so far there’s no need to water your plants! Just harvest your goods whenever they are ready and keep repeating the process as the “seeds” will always remain there.

    Planting carrots

    Gardening, Farming, and Changing the Terrain

    I accessed a new town area, Port City Deluca, where there were merchants that sell different goods every week. There, I was able to purchase a sheep and a chicken. I’m sure I can fence them in at some point but it’s pretty cute to see them wonder my entire town. You can talk to them and occasionally grab their bi-products such as wool from the sheep. However, I’ve noticed that it doesn’t sell for very much so I’m hoping that will change.

    My first sheep

    Your overall town is pretty easy to navigate and with the overview angle, you will never get lost. I find it absolutely amazing that you can actually go into “Build Mode” and affect the terrain just like Zoo Tycoon! Elevate and lower the ground to your heart’s content, and create slopes and even fishing ponds/lakes wherever you please. This took me a while to get right and align my paths properly but you can always destroy everything and get your materials back for a redo. You need Dirt for your paths, Tilled Soil for your crops, and so on.

    Creating ponds and fishing

    I had a pleasant experience playing this game and want to keep meeting these strange and adorable characters and listen to their stories. All while learning about my own for that matter. You’ll also want to discover these amazing and magical areas and new buildings for yourself! Stay tuned with myPotatoGames for the release date of the Switch version of this game!

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  • svgAug 8, 2019News

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    Pajama Llama Games, the developers behind Flotsam, along with the publishers Kongregate, have just announced that the game will be coming to Steam Early Access on September 26th, 2019! Wishlist this unique town-builder on Steam right here and be one of the first to attempt to survive on the ocean in a post-apocalyptic world! You can check out our previous article on Flotsam here in case you missed it.

    The old world has flooded and the driftwood, flotsam or garbage can be recycled by your drifters then turned into boats and buildings. Explore ruins, other small islands, and submerged cities to find items to salvage or people that may want to join your town. You can do this via boats, by swimming, or even by unfurling your sails and moving your entire town (which is usually anchored). Help your drifters to collect rainwater, fish for food, have storage for those resources, by building various workshops and tools. Watch as your drifters construct step-by-step in detail but make sure they’re all taken care of by keeping an eye on their meters, just like the Sims! Continue to build more efficient structures, homes, and other fun stuff as your floating town grows. You can even control the layout of your town and therefore make it your own!

    More Information

    Follow the developers on Twitter here so you can stay afloat be apprised on the latest features with concept art and videos. You may also want to download these awesome wallpapers from the official website here, as seen below. Enjoy their colorful and quirky art style, including the most dashing of seagulls, right on your desktops!

    New Release Date Trailer

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  • svgJul 27, 2019News

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    You are responsible for colonizing uninhabited planets by starting from nothing and harnessing natural resources to build a robot empire! In Autonauts you teach adorable little robots how to world-build so you can sit back and watch them do all of the hard work for you (with fair wages of course – no we just made that up). In truth you can create these little workerbots from humble beginnings and watch them create an entire automated civilization. Moreover, this is all about reaching new heights of technology for our species.

    Autonauts is currently being developed by Denki and published by Curve Digital. On July 25th, 2019, the creators announced that the game will be releasing on Steam in Autumn 2019. They also would like to take it to further platforms other than PC but for now you can Wishlist it here.

    About Autonauts

    Travel the universe colonizing uninhabited planets with the sole goal of setting worlds in motion through the power of automation. Fresh from your spaceship you must harvest stick and stone and begin your colonization efforts. Create rudimentary crafting items from blueprints and slowly build a number of workerbots to aid in your efforts.

    Teach and shape their artificial intelligence with a visual programming language. Afterward, instruct them to begin the formation of your colony. Marvel as a planet you’ve shaped becomes home to a civilization of workerbots, happy to do your bidding! Expand further with the creation of colonists; beings that require your assistance to survive. Push your workerbots further by introducing fishing, cooking, housing, and tailoring and help the colonists into a state of transcendence. 

    Key Features

    • Playful Programming. Teach your workerbots requisite steps to complete tasks by asking them to repeat actions utilizing a visual programming language. Designed to be easy to learn but with added complexity there are numerous possibilities.
    • Automated Automation. Build an army of bots to automate just about everything in your colony, teach them what to do and expand both their brains and task possibilities with numerous upgrades and options.
    • Various Ventures. From gathering to building, cooking, fishing, tailoring, farming, animal husbandry and more – the world of Autonauts is vast with limitless opportunities to automate and colonize.
    • Charming Creativity. The world of Autonauts pops to life with a low-poly art-style married with a consistent and bright color palette adding depth and scale, creating a relaxing and attractive play space.

    Autonauts is unique in combining agriculture, simulation, crafting, building, production-line, and resource management all in one. If you’re interested in automated production-lines and managing robots, check out our article here: Automachef – Kitchen Puzzle Game with Fast-Food & Robots.

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  • svgJul 24, 2019News

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    Dinkum, an RPG and simulation game is currently being developed by James Bendon and published by The Irregular Corporation. The release is marked as “coming soon” on Steam where you can wishlist right here. Essentially, Dinkum is a life simulator with town building elements. In Dinkum you will arrive with a group of explorers to a previously unexplored island. You will be tasked with building a home for yourself as well as helping the other explorers build their homes and businesses as well. The developer also mentions that you can attract more people to come live in your town.

    Dinkum has a very unique premise as the environment is entirely Australian with Australian wildlife. This mean you’ll be dealing with a lot of crocodiles and kangaroos in the wild, and raising farm animals such as giant wombats and turkeys! There will also be several different biomes to explore such as a desert biome, a tropical biome with palm trees, banana trees and ferns, bush-land biome with swamps, etc. The term “dinkum” is even slang in Australia and New Zealand for meaning “genuine, honest, or true”.

    About Dinkum

    G’Day there! Get ready to start a new fair Dinkum life and build a home on an Island inspired by the wild Australian outback. Explore tropical eucalyptus forests, survive scorching deserts, relax at cool billabongs and discover scrubland filled with adorable Aussie inspired wildlife. Collect valuable resources by hunting, mining, fishing and foraging to expand and customize your town and attract new townsfolk and businesses. Share your new home with friends and protect each other as you explore beautiful landscapes filled with dangerous predators.

    Key Features

    • Build your town, your way.
    • Craft items to help organize and decorate your town.
    • Play co-op with friends.
    • Go fishing, bug catching, and treasure hunting.
    • Start a farm with crops and animals.
    • Hunt animals for food and defend yourself from deadly predators.
    • Customize your house and character.

    If you want to know more about the game you can go to the official website here. For more unique farming simulation aspects, check out our article here: Boundless Gets a Large Update: The Harvest Era.

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  • svgJul 24, 2019News

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    Since our last article on Critter Cove, which was the interview we had with Gentleman Rat including all three members behind the indie studio, there has been a lot more development to the game! You can get the full details from their blog post right here or get the highlights below. We’d like to thank Gentleman Rat for giving myPotatoGames a shout-out on their website and can’t wait for their playable demo to be ready! We’d absolutely love to be a captain of our own ship and go treasure hunting, salvaging shipwrecks, and exploring with the most adorable crew members!

    The Main Island

    The main island of Critter Cove is the first location that the player will see when starting the game. Therefore, the developers wanted to make sure that it would immediately catch our attention and give us the urge to explore. You can see below that the vast and varied layout is perfect for long-term building of homes and shops, which is a large part of what we are looking forward to at myPotatoGames. This central location is the perfect balance of mountains and lush greenery with large empty spaces for customization. Moreover, the more you build-up this port, the more bustling it will become with more friendly NPCs!

    Swimming with the Fishes

    In Critter Cove you’ll be spending quite a bit of time on your ship and sailing to new locations such as other islands. You’ll also be diving underwater to explore the depths below. The developers mentioned in their interview with myPotatoGames that the player character will have the chance to stay underwater longer with the help of equipment like re-breathers and diving suits so it should be quite the experience! The sea has many resources and treasure so the creators have made sure the environments down there are fun and interesting. Their blog goes on to say: ” The world of Critter Cove is built on top of the sunken ruins of the old world, so expect to find sunken ships, buildings, monuments, cars, planes, and much more. “

    Character Customization

    All the characters in Critter Cove have very unique looks and personalities so the developers decided to give us the option to not only be humans but to be critters as well! We now also have the option to mix and match various body parts, to choose new patterns, and to alter colors. This will be a highly creative experience with more plans to include fantasy style characters such as griffons and dragons. Want a human body with a blue fox’s head? Well you can do just that! On that note, players will be able to customize and change the colors of their clothing which can even be gifted to your animal friends.

    You can continue to follow Critter Cove’s progress via Twitter here or join the Discord channel here. You can also stay tuned with us here at myPotatoGames as we look forward to more content for this grand adventure on the high-seas!

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  • svgJul 3, 2019Reviews

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    Garden Paws, created by Bitten Toast Games, has it all in this simulation/adventure! You can garden, farm, fish, mine, run a shop, tame wild animals, decorate yourself and your home, build new stores and homes for the town, and much more! Constant quests to either progress the town or to help out some villagers makes it so that everything you do has a grander purpose, aside from just being cute that is.

    The game is out now on Steam but is still not content complete. Meaning, the developers state that they are still building upon the game and doing frequent updates. However, there’s already a lot to do and we highly recommend starting to play now and be part of the feedback! It’s even on sale until July 9th, 2019! We’d like to also thank Bitten Toast Games for providing us with a Steam code so we could do a review and show our Potato Family the finer details of Garden Paws.

    Customizing Your Character

    When first creating your adorable character, you get to choose from 10 different species: Cat, Bunny, Fox, Bird, Badger, Dragon, Chipmunk, Horse, Dog, or Bear! Afterward, choose your color and design, which are called “skins”. Skins can be found in treasure chests or purchased later on after gaining access to that specific shop. Your character customization doesn’t even stop there! Once you begin to play, you can start getting clothes and accessories to wear such as glasses, headbands/hats, dresses, backpacks, and even beautiful wings of all sorts! Side note: the music will indicate when a treasure chest is nearby!

    I am the night!

    One of the most interesting accessories for your character is the Glider. After completing a certain quest, you get a free glider but you then have the option to buy prettier ones. With a glider you can jump from all of the hills and soar through the air at high speeds. I love getting around this way and taking short-cuts to where I want to go. It’s also a great way to reaching new little islands with different items to forage. In one of the updates by the developers, it is said that there will be a fast-travel method to unlock in the middle of your second year! It’s so wonderful that they’ve added some goals for the next year which makes me want to continue playing all the more!

    Building Up the Town

    The town of Florens starts only with a few characters, Frank being a vital part in helping you expand which brings in new villagers and shops. Certain buildings and characters are only available after quests, but for the most part you start off with quite the list. You’ll want to start off with the Blacksmith and the Miner’s Camp as they progress your main quests and unlock new areas to explore! Frank will ask you for some materials for certain expansions or buildings, or he will tell you to purchase the building outright from his Upgrade Table.

    The Upgrade Table

    In the town there will be a few villagers with booths that sell cloth, seeds, inventory expansions, and lemonade (to gain more stamina). The more quests you do for them, the more items they will be able to sell! Sometimes they will even supply you with some blueprints so you can build your own things from workstations such as storage and furniture. This is also a good way to earn some money which you will receive as rewards upon completion.

    My first display case that I also use for storage

    Your Farm and Your Home

    Speaking of workstations, some items are just for decorative purposes but others are key to quests. For example, you’ll need a Stone Furnace to make bars out of your ore or glass out of sand. You’ll need to always have coal on hand to keep the fires burning. You’ll probably first start out with a Campfire Grill, like I did, to grill up some fish to either eat for energy or to sell. Then, you can move up to a Cooking Station which is where you’ll be creating dishes out of your crops that sell for quite a bit of money! Both of these activities will take time, but you can queue up to 10 items for each and leave to do other things.

    Gardening & Foraging for Crops

    To grow some crops either by tilling soil or making some planters, you’ll need to either purchase seeds or forage. I love how you can harvest items all around the waterfall and forest areas, which takes very little stamina. I mean, free items! Sometimes you will even pick up some seeds as well as the crop which is my sneaky way of gardening.

    What I find the most refreshing about gardening is that you can plant whatever you want, whenever you want, in any season. You don’t have to stress out about which crops you’ll need and how much time it will take them to grow. They also don’t wither at the end of the season. The items you can forage however will change with the seasons but you can always find the off-season ones in chests that will continue to periodically respawn.

    My plots are diagonal but finally got them straight

    Tilling you soil is a bit of a nightmare for those that want to perfectly place everything, even with the suggested “Grid Placement”. Placing anything for that matter can take up a lot of time as your cursor will start going all over the place with the slightest movement. I like the freedom of placement but a little more control would be nice. Now back to the crops. You’ll need to water your crops every day unless it is raining out or you have sprinklers! You’ll eventually get a blueprint for them and you’ll be set to let the magic happen! If you have animals, you can pick up their poop and use it to make fertilizer to get more seeds. Poop is actually useful for many things but more on that later.

    Glid Placement in Settings

    Taking Care of Animals

    You’ll be given your first chicken coop and some chicks for free after doing some quests. You can easily make chicken feed out of wheat which you can grow and forage or just buy the seeds early on. You only have to feed a chick for about 6 days in a row and then they become an adult. The best part? Adult farm animals do not need to be fed! I love this so much because it doesn’t deter you from taming or buying more animals than you can handle and frees up a lot of your time to do the many other things! It makes every day feel less like a chore and more like an exciting adventure with options. Your chickens will give you either poop, feathers, or eggs (all golden sometimes).

    Someone had potatoes on their mind while naming these chickens…

    Barn Animals

    Getting your first barn and cows will be a lot more costly in terms of material, time, and money. This may not be possible to obtain early on unless you make it a priority and save your money. Again, the same applies with calves; feed them hay for a few days and they will become adults. Hay is made out of grass that you cut with your sickle and then place to dry. The cows will give you poop every day and you can use a wooden bucket to milk them.

    You can choose to expand these buildings to house more animals (I have 6 chickens in one coop) or you can just make as many as you want! Therefore, there are no limits to the amount of animals you can have. Now that taming animals has been added to the most recent update, you can go in search of them and gain their trust rather than having to buy them! When you are carrying animal food with you, the animals’ favorite food will be displayed above their heads such as fish, grass, carrots, etc. In the wild you’ll find alpacas and dung beetles (hidden places), sheep, goats, and even hippopotamus that you can place in barns! Hippos, how cool is that? There are also other animals that you can purchase from a shop later on which will carry pigs for example.

    Said hippos looking cute

    As if that wasn’t enough, every large animal you own, you can ride! That includes the legendaries which you can read about in our previous post linked above. When you have a stable, you can also add horses to them and ride them to get places even faster!

    That wild horse will one day be mine!

    Small Wild Animals

    Smaller animals will need specific habitats for you to make before you start trying to tame them. Early on you’ll have access to one for cats and another for rabbits which can hold up to 3 of each. Unfortunately, if you miss a day of feeding them, your meter with them will drop so you want to make sure you have the time to do this consistently. I probably haven’t found all of the forest animals yet but you should also be able to tame deer, foxes, and ferrets that you’ll see roaming around. Normally I hate bugs, but the dung beetles can be particularly useful as you only have to feed them poop to tame them and then they will gather other animals’ poop in their habitat for you!

    Something that I found interesting was the fact that all animals in the wild will respawn so you can keep taming as many as you want! Some of them also come in a variety of colors: beetles can be rainbow-colored, cats can be black and white, rabbits are brown and white, and sheep can be black, white, or pink! I’m definitely going to tame that cute little pink sheep!

    You’ll notice that as soon as you tame an animal it will start following you. You need to lead it to its habitat to consider it yours and to name it. I figured out an easier way to do this is not to go all the way home with it but rather you can plop its habitat right next to it. Once it is yours, you can put everything in your inventory, provided you have a hammer to remove and relocate your habitat. I hope this is intentional because otherwise it’s a pain.

    Shopkeeping and Selling Your Goods

    On your farm there will be a table to place up to 3 different items which can hold a max number of 30 of that kind, and a cute little cash register. You have to go to your sign and open the shop from noon to 6 p.m. in-game and then watch multiple characters come running! These characters aren’t necessarily the ones from your town but I love that you can see all kinds of available skins like the one fox that looks like Amaterasu from Okami! They’ll buy absolutely anything you put on your tables, even poop! It’s a great way to not only make money but to get rid of your unwanted junk. Then you get to watch them scurry off with the item in their hands which I can do all day because it is so adorable.

    I wish I could see these little guys all the time!

    If you have other pressing things to do, you can go into town and “hire” an assistant for that one day! They don’t cost you any money but they will take a 30% cut of your sales. You also have to make sure to hire them before noon so that they will open your shop for you automatically. I’m not sure if this is intentional or a bug but it is not a huge deal since I often go to town. There you can purchase expansions at the Upgrade Table to have more tables to sell more items which will in turn bring more characters.

    You get a different Assistant every day

    Fishing and Bait

    Although fishing is my least favorite thing to do in the game as it takes a lot of time (you can sit there and not catch anything) and effort for very little payoff It is however necessary for one quest so far, and to tame cats and foxes. You need fish bait to catch anything at all which can only be found in certain plants that will yield Insects, if you are lucky.

    The animals do have very specific types of fish they want so you just have to hope you catch the right ones among several different kinds. You will occasional catch garbage like soggy paper which also consumes your bait. Too bad there isn’t specific areas for certain fish. I used to think old bottles were useless but you needs those for the quest I just mentioned and to catch bugs in them (butterflies and bees). The seaweed you also catch can actually be made into sushi so there’s that. On the bright side, fishing doesn’t take up your stamina.

    Mining and Cutting Down Trees

    Mining can be fun as you can use your pickaxe on rocks that are found everywhere, or go to town and unlock caves to find geodes and coal. When you find geodes, you need to use them on the anvil to get rocks, copper, silver, or gold. You’ll need to do this quite often so make sure to upgrade your tools by buying them from the Blacksmith. You can eventually make your own anvil at home as well so you don’t have to keep going into town.

    Beltran the Blacksmith

    Cutting down trees or even bushes is what you will be doing the most of in order to make anything. What I found useful is that if you are already going around for a ‘forage run’ then you can often find logs lying around that you can “harvest” which takes up way less energy and can add up quickly without you noticing much.

    Seasons and Festivities

    It took me approximately 10 hours to complete a season and I’m already in winter of my first year. Yes, that means I put 40 hours into this game already and still going! Time flies when you’re having fun! Your surroundings will change based on the season you are in and, as previously mentioned, different items such as plants and crops will appear all around Florens. I also just found an arctic fox in the winter month so my next immediate goal is to tame it. Winter also has the most adorable decorations like candy canes, wreaths, and gingerbread cookies all over town.

    Every season, except summer for some reason, has either special items to purchase or contests. I don’t want to give too much away on this but in the middle of spring you can find hidden Easter eggs all around town! Bring these eggs to the new bunny character and smash them for surprises! The rarer decorative eggs will have better items (I won a sprinkler and clothing) and maybe some tickets! You can redeem tickets for the best of prizes but those darn multicolored bunnies cost a lot! These eggs are very small and hidden very well so I had a very hard time finding them. I ended up only getting about 5 and supposedly there are 20.

    I just wanted to mention that at nighttime, exactly at 10 p.m., you can look to the skies and watch where a shooting-star will land. Usually it is in the forest for me which doesn’t give me much time to return home before midnight. When midnight hits, you will pass out and go to the next day but aside from that I don’t see any other penalties. It can be a nice warp home actually. If you manage to get that shooting-star, you can break it open on the anvil for extra surprises, use it for some quests, or donate it at the Museum.

    Controls and Details

    Not many buttons are explained to you so it is probably best that you check your Controls menu. You can also remap the buttons of your keyboard and mouse as desired. I figured out pretty late that there’s an “auto-run” button which would have saved my fingers a lot of pain.

    Until you get used to where everything is, it is very easy to get lost. Even with a map in your menu. I wish there was a mini-map on my screen at all times. The character names on that map are not listed very clearly and I would like the names of their respective shops there too. Maybe even an overall name for sections of the map so I know what the quests are referring to.

    Florens is quite vast!

    I really love receiving letters in my mailbox telling me if something has changed or if there’s something going on. I want to make sure I don’t miss anything so I find myself running around everywhere to check if anyone has a “!” above theirs heads for new quests. All quests stay listed on the screen and let you know if you have the required items, which is nice so I don’t have to keep clicking around menus.

    My grandparents are nice

    Game Playthrough – Starting Out

    Although I haven’t tried out the online multiplayer part of the game, I’m really looking forward to it. You can meet members of the Garden Paws community! With the newly added Creative Mode and some occasional “socials”, it sounds like this could be a blast together! However, for the sake of this review I only had time to do offline single-player. Below you will find a few minutes of gameplay footage from the beginning of the game, as I urge you to play for yourselves and discover everything Garden Paws has to offer! You’ll also see my first holiday and my first taming of an animal. We here at myPotatoGames look forward to more quests, and updates that will later include dungeons and mini-games as stated by the developers!

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  • svgMay 30, 2019News

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    Robert Tatnell , developer of Hokko Life, is hard at work and adding new features and designs every day in his studio, Wonderscope, based in Stockholm. If you haven’t already heard of this game, you can get caught up with us here. We here at myPotatoGames are so excited to play this game and wanted to share with you all of the progress that has been made thus far. Therefore, below we’ve given you the recap from the developer himself for 2018 and a look at his latest updates from March 2019.

    2018 Devblog Recap

    • The main town area got built, at the beginning of the year it was a one-room demo, but now there’s a whole town!
    • There are also mine and forest areas that are randomly generated each day, full of lovely resources!
    • Speaking of resources: resource gathering and crafting got in!
    • You have a backpack now to store stuff!
    • The game is now aimed at a PC/Mac release initially, so a bunch of control stuff got changed to fit this decision.
    • Fishing!
    • Player Customization!
    • Painting tool for making T-Shirts, Wallpaper and flooring!
    • Dig holes! Weeds!
    • Villagers can now move in if you’re good enough friends with them!
    • Villagers give you tasks to do!
    • A whole bunch of new villagers got added!
    • I started getting sound FX into the game!

    Recent Updates – Devlog 2019 Start!

    Below are the updates from March which include: improvements on the tools for customizing furniture, improvements on conversations with the villagers, and new information on shop interiors and inventory, and more.

    Customizing Furniture

    The developer has been testing different “drawers” that contain all the pieces you can add to your creation; much like in a real-world workshop. Improvements to furniture creation were made by adding a very handy menu system so as to be able to categorize certain paints and materials.

    There seems to be many options of material designs to work with and apply to your furniture which include: wood, metal, earthen, cushions, paint, and dyes. You will also be able to point and click anywhere, alternating between placing an object and editing it. As mentioned previously by the developer, you will also be able to scale the size of your own furniture when creating it. Moreover, you can see in the image that certain shapes are provided.

    Dialog Options

    Dialogue options are being reworked to give less of a “randomly generated” feel in favor of a more personalized approach. This ensures there’s more interesting variety in dialogue than there was before by giving you a selection of replies.

    If you’re an Animal Crossing fan, then you probably enjoy chatting up the locals every day. Therefore, this new feature is sure to please! The overall dialogue system is still in the works but so far it’s exciting to have the option to choose different text and get different options every now and again. The developer ensures that there will be a little more variety in the player and character conversations. You can also see that it’s possible for you to change and create the outfit the characters are wearing and to take requests for items! One can only hope that they are also given audio of adorable nonsensical gibberish for dialogue.

    Shop Interiors and More

    The interior of the shops will now have all of their inventory laid out and on display. You can walk up to each item and interact with them before buying. The contents of the shops change every day, so you can look forward to checking what’s new as often as possible. Shopkeepers will have set hours and will otherwise have the store locked. You can find them roaming the town or enjoying certain activities when they’re not working. Robert Tatnell also added new animations for mining and fishing which you can read in more detail with the link to his official website here. There, you’ll find all his devlogs which include all the details of his journey from 2018 to present.

    For exclusive information about Robert Tatnell and Hokko Life, be sure to check out our interview with him! There’s a lot of new information you will not want to miss!

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