April Grove

Wow, this game has a lot of charm, but that’s about all it has. It’s a monotonous, chore filled slog wrapped in the Color Grave aesthetic and its wonderfully odd charm. It feels like spending five hours grinding a gathering profession in an MMO, repeating the same tasks over and over with very little variety. This game is incredibly niche. I’d only recommend it if you’re a huge Color Grave fan, and even then, I have my reservations. I loved the world and the characters, but they weren’t enough to carry the gameplay. At around $3, though, it feels appropriately priced for the experience. Edit: I didn't directly address it, but this is a game you are obviously meant to play while in the middle of another task. It's probably best played while binging a show, or watching a movie. This is not a stand alone experience that takes your full attention and focus. This is for when you are distracted and killing time. I still can't say you need a bare bones game for that task, but you do you.

April Grove is one of the most relaxing games I've played in a long time. The soundtrack is fantastic, the pixel art is beautiful, and the whole game has such a cozy atmosphere. One of my favorite parts was the dialogue. The characters are fun to talk to, and it's obvious that a lot of care and effort went into writing them, as well as the game as a whole. For the price, it's an absolute steal. My only real criticism is that I wish there were a guide available in the Steam Community. After finishing April's main quests, there were still quite a few things I couldn't figure out. It would have been nice to have somewhere to look them up when I got stuck. Other than that, I had a great time with it. I honestly hope the developers make a full-blown story rich adventure game in this style someday, because I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Neat little in-between of an idle game and a micro Zelda-like. Not much to it aside from cute visuals and a chill atmosphere, but at 3 bucks, who's gonna complain? Buy this if you want to zone out while listening to some relaxing music as you watch numbers pop up and your axe tinks away. The only thing that's gonna interrupt your zen will be your trips back to a delivery box to drop off your logs.

The art for this game is beautiful, but that's the only thing it has going for it. You have an inventory with 15 slots (even though each tree drops 16 logs), a very slow walking speed, and 90% of your axe swings do nothing. So you swing at a tree 20-30 times to get four logs, collect 15, and then slowly walk several screens away to get to the store. The beginner logs give one gold each, and the first upgrade costs 350 gold. If you fill up your inventory each time, that's 24 trips back and forth, plus going back to your house to sleep when it gets dark. Then the shopkeeper increases prices so the next purchase costs 700 (or 1000 for the more expensive ones). When you reach level ten (which will be after or around the same time you get the first upgrade), you can start cutting oak trees, which take 2-3 times as long to cut down and drop logs that give your 3 gold each.

This game is great if you want, but not so great if it's not what you expect. April Grove is a grindy game. You need to want the grind, you need to love the grind. There's some story / lore to follow, and items to buy, characters to talk to, etc... But 90% of the game is chopping trees, picking up the logs, waiting for trees to regrow, and selling the logs until you've gotten high enough level to repeat the process for higher level trees. I went into this game wanting something nice to look at, with chill music and gameplay requiring minimal brain power, and that's exactly what I got. This game is perfect to play while listening to music or a podcast, or to relax before bed. That being said I played the entire game and got all the achievements in one night and one day. At the end of the game you can also reset your level while keeping all items and upgrades, so I'll probably keep playing to get my level back up, though resetting your level only gives you a small tree icon in the hud. My only complaints are that there's clearly more to the cave and beach areas that was meant to be added later as a DLC, but hasn't been, and there's no indication of that, so I was looking through the …

Just for note, I played this game 50/50 on my PC to Steamdeck. TLDR; Music was nice, but repetitive. Style is nice to look at. Game is just chopping wood and doing some quests for characters that weren't engaging IMO. Better played on contoller/Steamdeck. First off I'd like to state that I found it much easier playing this on the Steamdeck. I am not usually a controller user, so I was surprised that it felt far more comfortable on it. Possibly try playing with controller? First off, this game does one thing and one thing only. You chop wood, you sell it, and hopefully save up for upgrades and chop higher level trees. If you like doing the same task for a long period, you might just like this game. In saying this, the music in this game is nice, if not a slight bit repetitive after a while. I personally didn't find it very annoying to listen to after a while, and with the change in themes of a night it was enough. Character designs are also really nice and fit into the world. In general, the pixel art is very nice in this game. It's one of the nicer styles I've seen in a while. I cannot recommend this game due to the lack of content and just how repetitive the whole game is in…