Crystarise

[h1]Abandoned, and the devs are still telling people to buy the game, eventhough it hasn't gotten an update in 8months[/h1]

This game fills a need that I had for a long time: the feel of an offline MMORPG. At its very core, this game is very simple: Go in the underworld, explore, destroy everything, bring back materials on the island, build the island, go back down, defeat boss and get new powers, repeat. But this loop is very powerful in how it is done, and everything you do, every item you break or monster you defeat is impactful for your growth, as island buildings are what drive your power through the skills they procure, and almost every skill is valuable in some shape or form, be it simply getting more health, dealing more damage, or helping you survive in dangerous biomes with heat/cold protection or lava damage decreases. In its current state though, there's not much in terms of meaningful content, which is a shame for such a powerful loop. Every single boss in the game can be fought as many times as you want, as long as you have the resources, and they get more powerful as you go without any real limits. This is great as there's always incentives to fight harder and harder bosses to grow your island even more, self-feeding the loop while still being relaxing on its own. There are, h…

Have you ever wanted to play as a cute anime girl who walks around and gathers materials to decorate her own floating island for a bunch of cute creature slaves which can sit around on benchs in your home around a campfire? Now you can! (´・ᴥ・`) 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅

A cute game where building up your base (your flying island) makes you stronger and stronger by each decoration you place. The mixture of the action RPG combat paired with decorating and later on the ability to recolor your character makes for a fun experience. The game also has co-op which is nice as well. While the game is fairly repetitive and grindy along with being RNG based for drops you need (although you can expect this out of any game like this) I still find the game fun. The open world is fun even if more often than not you'll end up running into enemies you can only deal one damage to along with biomes you cannot explore at your current level of progression due to damage effects from lack of protection due to having not decorated enough. However if you are someone who tries to priotize aesthetics you'll likely run into issues and while it may be because I am not the best at decorating the island may end up looking very random and disorganized which could be disappointing.

I played this game on stream, if you want to watch my initial impressions, the archive will be linked at the bottom of the review. Overall, this game has cute graphics and a really interesting concept that is unfortunately executed poorly. You will expand your island town and recover crystals that are found throughout the world below. Exploring the continent below entails common survival elements (but let me be clear: this is not a survival game) of exploring for resources to collect and gather to expand you island town. The interesting part is that the island town sort of acts like your skill tree/you RPG progression. Which opens up interesting opportunities for not just build craft, but optimizing how you place your buildings to enhance your theory crafted build. The problem comes in with the design of the continent: Firstly, the game relies heavily on what I call "BS" design. Nearly every single death I had in this game was at no fault of my own unless you consider "I had no idea nor any indication that would happen". Such as very normal looking wooded boxes exploding randomly, getting spawned in lava, or mushrooms suddenly becoming sentient and poisoning so severely that I d…

Cute game, very fun. Want all the animals :)