Into the Emberlands

This feels kind of like kicking a puppy (I mean look at it, it's SO cute!) but having beat the game, I'm pretty sure I wasn't having fun for a lot of my time with it. My metric for a good game is that you enjoy most of your time with it and a bad game is one you can stop playing without any regrets. Into the Emberlands is jammed awkwardly between the two extremes in that I felt like I wanted to see it through but was mostly bored to mildly frustrated while playing. It's so close to a good game, but even at ten hours I kind of wish it was shorter. The pace is painfully slow once you get your feet under you, with no option to speed up movement. Death is punishing (you lose all your items AND a percentage of your permanent upgrades), but recovering from is never hard, it's just a slow, tedious process of building everything you had back. There's no incentive to take risks, so you play cautiously and once you're used to how each biome's resources are acquired, it's just a slog. There's no storage in your town besides throwing things on the ground, which you can't do with any tools, so inventory management is also aggravating. If you leave anything on the ground when you upgrade your …

pretty good cozy game, albeit i crashed out a couple of times in the beginning because i kept getting lost. i eventually started playing like hansel and gretel, leaving every other piece of wood behind so i could find my way back to base lol i do wish the little dude walked faster though. i ended up playing pretty conservatively and constantly heading back to base to replenish my lamp before venturing out again. this dude takes forever to get anywhere.

Chill, cozy game. Took me 17 hours to beat. The graphics are pleasant. The gameplay is essentially point and click, with collecting, crafting, and trading. A great game for playing while listening to other music.

It is a small relaxing game, slightly buggy but you can easily finish it in a day or 2. I don't think there is much replayability because by the end of the first playthrough, you would have explored most of the biomes, characters and items. Bug 1 : Some achievements didn't pop, small issue but could trigger completionists. Bug 2 : After progressing quite deep into the game, somehow a certain resource did not spawn at all. I spent 10-15 minutes walking around but couldn't find it, got confused, check online and seems like there is a chance of such a thing occuring. The only way is to reset current progress and regenerate the map. I wanted to stop there and then because that means I have no idea if the bug will reoccur and reset my progress again. Decided to continue and the resource spawned properly, never encountering the issue again. As for the penalty from dying, I didn't die once because of all the other reviews making me super vigilant about it. I ended up reaching the max amount of steps by halfway through the game. I wish there is a QOL to tell you that you can't upgrade some attributes anymore but the option remains because you lose some if you die. If you grind a bit…

Worst game experience in a long while. I couldn't get past the tutorial section because the game would bug out and not let me proceed. First playthrough: collect 2 wood -> click the wood nothing happens. Deleted the save, just in case. Second attempt: got to the part of rescuing on of the tiny dudes. It tells me to collect a flower but there are none on the map and you can't go past the "tutorial barrier". Really wanted to play the game 'cause it looked cozy, but I've already spent 2 hours on just trying for the tutorial to work and let me play. As a bonus, found one last bug before leaving: talk to any villager that creates a conversation bubble, press ESC, now you're stuck with that forever, nothing you do will dismiss the text. At this point I feel scammed :/

A very cute and cozy game with a very simple but engaging gameplay loop. I would like it more if the roguelike elements were a bit more central to the game but overall it was a ncie little game.