Xoo: Xeno Xafari

I remember berating the developer of this after release, pleading for more "gameplay": At the time I found the core activity of collecting creature data with low friction very alien. Why not make the data acquisition part more interactive, I wondered. Six years later I have to admit I was wrong. This doesn't need more STUFF to do. Reading fun descriptions, completing your dex and racking up cash for better equipment is enough. The absence of danger doesn't mean boredom. It has taken me six years to learn to appreciate a vacation. I still find it hard. I'm trying. These are gorgeous flowers. Oh, an egg! Let's walk over here. Now let's call it a day. It‘s been a good day.

Nowhere near as interesting as Alien Squatter, which is by the same dev and completely free. Still, it's a cute time, and I'm happy to support it.

This is a weird little collectathon made in the OHRRPGCE engine (which I'm frankly astonished works on modern computers). There's no real gameplay here; you just walk around picking up items and sighting creatures, and what items and creatures show up is based on RNG that's affected by your stats, which you can only increase with books that are [i]also[/i] RNG-based. As such, I would recommend you try one of A. Hagen's free games first and see if you enjoy the writing, since that's the main draw. (I played and enjoyed the Android version of Void Pyramid.) The writing is pretty charming (at least in my opinion) and the music is nice. I have only two complaints (other than the lack of actual gameplay): First, there aren't enough unique sprites for the various items you pick up, and often their description doesn't match them - e.g., you'll pick up a mottled red egg but the caption will say that it has a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. I get that that would be a lot of extra work for a game essentially made by one person, but... yeah. Second, the full-screen mode doesn't work, or at least it didn't on my computer. When I tried it, I just got a black window that I couldn…

Fun collectathon game with entertaining descriptions.

Loved it! Gorgeous retro aesthetic, clever writing, and a satisfying mechanic where you can only explore part of the island each day, but you can set your camp in different areas. Plenty of fun things unlock along the way. Took me just shy of 14 hours to 100% everything. If you want a cheap, pleasant couple of evenings, pick it up. Can't wait to try more by this developer!

This is probably this creator's worst game and it's the one that costs money. But "worst game" in this case still means something full of colorful writing and imaginative, novel creatures and bits and bobs, and beyond that it's worth paying just to support the other games.