Welcome to The Hollow, a blighted and dying place, and home to the Drakes. Drakes are the friendly vegetable folk native to these parts, and they need your help. They’re hungry, thirsty, and need a place to sleep. They can - quite literally - die of boredom. It’s on you to save them. Build gardens to provide them with food, wells for water, and yoga balls and puppet shows to keep them entertained. You can even craft treadmills and solar panels to generate power for Tesla coils, electric fences, and other fortifications. You’ll need robust defenses, as you’ll quickly see that The Drakes aren’t the only residents of The Hollow. The Feral have overrun the land, evil creatures that are looking to shred anything happy or good. Battle them one-on-one with a wide array of weapons ranging from tennis rackets to nail guns, bring your friends to lend a hand, and build your defenses so you can take them out without lifting a finger. Travel from region to region, season to season, taking the Drakes and their village with you. Each region is over a square mile of territory to explore, dynamically generated and populated with each passing season. You must balance your time carefully. What supplies are most crucial at any given moment? What does your village need? Metal from the supply caches to build your defenses, or crystals from the blighted regions to grow your Drakes? Prove that you’ve got what it takes to help the Drakes and take back The Hollow.
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This game was picked for me and my friends to stream on a weekend and though it was a lot of fun and showed some great promise, there. The game has a passive-collection system in the form of the adorable creatures called "Drakes" who are sadly not decended from Dragons, but that doesn't matter as these little adorable things do a lot of the building everywhere in camp, but you need to craft the amulets yourself for travel between the corruption to each island.
Monsters will routinely attack the island and there's so much stuff you can smash apart, collect and such to make back home. Not to mention, if you keep the Drakes well fed, not only will they gather stuff for you, but they'll continue to work and be happy! They also have the chance of finding objects you might find useful, dumping them in the mail box for you to get later.
Though we didn't get far, the story certainly had me intrigued. You play as this kid (I assume teenager?) who is on the outskirts of their city, looking back at it and their mobile, having a message from a love interest that says "I think we should see other people" which was an immediate Oof, but we ended up following a magical raven that brings us into the world of the Drake! You are given the task to not only be the guardian of the Drakes, but to also clean up and destroy the corruption that infests this whole world!
Now for the technical standpoint:
Graphically it has this cute cartoon look that I love and first time seeing a Drake I was just in love with the adorable thing! Oh, forgot to mention they even get you gifts too! Anyway...I found that the game didn't hamper my CPU like previous games I've played for our Saturday game and it worked well with streaming. I don't remember encountering any graphical glitches either.
Controls were great, no major issues and buttons were in the appropriate places. It just feels natural to play with a controller which I only do for certain games, usually 3rd person games. I also use a 3rd party controller so if it picked up mine without any issue, it'll certainly be compatible with whatever you have!
Multiplayer has one or two issues. When we played it, you weren't allowed to co-op until you completed the tutorial, which is fair enough I guess as the story is highly focused on your journey and it'd be weird if one teenager turned into multiple! We had to look up online how to join as it was never explained straight away, but apparently it's after the tutorial finishes, which is after you activate the Lighthouse. This was a pain as the three of us had to play the game singleplayer for a while before we could finally link up!
That said, we were having a lot of fun, but what ended it was when the game crashed. Crashes are not a major deal breaker, especially as after the entire hour it only happened once, but we lost ALL our progress. At first we were confused, wondering why it wasn't auto-saving, but it appears that, again, at the time, it was bugged and you had to make certain that you save because the auto-save was a little tempermental. So we lost all our story progress, all our weapons, buildings and so on, but when exiting I noticed that my character and her level was still there!
Stream of Part 1, hopefully more in the future
Monsters will routinely attack the island and there's so much stuff you can smash apart, collect and such to make back home. Not to mention, if you keep the Drakes well fed, not only will they gather stuff for you, but they'll continue to work and be happy! They also have the chance of finding objects you might find useful, dumping them in the mail box for you to get later.
Though we didn't get far, the story certainly had me intrigued. You play as this kid (I assume teenager?) who is on the outskirts of their city, looking back at it and their mobile, having a message from a love interest that says "I think we should see other people" which was an immediate Oof, but we ended up following a magical raven that brings us into the world of the Drake! You are given the task to not only be the guardian of the Drakes, but to also clean up and destroy the corruption that infests this whole world!
Now for the technical standpoint:
Graphically it has this cute cartoon look that I love and first time seeing a Drake I was just in love with the adorable thing! Oh, forgot to mention they even get you gifts too! Anyway...I found that the game didn't hamper my CPU like previous games I've played for our Saturday game and it worked well with streaming. I don't remember encountering any graphical glitches either.
Controls were great, no major issues and buttons were in the appropriate places. It just feels natural to play with a controller which I only do for certain games, usually 3rd person games. I also use a 3rd party controller so if it picked up mine without any issue, it'll certainly be compatible with whatever you have!
Multiplayer has one or two issues. When we played it, you weren't allowed to co-op until you completed the tutorial, which is fair enough I guess as the story is highly focused on your journey and it'd be weird if one teenager turned into multiple! We had to look up online how to join as it was never explained straight away, but apparently it's after the tutorial finishes, which is after you activate the Lighthouse. This was a pain as the three of us had to play the game singleplayer for a while before we could finally link up!
That said, we were having a lot of fun, but what ended it was when the game crashed. Crashes are not a major deal breaker, especially as after the entire hour it only happened once, but we lost ALL our progress. At first we were confused, wondering why it wasn't auto-saving, but it appears that, again, at the time, it was bugged and you had to make certain that you save because the auto-save was a little tempermental. So we lost all our story progress, all our weapons, buildings and so on, but when exiting I noticed that my character and her level was still there!
Stream of Part 1, hopefully more in the future
This review contains spoilers
After playing The Molasses Flood's other game, The Flame and The Flood, I was very excited to play this when it was announced. I really enjoyed it, but I have a lot of stipulations. It's a cute game with an entertaining loop, but it's very minimal in every design. Granted, I played the entire game solo and could have been more positive playing coop.
This really is a hack-and-slash. You tap your melee attack 3 times to make a hacking combination and there is a single jump attack. It seems like they recently added parrying to the game before I played. The combat is absolutely minimal, with some actual diversity in the ranged attacks (about 5). You're to hack-and-slash around islands to clear out enemy structures while fighting off a few different enemy types vary as you progress, but again, only a small number of them (about 6?) which also simply has HP and damage increase per level.
The levelling system is based on your camp, and no new mechanics to the combat system are introduced when your level-up - only the numbers go up for both enemy HP and damage and your own weapon stats. Your companions increase in level when using materials you collect in the world, which increases the camp level and player health. The other statistic change that happens to the player is obtaining buffs from the inhabitants as they level up. Beyond numbers, nothing new really changes as the game progresses.
When camps level up, some new buildings are unlocked, and they perform a very minimal economy. There's water, food and entertainment for your inhabitants that buildings provide. Then there is defense and some auxiliary components to that economy - utility water and electricity to provide resources for upgraded buildings which produce water, food and entertainment. These camps are supplied by what you collect out in the world, which isn't very finite, as it looks like some materials repopulate and the rest are looted from enemies.
The game looks great and the music is good. Except, the music suddenly stops and becomes very absent most of the time you're exploring and suddenly starts again for almost no apparent reason.
So, the loop is: explore the world, hack-and-slash-and-block-and-parry enemies, gather materials, return to build the camp up or defend it from an incoming raid of enemies. Within this loop, you'll be given a quest to do something at a far off island every stage, whether that is read a note, go in a building, or fight an enemy, then return to camp for an end-stage raid (4 in total). Despite the repetition and simplicity, I really enjoyed this loop, which restarts every stage of the game.
I was fairly disappointed with how lacking the combat, building and crafting is, also with the ease in which I finished off the end boss, which [spoiler] is just another enemy your meet regularly later in the game [/spoiler]. Although, it kind of feels like just the right amount, which makes this game teeter between a positive and negative review.
Beating up enemies and blocking their attacks feels great, even though it's just 3 different swings! Expanding the camp for your inhabitants is very charming and enjoyable, sometimes fairly challenging if you're not getting the loot you need! I don't need to craft more than what the game is asking me to, and any more could have been a burden on the system. It actually benefits from its simplicity.
This game brings some interesting mechanics to a survive-and-build hack-and-slash game. Each island is surrounded by a death-fog that you'll need to both craft items to walk through it and build a very fun zip-line that acts as the game's fast travel. The inhabitants acting as your levelling up system is pretty unique from what I've seen, and changes the "grind" from killing-to-exp into killing-for-loot, which is slightly different as it encourages full land exploration. I also believe the maps are all procedural, which makes me curious to try this again on harder difficulties and drop into multiplayer games.
Some of this may change as new content is introduced into the game, but I wasn't entirely disappointed by this game and really felt good playing through it all. I look forward to more updates and getting friends into this to play!
This really is a hack-and-slash. You tap your melee attack 3 times to make a hacking combination and there is a single jump attack. It seems like they recently added parrying to the game before I played. The combat is absolutely minimal, with some actual diversity in the ranged attacks (about 5). You're to hack-and-slash around islands to clear out enemy structures while fighting off a few different enemy types vary as you progress, but again, only a small number of them (about 6?) which also simply has HP and damage increase per level.
The levelling system is based on your camp, and no new mechanics to the combat system are introduced when your level-up - only the numbers go up for both enemy HP and damage and your own weapon stats. Your companions increase in level when using materials you collect in the world, which increases the camp level and player health. The other statistic change that happens to the player is obtaining buffs from the inhabitants as they level up. Beyond numbers, nothing new really changes as the game progresses.
When camps level up, some new buildings are unlocked, and they perform a very minimal economy. There's water, food and entertainment for your inhabitants that buildings provide. Then there is defense and some auxiliary components to that economy - utility water and electricity to provide resources for upgraded buildings which produce water, food and entertainment. These camps are supplied by what you collect out in the world, which isn't very finite, as it looks like some materials repopulate and the rest are looted from enemies.
The game looks great and the music is good. Except, the music suddenly stops and becomes very absent most of the time you're exploring and suddenly starts again for almost no apparent reason.
So, the loop is: explore the world, hack-and-slash-and-block-and-parry enemies, gather materials, return to build the camp up or defend it from an incoming raid of enemies. Within this loop, you'll be given a quest to do something at a far off island every stage, whether that is read a note, go in a building, or fight an enemy, then return to camp for an end-stage raid (4 in total). Despite the repetition and simplicity, I really enjoyed this loop, which restarts every stage of the game.
I was fairly disappointed with how lacking the combat, building and crafting is, also with the ease in which I finished off the end boss, which [spoiler] is just another enemy your meet regularly later in the game [/spoiler]. Although, it kind of feels like just the right amount, which makes this game teeter between a positive and negative review.
Beating up enemies and blocking their attacks feels great, even though it's just 3 different swings! Expanding the camp for your inhabitants is very charming and enjoyable, sometimes fairly challenging if you're not getting the loot you need! I don't need to craft more than what the game is asking me to, and any more could have been a burden on the system. It actually benefits from its simplicity.
This game brings some interesting mechanics to a survive-and-build hack-and-slash game. Each island is surrounded by a death-fog that you'll need to both craft items to walk through it and build a very fun zip-line that acts as the game's fast travel. The inhabitants acting as your levelling up system is pretty unique from what I've seen, and changes the "grind" from killing-to-exp into killing-for-loot, which is slightly different as it encourages full land exploration. I also believe the maps are all procedural, which makes me curious to try this again on harder difficulties and drop into multiplayer games.
Some of this may change as new content is introduced into the game, but I wasn't entirely disappointed by this game and really felt good playing through it all. I look forward to more updates and getting friends into this to play!
It has a lot of potential, love collecting lil plants as my children, I gave them all a lot of love.
I had fun with the game, liked exploring and cleaning the islands, but it is a little rough around the edges. I started playing story mode with friends and it was weird because the game spawned resources in very low quantity, as if there was only one player. Then we switched to sandbox mode and it was a lot better, we could gather our own resources progress through seasons. But in the end the combat just isn't very good and some mechanics kinda don't make sense being there.
too much stick and not enough carrot
Feels exactly like a lot of the games it's "inspired by" except worse optimised