A farming sim DLC of one of my favorite games in recent history? Sign me up!

I was so excited, and, sadly... this didn't really live up to my hopes. It's a neat concept: John and Sam, in an alternate universe, come to an old, rundown town called Octopia, and work together to build it up to what it can truly be. Fan favorites like William and the Daniels, Alva and Isabel, and more show up and make the town a lively place. There's a big focus on gathering ingredients and recipe to make delicious meals, which you can share with your neighbors and visitors.

To be fair, I did enjoy both the mining minigame and the fishing minigame, and I really enjoyed some of the little scenes with William and the Daniels, Alva and Isabel, and Mung and his sons. There's a lot of really sweet, charming writing here given that this is an alternate world where everything is nice and peaceful, and I really enjoyed getting to see these characters again.

There's a lot of neat trappings here, but overall it just kind of... falls short.

There's a part early on where you have to make curry, but curry involves chicken. Where do you get chicken? Well, you have to buy a chicken coop. Only then do you unlock the ability to buy chicken at the shop in town. I only ended up doing this around day 40 or so because I had looked it up and I had a surplus of salt (money) to do so. Early game, money is tight, and I didn't want to buy a chicken coop because I imagined I'd also have to buy a chicken (not true, you can just adopt one on your farm) and feed, all while managing growing crops and fishing with a low money supply. I think some light signposting towards that would make things a lot easier to help move along, especially since making curry IS the opening to unlocking more construction, characters, and visits. It might just be me, but it feels like a strange oversight.

The other rough part is that the story and visitors are ploddingly slow. I was surprised there was real story at all (and what there was, I mostly liked!), but it crawls along at a snail's pace, where even after completing all my construction and all the major quests for the people in town, I still had so many days before it just kind of, unceremoniously reached the end of the story? It felt really strange to me. It just hit out of nowhere and then it was done.

Every so often, visitors, well, visit Octopia. You can see who's visiting when you press start and when you check the map to see who might be where, but at a certain point they visit... very slowly. I had a character who wanted a certain dish, but I didn't have the ingredients, couldn't get them and make the dish in time that day, and they didn't show up again for 15-20 days. That just. Doesn't feel great. Now that I'm in the post game, I'm just feeding animals, watering crops, and gathering crops and sleeping immediately to try and get to the next visitors, who are coming every 3-5 days. I'm very close to 100%ing the DLC, but I just think I'm going to stop because it feels like a waste and lack of respect for my time. I'm not saying I need them all one after the other day after day after day, but they definitely needed to show up more often to make Octopia not only feel thriving as a town and tourist destination, but to make me WANT to keep coming back for more as Octopia the DLC.

Also, I don't know what the patch did, but on Switch, the game runs kind of abysmally now. Every 20-25 seconds, the game will just hitch and freeze for a second or so, which really sucks not just because it makes fishing kind of a crapshoot, but also, it's just, terrible performance in every way. Eastward ran pretty flawlessly for me when I played it on Switch last year, so it suddenly performing very poorly is strange. I had a bug where, while catching a fish, the game ticked over to 20:00 (at which point you go back home for dinner and to go to bed), but I also remained in the fishing minigame, with the sounds and everything. I would automatically get pushed out of the eating/cooking menu, and since I couldn't see the fish, I couldn't catch it, so I had to hard quit out of the game and THEN reset the switch because my switch started lagging. As a result I lost a day's worth of progress (which might not sound like a lot, but given a lot of crop gathering, the mining minigame, crop buying and planting... it sucked to lose all of that, and it almost made me just want to quit. Were it not for it automatically saving each night, I definitely would've.

I also had numerous crashes at random times, while fishing, at the farm, it just felt very weird and it makes me wonder, given it's been over a month since the DLC released, if they even realized the issues that suddenly popped up on the Switch.

I really, REALLY wanted to like Octopia. Maybe I'm being a little lenient with my rating, but I do love Eastward a lot, and there are parts of this DLC I like, but it just... doesn't feel well designed in parts, in my opinion, and the technical issues really drag it down. For the price, I would recommend checking it out (It's $4.99, I think?) and seeing if you vibe with it more, and I definitely got my money's worth of it, but I think I'm gonna stop just shy of 100%ing it and move on.

Aw, I loved this! It's just exactly what it says on the tin, a 15-20 hourish expansion (and you can keep playing after the credits) that takes the Eastward characters, world, aesthetic and fits it into a stardew valley-esque experience that also leans on John's expertise as Sam's chef. It has a nice well paced gameplay loop with plenty to do and interact with each day and lots of fun story sequences. The stamina bar is honestly a non factor after the first hour and this really is just a fun lazy time. Big thumbs up!

The farming & life sim aspect of a Stardew Valley mixed with the unique world and characters of Eastward makes this the perfect DLC for me since I love both of those things.

It starts a bit slow with only a few things to do, at least until you unlock a few more tools, machines and areas. Once it reaches its flow and you’re taking care of your crops and animals, fishing, mining, cooking and growing your community, the game gets hard to put down. Story wise it didn't grab my attention the same way the base game did but that wasn't really a dealbreaker since it's mostly there to progress the farming and community.

The DLC has a few problems going from some QOL to it crashing a few times throughout my playthrough, mostly when using the fasttravel system or during the fishing game, and I'm currently experiencing a bug where certain NPC's don't show up locking me out of 100% completion (need one more crop, two friends and a few recipes and I'm assuming they're all related). But besides those things I'm impressed with this DLC especially at its price point!

Edit: the bug with the NPC not showing up is fixed so now I have that sweet 100% completion

Uno de los mejores DLCs que he visto nunca, no tanto por la historia que tiene sino por todo el contenido nuevo que te da, es prácticamente un videojuego distinto.

La historia está un poco de lado y se basa sobretodo en gestión de cultivos, pesca y todo eso para lo principal, la cocina. Mientras vas descubriendo todos los platos que hay (154), vas descubriendo una historia súper entretenida con los mismos personajes de Eastward pero de un universo paralelo (está confirmado, y de hecho lo confirman en el juego). Vas creando tu propia ciudad en una isla apartada y llevando acabo distintas mejoras para que más gente vaya a la isla. De verdad que no tiene sentido que solo cueste 6€ con todo lo que incluye.

Una experiencia genial y que recomiendo a todo el mundo, eso sí, primero hay que jugar a Eastward.

They put an evil ass strain of crack in this DLC because holy fuck. I haven’t been this addicted to something since my first Stardew Valley playthrough back in 2017.

An amazing DLC expansion that stands on its own two legs. It feels a little unfair to judge it as a full-fledged game even tho they go the extra mile to make it feel like one, but I do wish you got to build more relationship with the town residents since you complete their questlines pretty quickly and don’t get much development past that.

i love eastward so i love this a lot, and it does a lot of clever tedium-cutting-out. the graphics and UI and audio are all fantastic of course

that said, i don't know if it hit the perfect timing and balance with its core loop. its very possible to end up with nothing to do but skip days until you get certain NPCs arriving to round off the recipe book, with no real incentive to keep the farm going, which was a bummer and sort of soured the end of an otherwise very fun very cute experience

none-the-less a very good audiobook game

A spin off to the Eastward game that is a completely different genre. The same charming artstyle and characters make appearance, although their stories are changed. An alternate reality. There is no need to play Eastward to play Octopia, although it is a DLC so both games have to be purchased to play.

I can’t decide if I should rate this game 3 or 4. At first it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the first I would say 10 hours. Then it gets a little grindy and then you have absolutely nothing to do. I found myself skipping days only to trigger an NPC visit that would allow me to progress a story or give an item. A lot of times I had no clue what to do and only moved the quest along with the great help of the Reddit threads. After the credits I did try to finish collecting all the crops and recipes, but again it is tied to NPC events which I just gave up on after skipping through 7 days.

There were things I did enjoy a lot. The recipe learning method, as well as the fishing and mining minigames were a treat.

All in all I wish they balanced the end game better as it salted my experience a lot.

‣ 9/10 – They took John’s pan away ;(

‣ Thoughts: I think Stardew Valley has permanently ruined how I approach cozy, farming games like this DLC. For just 5$ Eastward becomes a totally different game, that prioritizes relaxation and chill vibes. But that is not how I approached this expansion.

The game begins with an alternative version of John and Sam settling in an abandoned theme park with run down buildings. Your task is to put it all back together with the help of characters from the main game. There is no combat and serious stakes. It is all about cooking delicious looking meals, gathering ingredients, fishing, foraging, and helping out with various construction projects. Obviously, the biggest part of this DLC is farming. That is your main source of income and most ingredients. It is simple and quick to do and it is totally fine.

Everything starts out rather slowly and it takes a few good hours for you to start seeing progress. At times I felt like it was perhaps too slow, but that is undoubtedly because I played this expansion like Stardew Valley. Meaning, I tried to maximize my profits and work load every day, instead of just taking my time and relaxing like it is intended. It got so bad that I had to skip 20 days for the games story to catch up and roll credits. Of course, that is completely my fault, and I should’ve just slowed down, but that did not ruin the experience for me. It just simply made it feel sluggish at times.

Overall, it is incredible how different Octopia feels to the main game, and I think that was the point. It seems like the developers wanted to make a spin-off farming game, using assets from Eastward, but the scope was small enough to be an expansion. I truly wonder if we will ever see Eastward 2 or a full farming game like this, because they know exactly what makes these type of games so addictive.

The original Eastward is a game that brushes upon world ending threats, grief and existentialism. However, the parts I remember clearest and that have stayed with me the longest were the smaller moments in between all the world ending stakes. Brief reprieves from the larger narrative where you would get to spend time with the numerous off-beat, unique characters the game would have to offer. The colourful cast, accompanied by gorgeous, cartoony pixel art with expressive animation and soothing ost, made Eastward such a cozy experience despite the darker themes the game sometimes reached. So when Octopia, a farming simulator DLC was announced, I was ecstatic. Getting to revisit the world with a more relaxed gameplay loop seemed like a match made in heaven. And for the most part, it is. I didn’t realize just how much I liked the cast of Eastward until I got to revisit some of them in this DLC. Getting to interact with them again and even further—sharing a meal with them, helping them make a home was all so incredibly gratifying. I truly hope more of my favourite games get farming simulator AU DLCs; it honestly serves as such a great epilogue for a story and goodbye to a cast of characters. Moving on to the gameplay, this is actually my first farming simulator so I don’t have much to compare it to. The farming, cooking, building and resource management never gets all that complex or difficult, but its simplicity is what makes it such a great chill game to turn off your brain and relax to, and consequently get addicted to. While no individual mechanic develops much depth, there is a wealth of things you can do on any given day which helps keep you busy. I do wish the game offered more incentive to farm and cook new things beyond completion rate. There are a few side quests here and there that will ask you for certain recipes, but not nearly as many as one would think, and the rewards are usually lack lustre. The DLC definitely loses steam the further you get into it—once you develop a more reliable system, save enough resources, I found myself ending my days faster just waiting for the scripted content to come. Of course, the scripted content is great, I just wish there was more of it. Ultimately though, I know I gotta say goodbye to Eastward and its characters at some point, and Octopia was a pretty great farewell.