A cute, short and wholesome 3D platformer centered around helping a small town of well mannered folks repair what was left off of a storm. It's a collect-a-ton where you don't even need to collect everything and the quests are a laid out as the dialogue is full of positivity and charisma. Play this if you're either not that great at 3D platformer or you're having a not-so good day.
A very cute 3D platformer with some Animal Crossing inspired vibes. While the game is priced very affordably, the playtime required to beat it matches it (around 1 hour). Currently has some issues with controller/KB+mouse overriding each other among other visual/gameplay annoyances (i.e. camera sensitivity is one slider that applies in both directions, menus are sometimes janky, etc.). Can be cheesed incredibly quickly due to some movement mechanics. Overall a fun experience if you're looking for a short game!
Short, simple, but still enjoyable. I'd love to play a larger version of the game set in this semi-solar punk world
A collect-a-thon platformer in a dull, lifeless world. Attempts to imitate the blueprint of A Short Hike without understanding what made that game great. Poorly optimized and buggy; at least it's only an hour long.
Re:Fresh is a short and simple 3D platformer in the vein of A Short Hike, and wow does it really just want to take the ideas from that game without understanding what made them work. I'll say at the top that despite my complaints I still had an okay time with this, it's not truly bad and it's only around an hour to do everything in the game so it's not a big waste of time, but I wanted to talk about why it's disappointing.
You play as a robot after a storm hits a small island town and you're tasked with finding materials to help the NPCs rebuild. The movement is pretty basic with a jump and later a dash, and solar cells that act like A Short Hike's feathers in giving you extra charges for either of these as you collect them. It doesn't feel particularly great though, just passable for the basic unchallenging platforming here. The exploration is also pretty limited, and I feel like the structure of the world really hurts the game. The areas aren't that big, and even then they're split up in a very distinct way, with bridges between small islands that you unlock at different points connecting to the main hub area. There's only 3 of these, even being generous and counting the small starting area. I think even if they were combined together it would be kind of disappointing in size and density, but split up and made so that you have to approach them in a pretty linear order removes a lot of the feeling of exploring a detailed world. The worlds in games like A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game aren't huge by any means, but they're dense and feel made with care in a way that exploring them is a joy, but I can't say anything of the sort here.
Rather than the approach of slowly encountering NPCs as you explore, most of them are dumped on you all at once near the beginning of the game when you walk into the main town. This certainly doesn't help with any of them being memorable, but the simple dialogue also didn't really work for me and I didn't find any of it charming like the other games I've seen or played in this style. The overall story isn't really noteworthy either. It's definitely trying to be charming and cute, but I don't feel like it really hits those goals.
The game also just feels unpolished overall. The menus were weirdly buggy for me while using a controller. The dialogue interface is odd and I didn't even realize there were dialogue choices when I made the first ones because of how it's presented. There's a system for customizing your character but it's extremely limited, and I'm fairly sure there's not enough of the collectible currency in the game to even unlock all of the options available which seems odd. The game also runs shockingly bad for how simple it looks. I was planning to play it on my steam deck, but quickly realized that wasn't going to be a good time after booting it up, but even on my pretty beefy desktop it didn't run great. There were a lot of other small things that were offputting but I've already spent too long complaining about this.
Overall, despite the complaints it was okay, it's a very short game and if you really want more of these and feel like you're out of other options you might get some enjoyment out of it. I mainly wanted to review it to talk about how it completely misses what makes A Short Hike great while being a very similar game.
You play as a robot after a storm hits a small island town and you're tasked with finding materials to help the NPCs rebuild. The movement is pretty basic with a jump and later a dash, and solar cells that act like A Short Hike's feathers in giving you extra charges for either of these as you collect them. It doesn't feel particularly great though, just passable for the basic unchallenging platforming here. The exploration is also pretty limited, and I feel like the structure of the world really hurts the game. The areas aren't that big, and even then they're split up in a very distinct way, with bridges between small islands that you unlock at different points connecting to the main hub area. There's only 3 of these, even being generous and counting the small starting area. I think even if they were combined together it would be kind of disappointing in size and density, but split up and made so that you have to approach them in a pretty linear order removes a lot of the feeling of exploring a detailed world. The worlds in games like A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game aren't huge by any means, but they're dense and feel made with care in a way that exploring them is a joy, but I can't say anything of the sort here.
Rather than the approach of slowly encountering NPCs as you explore, most of them are dumped on you all at once near the beginning of the game when you walk into the main town. This certainly doesn't help with any of them being memorable, but the simple dialogue also didn't really work for me and I didn't find any of it charming like the other games I've seen or played in this style. The overall story isn't really noteworthy either. It's definitely trying to be charming and cute, but I don't feel like it really hits those goals.
The game also just feels unpolished overall. The menus were weirdly buggy for me while using a controller. The dialogue interface is odd and I didn't even realize there were dialogue choices when I made the first ones because of how it's presented. There's a system for customizing your character but it's extremely limited, and I'm fairly sure there's not enough of the collectible currency in the game to even unlock all of the options available which seems odd. The game also runs shockingly bad for how simple it looks. I was planning to play it on my steam deck, but quickly realized that wasn't going to be a good time after booting it up, but even on my pretty beefy desktop it didn't run great. There were a lot of other small things that were offputting but I've already spent too long complaining about this.
Overall, despite the complaints it was okay, it's a very short game and if you really want more of these and feel like you're out of other options you might get some enjoyment out of it. I mainly wanted to review it to talk about how it completely misses what makes A Short Hike great while being a very similar game.
it was cute tbh and that's the most i have to say on that. the platforming was kinda easy and that's quite a statement coming from someone who absolutely fucking sucks at platformers.
got exactly what i wanted, which was a tiny world that i could cozy into and master in less then two hours. appreciate that there is Some effort to stretch the mechanics in different directions even across the very short running time. kinda janky and weirdly poorly optimized if u care ab that stuff (i dont). i have mixed feelings on both "wholesome" games and solarpunk, but this is a pretty good case for the communal, inviting, aspirational best of both. not the most powerful thing, but i do long for the world that will happen when we finally decide to take care of eachother.
a cute short game to satisfy your itch for platformers and adorable robots! :)
I'm constantly on the hunt for new games that evoke the same feelings that I had when playing A Short Hike, so I had to pick up this "Very Positive" Steam reviewed platformer which seemed to be of that ilk. I continue to be baffled by some games' reception on Steam, because this game is nothing but a mess. Its cutesy exterior is all it has going for it. The game performs horribly, causing my Steam Deck to run at full steam and cutting its battery life down to an hour. It's chock full of bugs, from object pop-in directly in front of you to broken menus. The platforming itself felt like I was permanently in a moon gravity level from a better platformer, with a far too slow jumping arc. Movement overall is also sluggish, with turns feeling too slow. Exploration isn't properly rewarded, especially since collectible objects aren't visible until you're directly next to them. Those objects are also the only things to find, as all of the NPCs are clustered in each of the game's areas. Re:Fresh would have been an admirable student project, but as a paid product it's embarrassing.
I guess I still had some leftover desire for cozy platformers after a Short Hike so here's Re:Fresh to fill that particular craving. First impressions of Re:Fresh weren't great, the game was clearly made on a limited budget with a team of seemingly 5 main developers. And whilst the cartoony art style and general simplicity goes a fairly long way, some assets, in particular the geometry of the cliff level just reek of amateurish "let me just use the basic terrain brush tool that comes with Unreal Engine's starter pack".
That aside I really found the game to be quite charming. Its essentially a low stakes collectathon : after a storm your home village (you being a humanoid robot in a town where robots and anthropomorphic animals coexist peacefully) has its infrastructure wrecked and you are tasked with helping the townsfolk the repair their homes and businesses via standard collectathon platforming. As you go you collect solar cells which give you extra jumps (yeah, you thought the A Short Hike comparison's were going to end with just the tone eh?) and dashes which you use to collect resources to complete quests.
The game is really short, like, an hour. Maybe longer if youre going for 100% completion. But honestly its sold for really cheap and its a small indie studio's first project so I don't mind giving them my money.
The more interesting thing to talk about is the setting, however. I had heard of the term "Solarpunk" before but I think this is the first piece of media Ive interacted with that really subscribed to it. Now, take everything I'm saying here with a pinch of salt cause pretty much my entire knowledge of this is based purely on reading the wikipedia page for Solarpunk lmao. In fact, let me just link it here so you too can read it at your leisure. Its a relatively recent movement in speculative fiction that is focused on an optimistic sustainable future as opposed to the usual, more realistic dystopian hellhole we are currently en route to becoming in the next couple of decades, sooner if you life in the third world.
Now, on the one hand its easy to be cynical about both the society envisioned by the game and the solarpunk movement as a whole : communal subsistence farms and solar based sustainable development is great and all but how much of that is possible in a planet of 8 billion? Before the industrial revolution and enclosure the population of earth didnt even reach 1 Billion. Yes, most economic activity in the current day goes towards making profit for shareholders and ever increasing economic growth based on exploitation of resources and labour (mainly from the third world by the first) but mass industrialised agriculture is really the only way to support the current population of earth, afaik. There is also something to be said about how these sorts of optimistic, wishful views of the future can distract from what we really should be doing, i.e fighting tooth and nail to avert or at the very least mitigate the coming climate disaster.
With that said, I also acknowledge that Re:Fresh isnt ill intentioned, it is at the end of the day just a videogame and the fate of our planet rests on a hell of a lot more than whatever impact a budget platformer will or even can have. And honestly, an optimistic view of the future beyond capitalism and the overexploitation of nature is kind of radical, so I can't get too mad. Godspeed Re:Fresh!
That aside I really found the game to be quite charming. Its essentially a low stakes collectathon : after a storm your home village (you being a humanoid robot in a town where robots and anthropomorphic animals coexist peacefully) has its infrastructure wrecked and you are tasked with helping the townsfolk the repair their homes and businesses via standard collectathon platforming. As you go you collect solar cells which give you extra jumps (yeah, you thought the A Short Hike comparison's were going to end with just the tone eh?) and dashes which you use to collect resources to complete quests.
The game is really short, like, an hour. Maybe longer if youre going for 100% completion. But honestly its sold for really cheap and its a small indie studio's first project so I don't mind giving them my money.
The more interesting thing to talk about is the setting, however. I had heard of the term "Solarpunk" before but I think this is the first piece of media Ive interacted with that really subscribed to it. Now, take everything I'm saying here with a pinch of salt cause pretty much my entire knowledge of this is based purely on reading the wikipedia page for Solarpunk lmao. In fact, let me just link it here so you too can read it at your leisure. Its a relatively recent movement in speculative fiction that is focused on an optimistic sustainable future as opposed to the usual, more realistic dystopian hellhole we are currently en route to becoming in the next couple of decades, sooner if you life in the third world.
Now, on the one hand its easy to be cynical about both the society envisioned by the game and the solarpunk movement as a whole : communal subsistence farms and solar based sustainable development is great and all but how much of that is possible in a planet of 8 billion? Before the industrial revolution and enclosure the population of earth didnt even reach 1 Billion. Yes, most economic activity in the current day goes towards making profit for shareholders and ever increasing economic growth based on exploitation of resources and labour (mainly from the third world by the first) but mass industrialised agriculture is really the only way to support the current population of earth, afaik. There is also something to be said about how these sorts of optimistic, wishful views of the future can distract from what we really should be doing, i.e fighting tooth and nail to avert or at the very least mitigate the coming climate disaster.
With that said, I also acknowledge that Re:Fresh isnt ill intentioned, it is at the end of the day just a videogame and the fate of our planet rests on a hell of a lot more than whatever impact a budget platformer will or even can have. And honestly, an optimistic view of the future beyond capitalism and the overexploitation of nature is kind of radical, so I can't get too mad. Godspeed Re:Fresh!