Decent game. It's pretty, pulls you in, and builds some cool gameplay ideas. Also, a cat follows you around all the time, so...
The overall art direction is pretty solid. Not played a lot of games with this sort of illustration style for assets, and I think it aids the message and overall tone of the game. The art is pretty consistent throughout, and I think it stays pretty attractive.
Audio is fine. The overall SFX and character sounds are decent. The music gets a little repetitive and annoying occasionally, but I think it's solid.
Story is okay. I think it's worth it for a playthrough but most of the characters are not amazing, just competent. They certainly feel real and you can empathize with them, but by the end I was mostly tired of the story, looking to end it. The story of life and passing through is meaningful and the game talks about it in several dimensions, which I think is great, but like others have said the back end lacks, I think in both the characters that you get and the overall pacing.
The gameplay is weak. I'm all for mindless resource gathering, and complex crafting systems, and wandering around a map just looking for different resources to progress, but it takes it to a different level of tedium.
The game makes you feel like you're progressing and building new things and exploring new places, but every action you take for crafting, or gathering resources, is just irritating. They're all tiny minigames comprised of holding the e button then letting go at the right time and usually some amount of waiting. I completed the game and got all the achievements, but I was fatigued of it halfway through. The progression and the story kept me going, but if I hadn't had clear and present goals it probably would have fatigued me out.
The game uses these resource and crafting systems as the primary goals of quests and as a means to segment content, which means that the majority of goals in this game boil down to 'visit place to get [resource]/craft [product]/return [product] to quest giver'. This is fine if you know what you're getting into and you're ok with it. Again, not hard, just tedious.
The rest of the gameplay is mainly composed of the platforming aspects. I suppose it qualifies as a platformer, since the other way the game segments content is by locking valuable items behind some movement upgrade. Despite this, the platforming can be annoying. It's fun how fast you can go, and jumping and flying around is nice, but there's some minor quirks that result in you missing somewhere you think you could've landed, and having to go back to try again, over and over. If it just offered a little more lenience / control, it would be significantly less aggravating.
Beyond that, there are tiny things that prevent this game from being a 4 star that seem to be due to not enough time spent polishing. I personally completed a lot of the non-essential ship upgrades at the end, as I didn't need them / didn't have them available until after I'd sent away my spirits and went exploring. Rather than proper animation stretch frames the player character and others sometimes are simply stretched and squeezed for some amount of frames to display motion. Fine, but it was distracting and my main problem with the art. I also felt some of the animations were janky and did not fully blend into each other.
The characters often repeat the same dialogue over and over, even the ones you have to visit several times. The characters will have a favorite food, but their animation won't be them eating their favorite food. Seems like a minor thing, but a character that hates carbs has an animation of them devouring carbs, which is immensely frustrating when you spend half the time catering to their unnecessarily precise food desires.
ALSO: Almost all the achievements can be done in a single playthrough, but two are dependent on which decision you make, which means that you minimally have to do two playthroughs to get all the achievements. I consider this game to have very very limited replay value unless it's right up your alley, so I think this is just annoying and a poor decision by the devs considering the rest of the game is incredibly linear and I don't believe this decision even has any major effect on the characters involved.
TL;DR:
Solid game, I think you should play it for the art, story, and characters. It creates a solid narrative and world, while building on cool gameplay ideas (the ship, cooking for your passengers), but a lot of the gameplay is rooted in tedium or minor aggravations. The story and gameplay shines in the front half, lingers in the back half, and has some weird quirks and abrupt endings that feel more like lack of polish / rush than deliberate decisions. I'd up my rating if the back part felt less like a todo list and more like a proper finish.
The overall art direction is pretty solid. Not played a lot of games with this sort of illustration style for assets, and I think it aids the message and overall tone of the game. The art is pretty consistent throughout, and I think it stays pretty attractive.
Audio is fine. The overall SFX and character sounds are decent. The music gets a little repetitive and annoying occasionally, but I think it's solid.
Story is okay. I think it's worth it for a playthrough but most of the characters are not amazing, just competent. They certainly feel real and you can empathize with them, but by the end I was mostly tired of the story, looking to end it. The story of life and passing through is meaningful and the game talks about it in several dimensions, which I think is great, but like others have said the back end lacks, I think in both the characters that you get and the overall pacing.
The gameplay is weak. I'm all for mindless resource gathering, and complex crafting systems, and wandering around a map just looking for different resources to progress, but it takes it to a different level of tedium.
The game makes you feel like you're progressing and building new things and exploring new places, but every action you take for crafting, or gathering resources, is just irritating. They're all tiny minigames comprised of holding the e button then letting go at the right time and usually some amount of waiting. I completed the game and got all the achievements, but I was fatigued of it halfway through. The progression and the story kept me going, but if I hadn't had clear and present goals it probably would have fatigued me out.
The game uses these resource and crafting systems as the primary goals of quests and as a means to segment content, which means that the majority of goals in this game boil down to 'visit place to get [resource]/craft [product]/return [product] to quest giver'. This is fine if you know what you're getting into and you're ok with it. Again, not hard, just tedious.
The rest of the gameplay is mainly composed of the platforming aspects. I suppose it qualifies as a platformer, since the other way the game segments content is by locking valuable items behind some movement upgrade. Despite this, the platforming can be annoying. It's fun how fast you can go, and jumping and flying around is nice, but there's some minor quirks that result in you missing somewhere you think you could've landed, and having to go back to try again, over and over. If it just offered a little more lenience / control, it would be significantly less aggravating.
Beyond that, there are tiny things that prevent this game from being a 4 star that seem to be due to not enough time spent polishing. I personally completed a lot of the non-essential ship upgrades at the end, as I didn't need them / didn't have them available until after I'd sent away my spirits and went exploring. Rather than proper animation stretch frames the player character and others sometimes are simply stretched and squeezed for some amount of frames to display motion. Fine, but it was distracting and my main problem with the art. I also felt some of the animations were janky and did not fully blend into each other.
The characters often repeat the same dialogue over and over, even the ones you have to visit several times. The characters will have a favorite food, but their animation won't be them eating their favorite food. Seems like a minor thing, but a character that hates carbs has an animation of them devouring carbs, which is immensely frustrating when you spend half the time catering to their unnecessarily precise food desires.
ALSO: Almost all the achievements can be done in a single playthrough, but two are dependent on which decision you make, which means that you minimally have to do two playthroughs to get all the achievements. I consider this game to have very very limited replay value unless it's right up your alley, so I think this is just annoying and a poor decision by the devs considering the rest of the game is incredibly linear and I don't believe this decision even has any major effect on the characters involved.
TL;DR:
Solid game, I think you should play it for the art, story, and characters. It creates a solid narrative and world, while building on cool gameplay ideas (the ship, cooking for your passengers), but a lot of the gameplay is rooted in tedium or minor aggravations. The story and gameplay shines in the front half, lingers in the back half, and has some weird quirks and abrupt endings that feel more like lack of polish / rush than deliberate decisions. I'd up my rating if the back part felt less like a todo list and more like a proper finish.