Mostly mindless guilty pleasure crafting game. Addictive and simple enough to let me tune out of life for a few hours. I don't often get into the whole crafting genre, they can get pretty tedious and you often need a guide or lots of tutorials. This is super casual on the surface but can get pretty in-depth if you explore all of your options. There's a reason for every upgrade, and they'll all make your game slightly easier if utilized (well, except for maybe eating gems). Occasional pretty standard Zelda-style puzzles here and there that are sometimes challenging.

My biggest issue is that when you do too many actions (such as building a bunch of buildings) the game has ridiculous slowdown. Luckily, if you save and exit and restart the game, the slowdown disappears. Make it a habit of restarting every few hours or so.

This might seem like a deal breaker for some but this is a solo dev game so I let it slide considering. It only lasts around 15-25 hours so I don't feel like I've wasted too much of my life on it.

Basically an optimization sim if you want it to be, but you can also still beat it the sloppy way (it just might take longer).

repost but i feel like its worth it: fuck hopfrog. seeing as he outsourced so much of the game silently, underpaid them and then blamed them for his failings w the game so i dont feel bad for saying that. game is fun but has some critical performance issues and offers nothing late game

also worth noting that hopfrog banned one of his discord mods for 'mental illness' when they came out as trans so yeah :) fuck him

definitely a fun an addicting game but i cant help but feel disgusted at something basically made through unpaid labor under a shitty guy claiming all credit

Recently, it has become popular to make games that either don't feature combat, or in which combat takes a back seat as crafting, building and farming take the lead. This is a positive trend, to me, but like all trends in gaming, it's one that also often goes wrong, with designers failing to understand player motivations for the genres they're working on and, in this particular trend's case, creating games where the chore part is treated as the goal of the experience. This usually only results in a bland, boring game that you forget about as soon as you're done playing -- it wasn't until Forager that one of those managed to really offend me.

Forager is a mix of adventure and builder that does a lot of things, none of them well. It is also number-go-up taken to an extreme: the chore for the sake of the chore, the grind a means and an end. There is no story, there is no quest, there is no motivator for the player whatsoever. You expand your land so you can get more money so you can expand your land further. You collect stuff because it's there and you might as well, not because there's a reason to. It's an utterly joyless experience with nothing to offer but the cheap dopamine rushes from a game saying you accomplished something.

The real kicker, though, is that Forager is all that, and it's one of the most self-aggrandizing pieces of media I have ever seen. The game's synopsis cites inspirations from Zelda and Terraria, and... I can see the Zelda part if I squint, but "Terraria" is baffling -- Forager is as similar to that game as it is to any other with a crafting system. I doubt the creator understands what makes Terraria fun. Speaking of him, though, he makes several appearances in-game as some sort of in-universe god-figure, and every time he bores you with terrible jokes and with him going off about his own interests. It's like a bad Tinder date you paid a $20 Uber to be at.

And it looks hideous, especially in the late game where some of the art was apparently crowd-sourced. And it's buggy: it's been out for three, nearing four years already, and you still can't trust it to not crash or present game-breaking bugs.

So, thinking of buying Forager? How about you spend your hard earned money on an Excel course instead? It will probably take less of your time, the spreadsheets you'll work on will be more charming and engaging, and by the end, you'll even have a new, marketable skill! A much better investment than this garbage.

Very addicting game about non stop building and hoarding. The only limit is the time you are willing to spend on it... or if you fry your console/pc by filling the screen with so many effects, enemies, forges, factories, and (especially) droids, that the fps reaches single digits.

The start is extremely slow. I was actually disappointed since my expectations came from crazy yt videos, but once the ball gets rolling it never stops. The key moment for me was obtaining the thunder rod, that was a game changer. Also unlocking the lighthouses sped up everything.

This clearly was a small game that over time grew out of proportion. Due to this, it's quite glitchy, with some major glitches still existing in the current version, like item duplication, bugged trophies and ways to softlock yourself. It feels like the game's foundation is being held together by glue and a dream. Thankfully, it works well most of the time.

I played an obscene amount of this game in a very small window of time, but reflecting on it, I'm not sure I was ever having fun, just spacing out entirely. If you're only goal is to completely shut off your brain and grind, grind, grind, this is probably fine for that. Ultimately, though, you pretty quickly reach a point where progression is a constant struggle for huge amounts of every resource - basic resources, many of which have to be collected manually. Farms for example, have to constantly have seeds recrafted, crops reharvested, holes redug. The automation that does exist is, again, very expensive, and also works very slowly. In fact, everything works very slowly. I'm spamming out power plants to speed my machines, and electronics still feel like they take upwards of two minutes each. When you regularly need 5, 10, sometimes more electronics per machine, it really adds up. The main engine to speed up resource generation is the lighthouse building, which has to be placed on water. I found myself completely screwed by the game because I didn't realize how vital lighthouses were until I had purchased most land, at which point places where lighthouses fit become scarce, with no way to make new water.

Outside of making a thing to make a thing to make a thing, the main gameplay mechanics are combat (which is, unsurprisingly, fairly shallow) and puzzles. Most of the puzzles in this game are obnoxiously cryptic. In fact, there are multiple where I still don't understand what the logic was, even after looking it up. I can't think of any off the top of my head I enjoyed.

The cutesy pixel art graphics are nice, but there does come a point where the number of effects on screen can make it difficult to decipher. I was also amused by the variety of outfits, including all the obligatory indie game references. 2,000 years from now it will be traditional for all video games to have a character in a suit of armor wielding a shovel, the original purpose of this odd custom long forgotten, but carried on regardless.

I revisited this game for the first time in a long while recently. I knew there'd been updates since my last time playing and its lurked installed for a long time tempting me but I'm always lost to the game for a decent amount of time each new session, the gameplay loop is like crack to me I'm suddenly aware hours have passed and I'm looking around like I don't recognise where I am.

I can honestly say I enjoyed the second playthrough as much as the first, and the new content is interesting even if I've only reached the very edge of the beginning of it.

I'll end up getting sucked back in one day to complete more of what I haven't seen but for now I'm free.

A solid game worth playing.

Weirdly soulless when it didn't really need to be; the type of indie game where there's a guy on an island who spouts random Zelda 1 quotes for no discernible reason. At its base, it takes some of the familiar dopamine hits from games like Stardew Valley and Minecraft and throws them at you at hyperspeed. It keeps your hands very busy and takes minimal thought to do anything, so it's a podcast game really - I turned the music off about 5 minutes in. The pixel art is fine, the gameplay loop does what it sets out to do, but the writing is weirdly off. I can't really see any of the charm it supposedly has; I'd even say there's an almost imperceptible mean streak to some of it: killing the kind turnips (ok i didn't have to do that but you want the space), an old man impressing on you that you're killing so much of the place's (infinitely respawning) natural resources, the fact that every NPC wants you to know how their existence doesn't matter in the slightest. Should I care? The game tries so hard to not try at all with its writing.
The game's store page says "The idle game you want to keep actively playing!", which is odd because that takes the idle out of idle game making it just "game", but it does remind me of a certain type of good-not-great incremental game where all the math fits together but it's just lacking some cohesive alchemical thing. A soul probably.

Forager made me have an introspection on why I play games and my own mental health. Not because it is thought provoking or spectacular, it’s aggressively average. Which is why it spurred these thoughts.

I originally played Forager a little while back on the Nintendo Switch and walked away from it feeling like it was just another “numbers go up” type of game. Despite that, I for some reason got it again on PC. Honestly, I don’t know the reasoning for that or even if there was any.

I feel nothing while playing Forager, it just numbed me to my mind. For a little while, I’ve noticed that I’ve been playing less games, and the games that I do play are what I would describe as painkiller games. They don’t make you feel better or worse, but they do distract you from your life. Mostly, I’d watch YouTube and maybe play a painkiller game at the same time to occupy my free time. It demanded the least amount of engagement to “consume”, all but braindead. I even put many games that I had a genuine interest in and felt engaged with on the backburner, because I guess I felt it was “too much work”. Safe to say I didn’t have a healthy relationship with a lot of the media I “enjoyed”. Others take drugs and/or alcohol to numb themselves from their lives, and I found myself doing a similar thing with YouTube and painkiller games.

Forager helped me really acknowledge this behavior. I was always aware but never really thought about it head on. While playing, I just thought to myself, “What fuck am I doing playing this shit, I’m not having fun”. I grew sick of the monotonous and shallow gameplay, bland pixel art, and qUiRkY vibes. I wanted to feel something. Now I have dropped Forager and have to put the enjoy back into media ENJOYment. I have other problems in life more pressing than entertainment that I’ll be taking steps to deal with but that’s stuff I’d like to keep private.

Enough of the soapbox, now for the real question, does Forager suck big nuts and balls!?!?!?

No.

As I mentioned earlier it isn’t bad, just “aggressively average”. It’s inoffensive but does nothing to really stand out. It is satisfying, but it just fills you with unfulfilling boosts of dopamine. It feels nice to have large quantities of resources, unlock new skills/research, upgrade tools, etc. It’s addicting but not fun, and I really don’t want to play games like that anymore. I want to have fun, not just be mindlessly occupied. So, if you want to numb your brain then Forager is the game for you, if you value your sanity then you should consider holding off.

Divertido mas se torna entediante depois de um tempo.

Forager é um jogo que mistura vários elementos de jogos clicker, com sobrevivência e crafting que no começo é bem divertido e serve pra passar um tempinho. Mas depois de um tempo ele fica bem repetitivo e entediante pois depois de alguns upgrades que você faz as coisas ficam bem difíceis de se conseguir e você acaba se vendo num ciclo infinito de ficar cortando arvores e quebrando pedras com a sua picareta.

É um jogo legalzinho até, a arte é bonitinha ,músicas são bem boas e as mecânicas funcionam bem até, o único pecado desse jogo é ele ser bem repetitivo, no geral recomendo experimentar.

Segunda vez que estou fazendo essa Review porque aparentemente o Backloggd é igual o jogo, cheio de Bugs.

Forager é um jogo que eu comecei amando, mas terminei odiando. E irei contar, através dessa review, o porque você NÃO deve gastar R$40,00 nesse jogo ao menos que você goste muito do gênero.

Primeiramente, mesmo o jogo sendo um indie eu não o perdoo pela quantidade de bug ou mal planejamento da sua gameplay.

Em princípio, Forager, é um jogo de Exploração e expansão de seus recursos. Ou seja, faça upgrades dos seus itens e expanda seu território. Entretanto, jogos desse gênero como Minecraft, Terraria e Stardew Valley são incomparáveis com Forager. O jogo tenta ao máximo se comparar com eles, mas falha miseravelmente ao decorrer do jogo. Irei explicar direito em tópicos:

GRÁFICOS:

Nada de mais, nada de menos, é simplesmente ok. Um jogo bit com uma pegada bonitinha super carismático e com um design bonito. Nada impressiona muito, mas também não deixa a desejar.

SOM/MÚSICA:

Existem ao todo umas 5 faixas no jogo. 2 para o mapa, e o resto para dungeons ou outros mundos. Eu literalmente depois de 20h jogando o jogo liguei o Spotify e desliguei o som, no final não dava mais para aguentar a mesma música sempre.

DESING:

Ilhas exatamente iguais uma das outras, o que muda é a dimensão e o puzzle nela. btw, o puzzle nunca dá nada de bom ao resolver, sempre te dará uma orbe de habilidade que serve para você upar seus status. Entretanto, no final do jogo você acaba acumulando umas 50 delas sem saber o que fazer, uma vez que você já upou tudo que podia.

NPCs: As quests deles servem para nada, é só trazer tal item e eles vão te dar uma orbe de habilidade. E como eu já disse no tópico passado, chega uma hora que você tem mais do que precisa.

JOGABILIDADE:

Como é um jogo de exploração, contrução etc ele deveria ser bom nesse estilo né? Sim, mas ele falha.

1. Você NÃO consegue construir no jogo ao menos que esteja jogando no teclado, quando você está no controle ele usa a seleção automatica que faz você não conseguir colocar o bloco no lugar que você quer. Parabéns Forager, você tinha uma única tarefa e falhou.

2. Os recursos do jogo são INFINITOS, eles simplesmente são gerados automaticamente nas ilhas do nada (árvores, minérios, flores, trigos, algodões, etc). Isso faz com que a ilha fique infestada de recursos em um piscar de olhos, e sua única opção é destruir tudo com bomba, picareta de explosão ou magia. Mas até chegar no nível de usar esses itens demora kk boa sorte. Ah outra coisa, o jogo literalmente implementou uma mecânica INUTIL de plantação, mas já que os recursos são gerados automaticamente nem faz sentido usar KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

3. Os puzzles são um cocô, nada de legal. Acho que o mais legal foi o de procurar a ordem de clicar nos pilares pelo mapa, porque o resto server apenas para encher o jogo de puzzle.

4. Os upgrades finais são tão absurdos de se conseguir que fica chato de jogar o jogo assim, você literalmente precisa de uns 20 mercados mais 40 fábricas etc etc etc para no final fazer 1 espada de diamante do vazio ou seila o que deveria ser.

5. As dugeons são legais, seila nada de mais, eu não me senti me divertindo fazendo elas. E os boss... são feios e com poderes nada inovadores.

6. PVP como é tudo visão de cima a única coisa "complicada" é o rolamento, mas ele é INUTIL já que você desbloqueia a evasão. Ou seja, você pode ficar parado que você não vai tomar dano por conta da evasão.

7. Os inimigos são poucos e chatos, você mata ele rápidos e eles nem atrapalham direito, só "existem".

8. O jogo é FACIL d+, é só você upar ataque e vida infinita faça os boss dos selos derrote eles, você vai ganhar orbes infinitas e já era. GG

9. O mundo vazio é a coisa mais meme que eu já vi. Fui desconectado de lá umas 5 vezes por NADA. É tipo uma RUN, você mata certos inimigos e passa de fase. Cheguei na fase 25 (Onde só spawna boss) e eu matava em hit kill. Ou seja, não tem graça, e é tedioso já que demora muito para passar de fase. Tentei chegar no nível 30 mas é quase impossível já que lá é BUG puro. Teve uma vez que eu buguei no chão do nada e não tive escolha a não ser começar tudo de novo.

10. As conquistas são legais, são várias e eu fiquei com vontade de fazer todas. Cada uma que você faz você ganha uma personalização para seu boneco. btw, as personalizações são o mais forte do jogo, literalmente tem roupas de todos os jogos mainstream que você pode equipar e outros acessórios super legais divertidos.

Para concluir, Forager podia ser muito mais do que é. Os desenvolvedores em vez de ficar colocando recursos infinitos no jogo, podiam poli-lo, tirando os BUGs e ARRUMANDO A PORRA DA JOGABILIDADE DO CONTROLE. PUTA QUE PARIU NUNCA VI UM JOGO DE CONSTRUÇÃO QUE NÃO PODE CONTRUIR VAI SE FUDER.

Bom é isso. 4/10 gostaria de poder dar mais. bye