EARLY ACCESS REVIEW

i like the gameplay a lot and how tactile things feel, but the writing is just not for me personally. it's extremely cutesy, to the point where i'm struggling to figure out who this game is targeted towards? if it's children, it's patronising; if it's adults, it's tiring. there are a lot of made up words (humans are 'oobin'), deliberately misspelled words (reconstitooter), or things are bizarrely renamed (drippy can instead of watering can, dirt scraper instead of hoe). this is fine, but not for me.

also, currently, there's not much to do, due to it being in early access. i'd stave off on this one for a little while. my 3 stars will hold even for future updates, though, unfortunately.

I wanted to really like this game, but I only kind of do.

First off, it's cute as heck, the dialogue is fun, everything looks great and it has fun gardening, creature collecting and deck building. It's like a Stardew Valley meets Pokemon meets Slay the Spire combined!

Except it's very minor in all those aspects. Growing plants in the garden serves as the goal for fetch quests, cooking, recruiting Ooblets or selling. It does have similar systems as Stardew Valley, but not as robust or deep as the farming simulator. It also seems somewhat simple, as I'm now hoarding seeds, plants, cooked food and Ooblets, which I'm not sure if a fault of my grinding behaviour in games like this or if the game is not demanding enough from me.

The Ooblets are very cool! Running around towns to find the little creatures then coax into dance battles is fun. They make little noises, follow you around and serve as the basis for deck-building. I mix and match them for dance battles typically as counters or because of their synergy, such as ones that require a high amount of resources to spend their cards along with ones that accumulate resources per turn.

However, these dance battles have huge problems. This part of the game is incredibly easy, and I don't believe that's because of my skill level. Your team always goes first, which is a huge advantage. There's usually a clearly visible order of operations and limitations when looking at your cards, which the AI absolutely ignores. For example, it will play cards with "+2 points" then "+1 to all points gained" and then "+1 point for every card played this round" - we humans should know that the opposite order should be played to get the most points, and it's laughable how bad the computer plays this game. Counter strategies aren't even really necessary, because the computer tends to play cards in a random order without taking advantage of Ooblet unique abilities and synergies, how they can interrupt the players' round or whether the cards can even be played! The computer attempts to steal points from me when I don't have any.

While this is frustrating, my biggest problem with dance battles is the camera. Your Ooblets are super cute, fun to look at and have really cool dance moves. However, when it's their turn to dance, they're obfuscated from view as the camera zooms out, pans upwards, and gives the worst angles of your Ooblets during the dance battle. I want to clearly see these little guys do the "One Step Pep" then "Gavotte Trot," but they're either obstructed or too far away to really get a good look at. Then, when you inevitably win the dance battle, there's beautiful shots of each of your Ooblets gaining experience points, but they're not visibly in the spotlight when they're doing their signature "Boogie Blossom". Also, the music is good with some real bangers, but it needs more of it if the dancing is so intricate to the game and done often.

It's so odd that an incredibly cute and fun game does a disservice to itself. The difficulty and views are my major gripes and if they were somehow patched, it would be definitely be a 5-star game. I recommend this despite my disappointment with some aspects of it.