This game is baffling after the huge step up Trio of Towns was over the laggy, annoying design decision-riddled mess SoS. And no matter how cumbersome SoS was, the characters still had depth in that and the game mechanics still functioned. Pioneers of Olive Town is the worst of all worlds: everything is a cardboard cut out, runs like garbage on switch, and it is not a farming game at all.

You will spend most of your time parked next to some kind of crafting machine to feed it materials because you can only craft things one at a time. Farming has been so nerfed, there are no longer festivals/competitions for it or livestock. All your crops will basically go toward tediously crafting thing upon thing and I'm not entirely sure to what end.

There are no characters in this game. They're all soulless robots who just happen to occupy the space outside your farm. Night and day difference from the wholly pleasant and memorable cast of ToT.

Between this and RF5, I guess I'm just going to have to replay RF4 and ToT until I die.

This is a niche recommendation. Desolation Tycoon is the perfect game for anyone prone to moods where they want to play something, but everything feels like too much effort. There are no stressful timers, important decisions, anything to keep track of, and nothing you do matters. Watching your little colored peg bounce across the landscape is quite soothing. Traveling between equally featureless towns is a kind of honest monotony you’d find living on the road.

What is this game’s power is also its weakness. What you see is what you get. There is no strategy or depth here. Character creation is random yet doesn’t change the flavor of your playthrough at all. It makes some things harder, others easier, but you’ll be doing the same thing no matter what. Unlocks change nothing either and is likely why this game features one of the harshest unlock treadmills I’ve ever seen outside of an abusive F2P game. It’s harsh because it doesn’t matter. They’re a trivial bonus, not a feature. Once you unlock something, you’ll likely never see it in the game as it gets added to the big bag of stuff the game blindly shoves its hand into. This is besides the fact you’re offered five possible unlocks at a time, yet may only choose three, with no ability to change your mind later. Getting to this point will have cost you a dozen real life hours at the mercy of random chance, too.

Futile repetitiveness can be appealing to some people, myself one of them. I like this game a lot. But if you’re looking for effective rewards for progress, emergent gameplay, or options to flavor a gameplay loop, you won’t find them here.

I don't think I've ever played/read IF that has been in such a rush to be over. You're at your job for less than 24 hours, hardly unpacked, barely two chapters in, and the narrative treats it as if you've been there for six months. You never get to know any of the romance interests because there is nothing to know. Their sole qualities are whatever is required to keep the plot moving, same as the absurd "dates." The idea of romancing a demon dad sounds great but you never get to see him be a dad or even really a demon for that matter. Sure, "blonde", "twee", or "wears a suit" can be significant traits when there's nothing else behind it. It's all so toothless and bland.

Aside from how unromantic it is, the protagonist is a little too "well defined" for my tastes. They spend most of the first chapter going on about how spooky this house is simply because it's run down or how their employer wrote a letter, like normal people don't live in dilapidated houses or some people just can't afford nor know how to email others. Surprised they didn't remark about how we need to close down libraries while they were at it. Choices are rather pigeonholed into stat archetypes which would be fine if any of them were reasonable but most result in or stem from the protagonist acting very stupid against your will. Despite generally being chaotic when I play games, I found my character clocked at a perpetual neutral because I tried my best to navigate around the most egregiously nonsense options.

The short length means it's over before you know it, so at least it doesn't drag. 🤷‍♀️

I didn't play through the entirety of Act 1. I found it impossible. This person you are trapped in a room with is just the worst person in the world. When the shadow monster showed up, I got a little excited, hoped I could leave with them because anything would be better than this albino prick. Ilar puts their hands on you, they insult you, they're rude, manipulative, and cruel, and how does your character respond? Endless apologies for THEIR behavior. When the VN telegraphs clearly that you're just supposed to be okay with this because hey, look at these cutesy letters and see, they have it so t-u-f-f, that is when I stopped. I couldn't take it anymore. If I could have, I would have shoved them into the rift and called it a day. Let them be someone else's problem as I disintegrate into the sweet embrace of nothing, finally free of them.

The world is well formed and established quickly though I didn't care a lick about it, maybe because it was Ilar who was explaining it. The overall presentation is nice though I feel Ilar has one sprite that doesn't look quite as good as the others, 3/4th angle/turn iirc. They maybe go a little overboard with the effects and I think some sounds managed to ignore my settings and play despite everything being muted.

If you enjoy being powerless and mistreated or trapped with a sociopath, I guess you can't go wrong with the entry price of free.

This game is an excellent "two obnoxious people on a date" simulator. I think you're meant to find Mel endearing for whatever reason but they just came off to me as an inappropriate wind-up merchant at best, actively antagonistic at worst. Completely unsympathetic in their first impression. The protagonist isn't any better. They come off as desperate, creepy, and somewhat selfish even within passages where you have no choice, which seems to be handwaved as simply "everyone is like this." You're given a lot of choices but none of them gelled with me. It was like picking between jumping into acid or jumping into lava every single time. I couldn't make it past dinner as result. I have to assume whatever arc these characters have aren't really arcs at all, but just commentary on how messed up this world is as a means to lazily absolve their garbage personalities, but I'll never know.

I liked the art and the setting. I was wholly accepting of this dystopian melonpeople storm world within the first few lines. It's simply the characterisation and choices that made it unplayable for me.

A few steam reviews make mention of humor and dialog but there's not much in this game. There's actually only enough story to get you going then the game steps back and lets you do your thing undisturbed. The dialog that does exist is pleasant enough and while a few lines of lore are scattered across some bookshelves, I didn't feel I needed more story than what was given. If you're expecting some sprawling saga, a speaking protagonist, memorable characters, or love exposition, you won't get that here.

The game captures the zenlike repetition of something like Monster Hunter where you repeatedly hurl yourself at the same boss which is an advertised feature but everyone is given very few tools to do this. The combat is extremely streamlined. Your attacks can't miss, the boss can't miss, you won't be juggling tons of skills and learning roshambo buffs and debuffs. And unlike Monster Hunter, you will find yourself trekking back to town to change class after fights. The developer provides teleportation between the front of dungeons and the bosses (thank you), but you will still spend a dozen or so seconds doing a meditative walk back and forth.

The developer was responsible by putting a warning at the start of the game but there is a great deal of screen flashing during combat. It's not necessarily any more than can be found in your average RPGM game and definitely not gratuitous or deliberately harmful but because all the battles take place in a black void, it's can be fatiguing on the eyes. I found myself blasting my room lights and wearing computer glasses to get through some of my loot farming runs where every single attack was flashing the screen.

You get to sail a boat around. :)))