Apcarne: I just played the demo from HB. It was kinda interesting at first, but I got bored pretty quickly. As a huge Zelda fan, I kinda find the "inspired by Zelda" line to be insultingly misleading. It may well have been partially inspired by Zelda, but that doesn't mean it shares any of the qualities that people like about Zelda.
I also tried the demo from HB and i am not sure if that "inspired by" means that developer liked those games in general, because i can't see not only Zelda, but Terraria or Stardew Valley anywhere.
-Oh, yes, your char has limited stamina for actions (like some Zelda did and does Stardew Valley)
-Also it has random enemies popups here and there, in any free cell (like Terraria does)
-You can upgrade your pickaxe/weapon (like every reference did or does)
-There are some npc's you can unlock buying more islands that give you "quests" (insert whatever game with some rpg elements here)
But all of those are so casual and generic that you can mention references to a lot of other games.
I really didn't like it, sadly. Specifically:
-You have too little space to move. Islands can be sized from small to tiny.
-Game randomly spawns resources on each free cell, on all of them. Constantly and so quick that it is annoying. This also blocks your sight and you don't know what are you hitting. If, for instance, there is a chicken there you don't want to kill and you end up killing it by mistake because you barely see anything. Also, resources like trees and rocks blocks your way so you could be suddenly surrounded and blocked in the few seconds you use for grinding some other material. As you cannot move in diagonal when you are traversing bridges over water and resources popup like crazy, this is specially annoying and stressful (also, remember that you need stamina to break every resource, and you waste your stamina each time you click the mouse button, no matter if you hit something or just hit the air by mistake)
-You can craft and place some constructions, but even a forge is so big compared with the tiny space you have that, added to the crazy respawn of resources in each cell, it is a hell trying to place each building (like in the time you need to press Esc, go to building menu, choose the appropiate submenu for each kind of building and finally the specific building you want, game has already spawned 2-3 resources that can block your placement. Again) Also, you cannot build in the first line of blocks around the water, which limits even more the space you have to build given the tiny islands and the constant spawn of random resources around you.
-Animals spawn almost as crazy as the resources, and some are enemies or agressive towards you. This means that in less than a second something that attacks you can popup in your face without any warning, and few different enemies at the same time. Game has no pause so, while you are looking at something to build or place or are blocked by some new resources popups, enemies can attack you instantly (maybe you were on the menu looking at the buildings or your equipment, no pause at all)
-Except for coal, that seems to spawn in little quantities, the rest it feels so casual with these constant spawning of resources to fill each free cell that it's a chore getting what you need. You just have to worry about being blocked in your movement and having to break 6 rocks and 5 trees to get to that iron or gold chunk you need. You will end up having so much of all that the only reason to get resources will be to fight the constant annoying of the materials popups that fill your space and your vision.
-There is stamina, yes, but you can recover it just eating something. When you break a pine tree you can get oranges (a bit weird lol), but there are also bushes with berries and a lot of vegetables that popup everywhere, so it all feels so casual and redundant that you will think there was no need at all for that stamina feature. It's just like adding features of different succesful games in a casual manner just for the shake of having it in game and can be mentioned in the store page.
-No tutorial or explanation at all. Not even a guide for controls (and there is no rebinding). In the options you can turn off/on music or change from window to fullscreen, that's all. You can't even select resolutions (but you can resize the game if windowed if i'm not mistake) After maybe 2 mins since i started a new game and got my first resources randomly, trying to guess what to do, i got very briefly a popup saying something about building a forge i think, but i cannot even read it because i was clicking in a cell trying to find a place to...place a forge. Maybe that was an intent of tuto? After that, nothing more, and there is no info also on the menu (for instance, what to do next, tasks, quests, whatever) so i just ignored it and continue guessing all around.
-There is some sort of auto-camera that moves with your cursor mouse, even in the main menu when you run the game. I get dizzy, it's also annoying.
-"Quests" means that sometimes you will unlock a new island (you need money for that, and for starters that mean grinding those constantly spawned gold chunks that you need to smelt and then forging the bars to make coins to buy the unlocks) which has a npc you can interact with. I have seen exactly 2 of those npcs. A woman in a fountain that says something like "I can teach you how to heal yourself" and shows a total of coins you need to give her to "finish the quest". Btw, it is one of the initial and cheaper islands you can unlock but it requires from you an amount equal to about 125 times what you needed to unlock and claim that island so probably you can forget about it for a long long time. In any case, it doesn't matter not having anything to heal because you have 3 hearts when you start, a hit from an aggressive animal removes 1 heart but when all are gone and game tells you: "It is over!" or something like that, you can simply reload the game from the main menu and you will continue where you left it, without any penalty.
Sorry but, for me, this seems like a casual mobile game with a lot of annoying decisions (mainly, the constant and too quick popup of resources that blocks your movement and your building placement, and the lack of a auto-pause when on the menu trying to select what you want to build while all around you is filling with trees and rocks) It has nothing to do with Zelda, or with Terraria or with Stardew Valley. Nothing at all.
(EDIT: it also reminds me somewhat to Forsaken Isle, but that game, even not finished, it is much more kindly, deep and fun to play that what i have seen of Forager->
https://forsakenisle.gamepedia.com/Forsaken_Isle_Wiki)
It was only a demo, of course, and perhaps something can change for the release but i doubt it will change too much given that release will be during this month (or in December at maximum, according to developer) so the demo is surely representative of the final game. 20 euros is too much for what i have seen (and for what it lacks) imho and with all the respects to the developer, of course.
Hope this helps those of you interested.
