This one had a really really rough start on the steam deck, but I am glad I stubbornly returned to it and attempted to make it work. It sucked me in for about three weeks, and now that I am at the end, as much fun as it was, I am glad I'm about to be done.

The gameplay is rather simple: Sidescroller action RPG, you have a shield, a melee weapon, and can unlock a throwing weapon. 3 stats, 6 gear slots, 4 skill trees. You use food to explore the map, discovering new places to travel to, and after clearing them, you can send your workforces to harvest materials: food, wood, stone, etc. which you then use to build your settlement.

While I have a forge, I never actually forged something. Drops were just good enough, and while they aren't overly exciting (mostly just stats go bigger), one or two weapons had nice gimmicks. I never really ran out of materials, though I sometimes had to scout a bit to find more leather or food.

The quest log is more or less useful, leaning towards less. All entries get just listed one after another, and it doesn't mention where something happened. One of my map locations bugged out and had a permanent blinking quest marker on it, while at least one other just kinda. Vanished? I know I had a quest to help some dude across a chasm, but at some point, it was just gone. Was the quest giver killed? Who knows!

Speaking of, there are bounties which spawn once you accept them. I wasn't too amused to realize that those bounties take out friendly NPCs in those locations - especially as one of those locations had wolves I could have taken as followers!! NOT THE PUPPIES!!

Followers. Eh. Without a fully upgraded training ground, they just died on me constantly, and I was playing on easy. You also can't leave them at the camp, so I lost my doggo in a siege event. Sad.

While most areas focus on combat, there are a few containing puzzles. Especially the main quest "light the beacons" maps are heavy on the platforming. As someone who hates platforming, it wasn't super hard, but it also wasn't fun. The achievements were all pretty easy to get, and are not tied to the story in any way, all just numbers, so I was done with them long before the end of the story.

The controls take some getting used to. A and D move sideways, that's normal, but W is used to jump, which is not. S is used to go down platforms, but I was unable to go down ladders with it. Who cares, no fall damage, just jump off. I had to rebind a few keys to make it work without me wanting to rip my hair out.

I know this all sounds negative, but what can I say, I was having fun. This game had the perfect low effort gameplay loop I was craving, slowly making my progress across the map, just one more location, one more, one more. While not really gameplay relevant, the different biomes were nice, the pixel is art pretty, and I just had what felt like a constant sense of progression across the board. I don't see much replay value, but I got almost 24 hours out of a game for less than 5 euro on sale, and I think that's pretty neat.

Steam deck specific reasons I cannot really recommend it there (despite having played it on the deck):
- The launcher is annoying. All launchers are annoying.
- You have to crank interface size way down, because it does not play well at ALL with low resolutions, which makes navigating the map especially tedious. Everything is so small! At the start, every few minutes, I shrank it down another little bit because there was something cut off. Imagine my surprise when I found buttons to press in the corner of the map.
- I didn't give the actual controller support much of a chance, because nothing was explained, jumping was so weird, and I couldn't even figure out how to talk to a guy, and in the end, I just downloaded a much-used community layout and adjusted it for what I needed. I don't think I would have been able to play with either default controls or any of the existing community layouts.

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