Recent reviews by Mag

Deffo a game to grab when on sale. Pretty short, but scratches a good idle game itch.

Some small graphical/texture issues though you quickly get used to it.

TLDR: Soft recommendation for this game, it has tons of passion and i can feel it as i played. I think this is a ez buy if you see it on sale.

Imma ramble and be a bit ranty, a lot of my tone is gonna be negative and pass over the things i liked. Let it be known, I like this game, the girls are cute, i was gripped at parts of the narrative, fun was had.


I really want to like this game more, but i kept running into small things that i think made me struggle. The actual game play is not hard, go from A -> B, do a puzzle, fight a boss. Rinse and repeat a fair bit. This is a great backbone, but the game from as far as i played did not expand much past this.

There are so many really cool things that are given and barely expanded on. You find a pickaxe in a mine, and after breaking a few blocks you get some coins. This makes me want to break a ton of things! But you don't really get to or need to. You fight your way through the cave, only using the pickaxe you found. This makes me think there are cooler/stronger weapons I will get later, but you never get a truly better weapon or need one.

There are a few puzzles that seem broken or not well planned. I think i broke a few of them and skipped over a good handful. This might be intended, and the extra elements are there to confuse players instead. If intended, I think it was an interesting design choice but it is not for me.

Shops are around, there is a casino, but their goods and games are lacking. The people you meet will have very strict interact with me here, now here, now here, now i want to marry you. The dialog between these events is very bare and repeats. I elected to avoid guides, and I think this is a game best played with one open, and that's sad to me. I normally am a lore fiend, but the text options and speed made me avoid books which there were a plenty. I do not need a game to hold my hand and tell me how to move, but I do want it to help guide me where to go to see more of its story naturally. I married Oakley and for the longest time, she would just not advance her very hard set path while i ran around the map looking for the next event trigger. Speaking on triggers, the questing is not fun. I have a boat, give it to boat guy who will give me a banana, who i give to banana guy who gives me x (this repeats recursively forever)

I took my sweet time even tossed in a few afk hours and it took me 11hrs. I think i could beat this game in a few in game days or 2hrs. Obviously, a game need not be 200 hrs per dollar spent, nor any other measure, but it is to say this game move very very fast.

I would have greatly enjoyed the game more if there were a few "jobs" you could do in town. Maybe being a miner, smashing and collecting ores. Doing a quick minigame for some of the shopkeepers to work in their buildings. Earning money from the arena, instead of it costing me to enter.
If the game had more dialog for the towns people, mainly the marriage peeps, I would like it. A better flow from each point in the story too would be nice, and a little bit of an expected downtime/cooldown.
Please, add a normal/different text style, and a size changer for it. I really love reading lore, i would have loved to read this games lore.


I can see this game has so much heart in it and i really wanted to bite into more. Its hard to describe the good, or the reason i feel this. So all i can ask is that you try it too, accept the shortfalls and enjoy the high points!
Thank you for reading all of my ramblings.

Good idle game, missing some things that would make it a 10/10. As is it is a 7/10, which is good and a cut above the rest. I played this game to completion and got every achievement, a fair amount was active. I'd recommend buying if the topic interests you or if you see it on sale.


I'm not a professional reviewer or anything like that. I'm just gonna talk about things, some that i really liked, and some that i didn't like. I'm a rambler, sorry ahead of time.

Things I like!

I really like the magic elements, crafting, and ways you can find more types of magic tomes. There is a wide range of elements and you get new ones at a nice pace. Crafting, combining, and making gear is a lot of fun too.

Time saved features. If you close the game, you are given a way to speed up the game in a wide range of ways besides just 2x speed.

Art and style. Foes and icons are neat and nice!

Hints on missing QOL or lore is such a nice feature, I wish other games had something like it too.


Things I am iffy on

Min maxing. To level up each element, you are required to play that element as a primary. Some spells don't work well with others, so you need a new fight style for most new things. This is both cool and not cool. Late game you are able to ignore this completely with an exception for the last run. Lots of min maxing to do, for almost everything. You of course can not do this, but you will be slower or unable to beat x boss.

Idle vs active play. This game focuses a lot more on the active side of things, the QOL features it has are behind RNG events. Use of an autoclicker makes the game faster, when it feels like it shouldnt for a game like this.

QOL / Slots. QOL being given as you progress, accessory slots being given and allat is cool! But the time before that point is a bit rough. Later on your new QOL updates are much less important imo and are not nearly as impactful as the cool first ones. I wish there were some stronger QOL features late game.


Things I wish had some more meat

I really like stories, reading long text spam and all! I love when things tie together and interlock game features to lore spoken. In the story, there are so many really cool foe designs. Your allies are very fun when you hear them talk in spoken lore. You are in some sort of time loop and this is never addressed. You always meet the same hired wizard, and this is barely talked about. I wish there was so much more in this game! The plotline of finding the magic thingy doesn't matter to me, but I also wish it had a bit more to the after story. The world has so much character to it, and I want more. Even just for reading in a side tab while idling.

Art access! The art you see is so small, even looking in your bestiary some of the cooler foes are way too small. I wish we could click and zoom to look at some of them!

Player choice / paths. I don't like "fake" hard choices and I really didn't like one of the later events in the game. The player doesn't really have much choice or impact in the story, you just follow what the character does. The start of the game is very impactful since your character's goal seems important to them. As you loop over and over, this goal seems less important, even the character becomes just an empty body you move in. I wish we could make some more choices.

RNG. Look, I love the way you get QOL features, it is always given in a story/gameplay reward type of way and that is awesome. What I don't like are 2% chances for an event that happens once every 30 mins irl time. If there was a stacking percent for each time I missed the event, or a "pity timer" type of thing It would get rid of so much frustration missing the event.




Look if you read allat and are considering buying or doom scrolling for a "perfect" game, just buy it and try it out for like two hours. If you don't get hooked you can always refund it. You can see how much I played the game, I enjoyed my time.

Im not a professional reviewer, so please excuse my rambling.
Short answer is this game is really good, buy it if you see it on sale.
you already are interested enough to scroll here why not try it out yourself?
other wise read some reviews and see if its the game for you.

game is about 40 ish hours, its worth the cost.


The Good
loved these parts, wish more games did stuff like this

Art, music, characters are all superb. this is where the game is at its strongest. like holy sheesh, these people could charge for this alone and id play it.

The early game, is fantastic. its the perfect amount of stress of figuring things out, and meeting a deadline. learning what you need, where to get it, and how to make everything. is great, it all flows nicely into each other and the game *feels* great to learn as you play.


The eh
i can live without these, itd probably take a bit too much time/money to fix most, and most people wont care about it.

i would have loved to see more animations for the characters, specifically the mc. however the ones we have are really really good. i just want moooore.

more downtime, a bit earlier in the game would have been nice to help build more character connections earlier. and make use of the bonuses you get, before you don't really need them anymore. and the time investments aren't worth really using.

there is no real reason to open your store twice or more during a day, you are wasting resource gathering for nothing. it'd be nice if you gained a bonus to sales, or were rewarded if you forgo leaving.

stress, the mechanic is a bit underused. it is pretty easy to manage, and besides during sales, doesn't really do much that i know. i don't think i ever broke 15% besides on one boss.

would be nice to see some of the later bosses around in your store a bit more. i wanted to learn more about them, even if they couldn't be added as places to visit.

The Bad?
i think time should be invested in these, they are issues, if fixed would turn the game to a 10/10

The late game is really really easy, and the potion making process becomes tedious, if you are *playing right*.
it takes so long remaking and setting potions to age, and you are rewarded for doing bigger batches, so its never worth wasting resources doing anything smaller then as much as you can. and buying large amount (which you'll need) becomes a massive chore.
-you might be able to fix, if you allowed the player to buy LOTS of a reagents, making a recipe to auto place reagents, having potions have a pop up that allows you to place the batch into a barrel.

later potions, because of the wider range of reagents. become a test of how much of that *one* can you buy/find. instead of using newer ones, because they dont have *only* what you want. lots of the magic is gone when i don't need to learn anymore.
-have more uses for the different reagents, like a bonus if an specific item is brewed with. or not as many downsides for having miss matched brews. maybe a newer potion for the multiple reagents that dont really have a use besides slime food.

bosses, past the first one are too easy. the first is perfectly placed in pacing and getting that mix just right.
-maybe have a diffculty slider, or have the bosses ramp up if you make the potions way too early.

a Sand-Box would be perfect for this game, the completionist in me wants to learn everything, and get every reagent. max all relationships. and not worry about a deadline.

The End?

look if you read all of this, know that i really really enjoy this game. plus its really easy to know things you wanted to see, but really hard to know what things you didnt see that made a big impact on enjoyment. id say if you've read this far, buy the game and try it out, you where interested enough to read through *me* rambling. {34 hrs of play!}

also there's a cute moth. don't give her anymore caffeine and hide your lamp.


The Update!

As of 12/18/2024, I came back to replay this game! I decided to try out the new harder mode, and see the new features. The new update fixes a lot of small things, the voices are nice, the being able to romance as many partners as you wanted was really cool, and the final boss actually made me lose a round!

This round, I decided that I was going to play as "Perfectly" as I could. This means every potion had to have been made a t6, every achievement needed to be gotten, every npc maxed out. Doing this, I felt a bit of the older issues of the game rise up again.

Besides the early game (which is blessed), the game is far too easy on the capitalism mode. The time the second round arrives, you are already trending ahead of any curve. You will not see boss features, nor their cute little faces as you try to haggle, since you will sweep without words needed. On the very final boss, you finally do see what the intended stressful fights are, and for that last fight, its perfect. I really wish there was a way to have made the early game hard enough to let me see the others.

The way to fix this? I think doing something similar to the final boss, locking you to a tier of potion for the battle, and having even the max craft be not enough to auto win. If the first round was a sweep, give the second round a harder check (almost impossible even)! Make the 3rd round feel tense.

Issues arise towards the late game as well. This game needs a "Buy max", "Set recipe", "Auto confirm" set of buttons. Without them, you will click almost 30 times for each batch of potions you make, assuming you know exactly what you are buying and putting into a barrel. Aging potions is not needed beyond the final battle. There is so much polish on the characters, their stories, and even the voice lines, and I think if the game had some extra polish on these features it would be one of my greatest of all times.

Last rant, potion mats. I expanded my horizons a bit from last time, and i found there was more to making them then buying only single type regents, mixing and matching became very enjoyable until the mid to late game due to this! Issues arise as you get regents that simply are not usable, the mana essences are good for making more regents, but are never on the table for actually making a potion since they hold all the types of mats. This is kinda sad, they are the super rare mat that cant be used for anything cool.


Like last time, let it be known, I love this game. I love the characters, I love the theme, I love the stressed out moth girl, the music is dynamic, the world is fantastic. I would tell you to buy and play this game, even if not on sale. There is a ton of work that was done, and as a consumer it's hard to name the good in ways like you can name the bad/missing aspects. I got every achievement and greatly enjoyed my time with this game! Thank you for listening to my Ted talk {64 hrs of play}

Very weak recommendation from me for this game. strong 5/10 if numbers mean things

its a pretty short game, you can probably get about 3-5 hours

If the game is on sale go and try it out, worse case you can refund it if you dont find the gameplay gripping.

So im not gonna say much about the story as its best if you experience yourself, even if i personally dont find it great.

The game is about making homunculus and murdering them to save your daughter, which is a pretty awesome idea for a story and game.

Gameplay

so this is where the game fails alot, look i'm not a professional reviewer but i know stuff i don't like so i'm just gonna list problems i had with this game

unskippable cutscenes - this is a big one, the first time you see one you'd either say aw thats dark or welp im a bad person. The problem arises when you have to see the same 30 second cutscene over 20 times in a short amount of time. or when you waste so much time summoning your homunculus just spam clicking through just to spam click to murder them.

unfun gameplay loop - to make money you gotta send your homunculus out to do jobs, but while you can send them to anywhere you'd better send them to somewhere they like if you dont want them to runaway faster then children from Jared from subway.
Problems start when you realize that this is all your gonna do. personally itd be a much better game if they let you automate sending your girls out, instead of clicking every single time. its a time waster, and towards the end of the game i just left the jobs up to the girls to decide if they want to work today.

Story completion grind - To complete the the game and save your daughter you gotta figure out how much of each emotion makes a daughter. so to figure that out you gotta use good old trial and error, but god if you want try on any other day then a fullmoon or more then once without spending cash. not only that you've usually got to kill 2 homunculus for each emotion, but you can only have 5 at a time. so you either wait and murder them slowly once they reach the level you want or you just spam summon them on the last day and pray that you get within a tiny margin to get that sweet sweet ending.

Translation - Not really a big one but it definitely affects how you interact with the story. for a dark/deep/dank story you've really got to hit the mark. your gonna either not care or think the story is unimportant and you should focus on the gameplay. problem is that the gameplay is a bore and i rather learn more about the monsterous homunculus girls, but i cant because every homunculus is the same if they have the same emotion and not much changes.
also the main man himself Faust which should be a crazy person acts just like a emo kid who doesnt like to talk to people.


HOW TO FIX THIS

Again im not a game maker, but these would turn this in to a solid 7/10 alone

-Add a skip button
-automation button for your girls
-either more jobs or jobs that get more rewarding as you do them
-retry day/week button
-better translation
-more dialog for your homunculus
-more then one main ending or a better one
-faster gameplay loop

Story

Spoliers ahead

Soo at the end of the game you find out that you are the reason you daughter is dead is because you killed her in the past / future to steal your current body and live longer to save your daughter that you killed and then you do it all again only to fail forever.

also you can read about your decent into madness as you unlock your dairy which is neat, but it tends to go on for a bit

also even with the dlc the story doesnt get much better, cool gamplay twist tho

Like what the f*ck? Maybe alot was lost in translation, but dude all you had to do was have a crazy guy want to bring back his daughter. hell i didnt want the guy to have a good ending but an undertale fanfic writer could make a better ending. ♥♥♥♥ it ill do it myself

guy gets his daughter back, she sees what he did in order to get her back, she runs away to the town/moon/doesnt matter, guy realizes he ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and murdered alot of girls for no reason and goes completely mad. either ending in suicide or shutting himself in his house to make the "perfect" daughter.

this game's story is what kills this game for me. I can put up with a lot of bull or bad gameplay but f*ck ya gotta at least have one


HOW TO FIX THIS


-much more story driven content, its the only driving force of the game and honestly doesnt need to be deep
-better ending(s)
-thats it, the main idea for the game can carry everything else

Ending thoughts

look man if you made it to here with me ranting this entire time without really praising the game just go and buy the game and try it. you can return it once youve seen everything in the first hour if you dont like it.

I found the concept really f*ckin cool and i expected a 3 star dinner.
I got a cup of water and some noodles which while not bad its very boring
and a good allegory for my life.

Its a good game, ♥♥♥♥ the fishing part tho

i like it :D