Recent reviews by Fantail

I personally really enjoy this game so far, there is a lot to like, which is why my review will be positive, but I will focus on the Early Access aspect of this game and its current state.


Now, is this game complete? No. The dev still has tons of plans for it. Does it feel complete? Depends on what you need for a game to be complete. So what is lacking?

What I feel the game lacks most is the "packaging". The main game mechanics feel solid and there's already a good number of things you can do. Enough so that content-wise, the game could be called complete as-is.

But at the moment, you don't have a real end-goal aside from the official one - surviving for 1 year in every location - which nobody has done yet. Mostly because it's simply not fun to just abandon your villages after 1 year, which is ~10h play time for me, depending on the speed you play at, and repeating the same early-game time and again. So most people actually play it without much of a goal and instead just try to survive as long as possible and find pride in their creations.
If you need something more permanent, any in-game action as well as reaching goals of the type "Do something X times" grants you permanent perks (buffs like +10% max health for your villagers), which stay even if you doom your whole world. I, for one, quite enjoy collecting and stacking these as one of my main motivations.

Aside from general motivation, the game doesn't have that many different buildings and upgrades yet, but they cover enough different aspects to build up a plausible village and to allow different strategies, so the gameplay is only linear at the very beginning (building camp, securing base resources, etc.).

Polishing-wise, the graphics still have some problems here and there, most of which are already fixed on the unstable branch. It has decent animations (tbh I don't think this genre needs too much detailed fluff anyway), a small but good set of soundtracks and an ok UI that definitely needs some improvements as the game content grows, but at the moment it's manageable.


My review wasn't that positive so far, but I can tell you that the overall game flow and feel is great. A perfect mix of relaxed clicking around and panicked emergency action spams. If you like the idea of a god-like village sim tower defense game, do give it a try. It's basically village sim by day, tower defense by night, and some godly powers to add your magic touch to the world and help villagers along (or destroy them, if that's what you want).

Nice little game with a simple concept that is ideal for leaving open in the background and playing in really short bits while waiting for something else.
To me, it's a bit too simple to grab enough attention and interest to really draw me in and make me play it for a long time, since all you ever do is literally click on a region, click on a subregion/enemy, click on a few cards, and other options every now and then. The whole motion gets a bit repetitive.

That isn't necessarily negative though, it just feels more like a casual mobile game, which isn't too far off, since it's actually a remake of a browser game.
But that's just my opinion, many other reviewers actually find it very addictive, and I'm sure strategies for this game can go quite deep as well!

If you're unsure about this game, just put it on your wishlist and grab it on sale. I really don't think you'd regret it. It's a really likeable game.

Great hidden gem with a surprising amount of content for an indie game.
It's a game pretty much anyone can get into. You can make the game as easy or difficult as you want, ranging from a normal RPG to rogue-lite to rogue-like (it is recommended to play it as a rogue-lite though).

Now onto the features: there's jobs, job skills, items, item skills, item upgrading, item dungeons that you clear for item upgrading, cooking, monster taming, monster breeding, planting plants that give you resources regularly, optional quests for extra stuff that can also give you some guidance as to what to do next.

That alone is already a lot but with the ability to switch jobs on a single character while keeping some of the skills and pets getting more and more skills from different parents as you breed them, you can already imagine the depth behind building the "optimal" character and pet.

If you have questions, there isn't much on the internet yet, but you can join the official discord. People respond to you there in seconds, even the devs themselves are there to help you.

As others have said, the art and music are beautiful, though the music does get a bit repetitive.

I wouldn't recommend playing the game with a controller. There's just too many menus to navigate. You can certainly do everything with a controller, but much slower, especially using your abilities becomes very tedious. The keyboard-mouse-controls are fine. The whole game feels very smooth despite being turn-based. And because it is turn-based throughout the game, you can literally pause or exit everywhere without concern, making this a great game to leave open and just play whenever you can make a few moves. I haven't found any real-time timers in the game and really hope it stays this way.

This review is a bit chaotic but I hope the bits and pieces of information will help you decide if the game is right for you!

Got this game for 5$ on Chrono.gg because it looked promising to me.

It was a bit hard to get into, especially since there are so few sources to help you but once you find your own rhythm when to gather stuff for survival, when to do more dangerous things etc. it's really fun. There's already quite a lot of content there.
Seeing how there hasn't been an update in a while, I really hope the devs are still working on this.

Wouldn't say it's worth the full price in its current state, with it not being really polished yet, having a few bugs and potentially being dropped by the devs, but if the game looks interesting to you, I'd suggest putting it on your wishlist and following it, maybe getting it on sale some time. For the 5 bucks, it was totally worth it, would've paid 10 maybe, but then, I'm a cheap gamer, so you do you.

Writing a review for those who might be worried about the difficulty of this game because they are noob gamers like me:

I'm someone who tried Dark Souls and failed quite terribly. No difficulty settings, and if you die to common mobs, you can't even really farm. But I loved the very hands-on combat feeling and I loved seeing myself improve, even though it turned out not to be enough.
Yet, I gave Salt and Sanctuary a try, and I have to say, I get through the game just fine. Some say it's a bad thing that the weapons are so unbalanced but I see it as an inofficial difficulty setting. Just make sure to look up the most OP builds from the beginning and with just a little farming, you can just force-smash your way through all bosses, if that's what you like.
Speaking of which, even if you are completely terrible and only ever manage to kill a few enemies before you end up dying, unlike in Dark Souls, where you lose all your currency and your only means of leveling up with it, there's actually a second currency (gold) in this game, which you can spend on items that transform into the currency needed for level-ups (salt), which can really save you when farming up high amounts of salt gets tough. You only ever lose a relatively small amount of gold upon death and you don't lose the items.

So you really have the option to play the game in easy mode, and if it gets too easy, you can always choose another build and shape the whole experience the way you like it best.

Difficulty concerns aside, it has a beautifully interconnected and fairly large map, each area with its own distinct feel to it, weapon choices that allow and encourage different playstyles, a good amount of unique enemies, a few quite interesting bosses, just about anything you'd expect from such a game. No magical glittery fancy shmancy effects, just brutal bloody violence. If that's your cup of tea, definitely go for it and give it a try!

Everyone who's a fan of rhythm-based games that look like button mashing (like all guitar-hero-type games) will love this.

Pros:
- Great soundtrack (that you can download for free!)
- Runs on any toaster
- Price is a steal
- Low effort for high show-off potential (beat lvl 1 and 2 in ~2h but friends will think you're insane)

Cons:
- The first half hour you feel like sh*t, it's a little hard to get into (as even the first level isn't easy)

Highly recommend a mechanical keyboard or at least a keyboard with n-key rollover that survives aggressive button abuse ^^"

BROFORCE BROFORCE!

*camera flies away*

"Uhh----"
"Let's do this guys ._."

It was a great game a few years back, loved it, spent a lot of time in it (outside steam as well).

I always come back to this game and am amazed by all the content they have added.
Seriously, it's so rare that a well polished game keeps getting updates and keeps getting better.
Kinda envy the people who get the game now and get to experience their first playthrough with so much added awesomeness.
Would absolutely recommend, especially at such a low price compared to similar games...

Because it cannot be said enough: I'm not crying, there's something in my eye D:

Great game though. Controls and options and all the technical stuff aren't the greatest but that's not why you play this game. You play it for the story, and one hell of a story you get.

At first, everything seems to be going fine, the setting is a bit weird, you have to fulfill dying people's last wishes by altering their memories to make them believe that.
But this man's story is special. His wish is special. It doesn't go as smooth as you'd like and you find yourself in a race against time: that man is dying, and he's dying fast.
You see the two characters making rash decisions, one worse than the other, and have to wonder yourself, how is this gonna play out? How are we supposed to fulfill that wish? Is it even possible?


Wish I hadn't played it just so I could experience it again.

It's funny what kinda things you get fired for.
Very nice game to relax in between. The emails are all worth reading, you'll get a chuckle from one or the other.

And there are gonna be friends who'll confront you about what the f*ck you are playing on Steam ;)