Eastshade

This is a lovely open-world puzzle adventure game, which for the most part rewards exploration and experimentation. It is well paced so that puzzles get progressively harder. There are also resource management and crafting challenges, which become more challenging later in the game. So, make sure your expectations are calibrated going in: this is not a casual game, and it's not even very easy. And it's definitely not a "walking simulator," as some reviewers call it. It's also not necessary "calming", though the basic themes are positive.

The game world is beautiful, peaceful, and populated by friendly and mostly serene people who live in comforting, Hobbit-like interiors. But though the world seems to hug you, it doesn't mean that the gameplay will hold your hand. You are sometimes given only vague hints as to how to solve puzzles and will have to rely on your powers of deduction and even observational skills. A walkthrough might be necessary to avoid frustration.

And you can't just blindly try everything. Indeed, you can make mistakes and be punished for them, such as costing you crucial resources and forcing you to grind in order to get them back. For example, the game seems to encourage you to paint beautiful pictures whenever you feel like it, but painting burns valuable "inspiration" points that are not so easy to come by. Moreover, a mistake can even cause you to "die" and teleport far away (like in Minecraft), though this becomes avoidable later in the game as you acquire certain objects.

Generally, like most adventure games, quests will send you back and forth across the landscape to talk to characters, find objects, deliver them, etc. This is mostly enjoyable because the world really is lovely and taking a different path each time can bring delightful little discoveries. However, after the 20th time moving back and forth across the landscape, after all has been discovered and mapped out, it might feel tedious. Many quests in Eastshade are quite exciting and lead to wonderful, even amazing reveals. These might be considered to be the "main story" quests. However, quite a few are optional—something you only discover in retrospect—and the reward might not be worth the backtracking tedium.

The game often loses its balance. On the one hand, it encourages you to stop and smell the roses. On the other hand, it rewards you for being clever and efficient while punishing you for being experimental and dreamy. In the end, I think the game kept me at the edge of my seat more often than it allowed me to relax. This is not necessarily a bad thing—I personally enjoy challenging adventure games—but the game doesn't always seem to know what it wants to be.

This confusion is baked right into the geography. Some areas are crammed with puzzles and things to do. Others are scenery. But which is which? I found myself combing a beautiful area just to make sure that I didn't lose something important. Apparently I was supposed to just relax and enjoy the view. But in other areas that attitude would have caused me to miss out on important story elements.

As for the technology: wonderful design, terrible graphics engine. Performance is poor even on high-end hardware. Textures are low-resolution, repetitive, and not very well detailed. Colors are over-saturated. Bloom is overused. Animations are buggy. It's a great achievement for a small studio, but let's not pretend that this important technical aspect couldn't have been better.

(By the way, the world bears a striking resemblance to that of The Witness, both structurally and visually. Is it meant to be a homage?)