izigame.me

When I heard of this game from my friend about a week ago, it was described to me as a top down view Minecraft with Terraria elements mixed in with it. From that, and seeing the trailers on Steam to get a grasp of what the game looks like, it looked like it would be a fun few hour grind, but nothing more as a clone of the genre.
Upon loading into the game and beginning my journey, I could tell that it was not a clone of Minecraft or Terraria. It was better.
The premise of the game is diversifies itself immediately from the tutorial where you officially start your own settlement on a small island with an NPC who serves as your guide to get comfortable in this world. At first, you'll just do the basic acts of chopping down a few trees and learning the controls, but it will be quick to find out that there's not much else to do. On the surface, that is...
When I took my first steps down the ladder and into the underground, there is a sense of exploration that hit me immediately. I didn't know what lurked behind each dark corner, and lighting the way brought another new monster to my roster of challenge. Speaking of which, the design to have a hotkey for placing down torches is excellent for making exploration flow amazingly. As I looted the structures around me, I would come to notice just how the progression system works, and it is all tied around armor and trinkets, with the bulk of buildcrafting revolving around the trinkets, as the armor and weapon selections were relatively self explanatory throughout my playthrough.
What really got my teeth sunk into this game however, are the bosses. Fighting the first boss gave me excitement and thrill. And when I eventually defeated it, I was left with a thirst for more. and thankfully, this game knows that and invites you to drink it all.
While this isn't usually the forefront of conversation, the art style and music really nails the feel of what this game gives you. You want peaceful town music? gotcha covered. How about a boss theme that goes unnecessarily hard? Of course! Even though the exploration aspect is the same throughout most of the game, I never found myself bored or tired of the environments due to the variation of enemies and music. Better yet, you can listen to them anytime you want in game, because of records that drop from bosses, enemies, and chests. And I have to give props to that.
That's not even to mention the aspect of handling your settlement with all the NPC's that will come throughout the game. And while each NPC has variation in how they can help you in terms of individual services, you also manage them as a community: automation of resources. And it feels so satisfying to have a society of people that will farm, chop trees, hunt, tend to animals, you name it. So long as they are taken care of, that is.
Granted, there are a few things that can be improved upon in this game. While the ability to automate a settlement in fun once the player gets a grasp on it, getting to that point is not so clear. At least for me, anyways. There were tasks that seemed to work just fine by changing priorities, such as farming and hunting, and a few others that needed a little more guidance on the player's part that is not completely user friendly. With Forestry and Husbandry, I had a hard time getting those to properly work for majority of my playthrough, because the player has to assign designated areas to do said actions. That wouldn't be bad at all, if it wasn't for the confusion of how to actually set up the area to do those things. I eventually found out way to do that through opening a seperate menu I did not know existed. My suggestion would be to have a button next to the each skill that requires specification of where to perform it when talking to the NPC about their line of work. Another note about NPC's and their skills is that each one can only have a few skills they can do depending on what type of profession they are. And I don't have a problem with that, in fact I like that decision. The problem arises when one of those skills seemingly a lot rarer than the others: husbandry. I don't know if that was an intentional choice or not, but as NPCs came to my settlement, there was ever only one that had husbandry, out of the 20+ that came, not including going to other civilizations to try and find some there too, with no luck. Again, I don't think that choice was intentional, but I think it would be good for a few other professions to have husbandry as a skill, just so that situation doesn't happen to other people as well.
One final note would have to be about boss drops. The boss fights themselves are great throughout the game, and the loot is also unique and creative as well. But past the first boss, not many others will give you more than one drop of loot. Granted, I did play on normal mode, and I do not know if more loot is dropped from higher difficulty games. But even having every boss have a guaranteed two items dropped upon defeat could go a long way. Because going through a tough boss fight, sometimes even a ginormous boss fight only to see one piece of loot drop is a bit unsatisfactory. Even if there isn't two boss drops from the bosses, even having a pile of gold and potions spew out alongside the boss item would be better.
All in all, this is an amazing experience of a game, all only for ten dollars. And even though there are a handful of things that can be made better, which I imagine will be better as time goes on and the game gets more quality of life updates, there are so many more good things about this game that cannot be stated in a review. I would definitely recommend this game, as it is a joy to experience with a googles on how to get certain items near the end(I did about 3 to 4, and they weren't completely necessary either). Do check it out if it's been on your radar.