It is a great game but I can't recommend it on Mac M1. After just 5 minutes it gets very very hot (90°C+) and it starts to stutter even on lowest settings. I didn't expect this tbh since other graphically more complex games like Divinity 2 run smoothly.
I have only had this game for three days and I'm already really obsessed with it. It's beautiful, colorful, adorable, and so many other things I could say... though I want to keep this short so I can go back to playing.
Edit April 2025:
The new addition of being able to trade in cards for cards of the same type is a good idea. However, You can easily still end up with 30 animal cards and nowhere to put them because you didn't get enough land card. Or vice versa. My scores haven't improved much, if at all, with the new mechanic. It gives an illusion of better control over your gameplay, but as it stands the score for score is the same as it was before. I think that if you could trade any three cards for other cards, it would be better. And I don't think it would break the game and make it too easy, because trading multiples of three all the time diminishes the amount of cards you have altogether. It should balance out in the end.
Original:
I really want to recommend this game. The game play itself is right up my alley. It's beautiful and fun.
However. The cards you get seem to be entirely random. It feels like it's forcing you to make bad decisions in order to be dealt the next round of cards and it makes it so that you can't meet the game's win requirements. It is exceedingly frustrating to get to the end of a game and find that it was unwinnable because you never got the cards necessary to win.
For example: I might have an overabundance of grassland cards but nowhere to put them because there's not enough space to make sure they don't touch, and I wouldn't have any animals to put in them anyhow, because all the animals are mountain animals. The hands themselves end up being incompatible.
I recognize that programming these kinds of games to make them reasonable is a difficult task, but it definitely feels like an early access game because, some of the games aren't winnable. And those that are can't get you to the secondary or tertiary goal posts in many cases.
If this issue is somehow fixed down the line, I would recommend it. But as it stands right now (end of 2024) it's too frustrating to recommend.
this games like playing russian roulette but you have 6 bullets in the chamber while 13 torpedos sent from japan are targeting you and while thats happenening your playing blackjack
Annoyed with everyday life?
Good. This game can add to the stress of not only being a calming puzzle game, but a stressful POS when trying to get achievements!
10/10
Fun game, but I have one major gripe with this game (And other puzzle games that suffer from this same problem).
There seems to be a disproportionate amount of RNG when it comes to getting the perfect expansion hexes and tiles to place within them for classic mode (or high-score mode). This is great for randomness' sake, but when you have to score a certain amount of points, its insanely frustrating to constantly score the same amount of points or less no matter what you do differently. Long explanation below, skip to the end for my summary of the game as a whole.
Let's take the Continental Medium stage as the prime and major example:
-To score "3 stars" on that stage you need to score 2100 points. There are river cards that give a point bonus to adjacent biome tiles, and ponds that do the same.
-Placing a perfect biome involves 12 like tiles and 3 like animals. (Think 12 forest tiles with 3 boars).
-You unlock the large expansions as you score more points, and each expansion is a large hexagon made up of 19 smaller hexagons.
-If you place a row of three ponds you score the most bonus points.
-If you have a river of at least 18 tiles you unlock the water mill, which gives an additional bonus to each water tile (Rivers and ponds).
-Ideally, you would strategically place biome tiles in a way that it utilizes the river bonus and at least one pond bonus. The only way to truly do this is to plan ahead for river and pond placement, taking into account the different tile elevations that influence the river's path and making sure not to place ponds directly adjacent to any rivers.
With those things in mind, imagine you get the perfect expansions to allow for an early 18 tile long river, unlocking the water mill. You manage to correctly use all the provided tiles for biomes of exactly 12 tiles, with as many rows of three ponds as possible and any extra rivers are no longer than 3 tiles. The ponds aren't touching the rivers anywhere, there is little to no wasted space with sharp turns in the rivers, and you have 3 matching animals in every biome. You have likely scored every single point you can, and you're sitting 200-300 points short of the 2100 needed for the "3 star" rating. You try again, getting a similar score with a seemingly completely different configuration. You try a third time, and you eke out 10 more points from the sheer luck of getting an extra pond this time around.
Now fast forward 2 hours, you still haven't gotten past the 1900 point mark and there is no explanation anywhere as to why. The only thing you can do is hope you randomly get an extra couple river or pond cards and that the expansion hexes you get are good enough that you can get the long river needed for the watermill quickly so you can maybe score more points this time, possibly. Now don't get me wrong, I get this is a puzzle game, but whats the point of any puzzle if there's no surefire solution to it? If you're relying on RNG to draw the perfect tiles and get the best possible hex configurations, it ends up being extremely frustrating when it doesn't happen after dozens of attempts. It also takes away from the challenge of the puzzle when there's not always a solution.
A good puzzle is solvable in one way with a set outcome. A great puzzle is solvable in multiple ways and has different outcomes that are all counted as success by the puzzle's parameters. A bad puzzle is one that relies on chance and bashing your head against the wall enough times that it eventually works. I hate nothing more than a puzzle game that relies mostly on RNG to achieve an outcome. This game unfortunately has that exact thing as part of its core mechanics. After 15 hours that has turned me off entirely to the rest of the game, regardless of its better or not. I also just don't want to spend hours retrying a puzzle because I can't get "lucky" enough to score enough points.
Summary:
Great game that suffers from a glaring negative; you will not be able to solve or "3 star" every stage consistently due to card draws and expansions being completely randomized while requiring a set score to complete. I can't really recommend it when there's better options out there like Dorfromantik or Islanders that do the same things in a much less frustrating format.
Very fun puzzle game, graphics are great and the soundtrack fits each theme nicely. Some of the high scores I have no idea how to possibly get. Gets boring after a while and Id like to see more themes.
7/10
I love the puzzle and strategy of this game. The puzzle mode becomes quite challenging. If redoing things after you learn new tactics, isn't for you, this probably isn't the best game.
A wonderful, warm, and cozy game. Fresh gameplay ideas. Nice mechanics. It is also very pleasing to the eyes. Thoughtful puzzels/ problem solving while generally relaxing. Well worth the money and the time. Thanks and kind regards.
EA Nature building puzzle + serene + great art/music = Immerse in nature with good vibes. Build and expand land using cards to cultivate. Bonus points for grouping items. Just enjoy the experience.
This game is great ! If you're looking for some cute little puzzle and way too many goats, this game is for you.
I think a nice feature would be to reroll available animal or terrain cards.
Anyway, nice game !
It is a great game but I can't recommend it on Mac M1. After just 5 minutes it gets very very hot (90°C+) and it starts to stutter even on lowest settings. I didn't expect this tbh since other graphically more complex games like Divinity 2 run smoothly.
I have only had this game for three days and I'm already really obsessed with it. It's beautiful, colorful, adorable, and so many other things I could say... though I want to keep this short so I can go back to playing.
Edit April 2025:
The new addition of being able to trade in cards for cards of the same type is a good idea. However, You can easily still end up with 30 animal cards and nowhere to put them because you didn't get enough land card. Or vice versa. My scores haven't improved much, if at all, with the new mechanic. It gives an illusion of better control over your gameplay, but as it stands the score for score is the same as it was before. I think that if you could trade any three cards for other cards, it would be better. And I don't think it would break the game and make it too easy, because trading multiples of three all the time diminishes the amount of cards you have altogether. It should balance out in the end.
Original:
I really want to recommend this game. The game play itself is right up my alley. It's beautiful and fun.
However. The cards you get seem to be entirely random. It feels like it's forcing you to make bad decisions in order to be dealt the next round of cards and it makes it so that you can't meet the game's win requirements. It is exceedingly frustrating to get to the end of a game and find that it was unwinnable because you never got the cards necessary to win.
For example: I might have an overabundance of grassland cards but nowhere to put them because there's not enough space to make sure they don't touch, and I wouldn't have any animals to put in them anyhow, because all the animals are mountain animals. The hands themselves end up being incompatible.
I recognize that programming these kinds of games to make them reasonable is a difficult task, but it definitely feels like an early access game because, some of the games aren't winnable. And those that are can't get you to the secondary or tertiary goal posts in many cases.
If this issue is somehow fixed down the line, I would recommend it. But as it stands right now (end of 2024) it's too frustrating to recommend.
this games like playing russian roulette but you have 6 bullets in the chamber while 13 torpedos sent from japan are targeting you and while thats happenening your playing blackjack
Annoyed with everyday life?
Good. This game can add to the stress of not only being a calming puzzle game, but a stressful POS when trying to get achievements!
10/10
Fun game, but I have one major gripe with this game (And other puzzle games that suffer from this same problem).
There seems to be a disproportionate amount of RNG when it comes to getting the perfect expansion hexes and tiles to place within them for classic mode (or high-score mode). This is great for randomness' sake, but when you have to score a certain amount of points, its insanely frustrating to constantly score the same amount of points or less no matter what you do differently. Long explanation below, skip to the end for my summary of the game as a whole.
Let's take the Continental Medium stage as the prime and major example:
-To score "3 stars" on that stage you need to score 2100 points. There are river cards that give a point bonus to adjacent biome tiles, and ponds that do the same.
-Placing a perfect biome involves 12 like tiles and 3 like animals. (Think 12 forest tiles with 3 boars).
-You unlock the large expansions as you score more points, and each expansion is a large hexagon made up of 19 smaller hexagons.
-If you place a row of three ponds you score the most bonus points.
-If you have a river of at least 18 tiles you unlock the water mill, which gives an additional bonus to each water tile (Rivers and ponds).
-Ideally, you would strategically place biome tiles in a way that it utilizes the river bonus and at least one pond bonus. The only way to truly do this is to plan ahead for river and pond placement, taking into account the different tile elevations that influence the river's path and making sure not to place ponds directly adjacent to any rivers.
With those things in mind, imagine you get the perfect expansions to allow for an early 18 tile long river, unlocking the water mill. You manage to correctly use all the provided tiles for biomes of exactly 12 tiles, with as many rows of three ponds as possible and any extra rivers are no longer than 3 tiles. The ponds aren't touching the rivers anywhere, there is little to no wasted space with sharp turns in the rivers, and you have 3 matching animals in every biome. You have likely scored every single point you can, and you're sitting 200-300 points short of the 2100 needed for the "3 star" rating. You try again, getting a similar score with a seemingly completely different configuration. You try a third time, and you eke out 10 more points from the sheer luck of getting an extra pond this time around.
Now fast forward 2 hours, you still haven't gotten past the 1900 point mark and there is no explanation anywhere as to why. The only thing you can do is hope you randomly get an extra couple river or pond cards and that the expansion hexes you get are good enough that you can get the long river needed for the watermill quickly so you can maybe score more points this time, possibly. Now don't get me wrong, I get this is a puzzle game, but whats the point of any puzzle if there's no surefire solution to it? If you're relying on RNG to draw the perfect tiles and get the best possible hex configurations, it ends up being extremely frustrating when it doesn't happen after dozens of attempts. It also takes away from the challenge of the puzzle when there's not always a solution.
A good puzzle is solvable in one way with a set outcome. A great puzzle is solvable in multiple ways and has different outcomes that are all counted as success by the puzzle's parameters. A bad puzzle is one that relies on chance and bashing your head against the wall enough times that it eventually works. I hate nothing more than a puzzle game that relies mostly on RNG to achieve an outcome. This game unfortunately has that exact thing as part of its core mechanics. After 15 hours that has turned me off entirely to the rest of the game, regardless of its better or not. I also just don't want to spend hours retrying a puzzle because I can't get "lucky" enough to score enough points.
Summary:
Great game that suffers from a glaring negative; you will not be able to solve or "3 star" every stage consistently due to card draws and expansions being completely randomized while requiring a set score to complete. I can't really recommend it when there's better options out there like Dorfromantik or Islanders that do the same things in a much less frustrating format.
Very fun puzzle game, graphics are great and the soundtrack fits each theme nicely. Some of the high scores I have no idea how to possibly get. Gets boring after a while and Id like to see more themes.
7/10
I love the puzzle and strategy of this game. The puzzle mode becomes quite challenging. If redoing things after you learn new tactics, isn't for you, this probably isn't the best game.
A wonderful, warm, and cozy game. Fresh gameplay ideas. Nice mechanics. It is also very pleasing to the eyes. Thoughtful puzzels/ problem solving while generally relaxing. Well worth the money and the time. Thanks and kind regards.
EA Nature building puzzle + serene + great art/music = Immerse in nature with good vibes. Build and expand land using cards to cultivate. Bonus points for grouping items. Just enjoy the experience.
This game is great ! If you're looking for some cute little puzzle and way too many goats, this game is for you.
I think a nice feature would be to reroll available animal or terrain cards.
Anyway, nice game !
