I LOVE the idea of a comedy farm sim parody where the main character is an oversensitive jerk with only rude options and everyone in town hates you. Maybe that's what they were going for? Haha!
I unironically would love a farming sim where you accidentally joined a cult and your character learned the truth over time. I'd also love a game where I can be mean to the characters I don't like. But I don't think this dev meant for any of that to be here.
If you want to be mean, try Echoes of the Plum Grove. You can even give them the death cake 😆 but the characters are randomised except the first lot (and a select few key people), since you play through generations, so don't expect them to have some deep lore.
I already joke that the Friday inn night in Fields of Mistria is a cult meeting since EVERYONE goes lol. I'd love multiple routes! Like you can join the cult, you can overthrow the leader and be the new leader, you can dismantle the cult (which has negative consequences for npcs and the economy at first, but you help them manage), etc.
You might enjoy Sun Haven. There are dialogue options there that are just straight up savage and I think you can even lose friendship points with them.
It's a red flag if the Lead Developer left the development. We've seen this in the industry a lot of times, taking over company, replace employees, terrible decisions, fixation on elements that had nothing to do with the game, and a lot more to look up whenever the product was released on terrible state.
yeah the second i hear the lead developer has left their own project i’m immediately turned off by the game, especially if said game isn’t even finished. granted there’s exceptions like if the dev’s an asshole that deserved to get booted but it’s still not a good look
A huge case of this is Zoochosis. The creator passed on but left a written document of what he wanted the game to be. The other devs just replaced him and changed the concept entirely to make it easier to develop and ship out. It's rather a more tragic story of changing the game to be bad.
Honestly it feels like it had a development team that loved it and enjoyed working on it, but halfway through they all got fired and a newer less experienced and cheaper team got hired and they did the best they could, but either did NOT have the skills to know what a farming game (or any game) should have, or just got payed so badly they barely put any effort into it
It's not even "what is good in farming sim-games", in this game even basic controls doesn not work what it should. And collisions are wrong, game crashes so often, they are just LAZY!!
@@Mike-or2cvLazy often has reasons behind it. Whatever happened during development was unlikely to be because of laziness but we might never know truly what happened.
Yeah :( Makes me feel sad. Im a game designer myself and i‘ve been with companies that didnt value you or your work and were extremely poorly managed. A lot of times games end up bad not because of the individual lack of effort or skill from the people working on it, but rather poor management decisions…
2:31 oh 😳 the apostrophes look wrong because they＇re not included in the font the game uses, so it substitutes characters from a basic sans-serif font from your PC. this can happen if the font is amateur-made or if it`s a demo/freebie version of a paid font, where the full character set is locked behind a usage license paywall, so it seriously is another sign of cheaping out on costs or inexperience. I think the main other reason an apostrophe might look weirdly spaced would be if the devs‘ keyboard was set to a more monospace language like Japanese or Chinese, but I doubt this is the case here thanks for the review! I’m upset how good most of the pixel art is because now I know I'll never play this. the flowers and trees are so freaking cute. btw, I used 5 different apostrophes in this comment. haha.
It's worse than that. It looks like they used a comma character on an empty line to render the apostrophe. Every line with an apostrophe is clearly preceded by an additional empty line. It's madness.
@@DeCendres yep, fonts can sometimes be wildly different sizes compared to each other, even when you set them at the same font size. I feel like it’s more of a problem with amateur fonts since the granular details like sizing and spacing aren’t as easy to adjust without deeper knowledge/more niche tools? (I’ve struggled with this myself. haha)
it seems so obvious that you pointed it out, the alphabets are in pixels while that damn apos is interpolated bilinearly also finding the 5 different apostrophes is kinda fun lol, props to you for being able to use 5 perfectly on one paragraph
My favorite parts of this video I think: - The bees - The protagonist's inability to take a joke - MOONWALKING - Chloe enjoys the rain - Josh (the player) wants to leave the town
"It sounds like I joined a cult" New idea: a farming sim where you actually joined a cult and are supposed to feed the entirety of it, and things gets more cult like as the game goes on. You have to do bundles, which are offerings to the god they believe in. All festivals are some religious cultist festivities. There's a production quota to meet so people don't starve. Of course, marriage and children are encouraged, as the cult need to grow. Secret ending where you get to escape the cult.
"offerings to the god they believe in" Coral Island and the Harvest Moon games have "the Goddess" to handwave the "why do I need to collect these specific items" game mechanic, so it fits right in! I do like the idea of production quotas, but I think most people who play this genre wouldn't want that much stress.
Oh, you could really have fun with that concept. The fact that the player is an extra-dimensional being directly controlling the "farmer" differently from the villagers could actually be plot relevant.
The real ending of Orange Town is that the farmer leaves after an excruciatingly boring experience in Orange Town handing Billy the farm and promising never to come back.
I love how they welcome you with "Everyone here is nice, you better go thank them, yes, all of them. What? They haven't done anything for you anyway? TOO BAD! Go. Thank. Them. NOW!. Also they have gold hearts... literally" Then you go to meet everyone and most of them have such a meh reaction to you, being nice they said
This may sound bad, but I love when you review bad games. You're so nice even when saying a game is terrible and the videos are very entertaining and funny. I did watch you play this one live and I thank you for suffering through this one to save us from having a very painful experience ourselves 😂
I bought this game when it was still "Fantasy Farming" and still in development. I left a review recommending it because at the time there were frequent updates, and the creator was very receptive to feedback. Idk why this was in my recommended because I never watch game reviews, but I was hoping to hear it improved since then. What a shame.
I would be more inclined to respond to that awkward 'joke' about the hammers with "Dude, are you ok? Do you want to talk about it?". It's specific enough it comes across as something that happened to him in real life that he is trying to brush off with humor because he never really dealt with it...
Exactly! Either it's trauma he hasn't dealt with, or he's just a very thinly-veiled criminal. Either way, I'd be very curious about him and his backstory!
I'd say it's a bit of brazilian humor that didn't translate well. I'm also latin american and I'd say those kinds of "tough love" type of jokes are pretty common. Even though he was "chased out with hammers" his family most likely still loves him and will take him back when their anger cools off over whatever he did. I don't think it was meant as an implication of domestic abuse or anything serious like that.
This is why feedback in video games are so important, not only does it give the player a better idea on what's happening in the game, but also it brings life to the game.
I appreciate the effort put into making games but sometimes devs just don’t know what they’re doing or aren’t putting enough love and effort into making their games.
If you want to see some devs who go above and beyond, look at Wolf Quest! They are brilliant, amazing, lovely people and the game theyre making is SO COOL. They listen to their community too😭 that game releases soon, ive never been more excited to play something in my life (besides Niche…i am a nerd)
I remember really liking this game - filling my entire house with animals, solving seasonal puzzles, the mysterious guy turning up selling kitchenware…. It’s so sad that games full potential was never realized
Yeah! I wish that if developers were worried that we would miss meeting important characters, that they would put signs around the town so that we can decide for ourselves to go meet them
Agreed, not only is it stressful, but it's also less effective than meeting all the npcs naturally since you'll try to rush it and forget most of them. It sucks, and I wish farming games stopped trying to do everything like Stardew.
Oh absolutely! I despise those types of quests with a passion. The worst part is that the dev also locks all other quests until you've met everyone. It should be the number one example of what NOT to do in a videogame. If the characters are so important, why not let us meet them naturally and decide for ourselves whether we like them or not? Now we're put on a wild goose-chase, not caring about ANY of the characters for the privilege of... doing other quests. Was the dev trying to annoy the players? Because it looks like they succeeded.
I especially hate this when they refuse to make a good visible map to reference where they are at all times. Not only do you have to guess where they are but it becomes annoying trying to memorize the layout. If the game doesn't have a map it makes me want to play it less. I don't like guessing character patterns, especially ones they want you to specifically look for in quests.
It seems like the new publishers wanted to make this a "child-friendly" game but used that as an excuse for it being lazily made. This seems like it had a good start and then it got gutted of all its charm.
I'm sad to learn that the team is Brazilian, producing games here is very difficult and probably there's not much incentive to do so. BUT there's no excuse about the problems in this game or the characters personalities, I swear we're not that insufferable here or so easily offedend
It sounds like the initial Brazilian team was doing a good job with it! The game suffered after another company's involvement and the original team left. Clearly there are game devs in Brazil with good ideas and skills, they just need a chance to finish games.
Well... it's different from Stardew Valley. In Stardew Valley you pretty much love all characters. Here you hate them all. But I gotta say I feel bad for Devin...
Forcing the player to meet everyone annoys me too, it's so unrealistic too. What person, after dropping everything and choosing a life that is overwhelming at the start (farm in disarray), has time to introduce themselves to the whole neighbourhood? No one. Or even, maybe you're introverted? Let me meet them when i want to xD
This game has changed drastically from what I remember playing ages ago. The biggest problem I had with it initially was that it would slow down TREMENDOUSLY in the center area of town, where the most NPCs were, to the point that you were moving at about a fifth of your normal speed in town. When I tried it again about a year later, they'd solved that problem, but mining was borderline impossible as you could only mine in one area and got nothing for clearing out an entire section.
fr all he did was tell terrible jokes and honestly the protagonist played along at first so i dont even blame him for doubling down. like it would be one thing if the protagonist was meh/upset after the first one and he continued still, but protagonist straight up joked along too then pulled a 180 and snapped at him
It feels like everyone uses “costumer” when they mean customer and it drives me insane. It’s really easy to check and it’s weird that nobody caught it.
Appreciate the honest review! I was offered a key for this game - but they were incredibly demanding with content being posted exceptionally fast (without it being paid content) so I chose not to redeem the key or review. Looks like I made the right decision.
I enjoyed that this is a thoughtful criticism of the game rather than just an emotionally charged review published for clicks. Your content continues to be quality and I really appreciate it. Thank you for another video!
Man I bought this game a few years ago when Tropical Puppy was in the picture, it actually used to be fun! I purchased it because I thought the art looked nice, it even got me back into pixel art! but the game decayed after each new update. What do you MEAN there’s no romance?? At least make the characters likeable then lol Sad times!
I don't like romance (I actually jump for joy when high friendship DOESN'T result in characters hitting on you) but if you're gonna promise it, you gotta follow through! And yes, at the VERY least, make the characters likable!
4 minutes in & I like how you describe stuff like "the items just disppear w/no pop-ups or anything," because I do have an _intuitive_ sense of why small (but essential) things like that feel good in games but it's v helpful to hear about them in concrete terms (speaking as an aspiring indie dev trying to make more time for it tho).
As a native English speaker and pun connoisseur, "mine company" is an affront to the English language, and indeed all forms of human communication, be they spoken or otherwise. Just for "mine company" this game should be cast into the deepest pits of hell, and when you add on the rest of this dumpster fire? The words to describe what should happen to this game elude me, if, in fact, they ever existed in the first place. Oh, great video btw.
For some reason the way it was used reminded me more of the German word mein. They sound the same and I could see someone doing that. It is sorta like they just used the slight essence of a joke. People in my family also use random German words in puns and in jokes a lot, so, I think I am pre dispositioned to see things that way anyways.
This is such a shame, the game looks really cute and I love the idea of having fruits I've never even seen or heard of before. Thank you for the review!
Take a shoot for every time the MC says “what?”, I guarantee you’ll get alcohol poisoning. It really is unfortunate but most games that have some sort of change in leadership or drama going on in the background tend to end up in not the greatest shape. This game does have some great art but that can only get you so far. At least I can save my money and get Farmagia though, so that’s a plus!
8:39 Imo, that "meeting quest" the best way was handled by "My Time at Portia" Quest required you only to meet few shop owners, not entirely of the town 9:55 Feels like game wants to rub that in your face. And it's hard to tell where it will smack harder - if you lose rare fis or the most common one
Portia did the meet n' greet well, and the devs improved on it in Sandrock. When you talked to a merchant for the first time, they welcomed you to town and gave you some free stuff, no quest required. Even a total newbie to the genre could figure out that "oh, if I talk to people, good things will happen" which is the whole point of a meet-n-greet quest. Devs need to trust their players!
The writing for this game is so unhinged, and I'm kind of into it! (Just not enough to play it) I could not stop laughing at all your commentary on the super weird scenes with Billy and Devin and Julia. Josh, all your content is so good, but your reviews of trainwreck games are starting to become my favorite!
“I hate her, I hate him, I hate myself” 🤣🤣 I really enjoyed watching you play Josh, your commentary was the best part! Thank you for warning me off this game!
same, because SAME. I couldn’t unsee them. I explained it in another comment but basically: the apostrophes look wrong because they＇re not included in the game`s font, so it substitutes characters from a basic sans-serif font from your PC
I am so sorry for your pain Josh for us, but this video got a few laughs out of me because I love how you joke about things and you're sarcastic with a completely neutral tone. I'm really sad about what happened to Orange Season though, I bought it years ago in early access years ago and I was rooting for the developers because they had some good ideas, but sad to see the game fall apart.
The reason your character was offended in the conversation where you were joking around with Devin is because he suddenly started "joking" about familial abuse. Haha! I mean, there probably should be an option where you just roll with it, but it's not surprising that it suddenly changed the tone of the conversation!
I have to say thank you for the honest review. At the start I saw some red flags, but went well let's just see it for what it is and not prejudge. Sadly I was right. I am sorry you had to go through all of that, but you did a good job trying to review this so individuals can make up their own minds on this game. Peace
to be fair I don't know if being beaten with hammers is common in other countrys but if someone asked me that i'd be utterly confused and leave immediately, even if it was a joke. its just so weirdly specific.
What a bummer! I played this when it first came out yeaaaars ago (i guess around 2017), and I remember enjoying it well enough and seeing so much potential. Then some years later I remember there was a big update and I played and it was awful, they changed so much. Now it sounds like it's even worse somehow. Such a shame!
The graphics look pretty, which would have reeled me in. Thankfully creators like you have warned everyone of the bugs and other problems with this game!!
I was not prepared for the Devin drama. I'm kind of onboard for giving your PC unhinged options, but it's such a weird development choice that they forced you into being a total jerk.
To be fair to the MC that was an unhinged conversation. Could you honestly say that you would be receptive to someone you just met a day ago making those “jokes” to you. The fact he played along the first time was enough for it to be a bit of dark humor and move on. Going on and on would naturally make you feel negatively towards him.
One thing that stands out to me is how pretty much every character portrait was seemingly made in the same base with the same pose. It looks pretty jarring when the icon changes during a conversation and the only thing that changes is the hair, outfit, and MAYBE skin tone. At least change the facial expressions or something!
I would love a "behind the scenes" on the development of this game to know what and how exactly things went so wrong. You dont spend 7 years wasting time and money on a project to deliver THIS.
Wow, Josh, this was soooo funny, 28 minutes went by in a flash! I've actually had the Orange Season demo sitting in my Steam library forever, guess it will continue to sit, not sure...lol.
"Enjoy mine company" sounds a bit like an older form of English, like in Shakespearean times. I think it makes sense. ^^ Also, just watched the "Haha" guy part. The response you said with "to get away from people like you" can be mistaken for rudeness, so I'm not surprised the responses from your character were biting remarks. "Haha" can sometimes be sarcastic. English... >_>
Using "mine" instead of "my" is something you see sometimes in old english. Nobody would naturally talk like that, and its a bit of a forced pun, but I'd say it was an intentional choice and not an error.
I was following Hudell's progress on this game way before SOEDESCO got involved and the game used to have so much heart in it, I feel so bad we ended up getting whatever this is. The game was SO much better when it was being made in RPG Maker and was a passion project, and not a corporate product with no soul in it.
Concept idea for the cult thing: you player a wake up in the woods and you don’t know who you are or where you’re from. You decide to walk forward the woods a bit when you see a town. The villagers are all talking about how beautiful or magnificent you are after looking at you and you find out they’re a cult worshipping something. Over time after you get a farm you notice you don’t need your watering can as you can just water it with the wave of your hand and etc for other tools. Maybe villagers follow and stalk you. Either you escape the town or stay as God in your cult. Loosely based on some fanfics i found lol Edit: oooo and everytime you try to leave the town you find yourself on your farm, as if they sealed you there to keep you forever!! Maybe fix bundles too break the seal or again stay if you want
Cozy farming sim is such an overused trope. This game is pioneering a new subgenre... ANXIETY FARMING SIM. All the NPCs suck, but even if you did like them, there's no romance system (despite the devs saying there would be and then walking it back... misleading marketing) because no one could ever love you. The player character is a nightmare to be around. The game is so unresponsive, uncommunicative, and cryptic that you feel like you're in a dream, and it's questionable whether anything you're seeing or doing is actually happening. The main quest appears to be a futile effort to fix your reputation in the eyes of townspeople you don't even like, all because the mayor is weirdly manipulative about it. Any hints or info the game gives, such as where and how to obtain items like fish, are straight up just actual lies. The perfect gift for that gamer in your life that you just really hate!
Yeah, I dont really like the character interactions. The game starts off by answering for you with no options, and then when it gives you options you kinda wish it didn't... theres really nothing good about Orange Season. I used to love the characters in the game including Devin, but this new direction sucks.
I remember playing this before the big change and just really hated it when it was changed, it's sad to see even now on the full release it's not gotten better.
This video had me CRYING with laughter. Your frustration and your deadpan humor was amazing, Josh. XD I will tell you as someone who has had Orange Season for a long time - no. The earlier rendition of the game was just as terrible and clunky. Nothing has changed, lmao.
I played this quite a while back (sometime before the name changed and useful map was removed). I remember it being tedious in some cases but overall an ok experience. Set it aside to try again once it was more complete. Surprised the new developers tanked it to such an extent. Seems like instead of focusing on completing the game they remade a bunch of already complete stuff worse than it was in the first place.
Somehow feels like most of the interactions in this game were made by watching a super simple tutorial for the engine and then just rolling with that heh
Even Fields of Mistria has the shitty "meet everyone" quest with all the problems you mentioned with this game. "Meet everyone" quests need to phased out. They're not fun!
It’s a shame this game came out in this condition, I was really looking forward to this game 😢, thank you for saving me the money on this one, I’m hoping you will be able to refund this game, hopefully the developer can fix this game so it will be working and worth buying at full price.
It's such a shame what happened with the game. The previous version the game is 'okay', nothing special and it had some weird designs here and there but it had some passion in it. Now the game felt rough, lifeless, and whatever passion it had was gone. It's like the devs just wanted to get the game over with so they could move on.
i saw this game when i was looking at farming sim games on steam the other day to add to my wishlist for when this semester finally ends and i have time to play games. really disappointed seeing the actual quality of the game, the art style looked really promising. idk who you are but really appreciate that this vid showed up on my feed today.
The game being broken and buggy is one thing. But the characters all being openly hostile while being touted as just your average nicey-nice town residents set off my Fight Or Flight. ESPECIALLY your main quest giver lady, holy FUCK. If you have even a drop of trauma in regards to people treating you badly, those people are gonna have a rough time playing this. The main character isn't any better! Everyone in this game is so deeply unlikable. What were they thinking?
6:47 I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a play on old English in how they would sometimes use “mine” where we today would use “my.” Or maybe I’m thinking too deep into this.
I played the demo years ago probably when they didn't change the engine yet, and I really loved it, it was high on my wishlist. But later I had to put it at the bottom when I saw more and more people complaining about the bugs, how it was unplayable... I really hope it would be fixed after early access but apparently it's not, and that truly make me sad since I saw the potential of the game in its demo years ago...
I remember loving the early versions of the game. I found it to be extremely relaxing and cozy to play. I am so sad with how it's changed. I may still try playing, bt my hopes are not high.
I had this on my wishlist for a while and i kept postponing the purchase. Now I'm glad that I procrastinate so much. Thanks for the save here man, and thanks for the funny video 🗿
The Enchanted Portals of farming sims it seems. Both could've been great games, but because other people/companies got involved, it was forced to make changes unnecessarily and released before it was truly ready
Oh my god I realized that the character spite backgrounds aren't transparent and actually have the background color built in. You can see this weird glitchy aura around them whenever they move where it doesn't match up to the ground around them. They really don't know what they were doing with this game.
I bought this game back when it was on sale during early access and refunded it in under an hour. The meet the NPC's quest bugged, and the controls were less then stellar. I would mouse over something and it would select something next to it, and it sucks that they never fixed it. It's a shame because I was super interested in this title, but probably won't check it out again.
I got this game in early access and refunded it because I thought it was kinda boring but had potential, promising myself to buy it when it released, but I kinda forgot about it. I saw it on the switch and decided to try it because I like farming games. The same problem happened. I got way too bored way too quickly. I didn't even meet all of the npcs because they all just looked so boring and there were too damn many of them to keep track of anyway. The map was way too big and kinda confusing. Not even the map screen helped me get an understanding of how to navigate the place. Glad I stopped playing early, though I regret not being able to get another refund.
The artwork of the game looks beautiful but the gameplay and UI itself sucks. I have a feeling that the main team was fired and the new company took over. The moment I heard they got partnered with a bigger company then the name got changed etc I knew where it was heading which is sad. Money hungry game companies will always find a way to buy out and ruin smaller game companies.
I LOVE the idea of a comedy farm sim parody where the main character is an oversensitive jerk with only rude options and everyone in town hates you. Maybe that's what they were going for? Haha!
Not the hahas 😭
Haha! 😂
Ha ha, what a story. Hello doggy.
@@planescaped oh hi planescaped
Your Haha! actually made me laugh XD
I unironically would love a farming sim where you accidentally joined a cult and your character learned the truth over time. I'd also love a game where I can be mean to the characters I don't like. But I don't think this dev meant for any of that to be here.
If you want to be mean, try Echoes of the Plum Grove. You can even give them the death cake 😆 but the characters are randomised except the first lot (and a select few key people), since you play through generations, so don't expect them to have some deep lore.
You should check out Cult of the Lamb. It's a roguelike but there are farming sim elements.
Graveyard keeper?
I already joke that the Friday inn night in Fields of Mistria is a cult meeting since EVERYONE goes lol.
I'd love multiple routes! Like you can join the cult, you can overthrow the leader and be the new leader, you can dismantle the cult (which has negative consequences for npcs and the economy at first, but you help them manage), etc.
You might enjoy Sun Haven. There are dialogue options there that are just straight up savage and I think you can even lose friendship points with them.
"I hate her, I hate Billy, I hate myself, I hate everyone in this town."
Well, I don't know about all of you but I'm sold.
finally a realistic farming sim
It's a red flag if the Lead Developer left the development.
We've seen this in the industry a lot of times, taking over company, replace employees, terrible decisions, fixation on elements that had nothing to do with the game, and a lot more to look up whenever the product was released on terrible state.
yeah the second i hear the lead developer has left their own project i’m immediately turned off by the game, especially if said game isn’t even finished. granted there’s exceptions like if the dev’s an asshole that deserved to get booted but it’s still not a good look
A huge case of this is Zoochosis. The creator passed on but left a written document of what he wanted the game to be. The other devs just replaced him and changed the concept entirely to make it easier to develop and ship out. It's rather a more tragic story of changing the game to be bad.
Honestly it feels like it had a development team that loved it and enjoyed working on it, but halfway through they all got fired and a newer less experienced and cheaper team got hired and they did the best they could, but either did NOT have the skills to know what a farming game (or any game) should have, or just got payed so badly they barely put any effort into it
It's not even "what is good in farming sim-games", in this game even basic controls doesn not work what it should. And collisions are wrong, game crashes so often, they are just LAZY!!
@@Mike-or2cvLazy often has reasons behind it.
Whatever happened during development was unlikely to be because of laziness but we might never know truly what happened.
Yeah :( Makes me feel sad. Im a game designer myself and i‘ve been with companies that didnt value you or your work and were extremely poorly managed. A lot of times games end up bad not because of the individual lack of effort or skill from the people working on it, but rather poor management decisions…
2:31 oh 😳 the apostrophes look wrong because they＇re not included in the font the game uses, so it substitutes characters from a basic sans-serif font from your PC. this can happen if the font is amateur-made or if it`s a demo/freebie version of a paid font, where the full character set is locked behind a usage license paywall, so it seriously is another sign of cheaping out on costs or inexperience. I think the main other reason an apostrophe might look weirdly spaced would be if the devs‘ keyboard was set to a more monospace language like Japanese or Chinese, but I doubt this is the case here
thanks for the review! I’m upset how good most of the pixel art is because now I know I'll never play this. the flowers and trees are so freaking cute.
btw, I used 5 different apostrophes in this comment. haha.
It's worse than that. It looks like they used a comma character on an empty line to render the apostrophe. Every line with an apostrophe is clearly preceded by an additional empty line. It's madness.
Actually, you're right. They have the same issue with long dashes. It's just that this other font have double the line height than the pixel art one.
@@DeCendres yep, fonts can sometimes be wildly different sizes compared to each other, even when you set them at the same font size. I feel like it’s more of a problem with amateur fonts since the granular details like sizing and spacing aren’t as easy to adjust without deeper knowledge/more niche tools? (I’ve struggled with this myself. haha)
it seems so obvious that you pointed it out, the alphabets are in pixels while that damn apos is interpolated bilinearly
also finding the 5 different apostrophes is kinda fun lol, props to you for being able to use 5 perfectly on one paragraph
CoOOOooL apostrophes! 👻
My favorite parts of this video I think:
- The bees
- The protagonist's inability to take a joke
- MOONWALKING
- Chloe enjoys the rain
- Josh (the player) wants to leave the town
"It sounds like I joined a cult" New idea: a farming sim where you actually joined a cult and are supposed to feed the entirety of it, and things gets more cult like as the game goes on. You have to do bundles, which are offerings to the god they believe in. All festivals are some religious cultist festivities. There's a production quota to meet so people don't starve. Of course, marriage and children are encouraged, as the cult need to grow. Secret ending where you get to escape the cult.
Sort of like the cult of the lamb game without the rogue aspects?
"offerings to the god they believe in"
Coral Island and the Harvest Moon games have "the Goddess" to handwave the "why do I need to collect these specific items" game mechanic, so it fits right in!
I do like the idea of production quotas, but I think most people who play this genre wouldn't want that much stress.
Oh god i would love that! Especially if it has some kind of lovecraft theme.
@@SimuLord production quota can be recommended, but option you can toggle on/off like with the monster spawn on farm in Stardew Valley?
Oh, you could really have fun with that concept. The fact that the player is an extra-dimensional being directly controlling the "farmer" differently from the villagers could actually be plot relevant.
The real ending of Orange Town is that the farmer leaves after an excruciatingly boring experience in Orange Town handing Billy the farm and promising never to come back.
I love how they welcome you with "Everyone here is nice, you better go thank them, yes, all of them. What? They haven't done anything for you anyway? TOO BAD! Go. Thank. Them. NOW!. Also they have gold hearts... literally"
Then you go to meet everyone and most of them have such a meh reaction to you, being nice they said
I like how the MC’s dialogue mostly consists of “what”? Like he’s just dumbfounded by how awful everyone is at all times.
omg this review had me in stitches. "On the one hand, I would love if they drove me out of town..."
Same! 😂 I stayed for the jokes!
This may sound bad, but I love when you review bad games. You're so nice even when saying a game is terrible and the videos are very entertaining and funny. I did watch you play this one live and I thank you for suffering through this one to save us from having a very painful experience ourselves 😂
Nothing wrong with cozying up with a blanket and a bad game review
I bought this game when it was still "Fantasy Farming" and still in development. I left a review recommending it because at the time there were frequent updates, and the creator was very receptive to feedback. Idk why this was in my recommended because I never watch game reviews, but I was hoping to hear it improved since then. What a shame.
“Everyone has a heart of gold”.. if you don’t me them they will ostracize you and they don’t like farmers..not very heart of gold for me
Gold in this case is literal, metallic and unfeeling
I would be more inclined to respond to that awkward 'joke' about the hammers with "Dude, are you ok? Do you want to talk about it?". It's specific enough it comes across as something that happened to him in real life that he is trying to brush off with humor because he never really dealt with it...
Exactly! Either it's trauma he hasn't dealt with, or he's just a very thinly-veiled criminal. Either way, I'd be very curious about him and his backstory!
I'd say it's a bit of brazilian humor that didn't translate well. I'm also latin american and I'd say those kinds of "tough love" type of jokes are pretty common. Even though he was "chased out with hammers" his family most likely still loves him and will take him back when their anger cools off over whatever he did. I don't think it was meant as an implication of domestic abuse or anything serious like that.
@@Itzaric Which makes it so much weirder that the main character was only allowed to be offended in response.
This is why feedback in video games are so important, not only does it give the player a better idea on what's happening in the game, but also it brings life to the game.
I have never seen a game on STEAM before that says "VERY NEGATIVE." Wowsa!
I see it all the time, but that's because I plunge into the absolute depths of the "under $5" category. 😅
@@TaoScribble Why do you do that to yourself?
I appreciate the effort put into making games but sometimes devs just don’t know what they’re doing or aren’t putting enough love and effort into making their games.
legit looks like they're just trying to cash in on a trend. Poorly.
If you want to see some devs who go above and beyond, look at Wolf Quest! They are brilliant, amazing, lovely people and the game theyre making is SO COOL. They listen to their community too😭 that game releases soon, ive never been more excited to play something in my life (besides Niche…i am a nerd)
Thanks Josh for checking into mediocre-to-bad games to warn us about them o7
My pleasure! 😆
@@JoshGamingGarden Your video with the bad farming games on Steam was really funny 😁
But I also love the more positive videos!
I remember really liking this game - filling my entire house with animals, solving seasonal puzzles, the mysterious guy turning up selling kitchenware…. It’s so sad that games full potential was never realized
The whole: meet everyone quests are so annoying. I wish every game would skip that.
Yeah! I wish that if developers were worried that we would miss meeting important characters, that they would put signs around the town so that we can decide for ourselves to go meet them
Agreed, not only is it stressful, but it's also less effective than meeting all the npcs naturally since you'll try to rush it and forget most of them. It sucks, and I wish farming games stopped trying to do everything like Stardew.
Oh absolutely! I despise those types of quests with a passion. The worst part is that the dev also locks all other quests until you've met everyone. It should be the number one example of what NOT to do in a videogame. If the characters are so important, why not let us meet them naturally and decide for ourselves whether we like them or not? Now we're put on a wild goose-chase, not caring about ANY of the characters for the privilege of... doing other quests. Was the dev trying to annoy the players? Because it looks like they succeeded.
I especially hate this when they refuse to make a good visible map to reference where they are at all times. Not only do you have to guess where they are but it becomes annoying trying to memorize the layout. If the game doesn't have a map it makes me want to play it less. I don't like guessing character patterns, especially ones they want you to specifically look for in quests.
meet everyone but there's no map
The main character gives person who spends their entire life on twitter vibes
the yiik of farming games
It seems like the new publishers wanted to make this a "child-friendly" game but used that as an excuse for it being lazily made. This seems like it had a good start and then it got gutted of all its charm.
I'm sad to learn that the team is Brazilian, producing games here is very difficult and probably there's not much incentive to do so. BUT there's no excuse about the problems in this game or the characters personalities, I swear we're not that insufferable here or so easily offedend
It sounds like the initial Brazilian team was doing a good job with it! The game suffered after another company's involvement and the original team left. Clearly there are game devs in Brazil with good ideas and skills, they just need a chance to finish games.
Josh - you crack me up when you say 'publisher also behind other lovely titles such as Garden Witch Life' You humour is so punchy! hahaha!
Well... it's different from Stardew Valley. In Stardew Valley you pretty much love all characters. Here you hate them all.
But I gotta say I feel bad for Devin...
People who claim that Dark Souls is hard have clearly never tried to greet everyone in Orange Season.
Forcing the player to meet everyone annoys me too, it's so unrealistic too. What person, after dropping everything and choosing a life that is overwhelming at the start (farm in disarray), has time to introduce themselves to the whole neighbourhood? No one. Or even, maybe you're introverted? Let me meet them when i want to xD
This game has changed drastically from what I remember playing ages ago.
The biggest problem I had with it initially was that it would slow down TREMENDOUSLY in the center area of town, where the most NPCs were, to the point that you were moving at about a fifth of your normal speed in town. When I tried it again about a year later, they'd solved that problem, but mining was borderline impossible as you could only mine in one area and got nothing for clearing out an entire section.
Poor Devin. It seemed like he was about to start crying by the end there lol. Someone rescue him from this game.
fr all he did was tell terrible jokes and honestly the protagonist played along at first so i dont even blame him for doubling down. like it would be one thing if the protagonist was meh/upset after the first one and he continued still, but protagonist straight up joked along too then pulled a 180 and snapped at him
It feels like everyone uses “costumer” when they mean customer and it drives me insane. It’s really easy to check and it’s weird that nobody caught it.
Appreciate the honest review! I was offered a key for this game - but they were incredibly demanding with content being posted exceptionally fast (without it being paid content) so I chose not to redeem the key or review. Looks like I made the right decision.
Something about Josh's sweet voice/mannerisms and absolutely roasting games just works for me.😅
I enjoyed that this is a thoughtful criticism of the game rather than just an emotionally charged review published for clicks. Your content continues to be quality and I really appreciate it. Thank you for another video!
Man I bought this game a few years ago when Tropical Puppy was in the picture, it actually used to be fun!
I purchased it because I thought the art looked nice, it even got me back into pixel art! but the game decayed after each new update. What do you MEAN there’s no romance?? At least make the characters likeable then lol Sad times!
I don't like romance (I actually jump for joy when high friendship DOESN'T result in characters hitting on you) but if you're gonna promise it, you gotta follow through!
And yes, at the VERY least, make the characters likable!
“This is a full release.” was waaaay funnier than it had any right to be 😂💀
4 minutes in & I like how you describe stuff like "the items just disppear w/no pop-ups or anything," because I do have an _intuitive_ sense of why small (but essential) things like that feel good in games but it's v helpful to hear about them in concrete terms (speaking as an aspiring indie dev trying to make more time for it tho).
As a native English speaker and pun connoisseur, "mine company" is an affront to the English language, and indeed all forms of human communication, be they spoken or otherwise. Just for "mine company" this game should be cast into the deepest pits of hell, and when you add on the rest of this dumpster fire? The words to describe what should happen to this game elude me, if, in fact, they ever existed in the first place. Oh, great video btw.
For some reason the way it was used reminded me more of the German word mein. They sound the same and I could see someone doing that. It is sorta like they just used the slight essence of a joke. People in my family also use random German words in puns and in jokes a lot, so, I think I am pre dispositioned to see things that way anyways.
This is such a shame, the game looks really cute and I love the idea of having fruits I've never even seen or heard of before. Thank you for the review!
same! the artwork is so up my alley but it seems like that's where all the budget went😕
Take a shoot for every time the MC says “what?”, I guarantee you’ll get alcohol poisoning.
It really is unfortunate but most games that have some sort of change in leadership or drama going on in the background tend to end up in not the greatest shape. This game does have some great art but that can only get you so far.
At least I can save my money and get Farmagia though, so that’s a plus!
I appreciate the candid and blunt descriptions of your experiences!
8:39
Imo, that "meeting quest" the best way was handled by "My Time at Portia"
Quest required you only to meet few shop owners, not entirely of the town
9:55
Feels like game wants to rub that in your face. And it's hard to tell where it will smack harder - if you lose rare fis or the most common one
Portia did the meet n' greet well, and the devs improved on it in Sandrock. When you talked to a merchant for the first time, they welcomed you to town and gave you some free stuff, no quest required. Even a total newbie to the genre could figure out that "oh, if I talk to people, good things will happen" which is the whole point of a meet-n-greet quest.
Devs need to trust their players!
@@SimuLordI didn't remembered that about Sandrock, thank you for adding
@@SimuLord Y'know, I never thought of going about it like you would with a dog, but that actually makes a lot of sense.
What a let down of a game, but man did that Billy Jean dancing joke get me. Had me rolling, thanks Josh 😂
The writing for this game is so unhinged, and I'm kind of into it! (Just not enough to play it) I could not stop laughing at all your commentary on the super weird scenes with Billy and Devin and Julia.
Josh, all your content is so good, but your reviews of trainwreck games are starting to become my favorite!
“I hate her, I hate him, I hate myself” 🤣🤣 I really enjoyed watching you play Josh, your commentary was the best part! Thank you for warning me off this game!
"That's enough drama for today. I need to sleep and save" I'll be thinking about this every time before I sleep now
You can't save? Ah yes, just like when I was playing with my PS1 without a memory card as a child lol
My psychic powers tell me they had a font with no apostrophe in it, so they are adding an extra line of text with commas where the apostrophes go.
"We have Stardew Valley at Home":
The apostrophe critique took me out 😂
same, because SAME. I couldn’t unsee them.
I explained it in another comment but basically: the apostrophes look wrong because they＇re not included in the game`s font, so it substitutes characters from a basic sans-serif font from your PC
Well….there was one good thing about orange season. (I preordered the physical copy😭) Because of it I found your channel. 😊👍
I genuinely FELT it in my gut that this won't be good. I even wanted to ask for a review code and then hesitated cause I felt like it will be a mess 😂
I am so sorry for your pain Josh for us, but this video got a few laughs out of me because I love how you joke about things and you're sarcastic with a completely neutral tone. I'm really sad about what happened to Orange Season though, I bought it years ago in early access years ago and I was rooting for the developers because they had some good ideas, but sad to see the game fall apart.
The reason your character was offended in the conversation where you were joking around with Devin is because he suddenly started "joking" about familial abuse. Haha! I mean, there probably should be an option where you just roll with it, but it's not surprising that it suddenly changed the tone of the conversation!
Should have had at least a sympathetic response, "hey man thats kinda dark, you good?"
Ngl that sheep is giving Moodeng energy and I love it 😂
The tomato war sounds like a fun festival if it was implemented well, which…this game does not
It was better on harvest moon btn
I have to say thank you for the honest review. At the start I saw some red flags, but went well let's just see it for what it is and not prejudge. Sadly I was right. I am sorry you had to go through all of that, but you did a good job trying to review this so individuals can make up their own minds on this game.
Peace
to be fair I don't know if being beaten with hammers is common in other countrys but if someone asked me that i'd be utterly confused and leave immediately, even if it was a joke. its just so weirdly specific.
What a bummer! I played this when it first came out yeaaaars ago (i guess around 2017), and I remember enjoying it well enough and seeing so much potential. Then some years later I remember there was a big update and I played and it was awful, they changed so much. Now it sounds like it's even worse somehow. Such a shame!
The graphics look pretty, which would have reeled me in. Thankfully creators like you have warned everyone of the bugs and other problems with this game!!
I was not prepared for the Devin drama. I'm kind of onboard for giving your PC unhinged options, but it's such a weird development choice that they forced you into being a total jerk.
To be fair to the MC that was an unhinged conversation. Could you honestly say that you would be receptive to someone you just met a day ago making those “jokes” to you. The fact he played along the first time was enough for it to be a bit of dark humor and move on. Going on and on would naturally make you feel negatively towards him.
Thank you for your sacrifice. I almost bought this in the most recent sale...
One thing that stands out to me is how pretty much every character portrait was seemingly made in the same base with the same pose. It looks pretty jarring when the icon changes during a conversation and the only thing that changes is the hair, outfit, and MAYBE skin tone. At least change the facial expressions or something!
I think "thats a sick joke" was the nice option. Using the slang "sick" as in cool or awesome.
Clearly, they needed another "haha" here.
I would love a "behind the scenes" on the development of this game to know what and how exactly things went so wrong.
You dont spend 7 years wasting time and money on a project to deliver THIS.
Wow, Josh, this was soooo funny, 28 minutes went by in a flash! I've actually had the Orange Season demo sitting in my Steam library forever, guess it will continue to sit, not sure...lol.
"Enjoy mine company" sounds a bit like an older form of English, like in Shakespearean times. I think it makes sense. ^^
Also, just watched the "Haha" guy part. The response you said with "to get away from people like you" can be mistaken for rudeness, so I'm not surprised the responses from your character were biting remarks. "Haha" can sometimes be sarcastic. English... >_>
Using "mine" instead of "my" is something you see sometimes in old english. Nobody would naturally talk like that, and its a bit of a forced pun, but I'd say it was an intentional choice and not an error.
I was following Hudell's progress on this game way before SOEDESCO got involved and the game used to have so much heart in it, I feel so bad we ended up getting whatever this is. The game was SO much better when it was being made in RPG Maker and was a passion project, and not a corporate product with no soul in it.
Concept idea for the cult thing: you player a wake up in the woods and you don’t know who you are or where you’re from. You decide to walk forward the woods a bit when you see a town. The villagers are all talking about how beautiful or magnificent you are after looking at you and you find out they’re a cult worshipping something. Over time after you get a farm you notice you don’t need your watering can as you can just water it with the wave of your hand and etc for other tools. Maybe villagers follow and stalk you. Either you escape the town or stay as God in your cult.
Loosely based on some fanfics i found lol
Edit: oooo and everytime you try to leave the town you find yourself on your farm, as if they sealed you there to keep you forever!! Maybe fix bundles too break the seal or again stay if you want
Cozy farming sim is such an overused trope. This game is pioneering a new subgenre... ANXIETY FARMING SIM.
All the NPCs suck, but even if you did like them, there's no romance system (despite the devs saying there would be and then walking it back... misleading marketing) because no one could ever love you. The player character is a nightmare to be around. The game is so unresponsive, uncommunicative, and cryptic that you feel like you're in a dream, and it's questionable whether anything you're seeing or doing is actually happening. The main quest appears to be a futile effort to fix your reputation in the eyes of townspeople you don't even like, all because the mayor is weirdly manipulative about it. Any hints or info the game gives, such as where and how to obtain items like fish, are straight up just actual lies.
The perfect gift for that gamer in your life that you just really hate!
Yeah, I dont really like the character interactions. The game starts off by answering for you with no options, and then when it gives you options you kinda wish it didn't... theres really nothing good about Orange Season. I used to love the characters in the game including Devin, but this new direction sucks.
I remember playing this before the big change and just really hated it when it was changed, it's sad to see even now on the full release it's not gotten better.
This video had me CRYING with laughter. Your frustration and your deadpan humor was amazing, Josh. XD I will tell you as someone who has had Orange Season for a long time - no. The earlier rendition of the game was just as terrible and clunky. Nothing has changed, lmao.
"Not very business savvy, Chloe" was A+.
0:37 wtf happened 😂😂😂😂😂😂
RIGHT LIKE ELABORATE, SIR YOURE A BROWN NOW
It’s just Ranma taking a dip in the local hotspring.
I played this quite a while back (sometime before the name changed and useful map was removed). I remember it being tedious in some cases but overall an ok experience. Set it aside to try again once it was more complete. Surprised the new developers tanked it to such an extent. Seems like instead of focusing on completing the game they remade a bunch of already complete stuff worse than it was in the first place.
Somehow feels like most of the interactions in this game were made by watching a super simple tutorial for the engine and then just rolling with that heh
It's crazy how Fields of Mistria is in early access and is still more finished and so much better than this full release
Stardew Valley: very pleasant game, hundreds of hours of content, made by one guy. Yet they can't achieve a fraction of this even though they're team
This game has potential but is heavily being hindered by how unpolished it is despite being a full release
Even Fields of Mistria has the shitty "meet everyone" quest with all the problems you mentioned with this game. "Meet everyone" quests need to phased out. They're not fun!
It’s a shame this game came out in this condition, I was really looking forward to this game 😢, thank you for saving me the money on this one, I’m hoping you will be able to refund this game, hopefully the developer can fix this game so it will be working and worth buying at full price.
It's such a shame what happened with the game. The previous version the game is 'okay', nothing special and it had some weird designs here and there but it had some passion in it. Now the game felt rough, lifeless, and whatever passion it had was gone. It's like the devs just wanted to get the game over with so they could move on.
I miss when early access wasn't slang for hot garbage...
Mom: "We have stardew valley at home."
Stardew Valley at home:
i saw this game when i was looking at farming sim games on steam the other day to add to my wishlist for when this semester finally ends and i have time to play games. really disappointed seeing the actual quality of the game, the art style looked really promising. idk who you are but really appreciate that this vid showed up on my feed today.
The game being broken and buggy is one thing. But the characters all being openly hostile while being touted as just your average nicey-nice town residents set off my Fight Or Flight. ESPECIALLY your main quest giver lady, holy FUCK. If you have even a drop of trauma in regards to people treating you badly, those people are gonna have a rough time playing this. The main character isn't any better! Everyone in this game is so deeply unlikable. What were they thinking?
6:47
I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a play on old English in how they would sometimes use “mine” where we today would use “my.” Or maybe I’m thinking too deep into this.
As a writer, the writing in this game hurts my soul. Thank you for playing it so I don't have to, definitely a hard pass for me.
I played the demo years ago probably when they didn't change the engine yet, and I really loved it, it was high on my wishlist. But later I had to put it at the bottom when I saw more and more people complaining about the bugs, how it was unplayable... I really hope it would be fixed after early access but apparently it's not, and that truly make me sad since I saw the potential of the game in its demo years ago...
I remember loving the early versions of the game. I found it to be extremely relaxing and cozy to play. I am so sad with how it's changed. I may still try playing, bt my hopes are not high.
Wow. Just watching planting seeds is infuriating. This game is nightmare fuel on the save function alone.
I had this on my wishlist for a while and i kept postponing the purchase. Now I'm glad that I procrastinate so much. Thanks for the save here man, and thanks for the funny video 🗿
The Enchanted Portals of farming sims it seems. Both could've been great games, but because other people/companies got involved, it was forced to make changes unnecessarily and released before it was truly ready
it's a shame because the art is actually so cute, i love the style
Oh my god I realized that the character spite backgrounds aren't transparent and actually have the background color built in. You can see this weird glitchy aura around them whenever they move where it doesn't match up to the ground around them. They really don't know what they were doing with this game.
I bought this game back when it was on sale during early access and refunded it in under an hour. The meet the NPC's quest bugged, and the controls were less then stellar. I would mouse over something and it would select something next to it, and it sucks that they never fixed it. It's a shame because I was super interested in this title, but probably won't check it out again.
I got this game in early access and refunded it because I thought it was kinda boring but had potential, promising myself to buy it when it released, but I kinda forgot about it. I saw it on the switch and decided to try it because I like farming games. The same problem happened. I got way too bored way too quickly. I didn't even meet all of the npcs because they all just looked so boring and there were too damn many of them to keep track of anyway. The map was way too big and kinda confusing. Not even the map screen helped me get an understanding of how to navigate the place. Glad I stopped playing early, though I regret not being able to get another refund.
The artwork of the game looks beautiful but the gameplay and UI itself sucks. I have a feeling that the main team was fired and the new company took over. The moment I heard they got partnered with a bigger company then the name got changed etc I knew where it was heading which is sad. Money hungry game companies will always find a way to buy out and ruin smaller game companies.