Game Quicky: Forager (Switch) ~ Collecting the Mining

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A few days ago, I wrote an article about a few of my favorite pieces of music in games. In that article, I talked about Forager. A game that recently got ported to the Nintendo Switch. Because the game looked quite interesting to me, I decided to give it a try and now that I have almost finished the game, I decided that it’s high time that I write an article about it. So, in this game quicky, you will find my opinions on the game and feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game itself. A little side note, this review is written when the original version came out on Switch, it’s possible that things from this review can become irrelevant when new content comes out.

Positives

In this game, you play as a sort of nameless somebody that’s stranded on an island. Your goal is to expand the islands and survive. Now, there are a lot of game mechanics and there is a lot of crafting that will need to be done. The pacing of the game is something special. Depending on your playstyle and what you unlock, the game can go quickly or slowly.

The gameplay is quite unique. You start off on one lonely island. I was unsure at first what I needed to do. I was able to mine away from the resources on the island and after a while they randomly respawned. So, where a flower spawned first, a tree was now standing. I always got small bits of experience. When I leveled up, I was able to unlock new skills and buildings. These skills and buildings allowed to me gather even more types of resources and sometimes even more efficiently.

It didn’t take long before I had a ton of farms and factories setup that helped me in automating certain parts of the crafting process. Now, it would be lovely if they expanded a bit more on this process in future updates, like for example, a certain furnace always smelting a certain ore when it got below a certain point.

Besides crafting and grinding for resources, you also have enemies to worry about. Depending on the strength of your weapons and gear, these enemies can range from major treats or pushovers. I found it extremely enjoyable to improve my gear and then to take revenge on some annoying enemies by defeating them in one swipe of my sword.

On top of that, there are various dungeons, quests, and secrets to find throughout the game. Almost every island has something to do or to discover it. Some islands have even more than one thing. So, it’s a great idea to try out different things. If you watch closely to each island and try out things, you might discover some secret treasures and upgrades.

I found the visual presentation of this game quite nicely. The pixel art of this game is excellent and fits the style of this game quite well. The animations aren’t too special or flashy, but that isn’t too big of a deal. The goofy writing and humor of the characters more than make up for it. Speaking about that, the characters in this game can be quite amusing and entertaining.

Now, if you talk about the presentation you can’t forget about the music and sound effects. These are excellent as well. The soundtrack of this game is a joy to listen too. I’m even considering adding the soundtrack to my playlist for when I’m writing or just relaxing. The soundtrack is in general quite relaxing but can be quite tense when it needs to be.

The controls of this game are quite responsive and easy to get the hang of. It didn’t take long for me to get used to the controls and do some advanced moves. The inventory management is a bit basic, but more on that later.

So, you have to purchase land, find secrets, unlock achievements and so much more. Whenever you finish a quest line or finish an achievement, you get special costumes that give you special abilities. These special abilities can range from taking less damage or certain enemies ignoring you. And some of these costumes are great easter eggs or references to other series. One thing to know is that once you unlock the effect of a costume, it’s always active. Even when you are not wearing it, it’s active.

Negatives

Certain building mechanics are quite underdeveloped. When I wanted to place another oil pumping station, I had an extremely difficult time removing all the wood I had placed in the ocean. Also, I was unable to remove any land tiles that were blocking the pumping station.

The vaults are quite handy and aid you in stocking up resources. The issue I have with the vaults is that you are unable to choose where which item goes when your inventory overflows. At the end of my playthrough, I had several vaults and I didn’t know which item was where. It was always a find expedition when I needed to find one item or check if there weren’t item stacks that could be combined.

In an extension of that, the inventory management is too basic. You can’t move items in your inventory, you can’t change the order of the items in the hot bar. Also, when I was catching things with bottles, the hot bar sometimes switched to the caught item and I accidentally released the fairy.

The randomness and luck-based drops nearing the end can get extremely frustrating. There are two artifacts that I still have to get to complete the museum but the random drop rates of the remaining treasures are so low that after 5 hours of trying, I was unable to get even one of those drops.

There are some minor game-breaking bugs in the game. For example, there are some puzzles where the required items don’t always spawn. These bugs are fixed in the Steam version of the game, but I still experience them on the Nintendo Switch. The one that affected me is the bug with the mushroom puzzle on the rainbow island.

When you bought all the islands and crafted almost every upgrade, the game gets a bit boring. Not only is one of the final upgrades quite repetitive and slow to get, but there is also nothing to do after you bought all the islands. Now, this might change in the future, since additional content is being developed. Recently a new content pack has been released for the Steam version.

In most cases, the frame rate is quite stable. But, whenever you enter or exit a building or when there is a lot happening on screen… The framerate can drop drastically. For example, I noticed a lot of frame drops whenever I had some special buffs applied to me and I was digging all over the place. Speaking of the frame rate, there is one dungeon where you have to guide a beam towards certain obstacles to open the doors. How the longer the beam was, the worse the framerate got.

Conclusion

This game is quite a lot of fun, I enjoyed myself with this game quite a lot. But, the game can be a bit rough around the edges. There are some parts of the game that are still a bit underdeveloped and could some expanding.

The tricky thing about reviewing this game is that there are a few major updates planned and I have no idea what they will change or add to the game. I don’t even know if I have to restart or if I’m able to continue on the same save file when the updates come out. While some of them already got released on Steam, I don’t know if and when they come to the Nintendo Switch.

Yet, I still recommend this game to people who enjoy games like Terraria, Zelda or Minecraft. This game is a lot of fun and quite addictive as well. When I started playing this game, I had a very hard time putting the game down and playing other games. I’m very excited to see what the next updates will bring and which improvements it will bring to the game. Since if they polish the mechanics that I talked about in the negatives section of this game, the game can become even more enjoyable.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed right it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in a future article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 70/100

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From Manga to Video Game: Btooom!

Manga: Btooom!
Publisher: Yen Press
Mangaka: Junya Inoue
Genre: Action, Science fiction, Romance, Psychological

Concept Game: Btooom!
Genre: Third person action

This articles is being posted here for all my fellow cats, 14 hours before it appears anywhere else. I hope it is an enjoyable read. 
Many of us have played call of duty in the past and those that have not have certainly seen gameplay or heard something about this massive success in the FPS genre; it’s like Final Fantasy to the RPG genre and Btooom! to the TPA genre….. oh wait, there is no Btooom! Game, but what if there was?

What if the manga was adapted into a third person shooter style game for modern PC and consoles. Could you imagine the awesome fun it would be to play such a game? By this point if you have no idea of what I am talking about then don’t worry I will explain briefly before I delve into the meat of this article.

OK so btooom! Is a manga based on a fictional game that can easily be a game in real life. The story is about this boy that is considered a Net (basically a hardcore online gamer). He is despised by his mother who has taken a husband that the boy does not seem to be too keen on. The mother then gets information about a game, ironically a real game based on the exact game her son plays. This game is played by real people with stakes that involve life and death. The company claims to be taking trouble makers out of regular society and so the wench sends her only son with this company (yes I called her a wench, what kind of mother does what she does). He is taken without his knowledge or consent to a remote island populated by giant lizards and other individuals of a similar faith as him.

They were all chosen by a person close to them that despised them enough to submit their name to be sent to the island. The main theme of the manga is kill or be killed. To leave the island one has to collect 7 gems, 6 if you don’t count the one embedded in the individual’s hand. The hard part of this arrangement is that the only way to acquire these gems is to kill people and take it from their corpse. The main way in which they battle is via the use of various bombs, hence the name btooom! The bombs are of different types and each type has a different ability. There is the standard one that just explodes, then the ones that spread a deadly acid cloud, the ones that home in on their target and numerous others.

The Island you go to to die.

Now that we are all caught up on the plot we can discuss what it would be like if this manga was made into a video game. Now as the game is already a third person shooter style affair in the manga then I say it should stay close to the source material in that aspect. The style I have in mind is similar to that of an uncharted 3 multiplayer style of game play. I think it would benefit from no HUD to add to the immersion.

The only way the player would be able to tell what Bim (the Bombs) they have active. They would be to look at their character whose stance will change depending on the one he/ she has active. For example the homing Bim in the manga is activated by holding it in front of the user’s eye and locking it on to a target. So for one like that the character stance would switch to one that is holds the Bim up in front of them. This I think will add a certain depth to the game that will allow vets to show their class by memorizing the different stances as well as being able to switch effortlessly between them even while in motion. In btooom the characters soon notice that they have to ability to detect moving targets by using the gems in their hands and putting out a sort of sonar style of pulse.

This is a great feature for such a game as without a HUD it will not have a map. The player will have to use their wits while using this system as by using it will give out that player’s location even if they are not moving. It will also add that trill of the stalk where some players can stay hidden not moving with a homing Bim only to pounce on passers-by. The Uncharted style gameplay would allow for a very limited almost accidental from of movement and verticality. This is very important to keeping the authenticity to the manga. Why I say this is because remember these are regular folks that are placed into a situation that they themselves are not familiar with, as such the character should handle in a sort of floaty as the match starts but as they kill more of their fellow men the controls will become tighter, deliberate.

The better players will use this system to their advantage, but this does not mean that by proper planning and execution that a new player can’t take them down. The system should be fair enough to reward all players but still punish weaknesses. As manga has access to an entire island I think the map should be just that. It can be split up into sections for some modes and open for the purist. The island in the manga has creatures on it most notable are the giant poisonous lizards. These creatures will be perfect for a multiplayer environment. They will add a certain degree of uncertainty and in some ways prevent the average camper from being just that, a camper.

Btooom has is a bit of like a survival story and because of that the characters have to use their surroundings to help them survive the hash island life they have been forced to live. In a game of the same nature it would be interest to add mechanics like a simple crafting system that can allow players to set traps as well as protect themselves. The system should be simple like that of minecraft or Dayz. In a multiplayer game the gamer does not have time to use a deep system when around the corner could be a homing or acid Bim.

which Bim would you choose ?

The games objective should be the same as the manga’s. What this means for the player is that if they can collect 7 gems they can call in a chopper to get them off the island scoring them one point towards an upgrade or character customization items. IF they work as a team and acquire 14 or more they would reap better rewards. A player can also solo play it and kill everyone if he can and take all the bim for himself earning him more rewards along a certain tree. I think all the rewards should be on trees that reward players depending on play style. So a team oriented player would get different rewards from the solo act and so on.

I already described a few of the games mechanics I have in mind above so I’ll focus on just a few others I think would help make a proper adaptation of the manga. Swimming is one I think the game should have. It will allow the player to use the water to stalk other players or use it as a way to escape an attack like an acid Bim attack. In the manga the company does these drop offs of supplies via parachute but the quantity is always limited.

This forces the inhabitants of the island to fight for these supplies if they want to survive. In the game it can be similar to call of duty drops but they will be random and dropped in unoccupied locations on the map near players. This I believe will result in the players playing in a similar way as the characters in the manga do. Some may get to the drop first and leave it in the open as a trap to kill other players, while others may take out anyone that they meet as they approach it then take it for themselves. The outcomes are numerous and I’ll be interested in seeing how the players play the game (if it were really made).

So far I have described an online multiplayer style game and ignored a solo experience due to the fact that a game like this would benefit more from multiplayer and less from a solo experience. As someone that prefers a solo experience I more so than most would enjoy an experience I can enjoy by myself without the competitiveness of other players spoiling my story experience. If the game I have in mind were to have what my kind prefer then it would have to be a fully customizable character dropped into the world of the manga.

He/ She would have a plot line chosen by the player e.g. (A thirteen year old bully from a broken home that beats up and robs his fellow students). With a fully fleshed out back story the character is put into the plot of the manga along with the past and current characters. The player is now allowed to explore the island and choose how he wishes to tackle his/ her survival. They can choose to partner with other characters from the manga or kill them. The game play I invasion as a Dayz meets Farcry 3 type of game play or even one like fallout 3.

This is my proposal for a Btooom! The Game. What is yours?