Game Feedback!

Hi all!

I'm compiling a list of feedback I'm going to send on their website. To preface, I think this game is incredible. This is not made with any negative intent--quite the opposite. I'm so excited and these are suggestions for the way I'd love to see this game polished. I'm a UX/UI nerd, so this stuff is interesting to me.

Please feel free to mention things you'd like to see changed in this thread and I might add it to my list.

I'm in year 2 and currently around 40h played time. There won't be HUGE spoilers, but I marked it as a spoiler in case you don't want to know anything about the game. Spoilers might include what sorts of things you can do in-game, not necessarily super specific information on storylines or quests. Peruse this list at your own risk.

BUGS

  • Sometimes when charging your pickaxe in the mines the area of effect disappears and while the animation continues, it doesn't land anywhere or break the rocks respectively
  • Animals will teleport through the fences even if they are completely enclosed
    • First noticed when I had play sections outside the fences, but then they do that even when this is fixed
  • I found a weird issue where the sound of an animation would repeat itself sometimes until I took a new action (like looking in a chest) -- I've only noticed this during the winter but it may happen all year round
  • Sometimes (but not always), you can't plant in spaces that have rock/tree in an adjacent square even though it does not intervene with the area you're planting
  • When you buy animals it doesn't deduct the right amount from your total
  • The random crashes

UX/UI

  • You can already tab between your bags so scrolling between them can actually hinder the UI since you can't get back to the first slot of Tab A/B/C very easily
  • The noise (compared to the rest of the sounds) when you chop trees, cut grass, and especially mine stone are really jarring at first. I'd reduce this sound slightly to be more in line with the other sounds in-game
  • Watering/planting favors the right, even when you have your cursor above or below your character. It needs to be slightly less sensitive and favor the way you're facing
  • You can't call animals back in if they fall asleep in front of the bell, and you can get mini-stuck if they stand in front of the doors (though I was able to make it through, it took some jiggling)
  • The animals will EAT YOUR CROPS ): and due to the teleporting issue I'm not sure how to stop them
  • Lots of animals encouraged, but the barns and coops are quite big with respect to your farm layout--this will still be an issue even with a barn/coop that holds more animals. Hoping that farm upgrades will translate to a bigger farm
    • Or maybe they can be reduced in size just a little/increase the number of animals each size barn/coop allows you to have
  • We should be able to see behind barns/trees/etc. Fade the item we're standing behind
  • It doesn't feel good to be stuck in the sword animation. I wish it was just a little less sensitive
  • Rock/trees should not spawn in dug up areas
  • Fences should close gaps
  • The area you build a bridge to at the beach allows you to jump into the water but it's surrounded by rocks so you can't get back up--and have to spend a lot of time in the water swimming somewhere else. This shouldn't be walled off
  • Would love to be able to manually pick up weeds or walk through them since cutting them often involves cutting down some of your precious grass
  • Sometimes bug spawn in places that will move you into the loading zone for the next area ):

BALANCE

  • Using magic to water should only take a quarter of a mana sphere (or less/needs to be reworked to a bigger area). There is rarely a reason to use it over giving yourself full stamina/growing crops. It doesn't save you time, and you recuperate much more stamina than you save by using your watering can and then just giving yourself the stam/health back (spell)
  • Fishing needs a slight exp buff. I'm into year 2 and fish regularly and it's the only one that I couldn't complete within the first year despite using it for money/dedicating days to it
  • Days need to be balanced around the targeted goal of what to do in a day. This game encourages you to breed animals and farm, fish and forage, mine and dig--but once you acquire a lot of animals you basically spend the entire day tending to them. Possible fixes include:
    • Making days longer
    • Making animals go back into their respective barns of their own accord or not mind being left out between sunny days
    • Making a bit more ore drop (you still may not complete the mines faster than 5-7 levels a day but you'd make progress towards upgrades/quests faster)
    • If you have the equivalent upgraded pickaxe to the biome you're in (in the mines) and spend the energy to break a large area it should actually break everything
  • I'd nerf the exp you get from archeology but add more spots to compensate
  • Ways to spawn bugs or to make rarer bugs more likely to appear/the net upgrades should mean something (maybe they add that in a future update?)
    • Could be a talent taken under another branch, too--if they don't want to dedicate something specific to it; maybe a miscellaneous tree
  • Wish fish were just slightly more common in mines
  • Pond skippers pause for half a second longer as they hit the edges, and should not pause where they are unreachable (IMO)
  • Because the game encourages having many animals/breeding and hoarding (for cooking/quests/whatever), feed for animals should be cut in half ($-wise)
  • Rock/trees respawn/regenerate outside the farm with each new day. Because of this, I don't think it's necessary to have it be so prevalent on the farm. It gets frustrating trying to clear out your farm over and over. Grass should also grow faster/more easily
    • While the ingredients for grass starters aren't necessarily rare, I still think it isn't in enough abundance to justify the use of more than weeds (especially because the other ingredient is used in other recipes)
  • Rocks are abundant, wood is not--common issue within these games. Would love for trees specifically to drop one extra log from the get-go
  • Anything you can forage that is used in any kind of crafting/recipe should really spawn in more than one area of the map
  • Speaking of misc talents, a way to make the processing of your animal products take less time

WANTS/WISHES

  • The people want Olric, and tbh most of the shop keepers are lookin kinda fineeee
  • Most of the dresses feel really bulky/long compared to your character (Maid/Overall dress both exceptions, love 'em both)
  • More than one farm layout to choose from would be cool
  • More types of pathways
  • Auto-feeders & silo (may already be planned, I'd be surprised if it wasn't)
  • Because you can see the amount of $ you get per item you're selling, would love to see a projected total in the bin (that combines all bins you're using)