What We're Playing: 'Forager' combines exploration with idle games
I'm a sucker for any video game that involves resource acquisition, crafting, and exploration. Forager ticks all of these boxes and more. It's been my favorite relaxation game for about a month, and it honestly gives Stardew Valley a race for his money.
Released in 2019, Forager immediately got great reviews from critics and audiences. I think I've had it on my Steam wishlist since its initial release, but never had time to buy it because I always had other things to play.
Then, with my new Lenovo laptop purchase, I got three free months of Xbox Game Pass. When I was browsing through the available games, Forager stuck, and I'm so incredibly happy that I finally gave it a try. With this game I finally found the outlet I was looking for after playing shit Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, terrariumsand other similar games.
In this section:
I like the art style
An art style doesn't necessarily make or break a video game, but considering how many hours you spend with a game, it certainly doesn't hurt to have an enjoyable art style. Forager has a pixel art style similar to Stardew Valley ou terrariums. There is something simple yet charming about this art style.
You would think that after seeing so many indie games embrace the pixel art style, I would be fed up, but no! It's a simple art style, but it's charming and nostalgic.
Gameplay: a combo of Stardew Valley, terrariumsand inactive games
When I first saw this game I thought it was basically a clone of Stardew Valley, just another farming sim with a slightly different premise. Whereas Forager remember Stardew Valley in some ways, like the ability to grow, craft, and decorate your home however you want, it's also unique.
With Stardew Valleythere is a clear idea of what you need to do first and some quests to follow in order. Forager is not like that. Instead, you get a very basic resource gathering tutorial, and then it's up to you how you want to grow and streamline your processes. You gather materials like stone, ore, wood, berries, cotton, or flowers to craft more tools and machines to make your base more livable.
You start out on a single piece of land covered in resources to mine. And as soon as you mine a resource, another randomly generated resource appears to take its place. It's not always instantaneous, but if you wait about five minutes, your whole land will be covered in mineable material again. As you progress through the game, you can build roads to lay down and prevent new resources from spawning, so you have a passable path at all times.
From your starting land, you can buy land in four different directions, as you can see in the photo above. Each time you buy new land to expand your base, you can buy any land above, below, to the right, or to the left of that new land. If you don't see any adjacent land available for purchase, you know you've reached the end of the map. For me, and I guess for a lot of people, the ultimate goal is to buy all the land available.
That said, there are a ton of other, smaller goals to complete throughout the game. With every new piece of land you buy, there's a chance it could house a dungeon or someone with a quest for you. . Some dungeons are individual rooms with a single puzzle to solve, while others have multiple rooms and more complicated puzzles.
Then there's a museum collection with eight sections to complete in exchange for treasure chests. Or, if you want to create one of everything before putting a game together, there's a ton to create. There are the basics of any game with crafting, such as a forge, a mill and a furnace, but you can also craft several weapons, gold to help you buy new land, a factory, a power station and a offshore oil drilling. You can even build locomotives and craft train tracks to follow a custom path through your base.
In some ways, Forager also reminded me of a game my husband recently played called Factorwhere you have to build a rocket to complete the game, but there are a million different ways to get there and make the game your own.
It's so easy to play for hours
If you've ever played an idle game on your smartphone, you know that there's usually a time when it gets old. For some people, that moment comes very early in the game, and for others, it's when it becomes too difficult to progress without constantly logging in. While many mobile games are idle, you have to pay for in-app purchases if you want to get going faster; Forager has no such paywall.
As long as you have food in your inventory to keep your energy up, you can mine endless resources and keep playing as long as you want. Even though I never intended to, there were several times when I thought I had only played an hour when I had actually played for four or five hours. I continually jump from task to task, remembering that I was lying on a road in an area, then spotting a dungeon I hadn't had a chance to explore yet.
I like games that have a clear story to follow, but it's nice once in a while to explore a game that seemingly has no purpose except to be an escape from a stressful world. If you have Xbox Game Pass, you can download Forager for free and try it out. Alternatively, you can purchase Forager for $19,99 on Steam, Nintendo Switch, or PlayStation.
