Kelly Denmade

I'm quite disappointed by this game. I wish I'd waited before purchasing it, so hopefully some problems could be fixed. I still have hopes that updates will improve the game. However, there are a lot of problems with the gameplay that I'm surprised have been accepted by the majority of people. Stamina: Like Dreamlight Valley, every single action you do uses stamina. It's not as easy as just eating an apple or ten to regain stamina. In the early game, all you can do is sleep the day away. The cycle is very short and very boring. Get, up, do as much as you can until your stamina runs out, go to bed (whilst it's still light) and then get up and do it all again. Later on you can cook food, but it would be much better if you could eat snacks or fruit all the time to keep it up. Keeping dinosaurs happy: If you don't keep your dinos happy, they simply leave. You get about a day or two to fix their problems until they pack their stuff and head out. It can be stressful in the early game because currency etc is very sparse, and the game encourages you to make friends with dinos without being prepared enough. Loading screens and fast travel: There's no fast travel in this game. Yes, the map isn't huge, but walking back and to from your home to the town gets very tiresome, especially when you run out of stamina and can't sprint. Most of the gameplay loop involves heading to town, so the loading screen between your house and the main map, and another one when heading into town, can get a bit annoying, especially on Switch. Controls: I wish I'd bought the copy on Steam instead of Switch, to see if I could just click to control, because the controls for Switch are actually awful. The character never points at the thing you want it to, and slides about like on ice, you can't input delicate inputs, and pressing the action button on something can be extremely finicky. This isn't due to drift either, as I was playing on a new pro controller. Your house: You can't go into the house. There's not even an animation for going to bed, the screen just goes black. Clearing the space in your garden feels very mobile game-esque due to the speed at which you clear an area. --- Positives: The dinosaurs are adorable and varied. Having multiple colours feels like collecting shiny Pokemon. They really are extremely cute and the standout of the game. The dinosaur calls minigame is well thought-out and fun to learn. Using your little flute to call over dinosaurs, you have to match their call pattern with a rhythm-esque mini game. It makes sense and it's fun! The NPCs are cute. Yes, there's no huge lore to each character but I wouldn't expect it. They're just varied enough for a cozy sim game like this. I really like them. --- What I'd change/what would bring my back to play again: The gameplay loop is far too short for a fully-priced game. It feels like a mobile game. I wish there was more to do with my day before my dinos and I run out of stamina. I can live with the loading screens, walking to town etc, if there was just more to do. I'd like to raise the dinosaurs, craft items, grow more varied crops, etc. Growing crops is necessary as currency is very hard to accumulate at first but you have to sleep to allow them to grow. Once you've cleared a couple of bits of debris in your garden, planted a couple of squares of crops and gone to town, it's only just midday and your character needs to sleep again to progress the game loop. I really hope they have plans for updates for this game because I was extremely excited to wishlist and preorder this game.