Day: June 3, 2023

Game Review: Ankora Lost Days (Switch)

written 6/03/2023

Released on September 15, 2022 for Steam and Nintendo Switch, then later on March 30, 2023 for PS4 and Xbox, Ankora Lost Days is the 3rd game released by CHIBIG. It stays in the same world as Summer in Mara (2020) and Deiland: Pocket Planet (2021), following the exploits of Junior Ranger Mûn who managed to crash her ship on Ankora, the home world of the Anks. Similar to its predecessors, Ankora Lost Days is an adventure game with crafting, leveling, cooking, and fighting elements along with terraforming. Mûn works to not only find the missing pieces of her ship to send a distress signal to her Interstellar Patrol comrades, but to help the Anks save their world.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Price: Paid $7.49 out of MSRP $14.99

Recommended: Eh…yes if you’re a series fan. No, otherwise

One Word Description: Repetitive

  • Pros: Part of the Mara world, Mûn is a recurring character, gardening, crafting, no item limits on bag, decent game graphics, many quests, caters to completionists
  • Cons: Fetch quests, random drops, difficult to find the one item necessary for every room, slow, fishing, annoying music, hunger, stamina, and drink bars, mind-numbing

Game Review

The game starts with Mûn, having crash landed, exploring the world, which is grid-based both in each room and on the map. She makes her way over to the tutorial section where a nice Ank merchant directs her through crafting some basic tools. After that, the storyline starts, and Mûn is tasked with some tasks before Koda, the Chief Ank dies. Then it’s Harvir who is her main taskmaster. Each room has terraforming or building obstacles that must be overcome in order to access new rooms. Fighting through enemies, opening up new rooms, restoring Ank “villages,” and fulfilling everyone’s quests unlock new recipes for food, items, tools, and weapons. Finding and restoring quick jump pedestals as well as fishing boats all help to traverse the map. Now, there is NO optional quest in this game. Every quest needs to be done in order to unlock craftable recipes. If you get stuck, it’s likely you need to fulfill someone’s task to move forward. The end of the game culminates in a big 2-boss fight that was laughably easy. 100% completion!

For a completionist, this game is great. You pretty much can’t beat it without getting 100%! There’s no need to go back and get or do anything more.

Game Goods

Flow: The beginning is crazy frustrating without the necessary items and tools to traverse the map. However, it flows well, and soon, money is easy to come by and everything can just be bought. By the mid-end of the game, bridges are a worry of the past and it’s smooth sailing from there. Each room holds onto the revisions you’ve established nicely. Increased stats really help.

Text: If you’re one to pay attention, there’s a lot of read. Each Ank has its own story, problems, and personality. Sadly, I found myself not caring in the least about the text even though someone clearly spent a lot of time fleshing it out, and just button mashed my way through them to get on with the game.

Addicting: Inexplicably addicting. I spent most of the game cussing at it, but I kept wanting to play. Why? I don’t know! I would have given it a 2 out of 5, but I bumped it to 3 because for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get it out of my mind when I wasn’t playing it!

Game Gripes

Random: Ugh. Again with the randomness being a problem with these games! Every herb, every drop, every monster spawn is random! Will you get that flax you so desperately need for the damn bridges that are required in basically every room? Maybe, maybe not!

Frustrating: Oh man. Frustrating is the key word for much of this game. From not being able to find that one single item that’s needed for rope building, to endless back and forth fetch quests, to those 2 GODDAMN rooms (mostly that one stupid room) that look traversable only to find that you actually can’t go through them, but you forget every single time you look at the map, to Mûn’s insanely slow walking speed, to her initially, criminally low stamina bar…this game is just a barrel of laughs. No. It’s full of tears. TEARS. Halfway through the game, I almost quit several times, and kept muttering curse words under my breath as I continued to play because I’m a completionist, dammit.

Lost: Yep. True to its namesake and plot, you’re just lost most of the time. Every room looks the same, every Ank looks the same.

Buggy: I fell off a few ledges when running on the sides. Thankfully the game resets after a while.

Bad Menu/Interface: Switching among tools was clunky even though it should have been straight forward. Sometimes it would switch twice instead of once with one button push. The menu cursor was very laggy. Given how much map reliance there is in the game, there is no dedicated map button. Instead, you have to open the menu and tab then over to the map, which would work and sometimes wouldn’t. Mûn should also have been given a perpetual running feature or at least a toggle.

Art: It’s like several different people created art for this game. The Start menu art is great! Mûn is like she is portrayed in the other games. Unfortunately, the animated scene Mûn, the gameplay Mûn, the status gauge Mûn, and the text character art Mûn are completely different from each other. I, myself, particularly disliked the portrayal you see most often: the text character art. The excessive emotions were honestly off-putting. Both that and the status gauge face make her look like a little girl and not the young woman she’s supposed to be. I found myself skipping through all the text so I wouldn’t have to look at her ugly mug. Why create a character and then change it 2 games in?

Repetitive/Boring: When it comes down to it, the biggest barrier for this game is the game at its core: fetch quests. That’s all there is to it. The entire game is about fetch quests. I’m all for side quests, but dang, all the backtracking and trying to remember the best paths…To be fair, I should have known better because all 3 games by CHIBIG so far have been fetch quest games. The story is super flimsy. You only hear of the main baddie towards the end, and he doesn’t really seem all that bad given the other Anks just sit on their butts and tell Mûn what to do.

In Conclusion

I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this game to the average gamer. It’s way too repetitive, and the main plot is as thin as cheap toilet paper. The only people I’d recommend it to are those who have played the other 2 games and are ensconced in the lore. With that said, the peculiar addictiveness of the game influenced me to finish it all the way despite several attempts to just quit. There’s just something about it… You know what I find interesting is that Summer in Mara came out first in 2020, and yet, of the three games, it is the most solid and most fun one of them all. It runs the smoothest and is much more intriguing. I was appalled to see that Ankora Lost Days came out in 2022. I would have bet money on it going Deiland then Ankora then Summer in Mara. I hope that CHIBIG’s next games (their website shows 3 new games coming out this year) are better because these last two have been rather disappointing in my opinion.

Vegan Cranberry Orange Shortbread Cookies

written 06/03/23, updated 02/18/24

What

Making shortbread cookies with dried cranberries and orange zest with vegan butter.

Ingredients and Supplies

Serving: 12-15 cookies (Double measurements for more)

Electric Mixer, Wax Paper/Plastic Wrap, Refrigerator, Knife/Food Chopper, Silicone Spatula, Zester/Grater

All-purpose Flour (1 cup), Baking Powder (1/8 tsp – optional), Salt (1/16 tsp)

Butter (1/2 cup softened = 1 stick), Confectioners Sugar (1/4 cup)

Vanilla Extract (1/2 tsp), Almond Extract (1/4 tsp), Orange Zest, Orange Extract (optional)

Cranberries, chopped (1 cup), Walnuts (puree or chopped, optional, 1/2 – 1 cup)

Time

Prep (30min) + Chill (~ 4 hrs) + Bake (10 min) = 4 hrs 40 min

Steps

  • Mix together Flour (1 cup) and Salt (1/16 tsp). Optionally, add Baking Powder (1/8 tsp) for fluffiness
  • Use electric mixer on medium to beat the Vegan Butter (1/2 cup softened) and Confectioners Sugar (1/4 cup) until it’s smooth. Stop and scrape the sides, if needed
  • Add the Vanilla Extract (1/2 tsp) and Almond Extracts (1/4 tsp), as well as the Orange Zest. Optional: Orange Extract for stronger citrus flavor
  • Mix in the Flour mixture in gradually while beating on low until everything combines well
  • Fold in the Chopped Cranberries (~ 1 cup), until evenly distributed
  • Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface (or directly onto plastic wrap/parchment paper)
  • Roll into a log
  • Wrap in either parchment paper or plastic
  • Set in refrigerator for 4ish hours to harden
  • Remove wrapping
  • Preheat oven to 350F (180C)
  • Slice into discs (your choice of thickness)
  • Bake at 350F for 12-15 minutes (your preference for doneness)
  • Let cool on racks, in fact, overnight, uncovered is best for the vegan cookies

EAT

Pictures

Chopper
Chopped
Butter and Sugar
Adding flavor
Gradual Flour mixture add
Whirrr
Cranberries: IN!
Dough
Turned out…a little wet
Ball Formed
Log Rolled
Wrapped and to the Fridge
3 Hours later unwrapped
Sliced
Flattened
Loaded into Oven
OOOOOOO

Result (June 2023)

Immediately , they ended up soft, crumbly, and sticks easily to the inside of the mouth. For the cranberry lovers this is great! Clementine usage instead of an orange made the cookies a bit bitter and lacked in citrus flavor. I don’t like the crumbling, melting texture. By the next morning it was almost perfect! It allowed the cookie to harden more and was quite enjoyable! Adding some nut pieces might add to the texture

Next Attempt (Feb 2024)

Used a dash of Orange Extract, real Orange Zest, pureed walnuts, soaked cranberries in boiling water, added a tablespoon of vegetable shortening (Crisco), while keeping all other instructions the same. Seemed less sweet this time, but good taste. Shortening makes it much more like shortbread (duh). Soaked cranberries makes the dough a little darker

Dry combo
Walnut pieces
Pureed
Butter, shortening, sugar
Zest and extracts
Lightly chopping soaked cranberries
Mixed
Turn out
Balled
Rolled
Fridge
4 hours later unrolled
Sliced
Squished
Fresh! Hot!
Cooling
Thinner Batch

Notes

  • I used a stand mixer with the standard paddle attachment
  • I wasn’t sure about dough consistency. Many recipes called for a good mix, but not too much. I gather you want something just well incorporated, not necessarily super smooth. Mine ended up wet because I added too much orange juice
  • Vegan Butter is much lower in saturated fats than regular butter. I think that has something to do with the crumbliness of vegan cookies as a whole. Apparently, coconut oil can be substituted one to one to regular butter because it provides the high fat content needed to compare to regular butter. Aquafaba which is the liquid in a can of chickpeas is a great egg white substitute for binding.
  • If you don’t have a food chopper, you can use a knife
  • Softened Butter means soft, but not melted. Basically, it’s the same as room temperature. I read that you can also just mix it in the bowl a bit before adding the other ingredients.
  • Softening butter can also be done in the microwave. I did mine about 15 seconds
  • You can add or take away from the sugar or cranberries as per your taste
  • I didn’t have an orange, so I used a Clementine…Not recommended
  • On my very first attempt, I completely messed up the measurements for the baking powder, using cups instead of teaspoons. Everything was great until I tried to eat them. NASTY NASTY NASTY. Too much baking powder makes food a weird salty, bitter, grainy mess! It smelled good at least…