Tag: chibig

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.

Game Review — Deiland: Pocket Planet (Switch)

writ­ten 7/06/2022

Dei­land: Pock­et Plan­et, released April 15, 2021, for Switch by devel­op­er CHIBIG, is an adventure/simulation/RPG remade from Dei­land which released for PS4 and Steam in 2018, which was also a remake from the orig­i­nal Dei­land: Tiny Plan­et which was released for iOS and Android in 2016. Pock­et Plan­et is a farm­ing adven­ture on plan­et Dei­land where the pro­tag­o­nist, Arco, is the sole inhab­i­tant. The young boy must care for the minor plan­et through farm­ing, craft­ing, build­ing, fish­ing, min­ing, and pro­tect its heart crys­tal from mon­sters and those who seek to use the pow­er for them­selves.

Rat­ing: 2.8 out of 5

Price: Paid $8.16 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: No

One Word Descrip­tion: Bor­ing

  • Pros: Throw­back to Sum­mer in Mara (if you played that first), good initial/basic game­play, smooth begin­ning advance­ment
  • Cons: Time, ran­dom events, RNG mining/drops, wait­ing, lack of clar­i­ty, bor­ing, fish­ing mechan­ics, fight­ing mechan­ics, minor glitch­es, pun­ish­ing hunger meter, lack of pause fea­ture

Game Review

The begin­ning of the game shows a young boy drift­ing down to a small plan­et. All he has ini­tial­ly is a tent and you get to run around a lit­tle to see that the plan­et is a sphere that rotates (kind of like Mario Galaxy) as you move. This made my ini­tial­ly wor­ried that I might get motion sick­ness because I’m real­ly bad about that, but I found that the more I plant­ed trees, the less I noticed the move­ment. Imme­di­ate­ly, a space trav­el­er appears, intro­duc­ing her­self as Mun from the inter­stel­lar troop­ers. I was excit­ed because hav­ing played Sum­mer in Mara first, I antic­i­pat­ed see­ing char­ac­ters I rec­og­nized. She gives you recipes and quests to start you off. The begin­ning smooth­ly push­es you into the building/farming aspect. I was busy plant­i­ng trees as I saw fit, their place­ment lim­it­ed by water sup­ply which required mate­ri­als. Build­ing new con­structs unlocks fur­ther recipes. Min­ing is heav­i­ly ran­dom in what is mined. You could get rocks, or gold/silver ore, or crys­tals, or in the win­ter, ice. New characters/merchants arrive, and you have 30 sec­onds to decide where to land the space­ship before they give up and go away. Then, when they land, they only stay for about 60 sec­onds.

After the ini­tial excite­ment of plac­ing trees, build­ing, upgrad­ing tools, etc, came the frus­tra­tion that would plague the rest of the game: ran­dom chance and time.

Every­thing is ran­dom, which isn’t ini­tial­ly bad until it is.

  • The fish­ing mechan­ics are just mud­dy and plain obnox­ious and espe­cial­ly in the begin­ning I kept wast­ing the pre­cious bait from hit­ting the wrong but­tons which are com­plete­ly ran­dom.
  • The arrival of vis­it­ing char­ac­ters does­n’t seem to fol­low any par­tic­u­lar order unless it’s to sat­is­fy a dia­logue quest. Giv­en that the quests and gath­er­ing of items spe­cif­ic to each character/merchant are depen­dent upon their vis­its, this gives a sense of help­less­ness to the play­er. There are only 2 char­ac­ters able to be called to the plan­et on demand and even then, they won’t come if cer­tain vari­ables are not in line such as storms, or anoth­er char­ac­ter is there, or some­times I have no clue why they won’t come.
  • The min­ing mechan­ics are just ter­ri­ble. Com­plete­ly ran­dom rate of drops which is super frus­trat­ing if you need a par­tic­u­lar min­er­al. There is a min­ing cave in the game where Arco can mine for crys­tals and then uncov­er some­thing in the back of the cave. To do so, you are allowed 4 mines before the cart is full and now you have to wait for Goliath to ran­dom­ly come so that it can be emp­tied, and you can fur­ther mine. (*spoil­er* it’s the crys­tal heart and adds noth­ing to the game and has no pur­pose)
  • Mete­orites or items will ran­dom­ly fall on the plan­et regard­less of what you’re doing. You could be fish­ing where it strange­ly changes the view, or even sleep­ing. If it hits your plants, they will burn
  • Ene­mies ran­dom­ly spawn. The num­ber ranges from 1–3 and what appears is ran­dom, too. Their drop rates can also be ran­dom depend­ing on the ene­my. For instance, you need insect wings for a quest, but the bees can drop either hon­ey or wings.

Time’s flow was an issue for me. It is unclear how the game tells time because there’s no clock show­ing, just the sky will change col­ors sort of. Each sea­son lasts for 7 days with win­ter being the worst because very few things grow and it’s just bor­ing to wait it out. Sleep­ing only advances time some­what and even stand­ing still did­n’t seem to advance time much, either. Oth­er times, time appears to move too quick­ly, and I’ve lost the oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant a par­tic­u­lar crop that is nec­es­sary for a quest, or that character/merchant has already left the plan­et. Towards the end of the game, there’s noth­ing left to do except wait for time to advance and it became unbe­liev­ably bor­ing. Also, time nev­er stopped. There was no pause fea­ture at all. I’d have to hit the Switch’s Home but­ton to pause.

The sto­ry advances via the main quest line through Mun. Sim­i­lar to Sum­mer in Mara the game is heav­i­ly quest depen­dent. Each com­plet­ed quest will unlock new items to buy from the mer­chants. It was real­ly nice to see Brram from Sum­mer in Mara and see his sto­ry when he’s clear­ly old­er (even at one point try­ing to woo females on his plan­et). Not only was his music nice, but he had the fish bait and food nec­es­sary to sat­is­fy the hunger meter. Even­tu­al­ly, the sto­ry allows move­ment to Anko­ra which was nice because final­ly, some oth­er place than the tiny lit­tle Dei­land. Final­ly, the end boss bat­tle shows up and the game is over unless the play­er wish­es to com­plete­ly fin­ish out the side quests.

The RPG ele­ment — the lev­el up sys­tem — seems com­plete­ly use­less with some­what appre­cia­ble upgrades to sta­mi­na, strength, intel­li­gence, and agili­ty. How­ev­er, the illus­tra­tions are eye-pleas­ing.

That brings me to the fight­ing mechan­ics. Well, it’s prim­i­tive, and many times phys­i­cal attacks would miss the ene­my alto­geth­er if Arco was juu­u­ust turned the wrong direc­tion. There seemed to be a best weapon to use against each ene­my, but I end­ed up either just whack­ing them to death or using mag­ic. Fire mag­ic would burn all of my plants or chick­ens, the light­ning did­n’t seem to work well on the mon­sters I tried, the ice spell seemed use­less because it encased the ene­my in ice but then made them impos­si­ble to hit. The frog spell was prob­a­bly the fun­ni­est one, but I received that too late in the game to real­ly take advan­tage of it. Heal­ing was hard because the heal­ing potions are set all the way at the bot­tom of the item list and since paus­ing is not an option, I was killed a few times try­ing to use a heal­ing potion. The game is by no means, hard, though. Heal­ing was only nec­es­sary for the last boss and the demon mon­ster that dropped horns. Speak­ing of the last boss, that bat­tle was plain obnox­ious. There was lit­er­al­ly no way to get out unscathed and you had to direct Mun to fire oth­er­wise she would­n’t.

The lack of clar­i­ty was frus­trat­ing. I turned to the inter­net a LOT in this game. How does the mine cart get emp­tied? How to get sheep­’s wool? Where is the plant­mu­tate seed? How does one get dan­de­lions? Who the hell is Bom and why do I keep hav­ing food stolen? How to get chick­en for Goliath (OMG you have to BURN the wild chick­ens????)? There’s just too much that’s not obvi­ous or explained. I can’t imag­ine try­ing to play this game before the inter­net made it easy to look things up.

Over­all — I, unfor­tu­nate­ly, do not rec­om­mend it. If you played Sum­mer in Mara it could go either way, but I’d still like­ly tell you to skip it. The game does flesh out Mun and Brram a bit, and does men­tion the pirate races and Ereti, so if that’s what you’re look­ing for, go for it, but def­i­nite­ly don’t pay full price. Ulti­mate­ly, its flaws out­weigh the sim­plis­tic charm of the game (name­ly, time pro­gres­sion and ran­dom chance) and it’s almost like the devel­op­ers want­ed to make a game that has a lit­tle bit of every­thing. I under­stand that it’s 6 years old and was orig­i­nal­ly a mobile game. I mean, it cer­tain­ly plays like a mobile game hop­ing to push micro­trans­ac­tions. Regard­less, I felt like I wast­ed my life play­ing this (took me 2 full days) game that left the taste of BOOOOORING (I even texted that I was bored out of my mind to my broth­er while wait­ing for the rest of the char­ac­ters to vis­it so I could 100% the side quests) in my mouth, which is not how I feel about Sum­mer in Mara, and don’t wish that on some­one else.

Glitch­es

Thank­ful­ly, there weren’t too many glitch­es in this game, but here are 2 that I found, both late in the game.

When try­ing to land in Anko­ra

Attempt­ing to put a track­er on Goliath’s ship. Mun, who isn’t there at all would appear. Lat­er, when she was on the plan­et and tried to talk to her, the dia­logue that Goliath would have spo­ken pops up instead.