Forager

Extremely fun for what it is and where it was left off, but just can't support randomly abandoned games. Especially one like this with so much potential.

decent and enjoyable grindy game

I'm gamedev myself, and that's what I think

Idea 3/10

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* Global item stash. Your items teleport directly from your storage to the machinery. And production teleports back to you as well. You can generally increase your inventory by building item vaults and putting items in here. Whenever you pick up an item that is in the vault and not in your inventory, it would teleport to the vault, making it a direct inventory enlargement. I like this approach; it's very convenient
Other than that, I didn't find much unique; nothing else that caught my eye.
At the beginning it looks cool, and I like the idea of combining an idle game with a rpg genre, but the implementation is kind of off the rail, and I'm not entirely sure what was the gameplay goal was at all.

Gameplay 4/10

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I would describe each stage of the game separately, because your goals will differ dramatically depending on your progress through the game
* In early game you would mostly grind. All the time you would gather resources to make better tools, gain experience to learn new skills (unlock new buildings / features), and earn money to buy more land. There are different ways of how you can earn much money/XP, so the amount that you need to grind depends on what skills you learn and how you progress through the game basically (you would grind until stable income of money/XP)
* In the mid-game, you would mostly buy all the land and complete dungeons/NPC quests. There is quite a lot of stuff for single-time completion. I didn't find it interesting, though. Other than that, you would upgrade your gear, max out stats, and make infinite resource production.
By the way, I don't understand why you have so much gear, because it is useless. You would really use Pickaxe only in the early game, when you cannot afford to upgrade it much. You don't really need to upgrade the shovel or bow; you don't really get much out of other equipment either. The really important thing is the resource multiplier gear. But overall, I feel pretty weird about equipment
* In late game, you would scale your production. But the building resource costs are growing exponentially, so you're very limited in how much you can actually build. Nuclear machinery is very dependent on, let's say, manual maintenance, so you cannot build much of it either. Overall, after mid-game, your only goal that I see is to complete all the achievements
Generally, game design is weird as hell. There is no goal the whole game. You have some things you want to achieve in the early game, such as learn certain skills or upgrade equipment, which give you the interest to progress. But this is grindy and short-lasting. There is no reward most of the time. Like, you gathered enough gold? Good, I'll give you a boring NPC who would give you a useless reward. The only bright side is you're getting more land where resources can spawn. And stuff like that happens all the time
Also, there are many problems and very little polishment. It's very raw. For example, sounds. In early-midgame, you would have many production machines, and each one would generate sound, which is an absolute nightmare. You obviously can turn SFX sound off and end up with a silent game, which is far from ideal. Why it's heard by the player in the first place and why there is no even an option to turn it off (all sounds except for ones made close to the player or by the player). This is so obvious
To sum it up, I'm extremely disappointed with the game design. With a fascinating beginning and seemingly much content, you grind in hope of a cool late game and end up with nothing

Replayability 3/10

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As mentioned before, we can separate the game into a couple stages. Where early game is simple 5–10 hours grind with little interactions from time to time. Mid-game is 5 hours to generally complete everything the game can offer, build every building and so on. After that, you can grind for about 10 more hours (and maybe 5 hours of AFK on top) to get every achievement and finish the game for 100%. In total, around 5 hours of interesting gameplay and 25 hours total to complete the game. There is also no reason to play for the second time, so you're limited to a single play through.
In my opinion, replayability value is very low, especially for an idle & rpg game where both of these genres tend to have high replayability value. And moreover, most of the gameplay is the grind
So, replayability is bad, in my opinion

Controls/UI/bugs 0/5

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* Keyboard controls aren't convenient. You must point at each resource you want to gather, whenever on gamepad it's selected automatically (the closest one). Why it's not the same for keyboard is questionable for me
* Gamepad controls have some flaws. Starting from hard to navigate on the toolbar when you have many options. I would like to see switchable 2 rows instead, for example. And finishing with impossible-to-aim bow/rods because when you release the aim joystick, your aim position is reset to default (straight to the right). I'm not talking about making auto aim and target selection (which would be great for a casual game), but a simple must-have thing that any game tester would notice as well as 10 minutes of coding to implement. That's simple laziness of the developer
* UI is bad and most of the time is inconvenient
* Lack of QOL features such as no "Move all backpack items to vault", which would come very handy, because in dungeons your items aren't teleported to them automatically, and they overcrowd your inventory
* Encounter some minor bugs, such as an unbreakable, not unlockable small chest, but nothing crazy
Overall, many many flaws

Overall rating 10/35 (3/10)

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I would say the potential is great, but implementation is pure disappointment. There are many problems with game design and so incredibly little polishment. The game is generally raw, and it's abandoned already. When it just came out, I can imagine people played it because they liked the idea, saw potential and wanted the game to grow and develop, but it's now abandoned in the raw state and even the multiplayer that the developer promised to make isn't done. I don't recommend. Had huge potential though

Extra

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Tl;Dr
HopFrog the lead dev is not a good person, and this game is technically not finished, however the game is really good and fun, but make your own choice on wether you want to buy this or not

Should you play forager.

I'm gonna break my review down into why i think you should, and explain why you shouldn't because of the giant elephant that is hopfrog.

Why you should:
The game is great, the actual gameplay and progression is simple and pretty fun, depending on what skills you pick up during the beginning of the game determines how fast or slow you make progress, while having the islands that you unlock randomized aswell, given the biomes. so the order you do stuff changes depending on the play through and its great for replayability.

On top of that the Achievements are all interwoven with the game's experience, allowing costumes and extra bonus content to be unlocked and acessed via the achievements.

The game can get grindy and a little tideous by the end but it's defiently a fun game.

As to why you Shouldnt:
Hopfrog.

Looking through the reviews and understanding what this dev did to his team, and overall not fufilling the games road map, is upsetting.

He was an arogant person, and was taking credit, and aruging with his team behind the scenes.

I will say that i do not know the full story, as i am just a steam reviewer, and i do say you should 100% research into this yourself. But If i new about this going in, for me i might not have bought this game at all.

So your choice honestly but yeah

I really enjoy the game. There's a few small things I'd wish were different, but I also played for nearly 5 hours straight and didn't realize I was playing for that long until I realized my hand was cramping on the controller. If you're a fan of concepts like skyblock or sky factory, I think you'll enjoy this.

Played the game before when I was younger and just discovered cracked games. Forager was on my list for quite a while and so I gave it a shot. Recently I saw it was on sale and had this deep desire to revisit my memories and get all of the achievements as well. I did that successfully and enjoyed the process of doing so (at least most of it)... However........

I would not recommend to anyone else to play this. Game offers little to no replayability and once you get the just of it, it's just glorified grinding. The game is extremely pricy for what it has to offer - the first few hours of playthrough may be joyful but with time it becomes more boring. I know this saying may be getting old but... Vampire Survivors is cheaper AND has a lot of room for replayability and in general is a better bang for your buck!

TL;DR the game is overpriced and does not really feel like the game which should have such price slapped onto it. Not enough vastness in the game to think of playing it more than once / more than 10+ hours (I only continued playing because of achievements). Furthermore, everything can be maxed out if yk how to cut corners / watch couple of tips n tricks.

Game is kinda buggy and the inventory GUI is so annoying to use.

You become OP very easily, the hard part is more get time to burn it while getting the achievements

i really love this game! it feels super relaxing and its a great way to pass time. i did, however, feel the need to install 2 mods to make the game not completely agonizing at times (scaling cost annihilator and fast crafting). the game is really amazing (as far as ive played) and its really nice. however, main developer, i hope you feel remorse for the fun you abandoned and the developers you antagonized. on a happier note, keep foraging people! :D

I am writing this review after having achieved all of the Steam Achievements

This game is really interesting.

It was just OK in my opinion. The Achievements were surprisingly not as grindy as you would think (barring one).

This is the kind of game that you can very easily get addicted to. And as a RuneScape player, I do love a grind. And I did enjoy it for the most part.

The best way to describe my gripes with this title, is "lack of polish".

I just feel like with a little bit more QOL, and a facelift, we'd be looking at a true winner.

If you want to kill a few days, like to grind, and enjoy seeing number go up. It's worth picking up on sale. But other than Achievement hunters and people with the grind-gene, I don't see a case for recommending this. If I *wasn't* going for all the Achievements (as I do), I really can't see the point in the game. The dungeons are uninspired, the combat is really mediocre, dying isn't punishing (and just extremely annoying), and there is no story/end goal (outside of the Achievements).

By no means am I bashing the game. I did enjoy my time with it for the most part, but you aren't getting into anything incredibly special with this one. And that's ok.

Clunky user interface on PC, maybe its better on a touchscreen device.
If you use E to open a machine interface it seems to me you should be able to use E to toggle it back off vs ESC.
After clicking on an inventory item to regain your stamina each time you click Use the item changes and you have to reselect the item you were trying to use multiples of.
It became a game of trying to manage inventory space and that wasn't fun.

This game is amazing 10/10. But the grind oh man the grind.

Original "dev" seems to be a real... whatever. Trying to keep a clean image while earning money on other ppls work without paying fairly.
Additionally the promised updates since 2020 never came... it's abandonware by now.

Search Youtube for "The DARK Side of Forager..." for some in depth information. 🔍

The game itself has real potential and is some mindless fun to wind down, but I cannot play this anymore without having a bad feeling in my gut.

I remember playing this game as a kid on Xbox and i liked it very much, so I decided to buy and play it here on steam again. But in order to play this game, I need to change the framerate of my monitor because if i don't, the game will run very slow and that ruined my experience. it's a shame a good game like this was abandoned by developers

Forager is good fun (if a bit grindy, which can be changed with mods). But its also completely abandoned because the lead dev HopFrog sucks. Get it for free somewhere else if you want it.

Not really a completionist, but something about this game had me HOOKED enough to gain all 103 achievements. Definitely recommended for a casual grindy game. 10/10

Yes, it's a fun game. But the developer made some bad moves, deciding his own wealth was more important than compensation for the hard work of the people he hired specifically for skillsets he did not possess. I think it's a great game, but not a game I feel comfortable playing after what I've heard. Don't support bad faith developers.

lead dev is a piece of garbage. abandoned the game and blamed the other devs working on it. don't support him

the game is great, i use a low performance laptop form 2023 i know im late but it runs at 60 FPS even when a ton of stuff is going on, and player customization is a 10/10

This game is a very fun, cheap game, which I feel is rare to find nowadays and i love how their is always something to do even once you finish the islands "Quests." I've played on my xbox for probably upwards of 100-200 hours and loved every minute of it.

great time sink and just a super fun game

Game's a lot of fun, but there's no end to it. You literally reach a point where there is nothing to do.
Apparently the game was abandoned.

It's fun if you can get it on sale.

It's fun but i think i need to play it a bit more. i only have 96 achievements

I would love to recommend this, seriously, but for one, the dev abandoned this game. From what I heard he isnt a great person either. My main concern is that I literally havent been able to launch this game in a long time now. It must be 2 years by now, if not 3. Neither reinstalling nor resetting my pc fixed this issue.

The game is really good but my save file randomly deleted. Hours of my life basically wasted so I can't recommend it.

The game is alright, a few issues on deck that can be worked around. the devs stopped updating yet will not mention that fact anywhere leading to some talking about some bugs thinking they will be updated yet they never will

love the game but sad to see that it was abandoned would still recommend it if nya want a chill cozy game

8,5/10 bonked beets

A nice difficult game that will keep you entertained for hours]

I absolutely LOVE Forager, it is a fun grindy kinda game with lots of crafting and advancements. If you like
Terraria or Minecraft or even Stardew Valley, you'll probably love this game too! The game has a fighting aspect like Terraria, mining and gathering like Minecraft, and lots of farming and expanding land like Stardew Valley. If you like a combination of these games and like to grind? Get forager! Plus it's cheap!

Really fun. I do not know what else I should say. Its a great game! It would take me a long time to say how much great things are in the game.

This is an edit, but I said "Its a great game!" I meant to say "It is a great game!".

Near perfect game, my only problem is that some buildings work too slow. But that;s probably a good thing because it gives you more time to play.

this is the game that I comeback every once in 5 months. Its alright, but thats about it. its very mid. Issues being developer being an asshole

This game is addicting to its core, from its gameplay loop, to the sound design, and the bouncy animations.
It's quite fun in the beginning and mid game when there's endless directions to go in, but I find it frustrating/lacking once you have no more levels to gain and nothing to spend your coins on and you're spending hours in the void for what feels like no reward.
This game is all about dominating the land and creatures around you and once that is done with hundreds of droids and nearly 1,000 dmg you're p much done even though there is technically more achievements. I assume mods would make the slog of the end game more enjoyable but I haven't used any myself.
I don't know if I can recommend this game in good conscience however bc there are some poor quality of life choices and VERY big game breaking bugs that have never been fixed to my understanding.
For the bugs, a large one is the sudden complete loss of the ability to use any tools. For pc users I heard pressing Alt can trigger this, but I play on steam deck and I don't believe anyone has ever found a fix. This happened to me in the late game when I already had 100+ droids so it wasn't the end of the world, but if you were to get this bug early on you just literally wouldn't be able to play. Restarting the game, any settings, key remapping, none of that fixed it. For me it just randomly started working again when I was in the void.
Another large glitch is that you can just get stuck when you're in the void, and that is simply the end of your run. This happened to me when I was over 100 levels in so you can imagine the frustration.
As for poor QoL, having your pet's sit button be the same as the interact button is very annoying so you'll just lose it constantly. Also the game incentivizes you to have a bunch of drones, but they clutter the screen so much it's hard to see what is happening or even where you are. Imo one of the most annoying things is placing and removing flooring when it comes to the docks and dirt. Having any structures anywhere near where you want to edit the ground makes the task impossible (as well as digging when there's water nearby), and when one of the achievements is to cover up all the water? Yeah no thanks sorry
Overall it's fun in short bursts, but if you're any sort of completionist stay far away. If you're into modding I might reccomend it, but overall you might want to save your time unless a large QoL update happens.

Performance
---------------------------------
☑ Amazing
☐ Great
☐ Good
☐ Bad
☐ Terrible

Gameplay
---------------------------------
☐ Amazing
☑ Great
☐ Good
☐ Bad
☐ Terrible

Is It Replayable?
---------------------------------
☑ Yes
☐ No

Is It Fun?
----------------------------------
☐ Super Fun
☑ Very Fun
☐ Fun
☐ Not Fun
☐ Boring

Features
---------------------------------
☐ Great Features
☑ Good Features
☐ OK Features
☐ Bad Features
☐ Featureless

Is It Tedious?
----------------------------------
☐ Yes
☑ Sometimes
☐ No

Overall Score: 8.17/10

My Comment on This Game:
Very good game! I love the mechanics and the polish on it! I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun and satisfying game.

Really fun progression especially toward the end

This game is really well made I'll suggest for anyone that wants to like play it feels really fun to have every single thing in the game lmao

Fun game to automate and stuff, boring end-game thou.

I bought this before I realized the lead Developer was a narcissistic bag of cocks. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/04/forager_team_retaliates_after_lead_dev_blames_them_for_cancelled_multiplayer

Don't support the developer of this game, the workers of the game were paid barely next to the minimum while the lead Dev made bank.

Forager is what happens when you take The Legend of Zelda, mix it with Minecraft, and then sprinkle in the kind of obsessive resource-hoarding that would make a raccoon jealous. You start with nothing but a pickaxe and a dream, and before you know it, you’ve bulldozed entire ecosystems, built a fully automated capitalist empire, and are drowning in more gold than a cartoon villain. The gameplay loop is pure dopamine—chop trees, mine rocks, build stuff, repeat—until suddenly, it’s 3 AM, and you realize you’ve spent the last four hours collecting virtual turnips.
The real magic of Forager is how it tricks you into thinking, just one more thing! You set out to build a small farm, and next thing you know, you're managing an army of mining lasers, summoning demons, and questioning whether you’re the hero or just an adorable pixelated tyrant. The game is cute, addicting, and dangerously good at making time disappear. 9/10, would recommend, but only if you don’t have important responsibilities—because Forager will make sure you ignore them all.

missed opportunity. Its sad to see 4 years without update

This game is really fun and I've loved it for a long time but I don't think this game is ever getting an update again lmao. Even if it doesn't it's still really fun I just think it's not as good as it could be (cough, hopfrog if you read your reviews, add multiplayer and nothing else. Just that, I will love you forever)

this game has replayability. wish it had some more content

I tried really REALLY hard to like this game. But the game just really fucking sucks. You feel stuck in the beginning since you only have one square of land to work with. As you open up more squares of land, you really don't get anything new. At first, you get some cool QoL upgrades, but then you just start unlocking new biomes which are literally just fragmented pieces of land. I got to level 25 or so and I kept on doing the same thing: using fish traps to feed myself and upgrading my pick/shovel/etc so I could just continue holding down left click to continue getting more things which allow me to progress ever so slightly. The reason I didn't change up my playstyle, despite having acquired new skills via leveling up is that the skills themselves are simply not that good and boring. After about 23 hours, I am done. I don't think I'll ever come back to this game and It will forever say in my "shitty games" category in my library.

This game starts off fun but the end game is extremely slow. it takes forever to make the materials needed to progress further. I had my fun with my 25 hours. I'm moving on to something else.

This game is unfortunately abandoned. There hasnt been an update since 2019-2020. If you find current gameplay fun then go for it, but dont expect more content unless its mods.

Pretty cool and chill game to become addicted for hours, my only problem it's when it comes to the last achievements like "Coin collector" or "Production Master" which requires a lot of time even if you maximize every little thing you can it just doesn't feel worth the time, and that would probably my only complaint about it.
It's a shame the community never got multiplayer but it's still addicting on solo and fun.

no multiplayer still and locked at 30fps unless your monitor refresh rate is a multiple of 30 frames

Although I haven't played too much, I can tell this little game is incredible. This game is so much fun.

Good gameplay loop, fun not too difficult puzzles, NPCs have some good jokes, all in all a fun lite experience although it gets really grindy by the end with the nuclear stuff.

Some kind of survival game mixed with an idle game. This is the type of game that will suck up all of your time if it is able to get its hooks into you, but I just found this game to be too boring for me. Found myself just sort of not knowing what I should be doing for most of the time, resulting in me just farming for resources with no real goal.