Info about Wildmender: Official game description: Join our Discord ================ About the Game ============== Wildmender is a game about bringing a deserted world back to life. Explore the vast desert, alone or with friends. Collect plants and bring them back to your garden to thrive. Craft new tools and use them to shape the earth, and channel water to your plants. Delve into the mysteries of a fallen civilization and discover their magic. Befriend animals, spirits, and seek out the gods to help you defend the land from the vicious wraiths who seek to corrupt it. It’s up to you to save the world, one seed at a time. Turn the Desert Green --------------------- With the tools you crafted, set out to grow the little oasis in the middle of a vast desert into your own thriving garden. Plant seeds, dig canals, nurture your plants, craft useful and beautiful structures, harness magical essence, protect against the forces of nature, and more! You’ll have plenty of space and choices to create the garden of your imagination. Acre by acre, you will reclaim the desert and reforest the world. Explore, Forage, and Survive ---------------------------- Explore the desert around you. It is not as barren as you think! Forage for seeds and resources. Store them for a longer journey or bring them back to your garden, the choice is yours. Manage your food and water carefully as your journey through the dunes, the drained and salted sea, the poisoned canyons, and the cold and distant mountains. The farther you adventure, the greater the peril and rewards. Rare minerals, exotic plants, adorable creatures, and ancient spirits await your discovery. Uncover the Mystery ------------------- What happened to this world? How did everything go wrong? How did the life-draining wraiths corrupt the land? Journey to the temples of the gods, learn their stories, rediscover arcane magic, unlock powerful weapons, tools, and abilities to help you defeat the wraiths, free the gods, and breathe new life to the world. 4-Player Co-op Gardening ------------------------ Invite up to 3 of your friends to your garden online! Work together to tend your flourishing garden. Share resources and survive together. Adventure with friends through the lonely desert. Fight together against dangerous wraiths. But don’t forget, with more hands to garden you’ll have more mouths to feed! Customize your Garden and Looks ------------------------------- Just let nature take its course or style the garden to your liking. Craft structures and tools to decorate and shape the terrain. Build bridges over canals, a footpath dotted with lanterns, stucco walls with a gate, magical sigils that return bees to your garden, a streaming waterfall with a pool below, and more. Craft a loom and weave a wide variety of outfits to travel the desert in style. Features: --------- * Dozens of plant species to cultivate and grow, each with a variety of cultivars to be discovered * 50+ craftable structures and tools to build and manage your perfect garden * 75+ unlockable perks and ability upgrades * 1-4 player online Co-op multiplayer * Procedurally generated world for a unique challenge every replay * Day-night cycle: plants thrive and grow in the sun, while ghosts roam the cool nights * Variety of outfits for your character * Difficulty settings and game modes that can be adjusted on the fly Release date: 28 Sep, 2023 Categories: Gardening, Terraforming, Cooperative Multiplayer, Exploration, Survival, Base Building, Crafting, Single-player Story - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Overall Positive & Engaging Experience (weight 1): Players consistently praise the game's overall quality, finding it beautiful, engaging, and highly enjoyable. Many describe it as a unique, relaxing, and addictive experience that offers significant value and a strong sense of accomplishment. - Satisfying Oasis & Garden Building (weight 0.44): A core strength of the game is the highly satisfying and fun experience of cultivating and expanding the oasis. Players enjoy the freedom of creation, the visual progression of transforming barren land into lush gardens, and the engaging mechanics of planting, terraforming, and managing water. - Cozy, Casual, & Customizable Gameplay (weight 0.42): The game is widely appreciated for its casual and cozy nature, making it suitable for relaxed playstyles, including co-op with friends. Its adjustable difficulty settings allow players to tailor the experience to their preferences, whether seeking a challenge or a more laid-back session. - Rewarding Exploration & Transformation (weight 0.3): The exploration aspect is highly rewarding, with players enjoying the discovery of new areas and resources. The game provides a strong sense of accomplishment as they transform the desert into a thriving oasis, visually representing their progress and hard work. - Engaging & Poignant Story (weight 0.1): The game's story and lore are consistently praised for being engaging, well-told, and often poignant. Players find the narrative endearing and interesting, keeping them invested until the end. - Beautiful & Soothing Music (weight 0.1): The music and sound design are frequently highlighted as excellent, contributing significantly to the game's calming and atmospheric vibe. The soothing soundtrack enhances the overall experience. - Well-Paced Progression System (weight 0.08): The game features a well-paced and engaging progression system, guided by quests and skill upgrades. Players appreciate the gradual acquisition of new abilities and tools, which keeps the gameplay fresh and interesting. - Excellent Water Mechanics (weight 0.06): The water physics and mechanics are noted as a strong point, with players enjoying the dynamic and physical nature of working with water, including digging channels and creating lakes. - Minimal & Minor Bugs (weight 0.05): Players report a generally low incidence of major bugs, with most encountered issues being minor and not significantly impacting progress. Developer responsiveness to bug fixes is also noted positively. - Responsive Development Team (weight 0.05): The development team is highly praised for their communication and responsiveness, actively engaging with the community and providing quick support for issues and updates. Common complaints: - Unfinished, Unpolished, Abandoned (weight 0.68): Many players report that the game feels unfinished, unpolished, and janky, with numerous bugs and performance issues. There's a strong sentiment that the developers have abandoned the game, as it hasn't received significant updates or optimizations since release, leading to a stagnant and frustrating experience. - Poor Quest & UI Guidance (weight 0.23): Players frequently struggle with vague quest descriptions, unintuitive objectives, and a lack of clear guidance on how to progress. The UI/UX is often described as clunky, disorganized, and confusing, making basic interactions and understanding game mechanics unnecessarily difficult. - Limited Base Building & Customization (weight 0.22): The base building system is severely limited, offering minimal options for construction beyond basic structures. Players express disappointment in the lack of house building, diverse animal variety, and overall depth in the gardening and customization aspects, which feels at odds with the game's premise. - Tedious Inventory Management (weight 0.18): Inventory management is a significant pain point due to small space, lack of auto-sorting, and inability to trash or sell excess items. Players constantly have to return to base to offload items, leading to tedious back-and-forth travel and an abundance of unused materials. - Broken Multiplayer Experience (weight 0.12): Multiplayer experiences are plagued by frequent disconnections, lag, and various bugs, making it difficult or impossible for players to enjoy co-op. Issues include freezing, getting stuck, and desynchronization, severely impacting the intended social aspect of the game. - Empty & Monotonous World (weight 0.12): The game world is criticized for being large, empty, and monotonous, primarily consisting of barren desert. This leads to dull exploration, tedious traversal, and a general lack of engaging content or interactivity, making the experience feel lonely and boring. - Bland & Repetitive Combat (weight 0.1): Combat is widely described as basic, repetitive, and uninspired, often boiling down to simple click-spamming. Players find it unenjoyable, lacking exhilaration, and sometimes a nuisance, detracting from the overall gameplay experience. - Frustrating Terraforming System (weight 0.1): The terraforming system is consistently criticized for being slow, finicky, and difficult to use effectively. Players find it tedious, frustrating, and often counterproductive, with upgrades offering little noticeable improvement and sometimes causing unintended terrain issues. - Destructive Final Boss (weight 0.09): The final boss encounter is a major point of frustration, as it spawns directly in the player's garden, causing significant and often permanent destruction. This unannounced event leads to a sense of despair and forces players to rebuild, negatively impacting their engagement with gardening. - Slow & Unskippable Dialogue (weight 0.08): Dialogue is criticized for being excessively slow, unskippable, and lacking voice acting, which hinders pacing and immersion. Players also note issues with vague or nonsensical text, typos, and black screens during cutscenes, further detracting from the narrative experience. - Insufficient Endgame Content (weight 0.07): Players report a significant lack of endgame content, leading to a plateau in progression and a feeling of emptiness after the main story. There's a desire for more challenging combat, enemy variety, quests, and general content to extend replayability. Gameplay feedback: - Extensive Gardening & Terraforming (weight 0.48): The core gameplay loop revolves around extensive gardening, terraforming, and environmental restoration. Players plant diverse flora, manage irrigation, and transform a barren desert into a lush oasis, often with magical elements. This involves resource gathering, exploration, and strategic planting. - Balanced Pacing & Challenge (weight 0.21): The game offers a balanced experience, blending relaxing exploration and building with occasional combat and survival challenges. It's designed to be accessible, allowing players to progress at their own pace, and is suitable for those new to the survival genre. - Desert World Exploration & Survival (weight 0.19): The game is set in a vast, initially desolate desert world that players are tasked with exploring and transforming. Survival elements like managing thirst and hunger are present, especially in the early game, as players gather resources to restore the environment. - Unique Mechanics & Easy Combat (weight 0.12): The game features unique mechanics, including a combat system that is generally described as easy or low-stress. Players gain various abilities and can engage in combat to progress the story and unlock new items, but it's not the primary focus. - Highly Customizable Difficulty (weight 0.08): A highly praised feature is the in-depth and customizable difficulty settings. Players can adjust numerous parameters, from plant growth speed and combat difficulty to day/night length, allowing for a tailored experience ranging from casual to more challenging. - Early Game Resource Scarcity (weight 0.06): The early game can be slow and challenging due to limited resources and capabilities, particularly concerning water management and planting. Players may experience scarcity of food and water, especially at night, until key upgrades are acquired. - Mystical Elements & Lore (weight 0.06): The game incorporates mystical elements, including gods, spirits, and phantoms. Players interact with these entities, often through quests and shrines, to gain abilities, level up, and understand the world's backstory, contributing to the environmental restoration theme. - Cooperative Multiplayer Available (weight 0.04): The game supports cooperative multiplayer for up to four players, utilizing a host-invite system. This allows friends to explore, build, and manage their garden together, enhancing the overall experience. - Large, Densely Packed Map (weight 0.04): The game features a large and densely packed map with various points of interest. This expansive world encourages exploration and provides ample space for players to transform the environment. - Extensive Post-Story Content (weight 0.04): The game offers significant post-story content, with many players feeling that the true depth of the game, particularly in farming and garden expansion, begins after completing the main quests. This allows for extended playtime beyond the narrative. - Streamlined Inventory Management (weight 0.04): The game includes quality-of-life features for inventory management, such as a one-click sort function for the backpack and a warehouse system. While backpack slots are limited, these features help streamline item organization. Performance notes: - Severe performance issues and lag (weight 0.15): Many players report significant and consistent frame rate drops, especially in the mid to late game or when a large number of objects like plants and trees are present. This issue makes the game unplayable for some, even on high-end PCs, indicating poor optimization. - Variable optimization feedback (weight 0.02): Some players found the water simulation playable and overall optimization acceptable, though one user noted low GPU utilization despite performance issues, suggesting inefficient resource use. - Slow asset loading times (weight 0.01): There are noticeable loading delays, with home assets taking 5-15 seconds to load after teleporting, which can disrupt gameplay flow. Recommendations: - Mixed overall game reception (weight 0.44): Player sentiment regarding the game's overall value and enjoyment is highly mixed, ranging from strong recommendations and love for the game to outright warnings against purchasing it. Many players find it enjoyable and worth the price, especially if on sale or played with friends, while others feel it's unfinished or not worth the full price. - Niche appeal to specific genres (weight 0.17): The game strongly appeals to players who enjoy specific genres such as gardening, farming, cozy sandbox, exploration, crafting, and world-building. It is particularly recommended for fans of games like Stardew Valley, Minecraft, or Astroneer, and those interested in ecological restoration or terraforming. - Game feels unfinished/unpolished (weight 0.07): Many players feel the game is incomplete or unpolished, particularly regarding core mechanics and single-player experience. Issues like constant backtracking and a lack of refinement make it difficult to recommend in its current state. - Desire for future updates/DLC (weight 0.04): Players express a strong desire for ongoing development, including new content, story updates, quality-of-life improvements, and bug fixes. Many are willing to return or purchase DLC if significant updates are provided. - Conflicting progression advice (weight 0.03): Players offer conflicting advice on progression, with some recommending focusing on the main questline first, while others suggest prioritizing base building and exploration. - Performance considerations for PC (weight 0.02): Some players advise checking PC specifications before playing, especially when planting many items, indicating potential performance issues or high system requirements. - Wait for deep discount (weight 0.02): Some players suggest waiting for a significant discount before purchasing the game, implying that its current price point might be too high for its perceived value. - Improve early navigation tools (weight 0.01): Suggestions for improving early-game navigation by providing better tools or earlier access to flying abilities. - Suits dedicated problem-solvers (weight 0.01): The game is noted to be suitable for players who enjoy dedicating time to problem-solving and persistent effort. - Disable environmental hazards (weight 0.01): A specific recommendation is made to disable environmental hazards like dust devils and tumbleweeds, suggesting they detract from the experience. - Play with friends (weight 0.01): A brief, general recommendation to play the game with friends, reinforcing the co-op appeal. - Game will be returned (weight 0.01): One player explicitly states they will return the game, indicating a strong negative experience. - Neutral review option needed (weight 0.01): A player suggests the need for a neutral review option, implying that the current binary recommendation system doesn't fully capture their sentiment. - Developer criticism (review bomb) (weight 0.01): A highly critical and potentially review-bombing comment suggesting the developers should not make indie games and instead focus on mobile games. - Cannot 100% fix world (weight 0.01): Players are advised not to expect to fully restore the world to 100%, suggesting limitations in the game's progression or scope. Other player notes: - Stunning Art and Audio (weight 0.15): Players consistently praise the game's visual and auditory presentation, highlighting its unique geometric art style, beautiful environments, and high-quality soundtrack. The aesthetic is often described as healing, relaxing, and artistic. - Strong Environmental Theme (weight 0.09): The game effectively conveys a strong environmental theme, focusing on the regeneration of nature in a desolate world. Players appreciate how the game explores themes of renewal and the impact of human actions on the environment. - Peaceful Exploration and Gardening (weight 0.09): The game offers a peaceful and tranquil experience, appealing to players who enjoy exploration, planting, and gardening. It provides a calm oasis suitable for a wide range of players, including those who appreciate survival and farming elements. - Responsive and Engaged Developers (weight 0.06): The development team is highly praised for their active engagement with the community, responsiveness to feedback, and continuous efforts to optimize the game and fix minor bugs. - Multiplayer Enhances Experience (weight 0.05): Some players found the single-player experience to be lonely and suggest that multiplayer could significantly enhance the game's enjoyment and replayability, making it more engaging. - Repetitive Music Cues (weight 0.03): While the soundtrack is generally delightful and atmospheric, some players noted that the music cues can be repetitive, often sticking to a limited number of tracks. - Unfinished Content Concerns (weight 0.02): Some players felt that certain promised or expected content, such as specific plot elements related to 'greening' or features seen in promotional videos like monster towers and home buildings, were missing or underdeveloped in the final game, leading to a perception of it being unfinished. - Small Studio, Compact Size (weight 0.02): Players noted the game's small download size, which is impressive given the quality, and appreciate that it was developed by a small studio. - Desire for Future Content (weight 0.01): Players express a desire for continued support from the developers, hoping for future games in a similar style or additional DLC content. - Adjustable Wraith Invasions (weight 0.01): Players appreciate the option to adjust the frequency of Wraith invasions through game settings, allowing for a more customized experience. - Accurate Translation (weight 0.01): The game's translation is noted as being mostly accurate with no significant discrepancies, contributing to a smooth player experience. - Charitable DLC Initiative (weight 0.01): The charitable aspect of the frog hat DLC, with 100% of its earnings going to charity, is noted and appreciated by players. - More Cosmetic Options (weight 0.01): Players suggest adding more cosmetic options, specifically more clothes and capes, to enhance character customization. - Fertilizer Box Tip (weight 0.01): A helpful gameplay tip suggests creating a fertilizer box for efficient disposal of seeds and bones. - Game Abandonment Claim (weight 0.01): A review bombing campaign suggests the developers have abandoned the game. This claim contradicts other feedback about active developer engagement, so it is given low importance. - Overt EULA Presentation (weight 0.01): The End User License Agreement (EULA) is presented overtly to players, indicating transparency. Emotions: - Satisfaction (weight 0.26): Players felt satisfied by the game's core loop of transforming a barren desert into a vibrant oasis through gardening and terraforming mechanics. The sense of progression, visual transformation of the world, and the game's overall quality, including its aesthetics, music, and balanced gameplay, contributed significantly to this positive emotion. The game's open-ended nature, customizable difficulty, and the ability to leave a personal mark on the world also enhanced player satisfaction. - Frustration (weight 0.16): Frustration stemmed primarily from technical issues such as janky physics, performance problems (especially late-game frame drops), and numerous bugs, including game-breaking ones and multiplayer disconnections. Poor user interface (UI), limited inventory management, and unclear quest objectives or guidance also significantly contributed to player annoyance and frustration. Tedious traversal and repetitive tasks further exacerbated these feelings. - Disappointment (weight 0.15): Disappointment was largely driven by the game's perceived unfinished state, lack of substantial updates, and insufficient late-game content. Players felt let down by the short story, empty world, and the absence of desired features like robust base building. Technical issues, poor optimization, and a general lack of polish also contributed to the feeling that the game did not live up to its initial promise or expectations. - Joy (weight 0.09): Joy was experienced through the game's core loop of exploration and the visual transformation of the desert into a thriving oasis. The cooperative multiplayer experience, the game's cozy and relaxing atmosphere, and the beauty of its graphics and soundtrack were significant sources of joy. Discovering new seeds, tending gardens, and interacting with cute in-game creatures like frogs also contributed to this positive emotion. - Excitement (weight 0.05): Players felt excitement due to the game's unique concept, its addictive gameplay loop, and the engaging storyline. The prospect of multiplayer exploration and the anticipation of future content also generated excitement. The overall high quality of the game, its beautiful graphics, and the progression of gaining new abilities further fueled this emotion. - Enjoyment (weight 0.03): Enjoyment was derived from the game's relaxed nature, its core gardening and exploration mechanics, and the overall aesthetic. Playing with friends or a partner significantly enhanced the enjoyment, as did the satisfaction of world-building and seeing plants grow. The game's mix of elements and its progression system also contributed to a generally enjoyable experience. - Relaxation (weight 0.03): Relaxation was a key emotion, primarily caused by the game's chill and cozy vibes, meditative gameplay, and adjustable difficulty settings. The act of gardening in the desert and reclaiming the land provided a zen-like experience, allowing players to unwind and enjoy a calm and peaceful atmosphere. - Love (weight 0.02): Love for the game stemmed from its overall immersive experience, including its captivating storytelling, beautiful art style, and well-implemented mechanics. The visual appeal, especially the glowing fauna and water at night, combined with the game's progression pacing and positive message, fostered a deep affection among players. - Annoyance (weight 0.02): Annoyance arose from various quality-of-life issues, such as cluttered inventory, confusing UI, and tedious survival mechanics like constant item decay and repetitive digging. Environmental hazards, unclear protection from dust storms, and persistent bugs in multiplayer also contributed to player irritation. - Appreciation (weight 0.02): Players expressed appreciation for the game's high-quality music, sound design, and unique artistic style. The developers' active bug fixing, dedication, and engagement with the community were also highly valued. The well-integrated mechanics and thoughtful world-building further solidified this positive sentiment. - Hope (weight 0.02): Hope was felt regarding the game's future, with players desiring more content, features, and improvements. The game's central themes of renewal and transformation, along with its potential to become a masterpiece, fueled the hope for continued development and the adoption of community suggestions. - Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion was primarily caused by vague quest descriptions, a lack of clear tutorials, and poorly explained game mechanics. Players often felt uncertain about objectives, how to use certain tools, or what to do after completing the main story, leading to a disorganized and unclear first-time user experience. - Anger (weight 0.01): Anger was a strong negative emotion, often triggered by severe technical issues such as persistent server problems and game-breaking bugs, particularly those that destroyed player progress or gardens. Perceived developer abandonment and anti-human design choices in inventory and UI also contributed to significant player frustration and anger. - Desire (weight 0.01): Players expressed a desire for more polish, additional areas, and a greater variety of plants and building options. Specific wishes included more story content, modding support, and the ability to name in-game creatures, indicating a strong wish for expanded features and customization. - Mild frustration (weight 0.01): Mild frustration stemmed from repetitive tasks, janky water flow mechanics, and general optimization issues. Technical glitches and a perceived lack of detailed information also contributed to a less severe but still noticeable level of annoyance for players. - Engagement (weight 0.01): Players felt engaged by the game's core loop of transforming the desert and manipulating nature, which fostered a strong desire to return to the game. The compelling lore, interesting world-building, and captivating story also contributed to a deep sense of involvement. - Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration was evoked by the game's charming art style, beautiful graphics, and lovely soundtrack. Players admired the creative freedom offered, the cool world design, and the potential for exploration and cultivation, recognizing the deep concept and environmental theme. - Awe (weight 0.01): Awe was inspired by the game's immersive atmosphere, beautiful landscapes, and vibrant night world. The game's ability to draw players in, its unexpected depth despite simple mechanics, and its stylized art and visuals created a profound sense of wonder. - Delight (weight 0.01): Players experienced delight from the game's smooth performance, particularly on devices like the Steam Deck, and the rewarding gameplay loop of exploration, building, and adjustment. The presence of cute animals and fluid movement mechanics also contributed to this positive and joyful feeling. - Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise arose from the game's unexpected depth, variety of content, and balanced gameplay. Players were pleasantly surprised by the complexity and richness of the experience, which often exceeded their initial expectations.}