Info about Vagabond:

Official game description:
Greetings Adventurer!
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You start in the middle of nowhere with no memories or possessions. It's up to you to forge your destiny, become a famous treasure hunter by searching dangerous dungeons, the best blacksmith in the whole country or a benefactor by helping the villagers who need you. Who will you become?  
Blending elements of traditional role-playing games such as The Elder Scrolls or The Legend of Zelda with the freedom of sandbox-style games such as Stardew Valley and Terraria, Vagabond is a unique experience.  
Moreover, you can share your adventures with your friends as Vagabond was designed from the ground to support multiplayer.  
Explore vast procedurally generated worlds and travel across many different biomes which have their own riches and dangers.  
Each world is unique and yours to write a new story.  
Harvest valuable resources by cutting down trees in forests, mining veins in caves, tending crops in your garden or hunting monsters and wild animals.  
In Vagabond, worlds are not deserted, they are populated by many villages.  
Meet the villagers, discover their stories and customs, help them solve their problems and become a respected member of the community.  
Join guilds to complete perilous missions and learn new secret skills.  
Meet the different skill masters in villages and learn how to craft powerful items from your resources.  
Forge dangerous weapons and strong armors at the forge, brew potions, enchant your equipment and craft powerful magical artifacts at the wizard's laboratory, sew beautiful clothes at the tailor shop or craft furniture to furnish your home at the carpentry workshop.  
Explore ruins buried in the desert, temples lost in the jungle or caves full of underground creatures.  
Fight your way with the point of your sword, defeat many monsters and bring back fabulous treasures from your travels.  
Share your adventures with your friend with networked multiplayer (through LAN or the Internet).

Release date: 1 May, 2023

Categories: RPG, Cooperative Multiplayer, Procedural Generation, Resource Management, Crafting, Exploration, Real-time Combat, Character Progression


- 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:
- Highly enjoyable and promising (weight 0.99): Players find the game highly enjoyable and addictive, praising its solid foundation, unique concept, and potential for future growth. Despite being in Early Access, it offers substantial content and a compelling experience, especially for a game developed by a single person.
- Impressive procedural generation (weight 0.25): The game's procedural generation system is a major highlight, creating diverse and immersive worlds, dungeons, and biomes. This ensures each playthrough feels unique and offers extensive exploration opportunities, reminiscent of classic RPGs.
- Responsive and dedicated developer (weight 0.2): The developer is highly praised for their responsiveness, consistent updates, and active engagement with the community. This dedication instills confidence in the game's future development and shows a strong commitment to the project.
- Robust and fun crafting (weight 0.16): The crafting system, including smithing, alchemy, enchanting, and farming, is a significant strength, offering depth and enjoyment. The item synthesis and proficiency systems are particularly well-received, adding a unique RPG feel.
- Engaging crime system (weight 0.09): The interactive crime system, including lock-picking mini-games and responsive guards who arrest players for theft, adds an engaging and dynamic element to gameplay. This system provides immediate consequences and a sense of realism.
- Pleasing aesthetics and atmosphere (weight 0.08): The game's aesthetic elements, including its graphics, soundtrack, and overall atmosphere, are well-received. They contribute to an immersive and pleasant experience, drawing comparisons to other beloved titles.
- High player freedom (weight 0.07): The game provides a high degree of player freedom, allowing for diverse activities and role-playing within a complete medieval setting. This open-ended design contributes to an immersive experience.
- Lively NPC behavior (weight 0.06): The game features lively settlements with NPCs exhibiting basic AI, such as reacting to player actions and following daily routines. This contributes to a good atmosphere and makes the world feel more alive.
- Strong niche appeal (weight 0.06): The game has garnered high praise from specific player demographics, including fans of pixelated games and those who appreciate titles reminiscent of Morrowind. Some even consider it a top indie game of the year.
- Well-written lore and quests (weight 0.04): The game's lore is well-written with proper grammar, which is appreciated by players. The storylines are easy to follow and contribute to an enjoyable narrative experience.
- Relatively moddable (weight 0.02): The game's relative moddability is a positive aspect, suggesting potential for community-driven content and extended longevity. This feature allows players to customize and expand their experience.
- Excitement for release (weight 0.02): There is general excitement surrounding the release of 'Vagabond,' indicating a positive reception and anticipation for the game's continued development and future content.

Common complaints:
- Shallow & Easy Combat (weight 0.67): Combat is consistently described as overly simplistic, lacking depth, and too easy. There's little incentive to engage with crafting or advanced mechanics because most enemies pose no real threat, making combat feel unrewarding and basic.
- Insufficient Content & Overpriced (weight 0.66): Players feel the game is significantly overpriced for its current state, which is perceived as incomplete and lacking substantial content. Many core systems are either missing or underdeveloped, leading to a shallow experience.
- Repetitive Gameplay & Content (weight 0.66): The game suffers from high repetitiveness across various aspects, including quests, enemy encounters, and environmental design. This lack of variety leads to player boredom and a feeling of grinding without meaningful progression.
- Prevalent Bugs & Crashes (weight 0.1): Players report numerous game-breaking bugs and crashes. There's also a perception that developers are more focused on excusing these issues on forums rather than actively fixing them, leading to frustration.
- Grindy & Unbalanced Crafting (weight 0.08): The crafting system is criticized for being an excessive grind, with high material costs and steep skill requirements that are difficult to meet. This makes progression in crafting feel inaccessible and frustrating.
- Harsh Death & Item Loss (weight 0.08): The game's death and inventory management mechanics are overly punitive. Players report losing all items upon death or game crashes, making item retrieval difficult and progression frustrating.
- Short & Unfulfilling Main Quest (weight 0.06): The main questline is described as too short and anti-climactic, with an unrewarding conclusion. This leaves players feeling unsatisfied with the narrative progression.
- Lack of Dynamic World Events (weight 0.06): The game world feels static due to a lack of dynamic elements like random encounters, traveling NPCs, or unexpected events. This contributes to the overall feeling of emptiness and repetitiveness.
- Broken & Unlogged Quests (weight 0.06): Several players experienced issues with quests not functioning correctly, such as not receiving necessary items for delivery. The absence of a quest log or review option further exacerbates these problems.
- Unreadable Small Font (weight 0.06): The game's font size is too small, especially on high-resolution displays, and there is no option to adjust it. This significantly impacts readability and user experience.
- Slow Update Schedule (weight 0.05): Players are concerned about the slow pace of game updates, with significant patches occurring infrequently. This suggests a slow development cycle for an Early Access title.
- Non-Functional Co-op Mode (weight 0.04): The advertised co-op mode is reported to be non-functional or extremely difficult to connect to, failing to deliver on a key feature.
- Accidental NPC Attacks (weight 0.04): A significant usability issue exists where players accidentally attack NPCs when attempting to interact with them, due to the weapon always being drawn and conflicting input mapping.
- Poor Bow Aiming (weight 0.03): The bow aiming mechanic is criticized for lacking any form of target assist, making ranged combat difficult and frustrating for players.
- Unnecessary Farming System (weight 0.03): The farming system lacks a proper tutorial, and its utility is questioned as players can easily acquire resources from towns without engaging in farming.
- Limited Race Variety (weight 0.03): The game lacks variety in playable races and NPC types, with all characters being human. This contributes to a bland and uninteresting world.
- Misleading Game Comparisons (weight 0.02): Players feel the game's marketing comparisons to titles like Stardew Valley or Elder Scrolls are misleading, as the current product falls far short of such expectations.

Gameplay feedback:
- Deep Crafting System (weight 0.43): The game features a comprehensive crafting system including alchemy, enchanting, smithing, and cooking. Players can craft powerful items, level up skills through activity, and learn recipes, with skill progression influencing item quality.
- Quest System & Lore (weight 0.17): The game includes a main story and various quests, though some players find the main story bland and repetitive. There are also many characters to meet and activities to undertake.
- World Map & Travel Needs (weight 0.13): The world map is currently small and lacks diversity, with large empty areas. Players suggest adding more dynamic elements like random encounters, larger monsters, teleporters, and mounts for faster travel.
- Open-World Sandbox RPG (weight 0.13): The game is an open-world, pixel-style RPG with sandbox elements. It combines features reminiscent of games like Skyrim, Stardew Valley, and Runescape, offering exploration, farming, and role-playing.
- Skill-Based Progression (weight 0.13): Character progression is skill-based, similar to The Elder Scrolls, where skills improve through use. Every action contributes to skill leveling, allowing players to strengthen proficiencies without restrictions.
- Housing & NPC Routines (weight 0.11): Players can purchase and furnish houses after gaining trust in towns. The game also features a day-night cycle and NPCs with daily routines, adding to the sandbox experience.
- Multiplayer Co-op Support (weight 0.1): The game supports multiplayer and co-op play, allowing friends to explore and play together. This feature was available at early access launch.
- Monster Combat & Economy (weight 0.09): Players earn money by fighting monsters in dungeons and completing quests. This income is essential for purchasing basic tools and progressing through the game.
- Repetitive Dungeons (weight 0.09): Dungeons, including caves and crypts, are procedurally generated but often feel identical in layout, enemy types, and boss encounters. Treasure chests within dungeons respawn with random contents.
- Unique Lock-Picking Minigame (weight 0.07): The game features a unique lock-picking minigame that involves guessing numbers. While it can be tedious, skill progression in lock-picking can prevent lockpicks from breaking.
- Resource Gathering & Respawn (weight 0.06): Players can gather materials, but some report optimization issues that make gathering specific resources difficult. Resource respawn times are set at 7 days for wood and ore, and 1 day for animals and monsters.
- Early Access Status (weight 0.05): The game is currently in early access, indicating that it is still under development and requires further adjustments and improvements.
- Good Performance (weight 0.05): The game is noted for not requiring high machine specifications and generally runs smoothly.
- Guild System (weight 0.04): Players can join and rank up in two distinct guilds: Mages and Thieves, each offering specific quests.
- Farming System Present (weight 0.04): The game includes farming as an activity, allowing players to spend hours planting and harvesting crops.
- Health Recovery Methods (weight 0.04): Health recovery is achieved by eating until full, which grants an auto-recovery buff, or by consuming cooked food and potions.
- Steam Deck Compatibility (weight 0.04): The game is compatible with the Steam Deck, though players may need to remap controls for optimal experience.
- Optional Sleep Mechanic (weight 0.03): Players do not need to sleep to progress, but they have the option to sleep at barracks.

Performance notes:
- Smooth performance (weight 0.03): Players consistently report that the game performs well on their systems, indicating good optimization and a stable technical foundation. This contributes positively to the overall player experience.

Recommendations:
- Promising potential, wait for updates (weight 0.44): Many players acknowledge the game's potential and are excited for future updates and content additions. However, they often recommend waiting for sales or further development before purchasing, indicating that the current state, while promising, is not fully realized.
- Recommended for genre enthusiasts (weight 0.41): Despite being in early access, a significant number of players recommend the game, especially for fans of the genre or those who enjoy sandbox, crafting, or RPG elements. They find the core gameplay and foundation enjoyable and fun.
- Avoid early game grind (weight 0.02): One specific piece of feedback highlights a negative experience with the early game progression, advising against the need to grind extensively for basic tools.
- Price point too high (weight 0.02): A reviewer explicitly states that the game's current price point of $10 is too high for the content offered.

Other player notes:
- Suggests new features (weight 0.1): Players are actively suggesting new features to enrich gameplay, such as farming, animal husbandry, base crafting, and portable camping. There's also a desire for aesthetic improvements to the user interface.
- Compares to other games (weight 0.06): Players are making comparisons to other games like Habbo Hotel and Necesse, as well as older titles like SS13, to describe the game's graphic style and overall feel. This helps contextualize the game's aesthetic and genre.
- Requests localization (weight 0.05): A specific request has been made for Japanese localization, indicating a desire for broader language support or an automatic translation feature to make the game accessible to more players.
- Solo developer noted (weight 0.03): Players have noted that the game is developed by a solo French developer named Pierre. This information is purely observational and doesn't directly impact gameplay.
- Linux version available (weight 0.02): It's noted that a Linux version of the game is available, which is a positive point for players on that operating system.
- Game is small (weight 0.02): The game is described as 'small,' which could refer to its current content scope or file size. This is a neutral observation.
- Negative reviews impact sales (weight 0.02): A player has commented that negative reviews can harm sales. This is a meta-comment about review impact rather than direct game feedback, potentially indicating a concern about review bombing.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.17): Players are satisfied with the game's quality, immersive experience, and freedom of action, particularly enjoying the crafting and exploration systems. The game's addictiveness, technical stability, and the developer's responsiveness also contribute to positive feelings.
- Disappointment (weight 0.15): Disappointment stems from a perceived lack of challenging content, repetitive combat, and limited variety in enemies and quests. Players also express frustration with the high price for an alpha game, slow updates, and issues like small font size or lack of full controller support.
- Excitement (weight 0.12): Excitement is driven by the game's addictive and fun gameplay, as well as its significant potential for future development and unique features like procedural generation and skill progression. Players are enthusiastic about the game's core concept and the entertainment value it provides.
- Frustration (weight 0.11): Frustration arises from issues such as a lack of incentive for crafting due to easy combat, inconsistent progression tracking, and harsh theft mechanics. Players also report bugs, non-functional quests, multiplayer connection problems, and a clunky combat system.
- Optimism (weight 0.06): Players are optimistic about the game's future, citing regular updates, continuous improvements, and the strong foundation of the game. They believe in the game's potential for further development and the expansion of its sandbox elements.
- Anticipation (weight 0.04): Anticipation is focused on future development and the release of new content. Players are looking forward to how the game will evolve and what additional features and experiences will be introduced.
- Desire (weight 0.04): Players express a desire for specific missing features, such as Steam Cloud Save functionality and Japanese localization. They also wish for more activities, better balance, and aesthetic improvements within the game.
- Admiration (weight 0.04): Admiration is directed towards the developer's significant effort, dedication, and the unique blend of genres in the game. Players are particularly impressed by the procedural generation and the overall design and content achieved by a solo developer.
- Joy (weight 0.03): Joy is experienced through the overall gameplay, especially when playing with friends. The game's quality and features contribute to a generally positive and enjoyable experience.
- Hope (weight 0.03): Hope is tied to the game's potential and the developer's ongoing effort and responsiveness. Players are hopeful that the game will continue to improve and reach its full potential.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Players appreciate the developer's quick actions, consistency, and the impressive achievement of a single developer creating the game. This sentiment highlights the positive impact of the developer's work on the player experience.
- Boredom (weight 0.03): Boredom is caused by repetitive content, including enemy stats, combat, quests, and town designs. The lack of variety in the main story and overall game structure leads to a monotonous experience.
- Observation (weight 0.02): Players observe specific game mechanics, such as resource scarcity, and note the current state of the game, including missing features and available activities. This emotion reflects a neutral assessment of the game's current design.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.02): Players express enjoyment from the overall game experience, even in its early access state. The game's quality and replayability contribute to a positive and engaging gameplay experience.
- Mild frustration (weight 0.01): Mild frustration arises from early game economic setbacks and repetitive gameplay, particularly concerning limited housing options. These are minor annoyances rather than significant deterrents.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement comes from the game's potential to consume a significant amount of time and the initial gameplay experience. Players find the game engaging and entertaining from the outset.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Players are surprised by the game's unexpected quality and its unique touch, which contributes to an enjoyable gameplay experience. This indicates the game exceeded initial expectations.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Relief is felt due to the absence of tool durability mechanics, which is a positive design choice for players. This removes a common source of frustration found in other games.
- Contempt (weight 0.01): Contempt is expressed towards the unrealistic and unimmersive world design. This indicates a strong negative reaction to the game's environmental and narrative coherence.
- Preference (weight 0.01): Players express a preference for either the solo or multiplayer experience, indicating that the game offers distinct modes that appeal differently to players. This highlights a choice in how the game is best enjoyed.}