Blue Oak Bridge

I wanted to like this game. I love the art style and was looking for something new to play while taking a break from some of my other games. This is more of a personal issue but for some reason this game hurts my eyes and gives me a massive headache. Not sure if it's the visual style or the way the character moves. It also took me a while to figure out how to get to the settings and not having a dedicated keybind for that is just a weird choice to me. I also hate the character voices. They're just annoying. Map is super confusing and as someone who gets lost easy this is a big thing for me. I didn't get very far before refunding so I can't say much on storyline. This is a game I would think about picking up only on sale as 25 seems a bit high. This is one of those cases I wish steam had a middle option for recommending games.

Blue Oak Bridge is a gem of a game that I can't recommend enough. It has gorgeous art that fits the cosy life sim feel extremely well and it has lovely quality of life features that some similar games can sometimes lack. There's a lot of different things to explore and take part in but you never feel pressured to go down certain paths, it's definitely one you can take at your own pace without feeling and negative consequences. The game feels smooth and responsive and a joy to play.

I struggled with whether to give this a recommend. I didn't want to give the dev a bad review, but this game isn't that great. The controls are so wonky as to drive you nuts. I'm playing with a keyboard and mouse. There's a pet, but sometimes he shows up and sometimes he doesn't. I hear a low bark in the distance on my farm, and it drives me crazy. I was forced to get a pet, and I didn't want one. The art work is nice, but you can't tell where the doorway is until you get used to where it is. Even so you fumble with that stupid control to get through the door. There isn't really a story, just the semblance of a story. You're thrown into everything without a tutorial, given a handful of quests, but you don't feel it's leading to anything. I placed a coop on my farm, and inside the building there are two interact-able places. Neither is explained, but you quickly figure out one is for the food. The other just says zero. I assume that will tell when you get eggs. You can pet your animal, but the game doesn't indicate you can. You just chance it and what do you know, a heart rises up. But you can't tell if you have to get more hearts or if there's an advantage to it or what. All the characters looks so similar overhead, it's hard to tell who's who. On the menu for relationships, you have to click on everyone to find the person you're looking for. The writing is so small and the font a nightmare to read. The store hours are not on the stores. They are on the NPC profiles. The map! It's useless! You can't use it to navigate at all. You can't use it to find anyone. All the NPCs are pictured on the map, just clustered together. Doesn't tell you anything. Even if you look at the map to show where you are, it really doesn't make sense. The game is generic, like someone took all the mechanics of a farming sim and put it in a new game. That's it. Nothing new, nothing really different. The game can be pleasant nonetheless, but only if the controls worked better. Maybe they work better with a controller. I don't know. One good thing is that the mine isn't hard. You can get through level after level fairly easily. There is no extreme grind in this game. However, the mine is frustrating because of the stupid controls. You get hung up trying to keep your cursor where it should be to fight the monsters. You could lose your progress if you mistakenly go back upward and end up on the first floor. That's possible because you can't tell where the opening leading back up is. I wanted to push to keep playing until I finish this game, but I don't really like it that much. We'll see. I hope this review helps someone with their decision whether to buy.

If Animal Crossings and Stardew Valley had a love child, it would be Blue Oak Bridge. It has farming, mining, dungeon crawling, romancing the villagers, and you can even run your own cafe. There is a fishing game but I find it to be easier than most other games. If you are looking for a cute and cozy game, this is it. I like that the devs allowed an option to turn down villager speech volume as it gets to be a bit much at times. This was a nice touch! My only complaints (more like wishes for the game) would be to have an auto sort for inventory and having the option to select multiple items at once to deposit or sell. Maybe we will get that in a future update. Overall: 1000/10 (because your pet can follow you)

It's very pretty and plenty to do but it's not overwhelming. It was a bit rough at launch but it's been greatly improved. If you like farming sims like Stardew you will enjoy it. The map could be improved. I have to just turn the NPC icons off because they are not accurate and hide the buildings, but that's minor over all. The town is not hard to get around after a bit of familiarity.

Great game. Love it actually. But for some odd reason, it keeps crashing. And I don't see that the developers have done any types of updates for over a year now.

I love how you can date everyone and you can just directly jump to dating someone else without the need to break off an engagement. Every single individual who's ready to date, will date you no matter your gender, race or sexuality. And that's wonderful. I am a little sad that the game's content isn't a lot. I can maybe finish it in mid to end of the 2nd year. I need more content! Maybe have quests that are only unlockable in year 2 or later. I want more inventory buttons where we can directly store items that we have into a chest. I love the variety of vegetation we can plant! It's a lot more than a lot of other farming games out there! I was hoping for more blue oak usage in the later parts of the game. Like i thought there would be more furniture or farm decor that would be secretly revealed by the game with blue oak material used. I don't know if this is something everyone can relate, but when I started playing this game the visuals were sort of too much for my eyes. I think maybe it's cause I'm so used to how in isometric games, any game asset that's designed in them usually follow the cubic space and size strictly. Whereas in Blue Oak Bridge, many items designed in the game, be it buildings, plants, a wooden sign and such, they all somehow break this rule. (Not that it's a completely bad thing. Honestly, I feel like that's kind of the reason why this game's artstyle is incredibly unique and it has it's charms.) It took a while for my eyes to settle in. It doesn't bother me anymore after playing for 1 to 2 in-game week. I love love love the art for all the food you can make in this game. So much colours and thought! I'd like to say that I've never seen this artstyle anywhere before! But, I realised we don't get to use the food a lot. I wish the usage of food happens more often. There's just not enough quests from villagers asking for cooked food. I NEED MOAR! To put it simply, i can't remember much of each food's sprite art. That's how little I look at them. (Save for the cooked food that are some of the villagers' favourites.) There's a lack of town events. I would love to get to know the villagers even more through festivals. I don't know if this is in the works or not, but I'm hoping it is! I think nearing 2nd year, the fishing part of getting all the rare fish is stressing me out :') I can only play 2 in-game days and not caught any of the rare fish and I'd have to stop, cause just dreading fishing again on the 3rd in-game day sucks the fun out of everything. Overall, I'd suggest this game to everyone. The devs are most possibly hold the fastest record in response time to bugs. They have a very active discord channel too. I've never even mentioned any of the bugs in this review, because it always seems like the devs could fix everything or find a way to get you through it. They'd often request for your buggy file too! So they could immediately tackle the problem. I've never seen a swifter response as them. spoilers beyond here --- I really wished there's a way to make Locke eat his words. His discrimination against witches was something that I hated close to the end of his personal questline. I was really hoping we'd get a redemption quest for him. but alas.