Len's Island

I had this game in my list for a while , the game , i like it , i wanted to play more since i lost my dog recently and i wanted to adventure with a dog but i keep getting frustrated at the controls . there is an update about full controller coming posted in January but no actual news since then , it does feels like an abandonware at this point. That's sad , i like it but i can't play it as it is , i have trouble finding a game where your pet follows you everywhere this one felt good , hopefully it will get there someday.

Len's Island is a very cozy game with a nice building system. It's a great effort brought forth by a relatively small team. The story builds enough intrigue in the beginning to go out and explore the world you've been put into. I would highly recommend it if you want to spend a couple of days playing something during downtime from other games. That being said, there are a couple of things I have to note. When you love a game, you feel more passionate than anything to see it be the best that it can, even when you know these hopes will possibly never be fulfilled or addressed. - Combat - The combat is an interesting twist on what one might be used to. Each weapon swing opens a window of opportunity via a bubble that, when triggering another attack when that bubble is present, the next attack in the sequence will deal critical damage. This creates a unique debate on whether you want to commit to the attack sequence or interrupt by dodging out of the way of enemy attacks. There is, however a problem that arises later on in the game. When you are being swarmed by enemies that can take and deal considerable amounts of damage, there is an argument to abandon the idea of playing this rhythm game and instead kiting enemies around in circles, preferring to use your weapon's abilities more than anything. Secondly, the weapons in this game are fine in principle. You have the option of making a shield for bonus armor when equipped, a spear for poke damage, a sword for standard combat and more. There is one big question mark I place when it comes to the stat distribution of these weapons. Why is the hammer, a weapon dictated in logic to be a heavy object thus packing a punch at the cost of swing speed, the fastest attack speed weapon you can craft? When you realize that the hammer has good damage and the fastest swing speed, why consider any other weapon? It is a tad disappointing that the only consideration once you manage to upgrade most of your weapons is what abilities you prefer to use to poke enemies to death with. What armor you equip is a significant factor in your combat capabilities. This game has a lot of armor sets, some sold by vendors, others found in dungeons. The inventory management in your character tab, however, is a cluttered mess. If I may be so bold as to recommend a theoretic alternative, I could envision a radial menu stemming from the armor slot the player first clicks circled by all the different armor pieces they have unlocked in the usual order. This would cut down on the absolute clutter that is that menu tab. - Building - As a sucker for letting loose my creativity in games, I was happy to see a snap point-based building mechanic in the game. There is a good amount of building blocks and decoration items to make your builds feel cozy and lived-in. My only grievance with this system is the inherent lack of triangular foundations and cross-beam, along with more styles. - Mines - To get most ores (excluding tungsten), the player would have to go down into the mines of the world with multiple entrances, acting as a limited alternative to boat travel for getting to other islands in the world. The spelunking experience felt nice to wander around in and hitting ores to see if my tools were high enough tier to mine was also an experience of all time. Some areas in the mines have some nice ambient story-telling in the form of ruins. - Islands - Considering this game is called Len's Island, I was not disappointed to find myself starting off on an island. One of many in fact. Getting around from one to the next on boat felt nice, though I would find it remise to leave out how I would have loved some small wave physics of some kind to really sell it. There is however a major caveat that somewhat lessened the experience for me. The islands are not purely randomly generated in shape like other island games. Each island's position on the map, excluding the starter island, seems to be shuffled around when creating a new world. That is the only pseudorandomization taking place. I was also somewhat let down by the scale of everything, with the world border being a massive, impassible glacier that surrounds the entirety of the map. Perhaps it is my preference toward the voyage from one to the other where I can tune out and listen to some good sea shanty music. - Final Notes - Throughout play, I learned to appreciate lots of things within the game. The harvest moon events making the night more dangerous, along with besieging your outpost if you bought any (I recommend not doing that too early on). The pet system acting as a small resource vacuum was adorable. At some point though, I found myself waiting for ingame processes to end so I could continue. The tasks and rewards are not all made equal, like the final cooking task granting you probably the last building blueprint you're still missing at that point which is a small supply barrel. My recommendation is setting your own goal for the day and knocking out these tasks as a side objective rather than making them your main objective. There is also one last thing I would like to mention. I had no issues with the normal difficulty for enemies up until the cursed version of the last dungeon. The debuff applied reducing your armor investment by half and the reduction to your damage dealt is not fun in the slightest. That was my breaking point where I just increased my damage by double to balance out the debuff turning my hammer into a pool noodle. Not cool. Framerate drops are also a little bit of a problem if you're playing for longer stretches of time. Be sure to take breaks and restart the game if need be. Hopefully you enjoy the game if you give this a try.