Nimbit Frontier

Much like you've seen from the other reviews, this is such a great creature collector game that is not only fun to play but very visually appealing as well. There are a lot of direct comparisons in other reviews with existing games, so instead I'll talk about what the game does really well (which is a lot!), and the types of things I'd like to see as Early Access continues on. The gameplay consists of what I'd consider 3 main components - walking around town and building relationships with NPCs in the town as they help you with your objectives, fighting in a rogue-lite style procedural dungeon to collect resources you need to breed the various Nimbit creatures, and breeding the Nimbit creatures in a customizable biodome where you try to make them the perfect specimen before releasing them into the wild. In addition to this there are smaller activities like fishing, foraging, home development, farming, and other types of things you expect to find in a game like this. I played for almost 5 hours on the Steam Deck over the weekend (offline just in case this review isn't reflecting that) and let me tell you, this is an almost ideal Steam Deck game. You get a few warnings when you boot the game up on Steam Deck but frankly it's over nothing substantial because I had such a smooth time playing with it with full gamepad controls. And really just the format of the game (going through a full day and then sleeping) is perfect for feeling like you accomplished something when you have just a little bit of time to play, as well as scratching that "just one more day" itch that the most addictive game loops have. My favorite part of the game is the dungeon dives. You can set the difficulty to "spicy" which makes it a little more challenging though frankly super challenging combat is not the focus here regardless. But the procedural dungeon generation works great and it has a lot of fun discovery moments, puzzles, tight combat, and some modifiers you can apply to the dungeons beforehand to give them some good variety. The other stuff in town interacting with people is very reminiscent of things you've seen in other similar games, but satisfying. The "Nimbit care biome" gameplay is something that I am personally less familiar with in terms of direct gameplay comparisons but I did find it satisfying to release a S class Nimbit into the wild and then have that unlock progression which allows me to explore more of the map and game features. It is honestly impressive how much content there is to be found here even in an Early Access state. I am definitely going to be following the development after I beat the storyline to see what kinds of updates there are and when it would be a good time to dive in again. In terms of things I would like to see added - character customization is an easy one, and in particular it would be cool if you could customize your pet a lot more. As the procedural dungeons are my favorite aspect of the game, I'd love to see more randomization elements added to this to provide even more replayability and variety. I'm also an "exploration" gamer and so I'd love to see a lot more things to discover out of the procedural dungeon system in the main world area, and especially things like secret areas to really incentivize poking into every nook and cranny. All that being said, this is a very impressive Early Access that I am definitely excited to play more of and see where it goes in the future. The best compliment I can give is that it feels familiar and fresh at the same time. I hope this helps inform people when it comes to their own purchasing decisions.