Osta

This game is great for militaria collectors, gun nuts, hardcore Estonians, and those who dream of gradually overcoming EU-wide travel bans. It is part treasure hunting, part sandbox / art project and manages to be unintentionally funny in how it presents itself. You are... a mystery. You wake up in a house totally devoid of cooking facilities or major appliances. I can acknowledge you do have electricity but it matters little because night never comes in Osta, nor does your hunger and thirst advance. While I am happy for the basic survival systems and the ability to stock endless borscht, pilaf, and sausage, it is a system that begs for a degree of refinement. If the system never did get altered, I would not be upset as it is currently very unintrusive. Who has buried a shotgun in your front yard? Why do you see no other people, or even your own body? Why am I not allowed to freely travel until I've impressed special contacts in museums and re-enactment organizations? I have come to the conclusion at some point you made a pact with some Eastern European druidic sorts, maybe a cult or some kind of witch. You've lost your ability to perceive other humans but, in return, the earth vomits upon you a bounty of war and industry. Through the connecting power of firearms you are able to piece-meal overcome an apparently pre-existing EU and maybe international travel ban. One can only imagine what we did to earn that ban but nobody seems to be keeping too close of an eye on us now and legality is not a concern of the gameplay. First you get your basics in Estonia, where a militaria fair, general auction market, and WW1 and WW2 Eastern front fields exist. First you'll be saving guns from the darkness of wild and empty Baltic forests. In France the stakes are raised where you find yourself rescuing the beleaguered relics of assorted WW2 combatant nations from capture or unionization by the local French populace. You can then earn passage (by showing automatic weapons) to the Balkans and Afghanistan to continue your mission of mercy. Here you are saving militaria and gun parts from, presumably, rambling French tourists, vacationers, and the predations of voracious Afghani mountain goats in the latter case. The morality of your heroism (and the hundreds of untraceable firearms) is a quiet and dignified reward. It is clear I have spent too much time thinking about Osta, thinking too deeply of things that were omitted for simplicity. But this is part of the unique charm in Osta, it is a game about freedom to mark up a blank canvas, of finding more canvases. Of defining what your project or product is, what your purpose is. For me it has become almost an art project, or a series of art projects. Tapestries of guns and unsorted bolts, carefully organized pantries and rows of unexploded ordinance. There is no threat here and almost 0 pressure so you have time to think, and time to metal sweep. I usually have a youtube video running on the 2nd monitor while I plod along in a rough patterns, each game day is usually a repeat of the last and I've been content to focus on WW2 weapons. Osta is a childhood sandbox for gun weirdos like myself, people who are happy to recognize a 1891/30 bolt from a Kar98k. While it is far to say I love this game I would not recommend it to everyone, you have to be someone willing to toil doing the same thing from minute 1 to hour 1,000. You have to be able to enjoy the small, self-set victories and goals. But i mean, I am not NOT going to recommend a game in which I have two dozen SMGs and even more handguns. Seriously, this is not a gun selling game, it is a collecting game. I am 40 hours into weaving a carpet in one room of double-barrel shotguns, Mosins, and G98/K98s. There is space in Osta for improvement, and having been here since day 1 I've seen the dev(s) pushing out new items and fixes. I do think that the biggest improvement it can make is allowing you to upgrade or purchase expansions to the Estonian house, though I suspect this is impossible while maintaining the games memory of what is inside that house. But a man can hope, sweep the fields, and keep his emotional support M1918 tankgewehr by the bedside for those cold Estonian nights (I did not learn anything about Estonia for the purpose of this review.)