Preserve

I played it on Steam Deck. So the first thing worth pointing out is that the controls are quite specific. I used the analog sticks for control. The left stick moves the cursor, while the right one controls the camera, except that depending on which trigger you press, you can use it to change the camera zoom, while the other trigger changes its tilt. After some time you can get used to these controls, and I wouldn't say they are a major downside. This is the first game where moving the cursor with analog sticks wasn't a complete disaster. The gameplay itself mainly focuses on optimizing the points you earn while playing. You earn points by using cards on specific tiles, and after reaching certain point thresholds, you get more and more cards available to you. And I think this is one of the game's biggest strengths. The game balances between your heuristics for making plays that should lead to the best possible result, while at the same time you have to focus on what you currently have in your hand and how to use it right now. And this creates a certain organic quality in the ecosystem you are building. The heuristics we use to optimize our boards aren't particularly impressive in terms of complexity. You have to create ecosystems of the appropriate size, choose the right animals that fit them, and use certain features that give you bonuses for being adjacent to other blocks. And this is where one of the downsides I noticed appears. I constantly had to count tiles to plan whether I would have enough space to fit my areas into the designated place. My second complaint is about rivers. They usually give us adjacency bonuses. These are fairly important bonuses, and of course rivers have to flow from higher levels to lower ones. I wouldn't say the game communicates the elevation of these levels very well. Of course, I could change the camera perspective to make sure about the elevation of the tiles, but I played the game from a bird's-eye view the entire time, and such camera movements felt unnatural. As for the biomes themselves, they change the gameplay to some extent, but there is always a consistent core to them. I think there was an opportunity to add more variety if the biomes actually changed the gameplay to a greater extent than they currently do. Right now, the differences are quite subtle. When it comes to difficulty, in the boards with expanding terrain, I think I completed almost all of the largest variants on my first attempt, except for the first biome, where perhaps I didn't understand the rules well enough yet. So once you know how to approach these boards, they are fairly easy to solve, but they still require some engagement and planning. This is especially true for the largest board of the second biome, where these unusual-shaped monuments appear that you have to somehow fit in and maximize the points from. These are things you have to keep in mind from the very beginning. And I think this is the only case where the monuments dominated the gameplay to such an extent. I should also point out that I had to repeatedly check their shape in the compendium, because there was no shortcut for it in-game until the midgame. I think I spent the most time in the puzzle section, where each biome has 20 puzzles requiring you to optimize the points from a pre-built terrain and a given set of cards. These boards can be divided into two categories: the ones you solve on your first attempt because they seem fairly obvious and straightforward, and the second category, where I would come back to the puzzle dozens of times and it required a lot of trial and error. The base game contains some minor visual bugs, such as board highlights not updating correctly, with the red and green indicators when changing cards. But there weren't any major bugs in the base game. I can't say the same about the DLC, which, I have the impression, was made in a hurry. To sum it up, I was quite engaged with the game and actually looked forward to coming back to it after work. So, for whatever that's worth, in my opinion it was money well spent. The game aims for a casual and relaxing gameplay experience, and it succeeds at that.

Preserve deserves more recognition. It's beautiful, it's relaxing, it's soothing, it's engaging (for what it is). But most importantly it's just plain ole 'fun'. Def recommend this one to any & all nature/animal lovers. Or random puzzle-lite enjoyers.

Fun Hard And Not The Best

This game is super fun and chill and tickles my brain, it's very satisfying to pull off the score goals, i really enjoy it and hope there may be more biomes

The game comes with 4 biomes, which all play a little bit different from each other, and each biome comes in 3 different sizes, which brings its own challenges. So replayability is quite high. I found the gameplay loops to be satisfying and occasionally challenging, just the right amount. Although you can play a free play mode that comes with no challenges. What makes this game really stand out though is the music and the music direction. Both are absolutely phenomenal. Game stays in its steam folder, does not pollute your hard drive. One point of criticism I have is that when ALT+TABbing to a different window, this game and its sounds don't pause or stop. The music will just keep playing. I'd really appreciate if this could be fixed. Game also has a luxurious amount of control settings that you can see here. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3715804967 Overall, the setttings offer a high quality of life.

Had such a great time with this game. It was refreshing to play a puzzle game with random elements, it made it impossible to cave and find a walkthrough when it gets tough. I spent about 30 hours in the game to get all the achievements and had sessions sat playing it with my partner to figure out how to get gold on some of the larger levels. Plus the audio and graphics are great and very soothing. Would highly recommend!

While it can be a tad confusing about how to get the bonuses from time to time, generally an enjoyable little puzzle game to pass the time with. You'll want to come back and try again to beat your score, but not a demanding game for sure.