"Among Trees" by FJRD Interactive

I first discovered this game from iBallisticSquid's series of Let's Play videos on it. It was in early access then, and it hasn't changed much.

 

Actually, it's in beta now, and that's not likely to change. I did a bit of digging, and it seems the developers just abandoned it. It's playable, just unfinished.

 

That said, it's a very, very pretty game. Unfortunately it's also an equally heavy one, so unless you have a rather beefy computer, you can't experience the prettiness if you want a framerate of more than 1/10th of a frames per second. Which I do happen to want, so unfortunately, I can't experience the prettiness as much.

 

In the original (as in the early access version iBallisticSquid played), the crafting system would create the items you crafted as physical (well, "physical") objects on the crafting table, and you could pick them up. I thought that was pretty innovative, as crafting systems usually have the items you made go straight to your inventory. Unfortunately, in the version I have, they just go straight to your inventory; while it's not worse than other crafting systems, it's also no longer better.

There are some changes from that version that I do like, though, and some that at least make sense. You no longer find (as many) random beets around the world; I think most of them have been replaced with burdock roots. The loot sites you find around the world no longer respawn their loot, which, while it means you can't just get infinite loot from them, makes sense; after all, who would be going around to these abandoned metal tower things and restocking the crates full of rags and bent metal pipes and stuff?

 

(My headcanon for the reason those towers are surrounded by trash and campfires [that you can search to find more trash] is that these are the places where someone once came out to burn their trash until whoever runs this forest made them stop. As for what the towers themselves are doing there, I have no clue.)

 

There's a fishing minigame in this, but it requires a framerate of more than my current 3 frames per second to get the precision needed to actually catch any of the fish.

 

This is a videogame, but it's not rated by the ESRB (you don't have to have an ESRB rating, it's just that most games choose to get one to do their part in making this not a government thing). Anyway, if I were rating this, I'd give it an E.

 

4 stars. 

 

(Endnote: I have no idea what "FJRD" stands for.)