Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Aug 6, 2023

  I beat the game after playing for 24.2 hours. As an early access game, One Lonely Outpost has a lot of fun and potential. But it also has some serious flaws. The most terrible design is fishing system. From small to big fishes, they always swim more agile than your drone. When you finally catch one, game will display a slider with limited time. You must let the pointer stop at a narrow position in order to catch a fish successfully! It's nearly impossible to catch a big fish because you need to click the slider very quickly. However, catch a certain fish is an important part of a main quest. So this is very annoying. Additional problem: game will automatically save your progress in just one save slot, no manual save function. If things go wrong (for example: you have no enough food or packaging to supply people), then you can't do anything except starting a new game. This is why I don't recommend the current version.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 27, 2023

  I never usually write reviews but by god the down votes forced my hand. This isn't Stardew, it isn't Harvest Moon - if you want a farming life sim clone where you access everything right away then ground breakingly rotate through spring, summer, autumn and winter while giving *insert item here* to *insert item here liker* then maybe this isn't for you (though the game does get there with time). You have to earn everything, it's One LONELY Outpost, you start with yourself and your rolling inventory chest with feelings - there is a real sense of work to be done and a strong accomplishment when you do it. It reminds me of the hit film - Matt Damon's the The Martian starring Matt Damon. There's farming, mining, exploring and lore hunting which I love, and the mechanics are very nice and fit the world setting brilliantly (refilling water by mining ice crystals *chefs kiss*). Seeing the first little sprouts of human and alien crops is exciting and starts as early as day 2. Of course the pacing is steady - you're terraforming an inhospitable planet dingus. It will all come together, its up to you to put the effort in - and the effort is enjoyable if you stop comparing it to games it isn't trying to be. Play One Lonely Outpost if you find farming life sims repetitive and wish for something more - if you wish you could play as if you were the very first in the settlement, who built the town the games usually start in. Thumbs up <3
• gamedeal user

  Jun 28, 2023

  I don't think I've ever written a review before, but this game has caused me to do so as I am now stuck with it. Did you find yourself looking at this game because it screamed Stardew Valley in space vibes? Yeeeeeah, you'll want to throw that out the window. The idea is interesting, you semi crash land on a deserted alien planet with your robotic companion and begin your journey to basically terraform the planet to make it habitable. I went into the game with the SDV in space vision and eagerly waited for its release, in the games's current condition I'd say wait a while. There's so much wrong at the moment. - The UI and menus are clunky. There's storage containers you can use and the bottom most row of slots actually expands out of the storage window and overlaps atop the bottom of it. Menus don't close properly but instead just pop up underneath one another. Tooltips takes at least a minute before it shows up when hovering over an item. - The camera view cannot be moved whatsoever. - Were you shown a tutorial video by either the game or while an NPC had dialogue and you clicked to close the video? Congrats, while you did that you advanced the dialogue that was partially hidden beneath the video. Also there's an unlocked NPC who shows you a tutorial about tools that you actually do not get access to until you progress the story, which is redundant. - There is absolutely ZERO graphics options in the settings. Do you dual or triple monitor as your setup? Congrats, your primary monitor has just been taken over by this fullscreen game. F11 or using Steam's launch command line does nothing to the game. - There is no money making until you make progress in the game's bland storyline and unlock the community box, either by day 20 - 22 or a couple hours in depending on your play speed. The community box, once crafted, also has limited spaces for things to be sold, unlike other farming sims where their community boxes are pretty much hammerspace. - Farmable resources? What's on the overworld is finite and does not refresh over time so you're forced to either conserve or spend the very limited amount of money you have (which until you unlock the community box to sell you only get have access to 1500$B - 2000$B) on the shop in your ship. Not until you unlock the mines. - Speaking of the mine. Do you like mini-games? Cool, so do I. Do you like minesweeper from good ol' Windows '95? I absolutely did not. Guess what, mining in the mines is basically minesweeper where you're penalized with a hefty loss of gathered resources and consumed time if you ignite the gases from hitting what constitutes as the 'mine'. You "can" cheat and just bee-line it to the next floor, if you're lucky. There's also hazards the further down you go on top of each floor is timed. Yes. Timed. There's a timer bar above your four hand tools. - Any gathered resources do not automatically go into your inventory, they collect on the hotbar at the bottom of the screen. If you happen to have a rock in your actual inventory(bag) and you mine another, it doesn't join its friend but takes up space on the hotbar instead. You also do not have a pick-up radius when harvesting your crops and all item stacks cap at 99. - Do you like decorating? Congrats, you're limited on what you can do and you cannot redecorate the inside of your ship. - Do you like character customization? This game not only does not have that, your name in dialogue windows is "Player" and you're called something completely different when an NPC dialogue addresses your name. "Star"-something, I don't recall because the name is only used like three times in the near six hours I played. - You are very limited on your crafting machines and how you set them up. You can only have up to three connected to your ship before you have to craft an item in order to use more. - There's a relationship/friendship tab just like in Stardew and you're instantly given the dialogue choices right off the bat with the first NPC, which seems off because your character is male by default and so is the NPC so unless you're into MLM then go for it. I haven't seen my friendship levels increase at all talking to the few people I have access to at the moment. - Your companion, QWERTY, gets in the way ALL the time when you're farming and seems to have noclip enabled as it just clips right through your ship and other set objects when outside while snails crawl following you around. It also has storage, I'd recommend not using it for important items. These are all the cons I've found in the near six hours I played. I've not really found any pros that help me redeem the game. I'm most likely going to uninstall until things really improve, but, this is my two cents. Take it as you will.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 27, 2023

  This game is clunky and I can't recommend it at the state that it's in. The tutorial tells me that the furnace block for this game only works on in a radius of power - but I put in that radius and its not working. Pushing 'escape' doesn't close you out of the window you're currently in. It opens and closes a window that is beneath the window you're in. The tutorials in general are like, almost helpful but not helpful at all. This is one of those very obvious Early Access games, and I'm looking forward to eventually changing this review to recommend it.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 27, 2023

  It’s never a good look whenever a new release gets bombed with negative reviews. It can be incredibly disheartening for indie devs. But at the same time, sweeping those reviews or critics under the carpet, can look just as bad. It’s almost as if you’re ignoring legitimate concerns about the game’s well being. This is a game we’re talking about that was announced in 2020. It’s been over three years since this game was conceived on kickstarter. It was probably in development even before August of 2020, so you’re probably looking at a considerable amount of time being worked on this game. There are several trailer videos that state the release of this game was going to be in 2022. That’s not a lot of turnaround. Two years? Given the time frame, it is understandable that there were delays in the game’s release. It’s blatant that the game is unfinished in it’s current state. Whether it’s with the bugs that are slowly being patched or what seems to be damage control on the steam-side. I think I could’ve waited a bit longer for a more polished rendition of this game. I don’t think the game’s been updated at all since launch. I don’t remember installing any patches so the Kickstarter patch notes seem bogus. There isn’t a community post on the steam-side listing these same changes, so I don’t think those changes have been implemented yet. I mean of course they haven’t, but it would be nice to let the people on steam know what bugs are being fixed and to find other problems to provide feedback while they wait. Like I don’t think it’s much trouble to have a day one patch for a game. Especially for something as simple as being unable to open your inventory while in the furnace interface. If that isn’t clear, you can open your inventory while in the furnace interface even though you already have a menu-ing for your inventory on the screen. There are a bunch of minor interactions such as this, that really shouldn’t take as long as it is for the devs to do something about it. A lot of the current reviews were mainly influenced with the idea of a reward for other game keys which is kind of a manipulative behavior if it wasn’t just asking people to leave what they thought about the game without a reward. A lot of other survival craft or farming-sims have been released in either early access or with a lot of bugs. But a lot of those other games were pretty quick to release hot-fixes for minor issues to help with accessibility. I’m assuming there will be a patch in the next coming day or two, but it just seems to be taking longer than it should. With that stated, I will restate the issues with the game so people can decide if they want to get the game now, or wait until this review becomes positive as the many issues I have, have been fixed; Bugs/oversights: -You can open your inventory and other menus while in any other interface. Pressing ‘E’ or ‘Q’ while in a furnace, storage, or construction will bring up a background overlay. -Bug drone vanishes after exiting a menu and reappears after moving. -Sprites in cutscenes sometimes flicker to a default sprite. -The camera is locked which makes it difficult to navigate certain areas. -The interaction hitbox/selection of tiles is difficult given construction and your companion takes priority over said interaction. -Blowing unplows soil. Blowing blows bugs away. Blowing bugs away unplows soil and breaks your crops. -Mine sweeper minigame has impossible starts. -Safe spots can spawn in unreachable places in the minesweeper minigame. -Hit boxes don’t match up visually in certain interactions. Placing seeds behind a water pump, tilling soil under a solar panel, being able to walk diagonally past two rocks in the mines, etc. -Bugged visual indication of dismantling constructions. Can target incorrectly, or not display it is breaking at all. -Community box requests don’t have limited amounts of time, and repeat if you miss the deadline. -Rocks sell for a lot more than they probably should, ruining the economy. -You can gift lore items to people and lose your only copy of said item. -A lot of others, but from the vague sound of it many are being worked on. Just not all at once. Gameplay Choices that I don’t think are great: -You can’t move your constructions once placed. Destroying them doesn’t refund all materials used. -Refining interface doesn’t tick up incrementally. There are only 6 states. It is visually hard to gauge the speed of processing resources. -Bugs on crops cause them to regress or prevent them progressing to the next growth stage. You have no control over this, and messes with your farm’s various layouts and produces uneven harvests. Blowing bugs away can cause your crops to break. -Progress is based on the passage of time a lot more than most games. It doesn’t take into account whether or not you’ve unlocked or progressed to the next stage of the game. If you’ve reached a certain day the game assumes you have gotten to a certain stage in the game in some cases, in other cases the game ignores this idea. -Being able to technically reach water sources you aren’t supposed to, to refill your water tanks. This takes longer given you are ‘further’ from the source. Just make it so you can’t get water from these areas to avoid confusion. -The size of the water pump is one tile, but the interaction hitbox of the water pump is more than one tile. It doesn’t make sense why you can even interact with it when it doesn’t do anything when you click on it. -The solar panels are your only source of power for constructions because your base can only power 3 constructions. The size of solar panels being 2x3 is unfair given they can only power one construction each. This makes the layouts of bases very unwieldy and not very decoration friendly. -Food recipes not displaying energy replenished from consumption or any additional buffs before crafting them. -The days are a lot shorter than I would like them to be. Hopefully when more content gets added to the game, the length of days are extended because I do not enjoy having only time to do one activity in a day. This is most of what I have to say regarding this game at the time being. And I would like to state once again, When this game receives the bug fixes, content patches, and accessibility changes it so desperately needs in this point in time, I will change this review to reflect what the game was aiming for, rather than what it currently is. Because currently it is not, "Stardew Valley but in space" or "Harvest Moon but in space" or anything of the sort. The space element in this game doesn't exist very strong except for the opening cutscene and the alien cave. Like the context of the story is that you are on an alien planet, but there isn't much going on that incorporates space colonization as a concept other than terraforming a planet. This isn't like a 'Terraria vs Starbound' or 'Raft vs Voidtrain" kind of comparison you can make. The game is a 3D environment with 2D characters. The music is fine. The idea of the environment is incredibly limited. You get an idea of what's to come, but it's more of a cage than a tease. If you want this game get it in the bundle. It's 2 dollars cheaper than the current 20% of sale in the bundle. The other game that comes in the bundle is also an early access game with cardboard propping up the environment. I would say that game has a bit more content, but only because they're a bit further along in development than One Lonely Outpost. You have a tavern which you maintain. Both games are being worked on, and will eventually reach a point where they are polished. But if you want to play a finished game, wait until it's out of early access or gets a couple content patches.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 5, 2023

  Wait till the game is fully released. Mini-games for mining, bug hunting, fishing (all main events), approx around days 47-48 you lose 80% of your hard earned $$ to some fee you wasn't told you had.... played for several hours before I wrote this. A positive note... devs do fix broken items quickly especially if you tell them on discord.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 27, 2023

  Important edit: they have confirmed in a post that the only differences between the demo and this early access release is some minor bug fixes and a couple minor QOL changes like slightly faster movement and zone names. If that doesn't tell you what you need to know, idk what will. The dev response to this comment seems to imply otherwise but from the dev comments in threads I read, it's contradictory, so I'm leaving this here because it feels unclear. I've decided against refunding as I have high hopes for the growth of this game and personally like the concept enough to stick it out and see what comes. I'll list the negatives for me first and finish off with some positives. I look forward to hopefully changing this review to a positive in the future. No roadmap. No customization. No playable female option. This should not have been released yet, it is NOT ready. To not even have basic options for a game like this is insane, this is a demo at best. There's a lot of weird conceptual things that don't really feel right to me, the shape of your watering (T versus straight line) and the camera angle being weirdly low making it difficult to aim are big things. Also Qwerty is adorable, but I wish he would get the hell out of my way because it's impossible not to constantly accidentally click him. Does it have potential? Absolutely. Unfortunately, they cared more about money in their pockets than making release a fun and enjoyable experience. I'm so tired of "early access" games that take years and years to complete, if they ever do, and paying money to play an extremely early beta version of a game. That being said, some positives: - it has lovely music, so far I've enjoyed all the sounds. - i actually like the graphics, I preferred the original but these are not as bad as everyone is claiming - there is SO MUCH potential, so much. The overall game concept is a fun twist on farming sims, I'm crossing all my fingers and toes they execute this well in the end
• gamedeal user

  Jul 5, 2023

  What happened to the original ideas? Cross breeding crops, choosing between a natural or more "genetically enhanced crop, Hints of a battle system... the game feels half baked and as if its missing many promised features. I get that maybe the dev team decided to go in a different direction, but this is not what i was hoping for. =( I will continue to visit from time to time and see how it goes, but as of right now i can not recommend the game in the state it is now, but i am REALLY hope the Devs make me eat crow on my initial feelings. Wow me guys!
• gamedeal user

  Jun 27, 2023

  Alright so this game has it's good and it's bad. Mostly good though so..yay! But let's get its negatives out of the way first. No giving character a name. No customizing character. Not able to play as female. No quick button to add or remove things from backpack/storage. No run button. Items don't automatically stack when you pick them up and no sorting button. Basically just a few issues with the mechanics and U.I. But everything else about the game is pretty good. I see a bunch of negative reviews but idk what they're talking about. I didn't run into a single bug or glitch in my first 2 hours of playing. It ran smooth as silk. I mean...not a SINGLE bug or glitch. The artstyle is nice, the sound is awesome, the music is average. The gameplay is boring and repetitive in the beginning and I hope it picks up but it's not the worst i've seen. The writing is well done, the plot is interesting, there's a mystery you need to solve but don't worry, the main goal is still farming. Because in this game, it's a farming sim but on another alien world which I love the idea. It's camera angle is a bit wonky but you get used to it. Overal there wasn't a lot of negatives I could say about it more than what I said and even those things aren't making it awful or unplayable, just a bit annoying in some places. For a farming sim game I liked it and would recommend. Just remember that it's early access and it's gonna be a little rough around the edges alright? That's why they do early access, to get feedback from things people like and don't like so that they can fix it and make it better. Or at least one of the reasons why they do it. If you want to take a look at MY gameplay and see that it worked fine plus hear some more in-depth details about the game then please check out the video on my YouTube Channel (Link below). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rq6OiOlU6c Otherwise thanks so much for reading and I hope I managed to help some of you out there to spend your money wisely.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 28, 2023

  I actually have 11 hrs but whatever. let me start off by saying I reached the end of the content for the EA in about 11 hrs of game time. The game as it stands I very rough but after airing my concerns in their discord and reaching the "end game" I got to talk with the lead programmer for the game. They are keenly aware of the frustrations of the other negative reviewers and other platforms. My main two frustrations within the game currently, are the mini-games within the game. The game also railroads you into super farming to get the ingredients need to cook for the community which no cozy game to my knowledge does. Are these being addressed behind the scenes? Yes. Is it going to take time? Yes. does this game have SDV potential? Yes. Dont buy the game unless you actively want to help the dev team improve it, is what id say. you are going to need a lot of patience to play game as it is now.