المراجعات

• gamedeal user

  Nov 2, 2019

  Pine is high concept hampered by poor execution. Its premise is solid; Humanity never ascended to become the dominant species. Mankind is pushed from its home and forced to find a place in a world filled with horrific monsters and unusual creatures. You take control of a boy who must unearth lost technology and play politics with the other residents of the world. Pine's biggest draw is its living world. The factions actually exist. You will see traders moving between cities, foragers racing you to gather resources, and warbands moving to capture new territory. Pine's map will change as land is lost and tribes assert their authority. You as the player can have a massive impact on how the various tribes develop. Delivering food and supplies to a town will help it grow. As you help one race its growth is reflected in a stronger presence on the map. Technology you discover allows you to help or hinder a settlement. You eventually get the ability to call raids and can push a race you dislike back to a single territory. Its all really cool and surprisingly well developed for an indie game. The issue is a linear story that directly conflicts with the sandbox. The main quest forces you to be friendly with each of the races in order to do their quest line. You can choose the order of the quests but you have no choice but to work with each of them. I frequently had to spend time raising reputation with a faction that I had been fighting for hours just to do a single quest. Raising reputation for one race reduces it for others based on the current dynamic politics. I actually never beat the game because I was forced to help a race I didn't care about attack a settlement for a race that I had just spent hours growing. The constant attempt to wrangle in player agency took me out of the experience to the point that I have no desire to finish the game. Pine is a fun game and worth the price for all its flaws. I still recommend the game because I think the developers have made something worth playing. Just go in understanding its flaws and you will probably have a better time than me.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 22, 2021

  Pine is not a bad game. Pine is an ok game with good ideas and bad execution. Let me explain. You start off as a rando human guy whose tribe ends up needing to look for a more stable home, so he sets out into the world to explore. You can wander wherever you like, picking up crafting materials and food and finding treasures, crafting recipes, and civilization. You quickly discover the island you're on has 5 main non-human tribes living on it, the moose, crocodiles, foxes, birds, and frog peoples (plus the neutral otter-weasel-raccoon-things). At first these tribes don't like each other and they don't like you, but you can increase your reputation by gifting them items. Certain items give better rep boosts than others, and once you achieve different reputation levels the members of that species no longer attack you on sight, and you unlock favorable benefits like being able to trade with them, upgrade their villages, or leading their villages on raids of other tribes to expand their territory. The main story quest takes you around the island to various vaults which serve as the big Zelda-ish dungeons of the game filled with puzzles where you get your big artifacts that unlock new abilities for your character. Now all that sounds great! But the execution is absolutely botched in almost every facet. A normal player of this kind of game will want to become friendly with every tribe in the game, hoping to unlock quests with them and some such. Maybe they'll ignore the tribe they don't like or try to take out the one they like to hate. Unfortunately that's not how this game operates. See, when you give items to one tribe, multiple other tribes don't like that, and your reputation actually goes down with them while you attempt to build it up with another. So you basically can only be friendly with one tribe at a time, as the rep with other tribes plunges into hated territory. Every time you build rep you end up losing more in total. It feels TERRIBLE. Worse, there's never really any point to building reputation anyways. Outside of story quests where you have to be on favorable terms with a certain tribe for that specific moment, there's little benefits in allying with anyone. The story doesn't change based on which tribes you favor, and even worse than that - sometimes story events will destroy your gained reputation anyways with certain tribes! Favor the birds? Well there's no point in helping them conquer the north side of the map because the moment you leave, their villages fall to pieces. Crafted a bunch of efficiency plans to help them upgrade the town? The moment you start the next quest all those upgrades you spent your materials on vanish. Why even bother? Why have all the different tribes if you won't let the player choose their favorites or let them actually build up SOMETHING over the course of the game? There aren't even any faction specific sidequests. There's faction specific armor and weapon recipes, but they're of middling quality and vastly outclassed by the armor you get from exploration. The main vaults are well crafted for the most part, both in mechanics and story. The dungeons and puzzles are the high point of the game, but even there problems arise. There's....how should I say...some very poor implementation of the level design in the game. Inside the dungeons is mostly fine, but the devs didn't seem to really test out the limits of the abilities they gave the main character. Certain puzzles can be trivialized simply by making jumps the devs clearly didn't think you would be able to make. Some puzzles can be bricked by jumping into a place you can't get back from, requiring a game load. If you've played Skyrim you probably know what I mean here, but they also didn't really calibrate your ability to climb the global terrain like mountain slopes while they clearly intended it to limit where you can move. One puzzle outdoors wanted you to climb up this mechanical tower that had timed electrified pads and switches to change the alignments and so on.....I simply bunny hopped my way up the cliff face next to the tower and jumped straight onto the top. That kind of thing abounds throughout the game, if it's not just buggy. One puzzle had a horse creature you needed trapped inside a stable and you had to solve a puzzle to open the gate. Well, I just jumped onto the horse and it was able to ride through the gate like it wasn't even there. You get trapped on or inside terrain CONSTANTLY too, and if you can't roll or spam jump your way out of it you have to save/load in place. There's some pretty massive texture pop in going on with the grass too, and it looks really really bad. Lots of characters look and feel floaty, like they aren't anchored to the ground. I will have to say though the character models themselves look great. Most of the animations look nice too. Probably the worst part of the game is its combat, and unfortunately you have to do it a bunch. It's clunky beyond belief and you avoid it whenever possible. You have your choice of bow with decent aiming controls but arrows are a consumable you have to craft, or sword and shield. The sword has the slow heavy attack combo, the quick weak combo, and the medium speed.....medium combo. All have extremely poor hitboxes on the attacks and faulty swing tracking, leaving you swinging at air more than half the time, even when locked onto an enemy. The lock on is sketchy as well, often locking onto friendly units when you NEVER want to do that. Your character handles sluggishly roo - it's clunky to evade out of the middle of a combo, the evade is extremely short distance to begin with, and certain types of enemies have tracking attacks to begin with. Friendly fire is rampant (from both the foxes and frogs) despite the game trying to claim on loading screens that friendly fire shouldn't happen. One thing that is massively absent from this type of game that I find unforgivable (an explore-gather-craftandtrade type affair) is a BANK. Your inventory starts way too small, although you can upgrade it to a good size. But you still lack a bank so you are constantly fighting your inventory the entire game. Players will naturally want to hoard the materials they're constantly picking up, but the game seems to want to punish you instead. The music is very nice! High points are the peaceful type tracks while you roam the countryside and I quite enjoyed them. In the end - they had a lot of good ideas, and they tried. You can definitely see how things could have been better if they had a larger budget and a bigger team to implement the things that didn't quite work out. Still you can definitely get enjoyment out of the game if you accept its limitations - just make sure you get it on sale for half price or less.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 11, 2019

  I was going to wait until I had a few more hours into this game before I wrote a review, but I couldn't wait. I'm 37 years old, and have been jaded by a swarm of lackluster and seemingly uninspired games that, at best, have proven to be a mere distraction without any real immersion, and at worst, have been a frustrating waste of time. Well, this game immediately jumped out at me as a breath of fresh air in the realm of interactive story-telling. Everything is lovingly crafted from the textures of the ground to the models of seemingly insignificant plants. The controls are well above par and the animations are fluid. This game was definitely crafted with love, and it shows when playing it. From one storyteller to another, kudos to those of you at Twirlbound. You've done something that hasn't been done for me in well over a decade; you've captured my imagination and made me get swept up in setting and story. This is going to be a classic. A timeless benchmark for action-adventure RPGs going forward to be compared against. It's about time something this well-polished and balanced came to Steam. And Pine launched with a native-Linux client, day-one. As you said you would. Take note, other developers. This is how you do it. You follow through with what you say, and you let your passion shine through in your work. I have a category in my Steam library that very, very few games get the honor of receiving: All Time Greats. I'm a little over an hour into Pine, and I can tell you with every fiber of my confidence that this game will be among them. You've rekindled that spark of my childhood, imagination and wonder of different worlds that I had thought died along with my innocence from my short but bitter taste of war. I know very few people will read this, like most of what I write, but I just want you to know this game has brought me up a rung in morale and mindset. Just when I thought the soul of this world had lost its depth of character and passion, something as seemingly simple as a video game can bring to life something once long thought dead in me; my imagination. Pine: a timeless classic structured just like a bonfire story of old.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 8, 2020

  [h1]200 character summary[/h1] Pine is a great open world adventure game, You have to fight enemies, and gather resources to craft your gear and find a safe place for what remains of the human race amoung many dangerous species. [h1]Story [b]9/10[/b][/h1] The Story is set in an universe where many species have evolved into intelligent beings, Humans are not the top of the food chain, In fact they have been pushed to a dangerous cliff where they have been living for generations. Safe from all the evolved species but the cliffs have been falling apart for a while. You play as Hue, After an accident you fall off the cliffs and you meet one of the friendly species and your adventure begins. It is up to you to find a safe home for all that's left of humanity. [h1]Characters [b]7/10[/b][/h1] The Characters are good, but there are not many of them, Most are just generic NPCs, There are a bunch of people in your village but most of them lack a bit of personality, Hue and his brother are done nicely tho, I also love the camel riding species. None of the characters have voices, They just mumble a bit strange, It could have been done better. [h1]Gameplay [b]9/10[/b][/h1] There are 5 species that fight for control over the villages, They take over villages by themselfes but you can also help certain species, You can share technology, poison a village, or set them on the wrong track to weaken or strengthen them in battle, You can also place flares to let certain species spawn and take it over directly with your help. Villages have 3 states, A B and C, C is the weakest and an A village is the strongest, You have to take A to B to C and then the species will dissapear in that place or it will be taken over if you brought a species along. When you slowly befriend one species others will grow hostile towards you, It is like the classic GTA games. The game is mostly gathering resources, fighting hostile species and travelling a lot. You need the resources to craft gear and items, Gear is mostly optional but you need to craft certain items for several quests. The game is pretty short for a game in the genre, There are only 2 side quests 1 which is a riddle game where you have to find a few secret spots and the other requires you to find a lot of collectables. The main story felt really short, I spent most of my time gathering and exploring. The game starts in an amazing way, But it feels a bit incomplete in the middle and towards the end, Endgame there is literally nothing to do but find all orbs and chests that remain pretty much hidden, You will get a balloon that spots collectables around it, but you still need to deploy, wait and then take it down everywhere at least once to spot them all. which is going to take a very long time, You don't really get anything for it next to an achievement, It feels more like a chore sadly. I do think the game itself is very nice, It is something you don't see alot on Steam, You can tame creatures, There are dozens of gear items, It is a great exploring game, I especially think the setting is amazing, The idea that animals evolved into intelligent creatures to battle for control over territory. I also love the small things, Like the 3D map, The fact that you can walk while showing the map, The free choice in which Vault you go first [h1]Aesthetics [b]9/10[/b][/h1] The graphics are very nice, It feels a bit cartoony, But there is a lot of detail, I like it a lot. The game is also suprisingly light with only 3GB of storage needed. The soundtrack enhances the game very nicely, but it is a bit short. [h1]Performance [b]6/10[/b][/h1] Performance is not the best sadly, I do not get a stable 60 FPS most of the time which is a bit dissapointing, I had some drops going even lower, But It was not at the point where the framerate or stutters just get annoying. Especially when loading areas it has a few stutters, the stutters then dissapear but the low framerates are always present. [h1]Replayability [b]6/10[/b][/h1] Replaying the game would result in the same outcome, You can choose which vault you will do first but other than that the game will be exactly the same, There are no more gamemodes, difficulity settings or anything. I would not recommend replaying the game after you finished it. [h1]Improvements[/h1] Ofcourse the performance needs to be adressed and It could greatly improve by adding content, It is obvious that the game is lacking in content after the first vault. I would love to see more missions in between, Even stuff to do end game, Maybe some random generated missions, or random encounters and maybe some minigames. I feel the big open world, all the species, backstory, resources, everything is a bit of a waste when the game feels incomplete. [h1]Conclusion [b]8/10[/b][/h1] Overal it is a great game with an amazing atmosphere. The performance is a bit of a bummer but it is certainly playable with decent framerates. I think it is an amazing idea, And a lot of things have been executed in a great way, But I feel the development and release was a bit rushed at a certain point. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35216846/][h1]Follow my Curator Page for more Reviews like this[/h1][/url][/quote] [h1]Game Info[/h1] [table] [tr] [td]# of players[/td] [td]Single Player only[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Steam Cloud Save[/td] [td]Working fine[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Controller Support[/td] [td]Yes, Xbox One Bluetooth Working[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Achievements[/td] [td]Hard to find all collectables[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]FPS on Ultra 1080P[/td] [td]40- 120 fps[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Launch Command[/td] [td]gamemoderun %command%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Installed Size[/td] [td]3.2GB[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Issues[/td] [td]Not the best performance[/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1]Operating System & Hardware[/h1] [table] [tr] [td]OS[/td] [td]Arch Linux[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Kernel[/td] [td]5.4.7[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]DE[/td] [td]Gnome 3.34.2[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]CPU[/td] [td]Intel I7-6800K Hexa Core @ 4.2 Ghz[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]GPU[/td] [td]Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 (Nvidia 440.44 Drivers)[/td] [/tr] [/table]
• gamedeal user

  Oct 13, 2019

  Even though I give PINE a recommendation, do not buy this game expecting: - A deep, rich story-line. - A traditional RPG experience with numerous gear sets and progression(There is some), non linear choices, meaningful dialog, and weighted decisions. - A traditional level up system with skill trees and the like. - City or base building mechanics. - A fast-paced and thrilling combat system. - More than 10 hours of main story and side mission content. (Game is very short if you stick to the main quest line) Think of this game like the first Zelda, in which you have a linear mission to complete where both character and story progression is made through better equipment and gadgets, rather than levels and a talent tree. It's a fun game with a colorful and relaxing world full of anthropomorph animal factions that are in a constant struggle for territory. Outside of some whiskered lizards, the only enemies you need worry about are members of the factions you're hostile with, and you tend to run into them frequently on the roads and in the wild as they gather food and materials for their villages. The combat will feel clunky and unintuitive to those who are used to more responsive controls and faster paced gameplay, but PINE seems more geared toward exploration than combat. I personally used a bow for 90% of the game, which made the few situations with a scripted battle more bearable, as I do not like the melee combat mechanics one bit. The game has a great start and does a fantastic job of drawing you in, but the pacing goes right out the window at a certain point as you pretty much breeze through the 2nd half in no time flat, due to better equipment and the simple and somewhat shallow storyline. About 3 hours in, you'll realize you've experienced 80% of what PINE is. That said, for a $25 game with a small and talented team of dedicated developers, you get your money's worth(my opinion). No more, no less.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 15, 2021

  Dull, dumb and draining. Fake free save tends to rattle me more than no free save at all. It's also twice the stupidity, as the devs put the work into the feature, into the GUI, into the code that stores all this data... except for the actors' positions. Pine lets you save at any time indeed, but when you reload... you are somewhere else. At a checkpoint. Those 30 platforming jumps you went through and you hoped were done... they are waiting for your repeat on your next session. That is, if you remember them and how to get to them. Gameplay is basically collect everything you see, and stay away from anything that moves. Then find a drop box, offer 3000 Grotznits of collected goods to the village, and you can now approach them and are allowed to buy from their merchant the 30 Grotznits of goods you might be interested in. This model of commerce... that's how you know it's a fantasy setting. On top of that, there is a system of relative hate between villages. For what I gather, it fluctuates, but the details are incomprehensible. In any case, it's irrelevant as everybody seems to hate you 10 minutes later, whatever you do. It's not that they close the doors of their village to you, they don't. Everybody hates you and each other so much that they attack on sight. You are minding your own business, trying to jump on some platform, when a traveller sees you, approaches and shoots you dead from behind. Gratuitously and incessantly. You are now back at the checkpoint, 2 km away. Let's just say that the exploration and the puzzle-solving are constantly derailed by racist, murderous passersby. The combat is poor, yet routinely forced upon you. The platforming is 3rd-rate, yet essential to the puzzles. Last but least of the gameplay staples, crafting isn't going to save the day; one more formula of cheap artificial lengthening used by the industry, the one that keeps your nose in the GUI and out of the fantasy world. The video resolution cannot go higher than your current desktop resolution. The ESC key brings the inventory, not the menu. Loading a game takes ages (despite functioning like a checkpoint.) Fonts are too small to be legible. And so on, the quality of the UI is on par with the quality of the gameplay, i.e., weak.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 30, 2020

  Pine is different from your typical world-conquering quest. It's more like an interactive story in a world very different from our own. There are mysteries to discover and tasks to be completed. But most importantly - the world keeps going on around you - regardless of how much or little you accomplish. The world is definitely affected by your actions, but your actions do not drive the world. You're just a tiny pebble in the grand scheme of things. If you like being the underdog and can appreciate being kind of helpless (to start, at least) because humanity never reached alpha tier, then working your way to being decent, you'll like Pine. If you like exploring and puzzles (and can note things down to come back for later), you'll like Pine. If you like watching the world "happen" without you, you'll like Pine. If you want human domination and crushing populations, you're in for a challenge, so not sure you'll like Pine. If you need deep/complex mechanics, you may not like Pine - it's made to be easy to play, so while there's a range of mechanics (crafting, armor, weapons, quests, puzzles) none of them are super deep. Personally I like that my daughter who has little RPG experience can play Pine without getting overwhelmed. Definitely watch gameplay videos and video reviews to get a feel for it. For me, I find it refreshing. The attention to details like footstep noises and environmental sounds really enhance the "lost in the woods" and "stranger in a strange world" feeling that is part of the fundamental storyline. Remember too that this is a team of LESS THAN 10 who made this game, and in my opinion, it's quite the feat. I look forward to what this studio brings in the future!
• gamedeal user

  Oct 11, 2019

  From my playing time so far, i can say the following: Pros: -Beautiful graphics -Reasonably immersive atmosphere -Decent size of world -Enjoyable relaxing gameplay overall with easy little puzzles here and there, adequately challenging enemies, and good overall game mechanics. -Awesome music that fits the setting (beautiful valleys / war / etc). -Big battles between species are great (until you get pulled in xD). -Handy Auto save + manual save system. Cons: -Encountered very minimal audio bugs where the characters voice didnt activate with the on screen text. -Performance could be improved imo. Still playable nonetheless. TL;DR: I sometimes briefly forget this is an indie game. Might update after playing more.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 31, 2021

  Buy it on sale. Fun but quick with a damn good soundtrack, (the ending does removes most replay value). The tribe system is absolutely wretched though. The game fails to mention that no matter how well you invest in allying with or expanding the territory of a tribe, you will necessarily alienate basically all other tribes (making 80% of the map hostile anyways), the story missions force you to become at least neutral with all tribes (destroying your alliance if you even had one), and the late story missions make you hostile with all tribes while removing the possibility of re-allying. You also can't destroy a tribe to extinction, so the second you leave an area, the magically spawning NPCs will retake all the ground you gained. The tribe system is fine in theory, but it's application here is horribly flawed.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 12, 2019

  After a few hours of gameplay and exploration the glamor wears off and it’s easy to see the world is bland and empty. There are only 4 wild animals, 4 types of villagers and nothing really to do. You can go around and gather Skyrim-style but all you do is barter and trade for diplomacy. I haven’t gotten into the late game yet but the beginning and middle aren’t really enough to keep me hooked. Devs please add more! This feels like a (well done) pre-release version. I’d be very disappointed if this was the final product. There are also some things that could be polished, characters get stuck a lot, animations are slow and fighting is agonizingly clunky and delayed.