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After years of anticipation, I am happy to say Ooblets was well worth it

Ooblets is one of those games that I’ve followed from its announcement in 2016 right through to its release, so suffice it to say that this was a highly anticipated game for me. Stardew Valley meets pokemon is a great logline, and the combination of those gameplay elements compared to the game’s cute, colorful art style made it feel like it was made just for me. The game got early access in 2020 but got its full 1.0 release this month.

You’ve got all the usual mechanics you’d expect from a game like this – farming, fishing, foraging, cooking, befriending villagers – and some new twists. You can see clear inspiration from farming sims like stardewstill Ooblets still manages to feel completely unique in that regard. I am absolutely Ooblets‘ target demographic, and I’m happy to say I found it an absolute delight. Let’s talk about it.

Ooblets (Epic Games Store) [reviewed]Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
Developer: Glumberland
Publishers: Glumberland
Released: September 1, 2022
MSRP: $29.99

The premise of Ooblets is that it takes place in a magical land called Oob, which is populated with creatures called… you guessed it: Ooblets. At the start of the game, the player lands in a quaint seaside town called Badgetown, after leaving the big city for the countryside where Ooblets roam free. Naturally, they take up residence in a dilapidated old barn and start their new life as the local farmer.

Badgetown is as cozy and quaint as you’d expect, complete with a coffee shop, barber shop, clothing store, seed shop, town hall, and more. The residents are a lot of fun and have some of the most different personalities I’ve seen in a community sim since the beginning Animal Crossing to dawn. Some of the dialogue was so ridiculous and cleverly written that it actually made me laugh, making the friendship part of the gameplay loop something to look forward to.

In fact, all the dialogue, item names, and descriptions are written in a wacky tone reminiscent of the “sO rAnDoM XD” humor from the 2010s, but actually written in a way that feels fresh and funny rather than cringy and raspy. I got the feeling when I was playing that the style might make some players bounce, but I found it charming as hell – do what you want with it.

They have the moves

But let’s be real, the real attraction to Ooblets is the promise of pokemon-style combat – don’t worry, there’s plenty of it. Shortly after their arrival in Badgetown, the player must select one of the four local Ooblets clubhouses to join based on their values ​​(I joined the cute club Frunbuns, of course), choosing a starter Ooblet by extension. With your starter in tow, you can engage in battles with wild Ooblets to get seeds from them. After planting those seeds and growing them on the farm, players will have their own Ooblet of that particular type. Ta-da!

It’s also crucial that I mention that your Ooblets are running after you, following you everywhere, and there’s no shortage of fun accessories to dress them up with. Finally a game that understands mine needs.

As for the dance fights themselves, that was another pleasant surprise. Instead of a typical battle where your pets scare each other, all battles are in Ooblets takes the form of dance fights, an idea that got me completely dizzy the first time I saw it. The battles are card based and each unique Ooblet will have their own special cards added to your deck as they level up.

You can fight other inhabitants of Oob in the Dance Barn or in the other regions, or the most common way of fighting is with the wild Ooblets running through the different environments. You have to catch them all, right? Each type of wild Ooblet needs a different item to fight against them, which can range from foraging material to crops to processed foods.

Each match sets a score somewhere between twenty and forty, and the first team to earn that number of points wins. Players earn points from cards, and there are also modifiers in the game, such as Hype, that allow you to earn more points; Fluster, which earns you fewer points; Stun, causing one of your Ooblets to miss a turn; Trepidation, which adds useless cards to you or your opponent’s deck; and so on. If you’ve played a card-based battler from hearthstone until Kill the spireyou are right at home.

Sometimes a little unusual

The battles are simple with a few exceptions, and often a win or loss can be due to the luck of the cards. Consider Ooblets is a chill game, I didn’t mind a bit of RNG otherwise I won every fight without pushback.

I have a few qualms with the combat – that there was no way to view or modify my entire deck, which would have been a nice touch. Sometimes the animations for the moves can be a bit slow (which is also a problem the more recent ones) pokemon have had games).

The other thing is the Dance Barn battles, which are unlocked after you fix the mentioned Dance Barn in the city. It is a tournament style setup where you compete against other townies in 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 battles. I’ve tried to do them as often as I had time, and I can tell you, I’ve only ever won one or two of the tournaments.

Aside from jokes about my gaming abilities, it’s because some Ooblets have stun abilities. This isn’t a problem if you’re fighting teams of four or six, but if you’re unlucky enough to be stuck in a 1v1 with an opponent who can stun you, it’s literally game over – they stun you for the entire match.

There are special game modes in the Dance Barn, including one where players can only use their Ooblets’ special cards, which is a bit of a problem when you realize that the Ooblet you’ve chosen has no way of earning points without the dot – earning cards from the deck. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with the fights and often did my best to just do them for fun.

To-do lists, but make it fun

I would like to Stardew Valley is one of those games that strikes the perfect balance to give you just enough to do without ever getting bored, while at the same time not overwhelming you with too much. One thing I wasn’t so fond of Ooblets was that it became a bit of a grind, with players having to collect a bunch of different items to progress through the story and complete tasks.

There are about seven different entities that can give you tasks, with the exception of the smaller errands imposed by your friends in town. In the beginning of the game, I was grateful to have clear goals to get me started, but after a while it was hard to keep track of how many things I was trying to accomplish at the same time.

Sure, you can play at your own pace, but for someone like me who likes to cross things off lists, I couldn’t stop myself from going as hard as I could to get all my tasks done efficiently. If nothing else, it kept me super busy the whole time, although part of me felt like the game was insecure that I wouldn’t find enough to do on my own.

You can also do up to five or six pretty complicated tasks at once, and as someone who struggles with multitasking, I found it a bit overwhelming at times. This problem isn’t helped by the fact that everything in the game has a silly name – little feathers you use to build things, for example, are called nurnies – so I’d often have to keep checking what I was actually looking for in the first place .

Thankfully though, I love the foraging aspect of these types of games, and guys, hooray, a lot Ooblets walks around and collects things. If that’s not your thing, you might get a little frustrated, I’m not going to lie.

Exploration

A few hours into the game you meet a local named Gimble who owns a hot air balloon. After repairing it with a slew of supplies, she can take the player to different regions of Oob, where they will collect more supplies, participate in dance battles, and continue the main story quest. Each region has its own unique food, seeds you can take home and grow on your farm, and of course Ooblets to collect.

I found that each region had a fun theme, and I was always looking forward to seeing a new place and what surprises awaited me. I don’t want to give too much away, but the area called Port Forward was a real highlight for me as a lover of minigames.

I was also really pleasantly surprised by the main story of the game, which only comes together at the end. Most farming sims’ stories are pretty bare, but Ooblets presents you with a mystery from the very beginning – and it’s great to see the culmination of that mystery in the game’s last few hours.

Another element that will be added later is your own shop, where you can sell items that you collect, build or cook, and it is easily the best way to earn money in the game. Of course, you can also upgrade and furnish your store over time. Once I got to this point, I felt like there was a bit too much going on in the game again, but it definitely wasn’t a deal breaker.

Finally

General, Ooblets definitely lived up to the expectations I had built up for it in those six long years of waiting. If you like the farming/community sim genre, it’s an absolute must to play, and I think it will be a game that will last for years to come.

I played it on PC for this review and I’m looking forward to trying out some mods the community will come up with, but I have to say this is a perfect Switch game. In fact, after going back and ditching this save file, I’m planning to buy the Switch version to play from scratch, just like I did with stardew. You have to support the indie games you love, right?

[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]