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estirose
Four characters from four games: My Spirit Scout from Cozy Grove, Grey from Fantasy Life, Esti from Fantasy Life i, and Marco from My Time at Sandrock
There's stuff I wanted to put into my Yuletide letter but I didn't want to put people off by having to listen to all my ramblings (a couple sections got rather long)! So here are a bunch of extra things related to my Yuletide 2025 requests.
Assemble with Care (video game) review/promo
Date: 2025-09-27 02:01 am (UTC)It is very very short - 13 chapters + bonus. Two of these chapters are Maria unpacking and then packing up again, but most of them are her repairs, with the exception of the bonus chapter where you are playing as a different character putting a device together.
The puzzles range in difficulty from very easy to slightly challenging. If you're going for challenging puzzles, this game may not be for you. It's definitely meant as a very cozy game where you might pick it up for a single chapter, solve the puzzle, and then put it down until you need another brief break from something in Real Life. It was originally an Apple Arcade game - one made for the launch of Apple Arcade, in fact - but it is no longer a title for that service.
(To give you an idea of what you'll be repairing, here are the requests in order: Tape player + tape, small statue, telephone, camera, neon/electric sign, handheld game, watch, a slide projector, a stove (of the portable/camping kind) and some food, record player, music box, and an espresso machine.)
There are three storylines going on in this game that you follow - Joseph and his daughter Izzy, Carmen and her sister Helena, and Maria's general musings about her relationship with her own parents. Joseph is the town's ever-busy mayor and he's accidentally neglecting his frustrated daughter Izzy, especially as he tries to make sure everything's ready for the upcoming festival. Carmen needs some help from her sister Helena - but it may not be help that Helena can provide. And Maria is reflecting on the fact that she may have misunderstood her parents.All of the dialogue is voice-acted, and the short segments are enjoyable and build upon each other.
One thing I found frustrating about the format is that while Maria spends time repairing various things for the two families and pondering her own family relationships, sometimes what little plot there is jumps in unexpected ways because she's only seeing little bits of these other peoples' lives. The Joseph and Izzy storyline is particularly notable for the two suddenly going from not really communicating to being a happy family with no explanation - it's understandable because of the story structure, but I wish that there had been just one more repair/story segment in there at least about their relationship changing for the better instead of the jump to them both enjoying the festival (and Izzy notably in trousers and not a dress).
That being said, I find myself going back to it repeatedly and replaying it for the puzzles. They may not be complex, but sometimes you just need to step away from everything for a couple of minutes to fix a slide projector, a film camera, or a pseudo-Gameboy. And sometimes, that's all that you need.
Cozy Grove (video game) review/promo
Date: 2025-09-27 05:09 am (UTC)In it, you play as a Spirit Scout (imagine a boy or girl scout-type group that specializes in dealing with spirits) that accidentally gets stranded on the island of Cozy Grove for their first solo adventure. Cozy Grove is home to a bunch of restless but non-hostile bear spirits, all of which need a little bit of help with letting go. Which you will be doing step by step, getting them to trust you so that you can convince them to let go of what's holding them there.
This game is meant to be played for only a short time each real-life day. You cannot hurry the bears into telling their stories; they'll advance their plot when they darn well feel like it, and sometimes you're waiting for one bear to give you something another bear needs to make a realization about their own circumstances (Arjun's and Ursula's storylines are more often about other bears and not as much about themselves, though I feel you get to know them just as much). The game also allows you to do many cozy game type activities like gather resources, decorate your campsite/tent, pet and feed animals, and so on as you want.
I honestly love almost all the bears, and despite knowing what's coming next for them (or perhaps because I know what's coming next for them) I always want to get to the end of their storylines because I want them to find the peace that they were denied even if resolving their storylines makes me sad. (One bear is not looking for peace because they already found it - they just like hanging around and doing their thing, and I find it kind of a relief.) And I think it's because you have to take time to learn who each of them is and what their regret is.
That doesn't mean that sometimes I get frustrated by the wait to unravel each story. Cozy Grove is not a game of instant gratification. (It makes it very hard to pick up for Yuletide, to be honest, because you cannot rush the plot - I link to a playlist of videos that cover all the non-DLC bears' storylines in my letter for those who are willing to be spoiled or who just need to review canon.) I find that I don't enjoy some of the bears' daily missions - the ones that they give you when they aren't ready to continue their stories or when their stories are completed - but YMMV.
Warning-wise, this game deals with death gently, but it still deals with death (and for that reason, it's often compared to Spiritfarer, though they're very different games). While not all of the bears disclose how they died, at least two characters have fatal food poisoning, one dies in a fire, one is crushed to death, and one dies of cancer.
There is a DLC (New Neigbears) with a set of four new spirits to be helped. It is fun, but be aware that four of your existing bears, including one of my requested ones, leaves permanently so that these bears can move in.
There is a sequel, but it is currently only available to Netflix subscribers, and I am not a Netflix subscriber.
Fantasy Life (video game) review/promo
Date: 2025-09-27 05:43 pm (UTC)Fantasy Life often pops up on YouTube "3DS Hidden Gems" videos for a very good reason. It's got a cult following - enough to spawn a not so great mobile gatcha (Fantasy Life Online) and an actual sequel that is almost as awesome as the original (Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time). It's true to its title - it is your fantasy life to play as you want (amid some constraints). As King Erik states early on, if all you want to do is gather dandelion puffs all day every day, you can do that (though you won't advance the plot that way). If you just want to make clothes, you can do that. If you want to treat it as a traditional JRPG, you can do that too. If you want to be a tailor who sometimes moonlights as a mercenary (or vice versa), that is perfectly acceptable. It's extremely flexible. There are twelve "Lives" you can pick up as you want, you just have to go through an (optional past the first Life) tutorial story to learn the basics.
The YouTuber RudeBirb has an awesome if slightly profanity-heavy love letter (with some criticisms that I largely agree with) for the game, if a video promo is more your thing. It's about 20 minutes long. (And if you've played Fantasy Life i you'll see some familiar faces in that video!)
I'll get the big criticisms of the game out of the way first - one, it is very dialogue and tutorial heavy, especially at the beginning. This game loves its dialogue! It's often dialogue you'll enjoy reading, but boy is there a lot of it. Two, like its successor Fantasy Life i, this is very much "Grinding: The Game". (Or as more than one person put it, it's very much "Side Missions: The Game" as the game fully expects you to level up your individual job classes (Lives) to a reasonable extent as you get access to new areas.) Three, the actual main story, although charming, is not the main focus of the game and is not very plot-heavy. It often feels like it's there to introduce new parts of the map more than anything else.
So why do I like it so much (and you might too)? Because it's just so goshdang fun. It was a cozy game before Stardew Valley made Cozy Gaming so mainstream. Yes, you will be doing a lot of grinding to level up your various Lives, but it feels so much worth it. You are free to advance one or more Lives as you please. And you can choose whatever Life or combo of Lives you want. You can actually complete the game with a solo crafting or gathering Life if you want (though you'll only want to do that if you enjoy essentially playing on hard mode). I appreciate the main story just kind of sitting to the side while you enjoy doing whatever you want, until you have to progress to the next area.
I really enjoy the fact that the various Life-related NPCs feel like they're alive (to the extent allowed in a very expansive game from the early 2010s). Every time you rank up in a Life, you need to talk to all of them - sometimes you get recipes, sometimes you get materials, and sometimes you hear about what's going on in their Lives - for example, the tailor Taylor has an entire storyline with her friend Zippy as you progressively rank up as a tailor.
Between all of these, Fantasy Life is definitely a lose-track-of-time, one-turn-more type of game that you can spend hours in.
One thing of note that I will mention here: for some reason, we North American folk got different dialogue and some different location, character, Life, and rank names than the rest of the English-speaking world - something Fantasy Life i players don't have to deal with as the developers stuck with one set of names for the global release, thank goodness!
Also, if you are a Fantasy Life i player curious about Fantasy Life, I threw together a sort of guide about the mechanics and areas of Fantasy Life.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time (video game) review/promo
Date: 2025-09-27 09:35 pm (UTC)The general plot of the game is that you are a young adventurer traveling with your mentor/friend Edward when you are thrown into the past. In that past time, you must figure out how to keep everything from being destroyed. To save that world, you must travel in between the possibly-doomed past, the present, and even a huge open alternate universe world called Ginormosia.
In the world of Reveria where this is set, pretty much everybody has a Life (essentially a job class) of one sort or another. These Lives range from combat to gathering to crafting, and there are 14 of them in all. You are required to pick up your first choice in Life early in game; after a certain point in the plot you can pick up more Lives. The game only requires you to pick up the one Life in the beginning, but you'll find yourself picking up most/all of them.
You can also meet "strangelings", who are humans (or similar) transformed into inanimate objects that you can turn back into their normal forms- once they are transformed back, they'll be referred to as "buddies". You'll meet and free five of them during the plot, and can rescue 44 others. These buddies also become part of your present Animal Crossing-like village that you can decorate as you please.
I'm going to complain a lot about either actual flaws or things they changed that I didn't like a lot, but I wanted to emphasize what I did love about it first.
First of all, despite the plot being fairly predictable and paper-thin, I really did enjoy it as a whole. I enjoyed meeting the new main-story characters and seeing some old familiar faces again. The Quality of Life changes (insta life swap, limitless inventory, saving wherever and whenever, fast travel from pretty much everywhere to everywhere else, mounts from very early on in the game for quicker travel) are awesome, and I love Ginormosia and the Treasure Groves. And while the game is very grindy, it's done in such a way that you really don't mind, and it's fun to rank up your Lives and find new buddies that can help you out with that. I also love the vanity clothing, so your character can run around in what seems like a flimsy set of clothes but really be protected by a high-level armor set.
There are things that I don't like as well. The game takes forever to kickstart the plot. It's very dialogue-and-tutorial heavy, especially in the beginning. While the game essentially makes grinding fun, it is still very grindy, so if you do not enjoy grind, you may not enjoy this game. (These were all issues in the original game that this game inherited.)
I did not personally enjoy the main plot continually reminding me it's there because it made me feel like I had to rush instead of just relaxing and working on ranking up my Lives. Another unwelcome change that was made was that the plot practically forces you to be at least somewhat proficient in all non-combat Lives, even if you have no interest in picking up all those Lives, to complete a certain part of the main story. (There is the workaround of leveling up a buddy in that Life to do that for you, but I personally find it very irritating to do so.) This goes against the "pick whatever Life or Lives you enjoy and just skip the rest" attitude of the original game.
(I'm also a bit grumbly about the sheer amount of buddies that came from Fantasy Life Online, the ill-fated online gatcha - Level-5 should have mostly used NPCs from the original game - but that is just me.)
Despite all my complaining, I really do love this game. In the end, everything above is more annoying than anything else, and I've put so. many. hours into it. There are times where I just do nothing but wander Ginormosia to enjoy the scenery. There is just so much that you can do - even an overwhelming amount of stuff to do - and you can take it mostly at your own pace, just like you should in a cozy game. It is at its heart an RPG and fighting is not optional, but it's easy to forget while you're developing your own happy fantasy life.
Also, here is a pic of Monsieur Cobra, one of my requested NPCs, just because it's not obvious who he is (he's the same model as the King Cobra boss monster in the game, but non-hostile):
My Time at Sandrock (video game) review/promo
Date: 2025-09-27 11:13 pm (UTC)Anyway - My Time at Sandrock is a sequel to the game My Time at Portia. They're set in the same universe, and in fact happen around the same time frame as each other. Like its predecessor, you are a young Builder whose job is to make things for the residents of the town - everything from simple rope to an entire bus, and even more that I can't go into because spoilers. Your ultimate goal is to help in the revitalization of the slowly dying city-state of Sandrock. While Sandrock emphasizes building things, you'll also do the usual farming, gathering resources, and fighting monsters that is common in this type of cozy game. (Fighting is unfortunately not optional here, but there are 4 types of weapons and you can figure out which one works better for you.)
There are thankfully very few main missions with deadlines (most of the deadlines are related to the side commissions you take from townfolk via a board), so you can take your time and pause if you need to build more machines or gather more resources. Occasionally events will drive up prices, most notably food and water (though thankfully not both at the same time).
Without going too much into plot spoilers, there is a dangerous conspiracy afoot in Sandrock. Not everybody is who they seem - including the apparent bad guy that we're introduced to early in the game. You'll learn more about what's going on as you work to revive Sandrock.
Sandrock is a small town and you will get to know all of your neighbors. There are several who are introduced during the game as well that you can befriend as well. You can romance a wide selection of people, get married (both regardless of your gender), and even have a pair of kids if you want. Or if that's not your thing, feel free to just become BFF with everyone in town. (In fact, it's near impossible to not be close friends with pretty much everybody in town by the end of the game.) Generally, the town NPCs are very well written and interesting and you will quickly become attached to your favorites.
Like a lot of games of this type, you gain access to more areas/resources as the plot progresses, and these areas will carry higher-level resources that you need for later missions.
If you've played My Time at Portia but not My Time at Sandrock, you'll find the gameplay loop very much the same as that game. The main differences are that your workshop machines require water to run, you cannot chop down living trees (most of your early wood will be from recycling or digging through piles) without making the Church of the Light really upset, and it's a desert area with sandstorms instead of the green countryside of most of the Portia areas. The game has some nice callbacks to stuff you'll recognize, however, and a couple of Portia NPCs make a visit during the game.
In fact, there were only three things I did not enjoy in this game, two of which you are pretty much required to do at one point or another (at the very least you'll have side missions that require you to do them), and one you kind of inflict upon yourself. One is sandfishing. Even with as much experience I have, I do not enjoy sandfishing. It's not the easy moneymaker that it was with regular fishing mechanics in My Time at Portia, and you can't catch the higher-level/bigger fish with the basic Sand Trap. The other is farming. While I love the concept (it is based upon real life efforts in China to reclaim land for planting), and the devs try to make it as painless as possible, I just... I'm a Builder not a Farmer dammit! And unfortunately Owen keeps wanting either fish or plants for a series of his side missions, which makes me cranky. As for the self-inflicted one - if you get married and decide to have kids, plan to spend the next two and a half seasons near your workshop so that you can run and change the child's diaper/feed them/give them toys until they're self-sufficient. (Yes, it is very much RL, no, I do not enjoy it.)
That all being said, I watched My Time at Sandrock grow into the awesome game it is today. When I started playing, we basically had act 1 and that was it. It was a long wait until the plot was complete and all the features were added, but it was worth it. I love it, and I hope that if you have not played it yet, you get to fall in love with it too.
Monsieur Cobra dialogue
Date: 2025-10-10 05:17 am (UTC)Hey there pal. Seems you're a-riding, aint'cha? On your mount. M.O.U.N.T. ...But it seems like ya don't have it down pat just yet. Anyone can see that. Say what? Because I'm a pro mount, see. Once I traveled across Reveria with the finest companion, hehe. How 'bout it, then? Maybe I oughta give ya the "How to handle yer mount" 101?
If ya can bring 100% out of yer Mount, ya'll get an even more efficient performance from 'em. Furthermore! Ya'll be able to glide up them cliffs in no time! Uh-huh. So, ya wanna learn from the best?
I'll learn ya for 30 Cashnuts. Generous, ain't I? I'm giving ya a deal 'cause somehow ya remind me of my ol' companion. So I'm a-waitin' for ya. See ya! Buh-bye!
(When you come back to him with the 30 Cashnuts)
Hey, ya bring the pay for that Mount learnin'? Well then, let's get crackin' on the learnin' for ya. First, let's look at yer ridin' posture... back straight, deep breath, tighten that grip... and of course ya gotta give 'em a good, gentle pat. Who's a good widdle Mount? Yes, you are!
Everything else ya need to know is right here, so give it a good once over, will ya? Ah... finally some peace of mind. The other day, a black-hooded bear was chasin' me because he wanted the Pride of the Mount. Anyway, even if 30 Cashnuts was a steal, I was glad I got someone to pay it...
Huh? It's nothin'. Well then, buh, bye!
(Dialogue after)
When I look at ya, pal, I remember my ol' companion. Also had two eyes, a nose and a mouth... and ya both have them protudin' ears - remarkable. Gotta wonder how she's doin'... at this point I kinda miss them shackles, even.