I had the pleasure of wandering through 5 minutes of this landscape and here are my first impressions.
Type: Single-player
Genre: Walking Sim, Adventure
Developer: Hollow Tree Games
Publisher: Plug In Digital
Release date: 5 Jun, 2018
This is a casual walking sim. There’s a convenient marker for you to follow but generally this is a relaxing game that entices you to stop, smell the roses and enjoy the scenery. So far I’ve poked some little jellyfish characters, seen some worms, interacted with certain rocks to make catwalks appear to access the next areas, and discovered two plant items to add to my collection which I assume will give me some sort of reward when I’ve collected them all. There’s a day/night cycle and the artwork is low-poly with tasteful pastel colours.
I’ve played quite a few of games in this genre and I’d say this is reminiscent of one of my all time faves, Eidolon, due to it’s simple nature (from what I’ve experienced so far, anyway) and minimalist style.
Difficulty
None. I haven’t experienced any, and I very much doubt if there will be any later on either. This game is deliberately easy, so bear this in mind if you’re considering a purchase.
Value
It will be in the “$10-$15 zone” for 1-3 hours of play time according to the dev. This seems slightly on the steep side to me, but the quality is certainly there so I would probably put it on my wishlist and wait for a sale, personally.
For all you Linux enthusiasts out there, this doesn’t have native support (yet) but to my delight I was able to play it in wine flawlessly, with my Steam controller. Many brownie points have been awarded for this alone.
Verdict
So far so good. If you’re a fan of this genre, Shape of the World has all the ingredients you want: nice artwork; solid, smooth controls; intuitive gameplay with no frustration or guesswork required; lots of interesting things to discover and interact with; NO CHALLENGE AT ALL thank you very much!
