Advent Island

Plot Summary
Advent Island is an "adventure" game where you can gather minerals and sticks, and you can also Fish. Other than that, there really isn't much to this game summary wise, so lets get to the important stuff.

Graphics


The game's presentation is very clean, the Island itself is built mostly of RTP graphics, but it's done well. The Menus are fitting and the island is believable. The mapping isn't amazing, but it's not bad, everything works well together in the maps.

Gameplay
The game starts off with you selecting whether you're Male or Female (which as I can tell has no effect on the game), then you type in your name. After that, you're placed on an Island. That is it, there is no introduction, there is no explanation, you are on an island now do island stuff. There are various things scattered about the island that can be gathered: Sticks, Loot Crates, and various plants being a few. With no direction or guidance, you assume by the Hunger meter at the top right that the only goal is Survival. You find food and such scattered about and you can Fish as well. There are a couple NPCs on the island. One sells general goods (bait, seeds, potions, etc), another sells armor and weapons. There is a man who will take special minerals from you and a man who apparently builds things. The Builder does nothing for you, he just tells you how his head is exploding with ideas (all of which he cannot tell or show you). In other words he's Useless. There is one other NPC, he's found in the Cave (there is only one), he gives you a Lantern that you have no use for, so he is also Useless.



Seen above is Marco, the cave man who does nothing. I chose this screenshot specifically to show off the game's poor/awkward dialogue. Every NPC suffers from this. But, back to the core gameplay. The Cave on the Island has two corridors, one leading to Marco, and another to a mining/rat fighting spot. Initially I downloaded the 1.1 version and ran into the most overpowered rats in existence, but I realized this wasn't the correct version so I downloaded 1.2 from the Gamejolt link. (You should really update your download pages on This Site as well). The cave itself changes between various layouts every day, but since the new version doesn't let me sleep during the day to progress to the next, I only witnessed one layout in this version (so I never fought the updated rats). When you enter that part of the cave, clean it out if you can, because the moment you leave, you can't return until the next day. Inside the cave are Purple minerals called Barite and some other stuff.



That's me struggling because of the game's nonexistent instructions. There are no other tools in the game that can gather this mineral so I assume this is a bug. I've tried equipping the Axe, Hammer, and Sword to see if my tool is based on what I have equipped, nothing changed. You cannot craft anymore tools, and you cannot buy any (besides the Fishing Rod). Crafting items and cooking food is really slow for some reason, why not make it instant or a bit faster? In the camp area with the other NPCs, you can craft weapons and smaller bits of items, like Sticks and String.



The weapons shown require Skill Stones to craft. I hadn't once found one of those skill stones so I'm assuming they are the stones that I can't get. So crafting weapons is out. And even if I could get the Skill Stone, what am I even going to use my new weapons on? There are Rats to fight in the cave, but why should I really care about that when I can just not fight them and still survive just as well as before. There are no enemies outside of the cave and the Rats are easily avoided. Now that I've done all that I can do in the Cave, and completely cleaned the Island. Besides Loot Crates on the beach shores, nothing ever seems to respawn. So, logically, you should go to sleep and progress to the next day to get back to gathering. Oops, you can only go to sleep at night! Well, okay, I'll wait until nighttime, whatever should I do to pass the time on an island with nothing to do? You decide to go fishing. You caught three fish! Maybe I'll check what time it is now, maybe I can get on with the game now. Surprise! Time doesn't move while you're fishing so enjoy doing nothing until it's nighttime.

The Island itself is very small, and as I said there really isn't much to do on it. Once you've used up your Cave time, and gathered everything on the island, all that's left is fishing and seeing what (if anything) you can craft that day. The merchant prices seem to have no thought put into them. Most things you own cannot be sold to anyone, so you accumulate a ton of junk. There is a storage box in your tent, but as far as I can tell, you can hold unlimited items, so why not just let me sell the armor and weapons I'm not using? Not even the blacksmith wants your Useless weapons. The things you can sell are Sticks and Driftwood, which surprisingly sell for a good amount. For some odd reason, merchants are much more interested in buying sticks from you than that Stone Axe you have no use for. A smart man would buy my Axe and chop down some trees, lazy fools. Might I add, you cannot chop down trees. Seeds are ridiculously priced, 40G for a SINGLE carrot seed, while a Longbow goes for 15G in the Blacksmith's shop.

Time moves incredibly slow, and there's nothing to do to pass the time. I played for a total of 35 minutes and the game went from 8 am to 4:47 when I gave up. That might sound reasonable for someone simply reading this review, but in a game where there is next to nothing to do, no motivation, no interesting characters or enemies to fight, the pace is unbearable. Also, the looping Island music playing is annoying as hell and it never changes or goes away. I muted the game after a minute or two of playing. Some smaller details that need attention is that you have no way of monitoring your gathering level besides from when you actually level up. There is a menu option to view Tech skills, but there are none there, and I have no idea where to find any. One thing I'm confused on, is that the screenshots you show on your gamepage, have maps nowhere to be found in the actual game. The game you're showing in those screenshots is the game that I want to be playing.

Conclusion
Nothing respawns until the next day, so the majority of gameplay is doing nothing. You have to be willing to wait until nighttime (which I assume takes about 40-50 minutes) so that you can sleep to the next day, which I was not, and thus concluded my time with the game. However, I can honestly say I've seen everything this game has to offer. Unless the game takes a major shift, perhaps shooting me off to a totally different Island, I've completed Advent Island.

Here's some things that would totally help your game. The Island MUST be bigger than what you have here. It takes maybe 40 seconds to sprint around the island as a whole. One of these three things must happen: 1. Get rid of sleeping only at night. 2. Have materials respawn during the day. 3. Increase day progression speed.
Include more interesting NPCs, and less Useless ones. When the Island is larger you can include more enemies, which leads to more uses for weapons and more things to do while you wait for nighttime. As it stands, besides the overpowered Rats, surviving is very easy, food is not hard to get so you never worry about anything. Add an introduction to the game so that the player has more direction and drive to play the game. You can still make this into a game worth playing if you put in the effort. I'll keep an eye out for any progress, but as of now, this game just simply is not fun to play. Since you've got the game listed as Complete, I'll be giving it a rating. Please work on your game.