Playing Seeds like being allowed so much freedom when choosing-n-mix. Not that all the separate parts go together badly, having chocolate cakes and cola bottles mixed together is exactly what I want. The problem is that it can’t live up to what you’d expect when you’re scooping junk food into that heavy paper bag. There’s an unexpected layer of chalk in the chocolates, some gum is glued together and in your hurry you won’t have two candies that look alike and mismanage your expectations. In a flash, it was correct a rainbow of colors you want, but it often leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Kynseed is an RPG, life sim and sandbox game. It’s also Cooking Mama, Moonlighter, and a dungeon crawler. It’s soothing ASMR vibes that relax and watch for seasonal changes, while also being crass and intentionally subversive. It does some of these things brilliantly, while others don’t.
You begin your adventure as a child – with your siblings – adopted by a benevolent uncle and rescued from your life of poverty with The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe (you know, who has so many kids that she doesn’t know what to do). He makes you work on his farm as he becomes stiff and rickety in old age, so it’s your duty to feed the pigs, water the plants and deliver fresh milk to the local NPCs with these funny name. But then you make a magical deal that sets Kynseed apart from other farming sims: plant a genuine kynseed and a part of you will live forever in the generations to come, but you pay. the price of many years of his mortal life. now. As the sapling grows into a branching tree, it keeps track of your character’s stats, then transfers special rewards to your character’s children, and then their children’s children. This way, a part of you will live on for generations long after you have passed away.
It takes about sixteen hours to get into the relaxed rhythm, which is quite a hefty price to enter
The transition to the world that unfolds after the prologue is very confusing, which is also a fair representation of my timing with the rest of the game. The constant tug-of-war between discovery, desire, and paced instruction roughly means there’s no real difference between a “find this out now” goal and a story-driven slow-burn goal. , which has me running around the map hunting allium as if my life depended on it. It takes about sixteen hours to get to a comfortable rhythm, which is quite a hefty price to get in.
Kynseed’s best promise is its vastness. If I really like its dungeon system, I can grow crops and cook meals for the best stats – or I can mine ores and forge better weapons, and let my spouse manage the farming and cooking – or I can send my spouse to the dungeon while I cook for them, and sell both their loot and my leftovers in the general store . And if I get tired of that loop, I can uproot the kynseed and pass on my skills to my kids, but with their own extras that make them a cook, blacksmith or better fisherman.
I usually don’t like to write about bugs in reviews. Reviews are final, but bugs will be patched, usually between the version of the game I play and the released version. That said, almost every major system I interact with in Kynseed is broken to some degree, and that makes it even more frustrating for me because of how much you can invest in these features before cracks appear.
I received a letter about an upcoming cooking festival and spent time practicing all the cooking minigames only to get to the event and find no one there. After giving an NPC a present, I asked them out, but they never realized that we had arrived at their chosen date spot. I went through a seven-day ritual to propose, which included picking a rose on the day of the week it grew, in the specific seasons it grew, but after my spouse moved in, they randomly stopped doing things. housework. We conceived, with the help of goddess offerings and life-supporting foods (yes, really!) and the stork never came. I sold vegetables and tools made from the ore I mined until I had enough money to buy a shop and then discovered that the economy only ‘worked’ if someone else ran the shop while I was away face.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of Kynseed not being a bug is the way it’s written so deeply. No one reacts to you disappearing for years at once – not even those with whom you have a strong relationship. Most of what the characters have to say is general and often repetitive, while forming relationships largely leads to free stories about the world – did you know that you can get results? better quality apples with a slingshot? It may seem like there are dozens of dating places but dating will get you a single line of dialogue about places and nothing new about your partner. A lot – and I really mean a lot – in-game text are fart jokes.
Visually it’s a beautiful game, and combined with the soundtrack, each map has a really strong sense of identity – which is impressive given their sheer size.
Elsewhere, Kynseed pays special attention to detail. Visually, it’s a beautiful game, and combined with the soundtrack, each map has a really strong sense of identity – which is impressive given their sheer size. Discovery is rewarded, and I’ve discovered one or two world-widening secrets that are highly suggestive of many more to come. There are also small, intriguing details – like how pigs run around corners instead of just being ‘you but faster’ and how you can grow pork in a tree if you’re too soft-hearted to take your own meat along. old type. way (guilty).
The cooking mini-games and combat system are truly excellent, filled with detailed and varied visuals. You want attack combos? You’ve got attack combos. You want terrible little creatures? You’ve got terrible little creatures. Want different ways to make stat-boosting soups, sandwiches, jams and stews? You can eat them on the way to combo attacks of the horrible little creatures, and your pet will help!
I intentionally compared Kynseed to pick-n-mix. Its different parts, like concepts, mostly go together. It’s not thoughtless or careless, but it promises more than it can deliver right now. You can immerse yourself in some of its very precise aspects and try not to touch the inactive parts of it, but you have to choose carefully. Still, it’s a compelling promise, and I can see it being an incredibly compelling game – when it’s over.
