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Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
cont-ss03.png

PSN Link
Steam link (might be buggy, no clue)
This game is an ecosystem simulator, and in that (very, very tiny) genre the most complex one I can think of. Your task is to create a world in which a multide of different species live and thrive.
How come you never heard of this? Well, to get that stuff out of the way:
- PS4 version might have some bugs
- PC version might have some more bugs
- Its a relatively complex game so people consider some things bugs that are none
- It was missing some important QOL features at launch

... and some more.

BUT!

And this was a reasonably well sized but with capital letters:

This game is good
and most importantly entirely unique. How many similar games have you played? Viva Pinata maybe? Well, did you need to consider the altitude of the land, which affects the temperature important for not only the creation of a species, but also their development potential, while making sure it has enough access to the correct water sources, earth types and food sources or other animals it needs to evolve? *inhales'

81KPlCiMVlL.jpg

So what do you do? Is it a relaxing meditative Zen Garden thing, is it a hardcore sim, what is it? Well, and this is the most interesting part in my opinion: Its both.

After the initial tutorial mission, you can just start up Free Play and enjoy to play around with the ecosystem and merrily watch dozens of species going the way of the dodo, while making way for new interesting creatures to watch.

Or, and this is my jam, you follow its "campaign" and tackle its challenge missions, tasking you with very concise tasks that will actually ask you to understand the underlying mechanics of the simulation. "Create creature X" might sound simple, until you figure out that this creature needs another creature as food that died out 100 million years ago when you were effing around when you were drawing smileys and other less innocent human features into the primordial earth.

CAJfADC.jpg

Some other bullet pointy stuffs:
- It has a ton of content
- Its a game that lends itself to relaxed meditative play even after you played through the "content"
- It can be quite challenging to get things started
- It throws in some more mechanics to keep you busy, such as a variety of different items to affect the world
- ... get in the habit of doing saving on new save slots.

I know this OT isnt particular great, excuse me, gotta go back to killing off protozoic creatures and save the others that agree with Zelda being GOTY 2017.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Last Toma thread for the next days, I promise.
 

Deleted member 1781

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,397
Toma keep making threads Toma!

Just to add what Toma already said, I played the PC version and it had some issues during launch, though I don't remember exactly what were the problems right now. As i said in the other thread, I enjoyed what I played and I overlooked some of the issues like the strange keyboard and mouse controls.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Seriously, where was this game hiding.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Hello you, my first land creature thing after 5 hours. :D I shall name you Panda and will keep a close eye on your life and death.
DNbJPPAWsAEV59C.jpg:large
 

TKM

Member
Oct 28, 2017
540
Thanks for the great work Toma. Judging from trophy profiles and number of "likes" on PSN, Birthdays must be the rarest physical game I own on PS4. The campaign was fun, though I never got enough of a handle on the gameplay mechanics to clear all challenge stages. Really ought to get back to it.
 

Revenger

Member
Oct 28, 2017
66
Wait how similar is this to Viva Pinata?

Don't have access to my gaming PC for a few weeks but just reading that makes me wanna buy it....
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Wait how similar is this to Viva Pinata?

Don't have access to my gaming PC for a few weeks but just reading that makes me wanna buy it....
Viva Pinata is the closest comparison I can make, but its less about following individual pinatas and being attached to your favoruite ones and more about balancing the whole ecosystem, which i the campaign also means that some species need to die eventually.
 

Deleted member 8593

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
27,176
I played the demo and thought it was pretty interesting and yes, very unique. I'm kinda drowned in games right now so I'm gonna wait for a EU sale.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Friendly reminder its still on US PSN sale for a few hours
 

platypotamus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,350
Wait how similar is this to Viva Pinata?

Don't have access to my gaming PC for a few weeks but just reading that makes me wanna buy it....

I think they share some DNA but are very distant cousins. If your favorite part of Viva Pinata was figuring out and satisfying the requirements to get a Chocodile to show up and join your garden, this is maybe the closest experience to that sort of thing, but it's still pretty far.
 

plngsplsh

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,142
Taking the cue from the previous post: The game is currently on sale both on PSN and Steam (at least in the EU).
It also had a release on Switch as "Happy Birthdays" (in 2018). The Switch version also has a longer demo than the PS4 version.
By any chance, does anybody know if there are significant differences between PS4 and Switch? I kinda want to make the jump with the PSN sale, but would prefer playing it on a console/handheld that generates less heat.
Sorry for the bump, btw, I've only recently discovered SimEarth and it reminded me of this game and this thread.

edit:
After reading some reviews, it seems that the most significant addition to "Happy Birthdays" is that one can choose a starting biome.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Taking the cue from the previous post: The game is currently on sale both on PSN and Steam (at least in the EU).
It also had a release on Switch as "Happy Birthdays" (in 2018). The Switch version also has a longer demo than the PS4 version.
By any chance, does anybody know if there are significant differences between PS4 and Switch? I kinda want to make the jump with the PSN sale, but would prefer playing it on a console/handheld that generates less heat.
Sorry for the bump, btw, I've only recently discovered SimEarth and it reminded me of this game and this thread.

edit:
After reading some reviews, it seems that the most significant addition to "Happy Birthdays" is that one can choose a starting biome.

Thanks for the bump! This is a really special and lovely little game. People absolutely should check it out if they are curious and if it's on sale!
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Taking the cue from the previous post: The game is currently on sale both on PSN and Steam (at least in the EU).
It also had a release on Switch as "Happy Birthdays" (in 2018). The Switch version also has a longer demo than the PS4 version.
By any chance, does anybody know if there are significant differences between PS4 and Switch? I kinda want to make the jump with the PSN sale, but would prefer playing it on a console/handheld that generates less heat.
Sorry for the bump, btw, I've only recently discovered SimEarth and it reminded me of this game and this thread.

edit:
After reading some reviews, it seems that the most significant addition to "Happy Birthdays" is that one can choose a starting biome.
I totally blame you for thinking about this game nonstop today. Might need to restart it again and maybe throw up a new thread if it's still on sale when I get around to it.
 

plngsplsh

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,142
I totally blame you for thinking about this game nonstop today. Might need to restart it again and maybe throw up a new thread if it's still on sale when I get around to it.
And I blame your for my staying up way too late last night to evolve some Pikaia to get on the road to fish-out-of-water. I haven't had too much time yet, as I only bought the game yesterday, but I already feel like that was time and money well spend.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
And I blame your for my staying up way too late last night to evolve some Pikaia to get on the road to fish-out-of-water. I haven't had too much time yet, as I only bought the game yesterday, but I already feel like that was time and money well spend.
Which version did you end up picking? If its the switch version, how does it play?
 

plngsplsh

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,142
Which version did you end up picking? If its the switch version, how does it play?
I went with the PS4 version, but judging from my short time with the switch demo version, it does not change too much.
Are the "seeds of evolution" necessary for progress? I haven't used one yet, as every roadblock so far could be circumnavigated by manipulating the terrain heights. Currently, I am one evolutionary step away from evolving the first land creature.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
Game looks super cute!
Dont be fooled by the looks, its quite an in depth simulation, but yeah, its a lovely game if you dont mind digging into some more complex mechanics :)

I went with the PS4 version, but judging from my short time with the switch demo version, it does not change too much.
Are the "seeds of evolution" necessary for progress? I haven't used one yet, as every roadblock so far could be circumnavigated by manipulating the terrain heights. Currently, I am one evolutionary step away from evolving the first land creature.
You can trigger evolution by waiting, but that can take... a while. Those seeds do definitely come in handy.
 

plngsplsh

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,142
You can trigger evolution by waiting, but that can take... a while. Those seeds do definitely come in handy.
It seems like the seeds are not optional but necessary for progression. I shaped the terrain so that all the conditions for Ichthyostega (the first amphibian to live on land) were given, but even after about 10 minutes of letting the simulation run, it just wouldn't evolve (though spiders did and some plant life). As soon as I used a seed of evolution on its ancestor and started time, not only it but also two other new organisms popped up.
 
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Toma

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,830
I went with the PS4 version, but judging from my short time with the switch demo version, it does not change too much.
Are the "seeds of evolution" necessary for progress? I haven't used one yet, as every roadblock so far could be circumnavigated by manipulating the terrain heights. Currently, I am one evolutionary step away from evolving the first land creature.
It seems like the seeds are not optional but necessary for progression. I shaped the terrain so that all the conditions for Ichthyostega (the first amphibian to live on land) were given, but even after about 10 minutes of letting the simulation run, it just wouldn't evolve (though spiders did and some plant life). As soon as I used a seed of evolution on its ancestor and started time, not only it but also two other new organisms popped up.

Ah maybe it was a bit differently in the "tutorial"? But its been a while so I also might be misremembering. If I wasn't knee deep in Victoria 3 right now, I'd gladly join you immediately haha.
 

plngsplsh

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,142
Ah maybe it was a bit differently in the "tutorial"? But its been a while so I also might be misremembering. If I wasn't knee deep in Victoria 3 right now, I'd gladly join you immediately haha.
All cool, I was just curious how far one can get without any items. I really should finish the tutorial or story mode, but some stubborn part of me usually wants to get into these games without a guide. That's probably why I'm still stuck with Victoria 1 :)
 

plngsplsh

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,142
So, I returned to story mode and now evolved my first velociraptor. The cube gets pretty large in Episode 3 and the performance on PS4 gets a little slower and the fan a little louder. Also, this game has some pretty nice artwork buried in-between the episodes.
birthdaysthebeginningxodsa.png


I also played a little more with the Switch demo and found another QoL feature they added. On Switch, one can hover over any tile of the world, press the minus button and see if this terrain is fit for a certain species by selecting it from the tree view. Pretty handy, if one doesn't want to experiment too much.