Roots of Pacha

I only just figured out how to write a review. I'm not a big gamer. But loved playing this with my husband. We had a great time. Thank you for making such a fun game!

So, normally, I don't bother to review farming sims - they have a dedicated playerbase and fangroup and don't really need my help However, this one is kind of special - I've recommended it to two of my best friends and even bought it for a sibling, so, I thought I'd throw my impressions of the game from the smattering of time I've spent with it There's no combat - gonna go ahead and get that out of the way - like, if you enjoy Harvest Moon's more laid back take (as opposed to Rune Factory or Stardew's combat elements) then this will be right up your alley The gimmick of being set in the stone age is very well thought out and permeates every inch of the game - it feels like a Saturday Morning Cartoon take on the subject and is very endearing. You play the plains dwelling adopted grandson of a loving elderly pair of siblings trying to help your tribe get started in a new territory they've just wandered into. The way you unlock and improve farming ties back into the game's theming - farming is very little understood by your tribe (your grandfather is the expert on this and 'by expert' I mean 'he sort of heard about the concept' and is figuring it out as he goes along with your help) so, it's up to you to experiment and breed new types of plants The farming system itself is very robust - the watering system relies on ancient early human concepts like irrigation and ollas (an underground watering system from human antiquity that you refill every few days - and can be bought from Reese if you don't want to craft them) that allow you to tend your fields very quickly at the start of the day and don't take more than a month or so of your first year to unlock. A far cry from how long it usually takes to unlock sprinklers and other 'auto waterers' in other games - while still adhering quite well to the prehistory theme The fishing in the game works in a similar way - there's a fishing 'expert' (similar to your grandfather) in the tribe who tells you what they know and then leave you to explore and study the fish you find in the various bodies of water. There's hunting - mining - all of them follow the same concept of being one of humanity's early members just coming to grips with ideas like tools and farming and fishing - even the ranching! At the start of the game you can tame animals - but they're, quite frankly, rather ♥♥♥♥ and drop items very rarely and are really slow. To counter this, there's a breeding system - which, if indulged in properly, can even lead to unique pelt and skin colors with livestock that can drop multiple rewards a day You can have offspring - they grow from infants to toddlers and then to children (I'd like to see them go to young adults or teens - but children is already farther than a lot of farming sims go) the romance options at the opening of the game is only a taste - there are 8 male options and 8 female options and they run quite the gamut of age and appearance. The cast is far larger than you'd expect for a farming sim - and they're quite far from the usual one note characters you find in these games. Like, there's this little kid who's missing a leg and he walks around with a cane and it's really cute and there's this lesbian couple and one of them dresses like a wolf and they adopted this kid who's a fashion expert and there's this older coupe who live on the beach and like to spend all their time surfing It's all very sweet and very tongue-in-cheek with the humor (your grandfather is a dad-joke generating machine) they have a ton of personality and I've become quite attached to them in the hours I've been playing The world itself is astonishingly large for this type of game - complete with a huge mountain and a savannah (a place you can hunt which, little tip, get the bird traps early on and lay them in every one of the hunting spots. You can collect up to 70 pieces of meat a day - allowing you to fill your dryers and grills with meat as a nice tidy profit - allowing you to go a few days between hunting so you can focus on other things) and even some basic sailing mechanics The music and soundwork is wonderfully done - calm contemplative tunes transition wonderfully into cheerful bops depending on what character you're interacting with and what zone you're in - honestly, this music is good enough to listen to while you're playing other games if their music doesn't really work for you The whole package - all of it - is wonderfully fun and I intend to keep on recommending it to everyone I know. Whether at half price or full price (at the time of this review the game is only 13 dollars - imo, a steal) if you enjoy cozy laid back life sims with endearing characters, charming music and a real sense of fun - then you can't go wrong with Roots of Pacha

for years i've been looking for a game that made me feel like a child again, playing something like virtual villagers, an old game i had on my childhood laptop but never played again. this game is beautiful. every aspect of it seems so well thought and researched. it has clearly been made with so much love and uniqueness. it stands outs so much from other games of the genre, imo. it has such good music, dialogue and characters.