2D open world game Forager is finally out on Nintendo Switch! Find out why you have to play this colorful and charming adventure In our Forager review!
In Forager, you are tasked with expanding your horizons by building different structures as you forage for resources that will allow you to craft new materials and items to aid you on your quest. It’s a very addictive gameplay loop since you can advance at your own pace, set your own goals, and expand your adventure as far as you want, as long as you’re ready to spend the time needed to get there. The first tasks will be to build a furnace so that you can use the resources you find to create the materials you need to progress further in the game.
You will need to use your tool with the X button to break rocks and knock trees down to get the stones and wood needed for your next objective. As you do this, you will lose energy, so you should also get some berries from the bushes that will spawn over and over again in the starting area. When your energy is low, you won’t be able to make much progress when you’re trying to collect some resources, so be sure to keep an eye on your bar so that you can eat when needed.
As you use the X button to destroy objects to obtain resources, you will also get some experience points for your trouble – these will be added to your experience bar at the top of the screen. Once you’ve accumulated enough experience points to fill up the bar, you will get to level up, thus gaining a skill point. These can be used to gain new skills under the starting industry, economy, magic, and forging skill trees, trading your skill points for things such as having new resources pop up in your game for you to collect, finding fairies, gaining a lot of coins in an instant, or unlocking new materials for you to craft with, to name some examples.
Once you’ve traded in one of your skill points for a skill (which is done by pressing and holding the A button once you’ve selected the skill you want), more skills will become available for you to choose from. You might think you can spend all of your skill points in a single path in particular, but you will need to you balance your character and spend some skill points on the other paths so that you can diversify your skills and increase the number of objectives you can aim to complete.
After you’ve obtained enough coins, you can expand your experience by purchasing additional pieces of land around the starting area. Each new piece of land that you purchase will add the chance of finding not only new resources but also enemies to battle. The first piece of land you purchase won’t be too expensive, but from the second one and on, you’re going to have to find a lot of extra coins – or forge them – so that you can buy new plots of land to expand and expand your adventure.
If you want to make some progress at a steady pace, I suggest that you use your skill points to unlock the bank and the merchant. The bank will produce one gold coin at a time at a steady pace, and the merchant can be used to sell all the extra stock of items you will have. Rocks, wood, slime, and flowers are probably going to be items you’ll have in the hundreds, and selling them as soon as you build a merchant, will allow you to have enough funds to purchase two or three pieces of land, increasing the odds of finding a dungeon to explore.
You should also make a habit of crafting accessories as you unlock them since they will be a great addition to your inventory. Accessories will make it possible for coins to be worth more, as well as to have extra inventory slots so that you can always have a wide variety of materials and items at your disposal. Along with accessories, you can also find artifacts that will give you an extra edge. These include things such as a top hat that makes coins be worth an extra 50% or a shield that will give you an extra chance to dodge an attack – something that saved my life and that will probably save yours.
There are also 84 feats for you to complete. The objectives to fulfill include playing the game for three hours, buying more than ten lands and having 5,000 coins, talking to all NPC, building 20 structures, completing every NPC quest, killing 100 enemies, having over 1,000 items in your inventory, planting 100 seeds, completing a dungeon without taking any damage, opening 20 big treasure chests, learning every skill, finding every secret room, collecting all accessories, and more.
Forager is a colorful and fun adventure that is either going to charm you or make you stay away due to the nature of its gameplay cycle, as is the case for games such as Minecraft, Terarria, and Stardew Valley, to name some examples. I was looking to playing Forager on Nintendo Switch from the moment I learned it was on its way to Nintendo’s hybrid console, and I’m here to report that the game delivered on everything I was expecting from it, so I definitely recommend you give it a try on Nintendo Switch.
Disclaimer
This Forager review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Humble Bundle.
