An Early Access code was used, with many thanks to Crytivo.
On April 16, A New Leaf: Memories landed in Early Access on Steam. This farming sim starts with the usual video game malady: you wash ashore on an island and can’t remember anything. So, what do you do when this happens? You set about getting a farm to thrive and help Omoide Island to develop. While you complete quests and get your life and the island on the rails, your story unfolds.
Former Kickstarter Project
A New Leaf: Memories started life as a Kickstarter project, in 2021 we wrote an article about it. Alas, not every Kickstarter is a successful story. The original developers have encountered some major challenges during the game’s development. Their best effort, however, wasn’t enough to bring the game to the next stage, and eventually, publisher Crytivo took over and got involved with the development as well.
Usually, I have a good idea of what I’m going to write when I’m playing a game. Bits of text form into my mind, so it’s just a matter of jotting them down and putting them into a nicely readable article. It was different for me with A New Leaf: Memories, as I was a bit conflicted. Though I want to like this farming sim, there is so that needs work. Let’s look at what you can currently expect.
Loads of Content for Building and Crafting
Let’s start with the positives for A New Leaf: Memories. From the start, the game doesn’t bog you down with the basics for a prolonged time. You can immediately start developing the huge area around your farm and add buildings as long as you have the materials and coins, of course. At least you have the axe and pickaxe to gather things. The bottleneck, however, is your energy bar, as early on, it’s difficult to replenish it.
Though the canvas to build things or layout farmland is huge, it’s also unwieldy. It’s difficult to put things exactly where you want them and impossible to see if things are facing the right way. This goes for the decorating in the house as well.
A crafting table has loads of recipes as well. It’s hard to find what you need as, for now, there’s no search function. The island is huge; I was almost scared to venture too far before dark, as I would have trouble finding my way back. The landscape is varied, and activities like mining are unlocked early on.
I’ve found spots that made me curious about what it could develop into. Having said that, the town close to your farm feels empty. There are some villagers with minimal interaction, the houses all look the same and there is no hustle and bustle. The areas in the wild feel more alive, where suddenly, a farm selling animals pops up with all kinds of interesting critters roaming around. Or you see several characters mining and no doubt taking away all the precious ores!
Dimensions and Farming
In A New Leaf: Memories the dimensions seem all wrong. First, this house feels like the tent Mr Weasley set up when the family went to the Quidditch World Cup: small on the outside but super large on the inside. That could be okay ( I know a lot of us could do with more room to put our stuff), but the furniture doesn’t match, and neither does the door. It’s so small that it’s hardly noticeable on the huge canvas of the room.
Going into town you are on a bridge that has such high sides that your character is clearly too small. The chicken coop seems a bit small too, and there are more areas that feel off.
The biggest obstacle to enjoying the game is the controls. It’s nice that controller support is implemented, but on the whole, the controls need a lot more work. They are clunky and not always responsive or logical. Now, I must add I mainly played A New Leaf: Memories on the Steam Deck. I was quite happy that it worked on there, as you could control the game on the Deck with the Bluetooth controller.
The quality of life aspects, on the whole, can really do with more work. Working with the inventory and the quick bar isn’t intuitive. On Steam, you have trouble getting started as you need to give your character a name, but the keyboard doesn’t pop up. I could only name my character and get things started by putting it in on the PC first. The good thing is that Cloud saves work flawlessly.
Farming is too much of a wrestle, as the spot that you want to water, or hoe, or seed is difficult to get right. I’ve found it was easiest to position the squares behind me, which allowed me a modicum of control. But that really should be better.
My Impression of A New Leaf: Memories
I love the graphical style of A New Leaf: Memories and the customization options you get at the start. In some places, I just stood and watched the vista unfold before me.
There are a lot of wild animals running around, and things added like a hover-bus that is a nice touch.
Despite having a lot of potential, you can see this early access game needs quite some work to get to the stage it could be. The positive news is that Crytivo is working constantly to update things. The work behind the scenes goes on six updates (as I’m writing this on April 28th) since release in early access on April 16th. Omoide Island has a lot of potential, but several things hampered it from being the wholesome and laid-back experience I was looking for.
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