As Far As The Eye Review

Game: As Far As The Eye
Genre: Strategy
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam (Windows))
Developers | Publishers: UNEXPECTED | Goblinz Studio
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: US $24.99 | UK £18.89 | EU € 18,99
Release Date: April 28th, 2022

Review code used, with many thanks to Stride PR.

As Far As The Eye is a rogue-like strategy game set across a series of hex-based maps. Where you play as the Wind guiding the “Pupils, a tribe that must reach the centre of the world”, the Eye!

Head to the Eye

Along the way, you will have to find and manage their resources and the buildings and keep everyone alive until they reach their goal of the Eye. Each playthrough of the game is procedurally generated. However, there is also an overlying urgency to proceed to the Eye as there is a major threat to the little convoy of travellers.

You see, the world is flooding behind you, so you need to move on before the water catches up to you. A series of unexpected changes (violent natural disasters) can occur or vagaries to complicate matters even more. These can consist of something as simple as lakes flooding causing tiles next to them to take damage or perhaps creating a fog over the map, making navigation take longer.

Halts

Initially, you are greeted with an overview of your journey, which contains several maps or halts, as the game calls them. Each Halt requires you to gather a certain amount of resources and or skills to progress to the next, and looking ahead to see what you’ll need later on is important.

At each Halt, you can direct the Pupils by assigning them tasks. For example, each Pupil can move a certain amount of hexagons in a given turn. Once directed to the hexagon in question, they can collect resources for their crew: wood, ore, stone, and fish. These resources are used to create new buildings that unlock new resources to gather or fulfil the goals needed to make the journey to their next settlement. While they collect resources and construct buildings such as quarries and sawmills, the ever-present time pressure of the impending flood hangs over them.

Look After the Pupils

You must also look after the pupils by ensuring they are fed and helping them with whatever obstacles they find on the map. You also need to help cure them if they fall sick. Each Pupil has a skill tree that will grant them specific perks for each kind of the different resources they collect. The skills help the Pupils grow wiser through agriculture, crafting, and scientific and mystical research before the world is submerged.

On top of the choices related to general resource gathering and planning, each Pupil has unique traits that can either be a help or a hindrance. For instance, a Pupil may have a trait that requires more food than the other pupils or a trait that reduces the turns it takes a Pupil to gather resources.

Combat Free

As Far As The Eye is a game with no combat. There aren’t any hostile animals and no battles for expansion across the map. I like not having combat in the game, and I like its challenge, as it is not an easy game to play or learn.

Part of the reason it is not an easy game to learn is the tutorial, if you could call it that, as the game’s mechanics are badly explained to the player. There are three gameplay modes, campaign, custom games, and predefined games. The campaign mode has you playing through a series of tutorials, which isn’t really a campaign mode; even though it’s named as such, it’s just a tutorial. A separate tutorial and then a separate campaign mode might have been better.

Tiny Text and Unruly Controls

My biggest niggle with the game is the tiny font for the writing; I spent most of my time squinting at the game to read the text with my nose pressed to the screen. It can’t be that difficult for a developer to increase the size of the text when porting a game onto the Nintendo Switch from a PC so the player can read it comfortably without eye strain.

The game also suffers from an unruly control system on the Switch. The cursor has a life of its own and moves about the screen. The minus button is used to bring up the menu; half the time I pressed it, nothing happened at all. Graphically it is lovely with the muted colours on the map and the little ballons the Pupils carry. But again, the game’s look is hindered by an over-cluttered UI, and it takes away from the beautiful setting of the map.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, As Far As The Eye felt like work playing it. For me, strategy games tread a line between letting you execute a satisfying plan and responding to surprise threats.

However, with As Far As The Eye’s constant violent natural disasters and the need for upkeep on every game element, it gets quite tiresome to always be on the defensive and rush to the next Halt. A strategy game should encourage long play sessions with lots of deep planning of your next move and not having to rush because of some threat you have no control over. Apart from that, when you die, there isnt any post-game analysis, recorded stats, or even the ability to scroll the map and see where you went wrong and learn from it. All of that makes me think that hex-based strategy and roguelike genres should not be mixed together in a game!

Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure