Wholesome Gaming Round-Up May 24th, 2024

Welcome to our Wholesome gaming news!

This week, we have news about the cozy photography Indie game The Star Named EOS, Early Access for Heard of the Story, farming sim Peppermint Falls and Cassette Beasts x Moonstone Island and multiplayer update. A release date for The Last Alchemist, Strange Antiquities dark and cosy adventure announced and the charming world of Weyrdlets: a virtual pet adventure. Immortal Life gets a Divine Compass, a new cooking and management game called Magical Bakery is coming and a roadmap for Cozy Caravan.

Cozy Photography Indie The Star Named EOS

The beautifully hand-drawn anime puzzle game, The Star Named EOS, is near! Developed by Silver Lining Studio, known for Behind the Frame, this narrative journey features a young photographer uncovering the truth of his mother’s absence and rediscovering the world’s beauty through his camera lens.

Highlighted in Nintendo’s Indie World 2023, The Star Named EOS is set to launch soon on Steam (Windows, macOS) and Nintendo Switch.

Heard of the Story in Early Access

Heard of the Story is a game on Steam in Early Access that one of our Reddit members, Sooziq9470, brought to our attention. In the game, you forge a medieval community with intelligent AI villagers. The AI factoring in should make the procedural characters feel alive, self-aware, and grounded in the world that you build. You gather resources and transform the village into a town, or you can choose to simply listen to captivating stories from various simulated and evolving lives.

The reviews on Steam have been positive overall for this city builder. We have no experience with Heard of the Story yet; maybe that will change in the future.

Farming Sim Peppermint Falls

Personally, I can never have enough good farming sims, so Peppermint Falls coming to Steam is nice news. Especially combined with the fact that it’s set in a world of sweets! In Peppermint Falls, you cultivate delightful candy plants, and they won’t even make you count as an extra-calorie intake! You get to explore the world with your whimsical pancake house companion, forge friendships with charming confectionary inhabitants, and discover fabled mysteries!

Peppermint Falls by JellyFrog Games is yet to be announced.

Cassette Beasts x Moonstone Island and Multiplayer Update

Raw Fury has launched a multiplayer update for their creature-collecting RPG Cassette Beasts with a new multiplayer mode and a Moonstone Island in-game collaboration event, available to crossplay across PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.

Multiplayer Update – players can party and explore the world of Cassette Beasts with up to 8 friends, all visible in their world, as well as join a “Play With Friends” mode, where they can match with anyone on their friends’ list via an invite code. The multiplayer update allows players to challenge their friends in PvP battles and assign custom rules to their battle, such as enabling/disabling sticker attributes, as well as team up for 2-player co-op raids against Rogue Fusions and trade tapes with each other.
Moonstone Island In-Game Collaboration Event – Starting tomorrow, May 21st, players can check out the cross and in-game collaboration event with Moonstone Island, bringing new content to both games. Cassette Beasts has added Moonstone Island-themed costumes, and Cassette Beasts’ Pombomb has been added to Moonstone Island’s Spirit roster.

Release Date for The Last Alchemist

Marvelous Europe and Vile Monarch have announced that The Last Alchemist, the alchemy simulation game about the blazing pursuit of science and friendship, will be released on Windows PC via Steam on 12th July 2024 for an SRP of $19.99. The title is available with a 10% discount for the week of launch.

Some months ago, I looked at the demo for The Last Alchemist, and I definitely liked what I saw. In the game, you can explore colourful and enchanting landscapes rich in resources, secrets, peculiar plants, fungi and minerals and extract essences from each item you collect. You can also fuse them and obtain the Properties you need to discover the wonders of this charming world. Craft your alchemical laboratory and optimise production by working closely with the Agari, these cute but cryptic mushroom folk that will help you find the cure for your mysterious disease.

Strange Antiquities Dark and Cosy Adventure Announced

Did you like Strange Horticulture? Soon, you can step into the eerie town of Undermere as the owner of an occult antiquities store in Strange Antiquities, a new dark and cosy adventure. Set several years after the events of Strange Horticulture, this standalone title invites players to find and identify arcane artefacts while helping the townsfolk with their peculiar problems.

Explore a world filled with mysteries, puzzles, and unexpected twists, all while enjoying the company of your feline companion. Whether you’re a newcomer or a fan of the previous game, Strange Antiquities offers a captivating journey through the secrets of Undermere.

The Charming World of Weyrdlets: A Virtual Pet Adventure

Step into the delightful realm of Weyrdlets, where productivity meets fun in a unique virtual pet experience. Adopt a quirky pet that not only keeps you company but also helps you stay productive and relaxed.

In Weyrdlets, you can personalize your pet’s appearance with a variety of accessories and curate its home with charming decor. Experience lifelike interactions by petting, grabbing, feeding, and playing with your pet both in-game and on your desktop. Your pet will assist you with daily activities through features like the integrated Pomodoro Timer and To-Do list, turning work into play by reducing stress while you study, tackle emails, or doomscroll. Additionally, you can wind down with a daily self-reflection logger, enhancing focus and efficiency.

Plus, while your pet idles, it accumulates coins—an in-game currency to purchase even more delightful items! Express your creativity by decorating both your pet and its environment with accessories and stickers, from Viking hats to home decor.

The Weyrdlets demo is available now on Windows PC via Steam, with a full release planned for this summer.

Divine Compass for Immortal Life

It would seem players in the exotic farming sim Immortal Life can have some trouble getting lost. 2P Games & Yi Fang Studio have solved this by adding the Divine Compass. Here’s a small guide on how it works from their Steam page:

Dive Compass User Guide

On the day after finishing the main quest <Valley Pit>, you will receive a paper crane from Yang Ziqiong; open it to unlock Divine Compass.
When you are in a battle scene (except the breakthrough scene), open the map view to show the compass; after choosing your destination on the list on the right side, the compass arrow will lead to the portal in this area. When you close the window, there is a tiny compass arrow around your character, too.
Every time you enter a new scene, the compass will be turned off by default. Also, you can choose the first option one destination list (Stop direction) to close the compass manually.

Always great when a developer just keeps on working on their game, and it’s already a great one! In case you missed it, our review is here!

New Cooking and Management Game Magical Bakery

Get ready for a charming new experience in Magical Bakery, where you become a magical baker trainee tasked with crafting delectable treats to solve your customers’ problems and brighten their days. As you level up, unlock recipes, and pass exams at the Academy of Magical Bakers, you’ll prove yourself worthy of inheriting a magical bakery from its old, tired witch owner.

Enjoy this cosy management game where you run a magical bakeshop, baking all sorts of sweets and pastries infused with magic. Customize your character into your ideal magical baker, develop your skills, unlock new ingredients, and upgrade the bakery to your heart’s content.

Want to see more? Magical Bakery will feature on June 8th in the Wholesome Direct!

Cozy Caravan Roadmap

It’s been a week since Cozy Caravan was launched on Steam, and the team at 5 Lives Studios has been hard at work squashing bugs and making adjustments. This means the game I already liked a lot, as you can read here, will get even better. Interesting to see that we will, after all, have a Quest Tracker. As I commented, I get that the devs don’t want you to tick off a grocery list, but I guess more players needed something to keep track of requests.

There’s new content as well, with new outfits for the wardrobe and a roadmap to what we can expect in the future. Nice things to look forward to!