Forager, plowing is no longer torture

Forager makes us rethink the plowing genre: a form of ‘torture’ common in games. But for Forager, plowing is the goal of the game.

Games like Stardew Valley or Dark Souls all require you to do the same job over and over: whether it’s gathering resources for the farm or defeating weak monsters to increase your stats. Boredom in plowing is considered boring. Repeating the same thing over and over again isn’t the reason gamers love those titles.

But in Forager, plowing is almost what you have to do and you can hardly resist its attraction.

Players will control a petite character stranded on an island. Trees, rocks and insects and more start appearing on the island randomly. Using your ax, you destroy objects to gather resources and create structures so you can create new items yourself. In addition, you can also craft coins – they are currency used to buy new lands or exchange items in the shop, expanding your territory more.

This process repeats and repeats. It repeats itself for hours. However, the game applies small mechanics that make it different from other plowing games.

You don’t have to explore a pre-built open world. Instead, the player gets to choose how the world is formed. Instead of finding new tools or opening up new lands after passing the level, you can choose to expand the map. Once the player has enough money, the player can buy new plots from the game menu. You never know what you’re getting until you pay for it. New lands: from the desert to the graveyard, each offers a different excitement.

Sometimes, the new land simply resembles the one you already have. They can sometimes contain small puzzles. For example, the game has a mysterious building, which requires you to rely on hints to solve them. Sometimes you have to collect resources to decorate a museum.

New lands also bring new characters. However, the game does not have a co-op system or romance. They often give you simple quests, with rewards that can be as simple as a new hat or outfit.

Small discoveries are gradually revealed as you join this vicious circle. With other games, they are extremely tedious, but with Forager, you will feel the difference.

Resources instead of appearing in common areas, like entering the forest to get trees or going to the mines to dig gold, they can appear anywhere in Forager. Resources appear at random intervals. Every empty space of the land can produce anything. After you cut down the trees, after a while, the area will grow flowers, cows or little fairies. This endless resource generation keeps you constantly running around the map. Randomness makes finding resources more interesting, since you never know what you’ll find when you return to the same area.

The game can be a bit chaotic at times. If you don’t go through an area for too long, it can be surrounded by a lot of resources, sometimes you can’t go through until clear. Crafting items like bombs makes cleaning up easier, as well as collecting multiple resources at the same time.

When I first played Forager, the author was immersed in the game for up to 3 hours and didn’t realize he had spent so much time. It’s not the game’s plot that draws you in. Not because you strive for a goal. You are mesmerized by the journey of discovery in Forager.