I also love cozy farm sims. Same verse, second as the first right? These days, with the increasing global tensions and over all increase in daily stress, games where we can escape into the idealized drudgery of farm work are among the most popular titles in the industry.
So you would think, with Bounty Star, I would have found the perfect game right?
Well, much like what has happened with the real life American farming sector, its clear that the bottom fell out somewhere along the way, and yet the work still carried on in hope of something better. I really want to like this game, but well…
What Is It?
Individually, they’re a challenge. Together, it’s a grind.
Bounty Star (full title being Bounty Star: The Morose Tale of Graveyard Clem) is a mecha action/farm sim game developed by Dinogod, previously a developer of physical board and card games such as Age of Angra and Pocket Dunj. This is their first video game project, and its an ambitious one at that, combining customizable mech combat with base-building and farming mechanics. It also attempts to marry all of this with a postmodern Western aesthetic which it largely succeeds in.
The game itself takes place in a post-post-apocalyptic universe, largely in the ruins of the American Southwest where a post-nuclear war society has managed to rebuild civilization into something vaguely resembling the modern world (only with, you know, giant robots and mutants and what-not). You play as Clementine (or just Clem to her acquaintances), a former town militia leader who made one very bad mistake many years ago, and has since fled to the frontier to get away from everything. This led her to The Red Expanse, a sun-parched part of the country similar to the Wild West largely governed by The Syndicate, which keeps the peace through a system of bounties and bail bonds. Clem needs a source of cash, so she’s convinced to get back into a mech (called ‘raptors’) and earn some money by killing or capturing no-good varmints, and even the occasional animal control job (usually involving giant mutant bugs or saurian lizards). With the money she earns, she turns her run-down garage into a sustainable and profitable enterprise where she raises crops, livestock, and can even package meals for profit.
Why Should I Care?
Talk about a fixer upper…
This game can be pretty evenly divided into two parts: fighting and farming.
The fighting part revolves around taking on bounties and completing them as efficiently as possible via the use of your raptor. The raptor itself comes with two weapon types: ranged (your standard pistols, shotguns, machine guns, etc.) and melee (punching weapons, hammers, blades, etc.). All of these weapons have their strengths and weaknesses, and are effective against certain enemies. On top of this, there are also other components that can help or hinder you depending on the situation. A major thing to keep in mind is temperature; this is the American Southwest after all, which means that it can be hotter than Hell during the afternoon and downright freezing at night, so plan accordingly as your every action can generate either heat or cold.
As mentioned earlier, you take on bounties and then properly equip your raptor before heading out to the field. As also mentioned earlier, many of these bounties revolve around capturing or killing groups of marauding outlaws who are either squatting somewhere or are taking over someone’s property (mines, farms, baseball fields, etc.). These enemies can be anywhere from regular guys in cowboy hates trying to kill you, to flying drones, to mutated drug fiends and even other raptor-users who are as deadly and violent as you can be. You can accomplish every bounty by killing anything that moves, but if you manage to capture anyone alive (via use of a chain flinging mechanism) you’ll get additional monetary compensation. Each mission also comes with a number of sub-conditions that can offer additional cash (like taking no damage, capturing a number of enemies, and others). Also keep in mind that things like fuel and ammo will come out of your pay, so act accordingly
The other part of the game is the farming: this part is closer to a cozy game wherein you slowly build up your base and its equipment, along with building up your own personal farm. The garage that Clem lives in is fairly bare bones to start out with, but over time she can equip it with crafting tables, kitchen implements such as a skillet and an oven, and eloctrolyzers that will cut down on her raptor’s fuel costs. Those crafting tables in particular are essential as they not only allow you to build new equipment to upgrade the garage, but also to mill ammunition (cutting out any costs for ammo entirely). The farming mechanics involve planting crops and keeping them properly watered (though eventually you’ll develop upgrades to allow automated watering), raising chickens for their eggs and meat (and keeping them happy, as happy chickens make happy product), and even raising little therions (mutant lizard dinosaurs, you read that right). All of this can be used to both cook food for Clem to eat (which gives her temporary upgrades out in the field) and to sell on the market for additional cash. Outside of the bounties, the game can pretty much be played at your leisure, so you needn’t stress out over time limits.
What Makes It Worth My Time And Money?
She that look? She’s like that the entire freaking game.
Sadly, as much as I really wanted to like this game, there is just too much holding it back to give it a recommendation. Right off the bat, the first hour of this game is an exposition of everything that might chase away a potential player: Clem is a one-note character with no debt, portrayed via bland character art and jerky animation, none of the characters emote properly, the night-time textures are overly dark, the world itself is void of life, and the action itself is too button-mashy.
But as for the game as a whole, let’s start with the graphics: it’s obvious that they were hoping for something more ambitious than what we actually get. The character models are reminiscent of PS3-era character models; they aren’t polygonal or blocky, but they have serious trouble emoting. Think something along the lines of Fortnite or (horror of horrors) Ride To Hell: Retribution and you have an idea of what we’re dealing with here. Most characters are stuck in one facial expression for the entire game (Clem grimaces, Uday looks smug, etc.). Environmental assets are a bit better technically, as I did not encounter any fuzzy textures, but I did see quite a bit of clipping.
The audio and input also have their own issues. The voice acting is, to put it simply, incredibly weak. Clem speaks entirely in a campy cowgirl monotone that never ever changes, and that goes for basically every other character in the game. The writing is also terribly bland, and simply cannot decide what tone it wants to take for the game, which just makes the voice acting that much worse. As for input, there are a handful of shoddily programmed features that proved to be annoying. The farming and base-building parts of the game, although technically solid, are loaded with glitches that prove irritating: attempting to pet your chickens to keep them happy but failing because they’re either unreachable, crops supposedly being ready for harvest yet failing to actually appear in bloom, etc.
Like I said: I really wanted to like this game, but no amount of ambition or duct tape can fix something like this. Bounty Star has a good concept, and it has potential, but the end product as it stands now just doesn’t measure up. It’ll take some serious tune ups before I’m willing to ride into this desert again.
Bounty Star has a good concept, and it has potential, but the end product as it stands now just doesn’t measure up. It’ll take some serious tune ups before I’m willing to ride into this desert again.
I also love cozy farm sims. Same verse, second as the first right? These days, with the increasing global tensions and over all increase in daily stress, games where we can escape into the idealized drudgery of farm work are among the most popular titles in the industry.
So you would think, with Bounty Star, I would have found the perfect game right?
Well, much like what has happened with the real life American farming sector, its clear that the bottom fell out somewhere along the way, and yet the work still carried on in hope of something better. I really want to like this game, but well…
What Is It?
Individually, they’re a challenge. Together, it’s a grind.
Bounty Star (full title being Bounty Star: The Morose Tale of Graveyard Clem) is a mecha action/farm sim game developed by Dinogod, previously a developer of physical board and card games such as Age of Angra and Pocket Dunj. This is their first video game project, and its an ambitious one at that, combining customizable mech combat with base-building and farming mechanics. It also attempts to marry all of this with a postmodern Western aesthetic which it largely succeeds in.
The game itself takes place in a post-post-apocalyptic universe, largely in the ruins of the American Southwest where a post-nuclear war society has managed to rebuild civilization into something vaguely resembling the modern world (only with, you know, giant robots and mutants and what-not). You play as Clementine (or just Clem to her acquaintances), a former town militia leader who made one very bad mistake many years ago, and has since fled to the frontier to get away from everything. This led her to The Red Expanse, a sun-parched part of the country similar to the Wild West largely governed by The Syndicate, which keeps the peace through a system of bounties and bail bonds. Clem needs a source of cash, so she’s convinced to get back into a mech (called ‘raptors’) and earn some money by killing or capturing no-good varmints, and even the occasional animal control job (usually involving giant mutant bugs or saurian lizards). With the money she earns, she turns her run-down garage into a sustainable and profitable enterprise where she raises crops, livestock, and can even package meals for profit.
Why Should I Care?
Talk about a fixer upper…
This game can be pretty evenly divided into two parts: fighting and farming.
The fighting part revolves around taking on bounties and completing them as efficiently as possible via the use of your raptor. The raptor itself comes with two weapon types: ranged (your standard pistols, shotguns, machine guns, etc.) and melee (punching weapons, hammers, blades, etc.). All of these weapons have their strengths and weaknesses, and are effective against certain enemies. On top of this, there are also other components that can help or hinder you depending on the situation. A major thing to keep in mind is temperature; this is the American Southwest after all, which means that it can be hotter than Hell during the afternoon and downright freezing at night, so plan accordingly as your every action can generate either heat or cold.
As mentioned earlier, you take on bounties and then properly equip your raptor before heading out to the field. As also mentioned earlier, many of these bounties revolve around capturing or killing groups of marauding outlaws who are either squatting somewhere or are taking over someone’s property (mines, farms, baseball fields, etc.). These enemies can be anywhere from regular guys in cowboy hates trying to kill you, to flying drones, to mutated drug fiends and even other raptor-users who are as deadly and violent as you can be. You can accomplish every bounty by killing anything that moves, but if you manage to capture anyone alive (via use of a chain flinging mechanism) you’ll get additional monetary compensation. Each mission also comes with a number of sub-conditions that can offer additional cash (like taking no damage, capturing a number of enemies, and others). Also keep in mind that things like fuel and ammo will come out of your pay, so act accordingly
The other part of the game is the farming: this part is closer to a cozy game wherein you slowly build up your base and its equipment, along with building up your own personal farm. The garage that Clem lives in is fairly bare bones to start out with, but over time she can equip it with crafting tables, kitchen implements such as a skillet and an oven, and eloctrolyzers that will cut down on her raptor’s fuel costs. Those crafting tables in particular are essential as they not only allow you to build new equipment to upgrade the garage, but also to mill ammunition (cutting out any costs for ammo entirely). The farming mechanics involve planting crops and keeping them properly watered (though eventually you’ll develop upgrades to allow automated watering), raising chickens for their eggs and meat (and keeping them happy, as happy chickens make happy product), and even raising little therions (mutant lizard dinosaurs, you read that right). All of this can be used to both cook food for Clem to eat (which gives her temporary upgrades out in the field) and to sell on the market for additional cash. Outside of the bounties, the game can pretty much be played at your leisure, so you needn’t stress out over time limits.
What Makes It Worth My Time And Money?
She that look? She’s like that the entire freaking game.
Sadly, as much as I really wanted to like this game, there is just too much holding it back to give it a recommendation. Right off the bat, the first hour of this game is an exposition of everything that might chase away a potential player: Clem is a one-note character with no debt, portrayed via bland character art and jerky animation, none of the characters emote properly, the night-time textures are overly dark, the world itself is void of life, and the action itself is too button-mashy.
But as for the game as a whole, let’s start with the graphics: it’s obvious that they were hoping for something more ambitious than what we actually get. The character models are reminiscent of PS3-era character models; they aren’t polygonal or blocky, but they have serious trouble emoting. Think something along the lines of Fortnite or (horror of horrors) Ride To Hell: Retribution and you have an idea of what we’re dealing with here. Most characters are stuck in one facial expression for the entire game (Clem grimaces, Uday looks smug, etc.). Environmental assets are a bit better technically, as I did not encounter any fuzzy textures, but I did see quite a bit of clipping.
The audio and input also have their own issues. The voice acting is, to put it simply, incredibly weak. Clem speaks entirely in a campy cowgirl monotone that never ever changes, and that goes for basically every other character in the game. The writing is also terribly bland, and simply cannot decide what tone it wants to take for the game, which just makes the voice acting that much worse. As for input, there are a handful of shoddily programmed features that proved to be annoying. The farming and base-building parts of the game, although technically solid, are loaded with glitches that prove irritating: attempting to pet your chickens to keep them happy but failing because they’re either unreachable, crops supposedly being ready for harvest yet failing to actually appear in bloom, etc.
Like I said: I really wanted to like this game, but no amount of ambition or duct tape can fix something like this. Bounty Star has a good concept, and it has potential, but the end product as it stands now just doesn’t measure up. It’ll take some serious tune ups before I’m willing to ride into this desert again.
by Brandon Perkins
