Yonder - The Cloud Catcher Chronicles
Even after spending well over 100 hours playing Zelda Breath of the Wild earlier this year some how I was still jonesing for more open world questing and exploration. I had been following the small team of Prideful Sloth on Facebook develop their game Yonder, which seemed to have a Zelda vibe, for some time. When it was released I immediately jumped on it looking for that hit that I was still craving.
The first thing about Yonder that attracted me to it was the visual style. I really like the bold, bright, contrasting colored world. Everything really pops out and is clean. Reminded me of World of Warcraft. The design style is both "cute" and effective, making it easy to navigate and a joy to just look at. Screenshot paradise. The day/night cycle moves along a good clip (though this is being slowed in future patches) with great color changes and crisp shadows. The word vibrant applies in spades.
The primary mechanics of Yonder consist of exploration and crafting. The former has you running around a good sized island that has all the typical environments (beaches, snow, grasslands, forests, caves, mountains, etc) each clearly defined and look great. It doesn't take long to get your bearings and figure out where things are and how to get there. Which is good because the map is a little lacking - it shows where you are and major landmarks but it a little on the vague side so its a bit useless in helping you figure how just to get from point A to B. You run at a good clip and it doesn't take too long to get most places, with the added bonus of being able to leap off any heights safely with the help of your umbrella. There are a number of fast travel options but most of them are more of a trek to get to and from than the time they really save you. They are interesting in concept but not great in practice.
The second thing you will be doing a lot of in the game is crafting. The main reason for crafting is the quests and the main reason for exploration is to find the materials you need for crafting. It's a nice loop that pushes you through the game. Resources are gathered with a handful of tools that you have to unnecessarily switch to for each type of resource. It's only a couple of button presses each time but as everything you do is technically context sensitive it seems like a hold over from a older system of gathering.
All the crafting is done straight from you backpack via a ton of menus. So many menus. Some of these are easy to navigate, others have issues with filtering what you are looking for and just being a little over cluttered. Often you are consistently flipping back and forth moving items and checking to see if you enough items and bouncing through a load of sub-assemblies for each end item you want to craft. Far to much multi-stage crafted items for the end result. Also a number of key items to crafting must be bought from specific NPC's who run out of their small stock (which is never enough) and you have to wait till the next day before they have more. It wasn't the worst thing, but I felt I spent a lot more time in crafting menus that I wanted too.
Exploration also leads to the other major game mechanic with is finding fairies and clearing the murk. There is no combat in Yonder - it's a peaceful game but the island you are on is beset with a gross purple darkness that acts as close to conflict as you going to get. Large blobs of murk block access to items and pathways. Clearing these out requires a certain amount of fairies for each one, some less some more. I couldn't really figure out if their was a system to why some needed more than others but after acquiring 8 or 9 fairies you can get most of the murk. Though you do want to clear it all as it's part of each areas completion rating (along with finding fairies, planting trees and more). An aspect to the game which I think could have played more of a role, instead it was more like a series of check boxes. Missed opportunity? Maybe, but the developers are continuing to add new stuff and have a road map for even more.
I did get caught early on thinking that the quests were just not really up to their potential. The rewards seemed lacking for the effort you put in to them and the NPC dialog was not really jelling (there are some exceptions and over the course of the game you meet some really top notch characters) and I started to wonder, what was the point? But it took a turn in thinking. I was so set on this being "a Zelda" that when it wasn't I was disappointed. But Yonder isn't Zelda, it is really it's own thing. The quests are different in a way other than seeking reward - they are steps towards everything you need to do in the game. There is no need to rush from one to the next, enjoy your time in Yonder. Explore, gather, craft, figure out how to tame the animals, find a secret place...Yonder is just chill. Playing Yonder feels good. From working on making a nice little farm with all the amenities that your animals could want to seeing what is around the next corner.
After 20 hours in the land of Yonder I had completed the main story and was quite impressed with the pacing. In my eagerness I blew through it in a week but after the developers add some more I will definitely head back and see what's new. Yonder is a lovely game and I really happy to have played it.
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