Deiland (Review)

Deiland is a gorgeous charming little single-player adventure RPG with sandbox elements. Developed by Chibig and published by 101XP. You play as a young boy named Arco who is the youngest of the many children individually sent to minor planets, you are sent to the smallest of the planets named Deiland to guard and defend it from monsters while trying to make his time there as pleasant as possible, there's a bit more to the story but I don't want to spoil everything. Throughout the entirety of my time playing Deiland, the game strongly reminded me of The Little Prince, mostly in and art style.

The main focus of the game is farming, mining, foraging, and meeting traveling merchants. right at the start you'll have a visitor land on your tiny planet and teach you the basics of foraging, farming, gathering materials, and crafting tools. The mechanics for said activities are very basic, most likely due to the fact that Deiland is a port of an IOS game. Farming consists of planting seeds, watering them if you want to speed things up and harvesting your crops once they have fully grown. Foraging is what you would expect it to be, picking berries, seeds and acorns. And mining is well... mining, there's nothing too complex about the gameplay which is one of the reasons why it's so relaxing to play.

There are some small threats to deal with such as the occasional enemies that can be fended off with bare-bones-basic combat that just consists of whacking with you tools until the creatures are dead (with the exception of the magic wand), and meteors that sometimes fall down on your planet. These were never challenging or even mildly difficult, but you can get certain materials from them, so it feels more like an event that happen every once in a while and less like a chore.

Tools can't break and never need to be repaired, but this doesn't mean you can work forever. Like Stardew Valley you have an energy meter that depletes a little with everything you do. Although unlike Stardew Valley you won't pass out when exhausted, to refill it you just need to sleep. You have a hunger meter that must be withheld by eating food you've grown in your farm or purchased from merchants, once the bar is empty you will begin to lose health, this never really became a problem as there is plenty of food and no real struggle for survival.

As you progress your little planet will be visited by alien travelers who sell you items and each have their own questlines (Some even taking you to a different planet). By completing these quests you will be rewarded with items for your planet as well as upgrades for your tools and new structures to build. The visitors were my favorite aspect of the game as they were charming and each had their own music to accompany them, adding to their personality. They also reminded me of running into captain toad and his mushroom ship in Super Mario Galaxy (which is one of my favorite games ever created!).

I know plenty of people have complained about many bugs and glitches, but I myself never ran into any major ones. Just a few smaller bugs, when playing with my Xbox One controller. I had a problem where sometimes I would try to stop moving, but my character would start to slowly walk and wouldn't stop until I had pressed down on the analogue stick. There's also a problem where berries and acorns sometimes would get stuck in the lake or on rocks. These only ended up being a minor inconveniences and nothing too obnoxious or game-breaking.

Overall I thought Deiland was a very relaxing adorable little farming simulator, I love how atmospheric the theme felt as well as the fact that it was presumably inspired by the little prince. As far as farming simulators go it's a fairly unique one, the game is pretty short but very enthralling, especially if you are one to enjoy a good farming simulator. And for as simple as most of the core-gameplay may be, it's still very addicting (while at times a little tedious) and had me hooked right off the bat. Deiland is available for $14.99 on Pc/Steam and PS4.