2.5/5 ★ – DaysposableHero's review of Eastshade.

I’m generally a fan of what are often derogatorily described as “walking simulators.” I think there are plenty of good ones: What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Firewatch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, so on and so forth. So I was hopeful that Eastshade would fall into that pattern. Unfortunately, the main mechanical hook that sets Eastshade apart, and is supposed to be the focal point of the game, turned out to barely be a mechanic at all. And the rest of the game just wasn’t interesting enough to make up for it. In Eastshade, you play as some kind of anthropomorphized animal, though I don’t believe it’s ever revealed which species you are. The world of Eastshade is populated by these animal-folk, and there are, if I recall, four species: bears, owls, monkeys, and deer. They all live on the titular island of Eastshade. The game opens with your character on a ship en route there, with the intent of painting landscapes of four specific locations that your recently deceased mother had cherished deeply. This premise was what initially drew me to the game. A chill, slow-paced game about finding great views and painting them. That sounds lovely. Unfortunately, Eastshade Studios, the game’s developer, focused too much on the “slow-paced” and not enough on the “painting”. As it turns out, “painting” in Eastshade simply consists of taking a screenshot. That’s it. When you, as the character, are looking at the scene you want to paint, you simply open the painting tool, set your frame size, and hit a single “Paint” button. The game then whips up an oil-on-canvas work that directly mimics your view of the game world, automatically, right there on your easel. It would be a really cool diegetic screenshot function if it weren’t the main focus of the game mechanics. Unfortunately, it is the main focus of the game mechanics and, as such, cannot shoulder the weight of a 20-hour adventure game. The game also has some light survival mechanics. Namely, the world gets cold at night and you cannot be outside without either a tent, a coat, or a supply of a special warming tea. This might have been an interesting obstacle, except that if you do have any one of those three things, it negates the exposure system entirely. Buy a few cups of tea before dark, and you’ll be fine. Learn to craft a tent, and you can skip the night time altogether. Or, as I did, scrounge up enough early currency to buy the coat, and then that mechanic just disappears forever, and you can stay out, everywhere, as much as you like. Being limited in your exploration is annoying to start with, but it could have been turned into an interesting time-management mechanic with the right gameplay elements. Instead, it’s just an annoying hinderance that soon becomes irrelevant. So, like, why do it in the first place? It’s not just the survival part of survival-crafting games with which Eastshade dallies. Eastshade also has a crafting system. But again, it just wasn’t terribly interesting. And in the same way, in renders itself obsolete by just giving you what amounts to a box to check, and then never asking that question again. For example, in order to reach some areas of the island, you will need to traverse some open water: a river, a lake, or along the coastline. To do this, you need either a raft or a canoe, each being fashioned out of some of the local flora. So, find enough Bloomsacs, and do a favor for a guy, and you’ll be able to craft a Bloomsac raft. The thing is, once you craft the raft, you can just pack it away in your backpack at any point, you don’t have to leave it behind when you make landfall. Thus, you’ll never need to craft another one. These items operate more like skill upgrades, instead of crafted supplies. Find a recipe and 15 of this plant, and voila, you can cross water now. So, then, what’s the point of finding all the “heavy reeds” in the first place? It just seems like busywork. Which, incidentally, is true for most of the quests on the island of Eastshade as well. Residents will have you trekking across the country side, hither and yon, collecting water samples, or finding a specific scene to “paint,” or other fairly trivial minutia. None of the things you’re doing for anyone feel the least bit consequential. Though, I acknowledge the developer’s attempts to immerse you in the life of the locals. One quest has you solving a mystery of theft at an isolated inn. Another has you attempting to clear the name of an unscrupulous apothecary who was accused of using endangered plants in his recipes. Some of these quests seemed like they might go somewhere interesting at first, but they never do. Every quest completion essentially results in the quest givers going “All right! Thanks, mate! I’m all good now. See ya later.” Nothing actually interesting ever really happens. The best quest reward in the game turned out to simply highlight another of Eastshade’s disappointments: the traversal speed. At one point, I was able to help a woman get her hot air balloon business off the ground (pun intended). I assumed the reward would be the ability to use the hot air balloon to travel around the island. And boy was I eager for that. The walking speed in Eastshade is abysmally slow, and I didn’t see any option – at least on the Xbox port – to increase that speed. There’s a “sprint” button, but I qualify that term because it might better be referred to as the “walk as if you have a destination, instead of meandering aimlessly” button. I fully understand that the game wants me to take it slow, appreciate the scenery of the island, learn the landscape, and become immersed. But you know, after I’ve had to traverse back and forth over and over from the city to the Blushwood and back for various odds and ends, I’d really just prefer to get there. I don’t need to stop and smell the roses when I’ve passed that same rose bush fourteen times. So I was stoked to see the hot air balloon and assumed this would upgrade Eastshade’s heretofore consumable-based fast travel system. But alas, no. The hot air balloon, once you’ve completed the quest and are able to use it, goes only from one specific place, to one other very specific place. It’s really just a bridge, or a cable car. Disappointing. I would be remiss to leave the impression that the game is all bad. It really does look rather nice. It’s not the photorealism we might be used to from big budget developers, but Eastshade Studios has given their island a beautiful color pallet, and relaxing soundtrack. There were some vistas that I genuinely found to be striking. Eastshade, as a setting, might be very interesting if there were a little more adventure to be had there. And there are some quests that almost make it. There’s a standard mirror and light puzzle that I was curious about the result of solving. I befriended a person who lived in a secret underground community that the other island residents don’t know about. I got to take that hot air balloon ride I mentioned earlier. There were glimpses of cool stuff in Eastshade, but they never lasted long enough, or went far enough, to really catch my interest and keep me immersed in that world. And that’s the killer for a walking simulator. The whole thing needs to be about immersion. About making your players want to poke and prod at your world, and see what’s behind the next door, or on the next bookshelf. Eastshade, the island, was just too…well, nice. I was never really interested in what was happening, because I knew it probably didn’t really amount to much. I suppose that encapsulates my feelings about Eastshade, the game, as well. It’s nice, but it doesn’t really amount to much, in the end.