WREN

Very very simple. Has a wonderful artstyle and a cute, innocent sort of attitude like a gameboy RPG. I do find myself wishing it was a little more in-depth, and that there was more you could do with *your* character in specific besides just adding him to the small population of meandering townsfolk. Ultimately, the NPCs come across as little more than set pieces with a few lines, and the game itself feels more like a browser idler game than the cardio-fueled Stardew Valley I was (admittedly unrealistically) kinda' hoping for. Still adds a fun component to my daily runs, it synced quickly and nicely to the free Strava phone app, and it has a solid sense of progression that promises I'll have to do a *lot* of exercising before I can consider myself having 'beat' it. I really do appreciate it.

Just found this game, really wish more games existed that utilized Fitbit/Strava fitness trackers to help progress. I'm probably in the minority of people that appreciate that kind of motivation but I do! Haven't even used my Fitbit in months because just stopped seeing the point, but now its time to stop being lazy and get into it again! That being said, this is a very simple game. You get a few "dailies" for getting mana that don't require external physical fit activities. and I'm excited (will updated review after I get some physical activity done on this) to see how much that helps you progress. It appears that you can see other players walking around the camp though I am guessing each one see's camp as their own and the other players are likely just "ghost" images of random players walking around. I don't think its live/interactable. There are some monsters you can fight though you need to build a team of fighters to do so and it seems if your guy dies you lose your weapon which takes some mana to get another and try again. Whole game revolves around mana collection, even upgrading your mana collectors, so really excited to see how much mana some fitness can get me!

I really want to like this because the idea is good, but there's about a tenth of an actual game here. The art style is a schizophrenic mix of vintage clip art and generic pixel art. The gameplay is... Well, you get to watch things happen, I guess? And it takes dozens of attempts to finish a mission/quest thing? The pacing is absurdly slow-- everything requires vast quantities of mana and you burn mana just to go do attacks. I really wanted this to be better but wow. I am surprised to see it's not in early access any more, even though it still feels like something somebody threw together in an afternoon from whatever assets they had kicking around. There's a place for a cool game tied into Strava activities, but sadly this is not that game. EDIT: It takes so long to figure out there's no game here that it will get you past the refund period. Don't do it. Don't even think "no, this couldn't be that bad." It's that bad.