Ooblets is immediately reminiscent of a modern take on Viva Piñata, a wholesome mix of village sim, some light farming, and a casual sampling of Pokemon. If you’re not familiar with Viva Piñata, you grow Pokemon from the soil. Plants are people too OK. Take that PETA.
At first glance, Ooblets definitely has a “I’m not like the other girls” vibe going on. The only problem is, it never stops. I’m only half joking because the aesthetic and feel of Ooblets is very colorful and cheerful but it does get to be a bit too much when every single thing in the game tries very hard to be quirky for the sake of being quirky.
This isn’t too much of a problem as the gameplay is actually pretty solid for the most part. If we slap the quirk away, you’re left with a casual farming, village sim. You have a small farm where you punch away debris from the field. Yes, you actually punch branches out of existence and use a rock to get rid of other rocks. After clearing the field you till the land, plant some crop and Ooblet seeds, water them, and wait to harvest them in a few days.
In between working your field, you venture forth to the nearby village and talk to the villagers, each trying their very best to say something out of left field. Talking to some of them will also activate quests, usually requiring you to go fetch a certain number of objects. The quests are mostly simple so they can be completed in a short amount of time thankfully.
You can also dance battle other Ooblets. The dance battle is a very simple card game where you have three energy, and play cards to reach a score of twenty first. It’s pretty simple and easy to grasp once you start playing it, imagine it as a very trivial version of Clash Royale or similar type of game. The main purpose of dance battling other Ooblets is to get their seed. Once you defeat an Ooblet in a Fortnite dance-off, you have the option to collect their seed. Once you grow the seed, the Ooblet can join your squad and follow you around.
There are other uses for Ooblets as well. You can assign them to work machinery on your farm. I guess plants have no rights in the world of Ooblets so you can keep them working forever with no pay. I don’t ever recall having to feed the Ooblets as well, this is perfect for corporations. Jokes aside, I do find assigning Pokemon to menial labor very, very funny and that is one reason I’m looking forward to Pal World as well. In Pal World, the Pokemon have guns and you can even eat them, what a perfect game.
Before I keep going off on a tangent (this is the only way I stay sane writing these articles sometimes), the machinery is very simple and either simplifies tasks such as a sprinkler system to water your crops for you in a large area, or aiding in cooking or construction, such as the Chrunchster that grinds up objects into intermediary crafting components.
You simply slot an available Ooblet into the required slots, put in the required inputs, and come back later when it’s done. The farming and crafting feel pretty simple compared to other games but it’s by no means bare bones. It’s more of a casual experience than one made for masochists micromanaging their farms to be efficient machines of endless production.
As for how you acquire the upgrades, you collect wishies by completing tasks, and then use said wishies at the Wishywell to unlock blueprints and other upgrades. Once the blueprint is unlocked, you can craft the device if you have the required materials.
There are other familiar mechanics as well, such as building up friendship meters with other villagers via a sticker system, a very rudimentary fishing mini game, scanning and 3D printing small sculptures of Ooblets for the display area, and etc.
The fishing I feel like sums up the game play of Ooblets, it’s too shallow. For fishing you recycle ten mystery cans in the Reconstitooter to turn into basic bait and then walk up to the Sea Dangle on the pier and it automatically just fetches you an item. There’s no thrill in the fishing, it’s just all done for you. Much of the game play feels similarly shallow and hollow but with a ton of quirkiness added on top.
I will also say as an aside that the limited stamina systems in most farming sims are starting to annoy me as I get older. I want to spend an inordinate amount of time chopping down trees and breaking rocks sometimes and the game won’t let me do that until I spend time doing equally tedious but undesired tasks. It’s fine if I want to grow crops and collect ingredients to cook food to replenish stamina but if I don’t want to, then I am wasting time.
I mean if we’re going to get philosophical here I guess one could argue all video games in general are a waste of time and that perhaps one is merely addicted to the slow dopamine drip of progression systems and a content treadmill and not having any actual “fun” at all. That may be true, but by golly when I want to punch rocks and chop trees let me do it! This goes for tiny inventory systems as well. I guess games just don’t have the technology yet, according to Diablo 4.
Going back to the game, it’s not necessarily a terrible thing that Ooblets feels shallow because it makes the game very accessible for players looking for a more chill experience. However, those looking for more depth should look into other games where you can dig much deeper into the mechanics. Turns out Ooblets is indeed not like the other farming sims but not in the way it wanted to be.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/593150/Ooblets/
Review Score: 90% positive with a total of 259 reviews as of this writing (10/11/23)
Developer: Glumberland
Publisher: Glumberland
Release Date: Oct 5, 2023
MSRP: $29.99
I received a key from keymailer. Thanks to the rooting tooting person for approving my request!
Time spent: 3.9 hours
Achievement Score: 5/27achievements
Ducky Obrien 