This download is going to take FOREVER so I might skip ahead a bit. JSH's stream made it look kind of fun, but I'm definitely going to be keeping my sound off 'cause I hate sudden loud noises. I do remember seeing this game when it first went up and being curious about the alleged Oregon Trail-like, but decided against downloading 'cause there weren't any screenshots and the filesize was so big. Doubly curious about it now that I've seen it in action a little bit.
During-Thoughts:
Wouldn't be fair to turn the sound off, so I'll just be scared shitless I guess.
You can't hunt, or at least I don't know how, so guns and bullets are a waste of money. A pity
..oh, you can, but you just go into a grassy area if you have a gun. Doesnt' seem to cost bullets! Awesome
Food... doesn't seem to be a factor.
Post-Thoughts:
Well, JSH's stream told the whole story. This is a game that somehow manages to include lip-service to every great Oregon Trail mechanic, hunting for food, fording rivers, rippin off the natives and contracting a who's who of 19th century illnesses... without ever actually managing to be a game. As far as I know you can't die, my party went 17 days without food, you can't lose items crossing a river, you can BARELY go hunting and even then it's just a textbox that tells you whether or not you actually shot something. I don't think anyone ever got sick, though they did mysteriously "get well" when I hadn't been informed they were less than well. I guess the prairie air was good for their lungs?
Music is like... two tracks. One a forgettable banjo kind of melody and the other the sounds of water lapping against a shore that segues into an easy listening kind of thing. They're not particularly out of place, but they're not particularly immersive either. Just weird. And of course, they're interrupted at random by a loud splashing noise and flashing thunderstorm lights sure to stop your heart at least once. There's a more subdued sound for a wheel or axle break that actually works really nice.
Graphics are also pretty forgettable. The wagons aren't too bad, but the NPCs in town have this weird squiggly quality to them. The tiles are okay but blocky as hell. It's all really half-assed and repetitive and never makes you feel like you're making progress on a grand journey. He did do little animations for like, Chimney Rock and various landmarks along the route, as well as little things for the random events. The fog and thunderstorm ones are kinda bad, the stuff on your wagon breaking is kinda good.
I loved Oregon Trail, I think every kid of a certain generation did. The thought of making a game like it is fresh and exciting, but what made it fun was hunting, actually clicking on bears and squirrels and buffalo and having so much space on your wagon for the resulting meat, or trying to pawn off a wagon tongue in exchange for medicine so you don't die of syphillis, This game pays lip service to those ideas, but doesn't actually follow through on what made them fun. Being able to choose your own path also seems fun, but really doesn't add anything to it except a bunch more button presses. The only addition I approve of was the wandering around in town bits, which remind me of Uncharted Horizons for the SNES. Even that could've been way cooler than it was. I wouldn't recommend it in its current shape, but there's enough of a basework here that improvement is possible.