Lonesome Village is a cozy life-sim and puzzle-solver where you are the hero sent to save the villagers from a mysterious tower and help them get on their feet.
A copy of this game was provided for the purposes of this review.
In Lonesome Village, you play as a coyote who has a peculiar past and becomes the hero for Ubhora, also known as the Lonesome Village. This village was overtaken by evil, embodied by the massive dark tower, and all of the villagers went missing. You discover they are trapped in the tower, so you must solve puzzles to free them and help the village be re-established by completing tasks to help them out. There is no combat, with the gameplay focusing on quest completion and varying puzzles, with the story developing as you complete both.
I enjoy the lack of combat honestly, and the variety of puzzles I have played so far has been great. No puzzle has been alike at all, even if some of the concepts are similar. Sure more than one puzzle has a laser, but what you need to do is much different. The puzzle variety may be the best part of the game next to the art. Speaking of the art, it is quite cute and really supports the more cozy feeling this game has. It also looks very polished and complete which I appreciate.
I don’t have much to say about the story, since I feel like I have either barely gotten into it or that it just isn’t as impactful as it seems to be. We are introduced to the story at the start of the game, and I don’t feel like I have really progressed with it as I have played.
I do have a few critiques of the game though. First of all, the controls are not very intuitive in my opinion and I wish I could change them, but I can’t. The button choices and how one navigates through things was kind of a struggle that grew a little bit frustrating. Maybe when playing on a console instead of PC this would be better. My other complaint is how the puzzles never had a clear explanation to understand what you are supposed to do. The puzzle itself is what should be challenging, not understanding what you’re supposed to do in it.
Overall, Lonesome Village is an enjoyable game with charm but also some bumps that could be smoothed out to have a better experience. I honestly don’t see myself picking this game up again since the struggles I had outweighed the enjoyment in the end.
This post is an Indie Game Collective Showcase
