As Far As The Eye: Charming, But A Struggle To Play

 *Note I was given a game code for the Nintendon Switch by Goblinz Studio for my honest review of the game. 

As far As The Eye has very charming art and is a turn based strategy resource management game. The story introduces a group of nomadic people who must travel to a place known as the Great Meeting before the flood known as The Sigh arrives. The whole premise of the game is to plan out your journey, gather as many resources as you can, and manage those resources during your journey. The game is set up into chapters with the goal of getting to your destination before the flood arrives. 

Chapters in the game. 

The game doesn't really give you much of a tutorial. It kind of throws you in and gives you tips on what to do in the first chapter so you can get a feel for it, but I really wish there had been a better guided how to especially for the first chapter regarding the map layouts known as halts. Each halt has a different layout and you can choose which one to travel to on the map menu. 

Exploring the halt. 

There is a bit of a timer as you gather materials and you can build temporary buildings like a quarry to gather stone for building. You can assign tasks to each person and when they finish one task you can assign them to another. Before you leave the halt, you can put things you gathered into your inventory. This gives you a little tetris like mini game to make everything fit. Once that's done, you're off to the next halt. 

Getting ready to organize inventory. 

Another aspect of the game is the people in the group can change or upgrade their job class. For example, a builder can upgrade to engineer or a trapper can upgrade to a fisher. This also means they can gather a bigger quantity of resources and they also do it at a faster pace. 

Changing job classes. 

All of those things seem nice and the art style of the game is cute and the concept is interesting. However, As Far As The Eye was a struggle to play because of so many technical issues on the Switch. The game would freeze in places or it would crash. Sometimes the inputs for the controls would not work or would delay or a chapter wouldn't load. There were so many issues like this that it felt like the game was not tested enough for consoles and felt unfinished and frankly it feels completely irresponsible to release the game in this condition. It made what could have been a good game, a frustrating mess. It should have been play tested more and it's very clear it wasn't. Until those issues are worked out and addressed, it's better to wait to play this game.

Building on the map. 

*As Far As The Eye is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS4, Steam, Xbox One, and Mobile

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