Roots of Pacha
Game Title: Roots of Pacha
Released: April 25, 2023
Game Length: Too Long
Grade: A
Development
Kickstarter: It is hard to imagine this game being covered back in 2021. Not much has changed from its original pitch video other than a few graphical tweaks and mechanical adjustments. The Kickstarter page shows them hitting all the milestones. The problem is that they really didn't add any of them to the game when it released a couple years later. The fishing pole was never implemented in the game and you don't travel along the river in a raft or canoe. There is no option to pitch a tent anywhere. They did incorporate a whole pet system but you can only have one for each level of house you build. The game is definitely "complete" in the sense that there isn't anything visibly missing within its contents, but those who backed the project will notice a lot of missing features that were originally discussed during development.
Roadmap: So after about a year of waiting, I decided to see what they finally incorporated into the game. Thankfully, they made a whole page with an updated release video. These included the ability to sit in chairs, grow herbs, the trap and butchering systems to collect meat, but most importantly... cross-platform play. The previous update offered mostly endgame features such as fruit to enhance your play, a single new outfit, an individual you can now romance, option to restyle your features, chance to move your buildings around, a bunch of decorations, and a multi-use tool. As for Update 1.2 & 1.3, you will have to wait a little longer. For Update 1.2, they will focus on releasing the game for Xbox, how your kid grows up and interacts with others, different locations to get married, cosmetic changes for the fishing mini-game to match its location, send pets on missions, develop a prototype irrigation system earlier in the game, and more dance songs. A list is shown for Update 1.3 for new biomes, advanced fishing system, and a few other additions to the game that might help buffer the amount of content you can explore.
Right Dispute: Players might not be aware that there was an issue with the game right after its release. The game was momentarily pulled from Steam. Although Crytivo had a contract, it was being rescinded. From the conversations in the forums, there appeared to be some previous complications with the publisher when it came to how their contracts were phrased. Two weeks went by before they parted ways without any sort of explanation on what conspired between them. Soda Den took over publishing rights from that moment on.
Progression
The Caves: Every game must have some way to make your tools better and exploring some sort of underground mine for ore is usually the thing for the job. The big difference for this game is that you explore a cave system horizontally instead of vertically. There are not levels you keep digging down but rooms similar to Legend of Zelda that become available once you crack open enough nodes. There are also animal transformations that turn you into an armadillo for fast travel, a bird to fly over cliffs, a monkey to hop across small platforms, and a bear to break open strong walls. Transformations can only occur in designated spots inside the caves. Each area will unlock better resources that increase the potency of your equipment. Flint, copper, and tin will increase the range or strength of your tools. Gems, silver, and gold will increase the potency of your accessories. There are plenty of secrets and unlockable features while you explore the depths of the mines too.
Prosperity: While it might seem like a good idea to contribute things to the tribe, their prosperity will continue to advance whether you give them items or not. In this sense, the system is purely a timeline that schedules in new ideas and structures as the year progresses. Your fellow members will occasionally let you know of new ways to improve the game systems like a sundial to calculate a better calendar or a hammock that will let you collect more stamina. For the most part, they merely want to add things that would naturally benefit the group like more torches that light up at night, a place to look over the river, or a better presentation to where people hang out. This develops a feeling that you aren't the only one trying to make life better.
Prophecies: Another important aspect of the game is completing achievements. Each time you complete a category of four related objectives, the game awards you with a new accessory. The more you complete, the more ideas become available too. After awhile, you will be able to obtain new features through the jungle and items that would appease that Horse Totem in the caves. A couple of new evolutionary creatures and crops become available too.
Mechanics
Relationships: Finding out what makes people happy will require some effort. You will need to pay attention to both their personality and what people say during a conversation. You cannot simply give everyone good food. An individual might love the smell of poop, a certain kind of pink shell, or some rare hardwood as some examples. Those who love cooking will take some oregano or a craftsman will like ore from the mines. Building up your relationship will encourage them to give you gifts, provide special awards, or prompt certain cutscenes.
Crops: Growing things is a little more complicated compared to other games of this genre. You have to first travel out and about to find wild seeds that go into a completely different pouch outside your inventory. Their location depends on the type of crop growing in each season and they are marked on your map after being found. Harvesting them after they develop provides you knowledge about their properties. This lets you know how long it takes for them to grow, increases their quality from wild status to best quality product, and increases the number available from the vendor. While you can collect fruit from the wild, the man also provides the option to buy your own trees for the farm. It might be tricky to see but make sure to move between the tabs in the interface to see what you can buy. If you accidentally place a tree down in the wrong spot, you can pick it back up again like a standard object. Fruit will only produce during certain seasons but can have lasting benefits during certain processing activities. Make sure you know the difference between harvest and clear as one will completely remove the crop when it is in the way of development. Thankfully, this requires two clicks as a way to confirm your action. Scythes allow you to harvest large areas of crops.
Pets: There are a number of pets available, including spiders in a secret chamber near the end of the game. To have a pet, a personal house must be constructed. You can have up to three pets, one for each level you advance your home. They will wander around the village and follow you as long as you stay outside the mines. They will be temporarily invisible while you are on a mount. Like animals, you will need to play your instrument to befriend them first and befriend them, by giving them food they might like, before the option becomes available. Release them back into the wild if you want a different animal.
Fishing: Collecting fish is rather simple and can be a lucrative business when first starting out. Each region has their own supply of fish depending on the time of day. What determines their value is how long it takes to collect the fish, how fast they are moving, and how quickly they are aware of your presence. You can gain a spear and some perks to make things better but catching the elusive ones can still be difficult. I had heard of a rumor of being able to use a fishing pole as a third tier type of equipment, but that was never implemented into the game.
Trading: Although the system isn't quite the best way to accumulate goods, a few merchants will wander into your village and offer up some material from the region they come from. Their exchange rates can be rather unfair and expensive unless you are really in need of something specific.
Ideas
Animals: As someone who prefers scavenging materials over taking care of living beings, this aspect of the game really hindered my progress. Not only does a lot of ideas come from inviting animals into the fold but there are a lot of exclusive materials they provide that are unusually necessary to make some progression in the game. For example, at one point I needed to offer cheese to a bear totem in the mines. Despite producing almond milk, the equipment to turn it into cheese is only available if you invite a female Ibex on your farm. Fur is required to expand your irrigation system, create casks to age your wine, and build the biggest structures that automatically collect animal products for you. Other products such as feathers and horns can be broken down into dust to enhance your crops. Once you invite a male and female of a type, a breeding house becomes available that can build better generations of animals. Collect each of the common variants and rarer breeds become available. You can ride and race with each animal. Your primary mount can be summoned from a horn from any of the primary transitional areas and marked on your map in case you forget where you last left them. They will wander about and fall asleep when they get tired. Switching your primary is as simple as clicking on the animal. While there is a new "send to Grob" feature that exchanges your animal for meat, this is entirely optional and can be disabled by asking the man himself. Traps can be placed in the Savanna that will provide you types of meat the next day.
Processing: The biggest aspect of the game comes to what you do with your crops. There are a number of ways you can manipulate them and the game does not do a very good job explaining how everything works. You can inspect objects, even while they are producing something new, to see a stylized list of what products go in and what comes out. Unfortunately, it can be difficult knowing if there is anything more you can do with something like smoked meat or dried fruit when the equipment only accepts specific types of items. A player needs to be careful sometimes since the cost of buying a seed can be more expensive than the crop it produces. Cooking ingredients will always provide you with meals to restore your stamina and sometimes provide you perks but the results always reduce the value of the product. On the other hand, any sort of process will increase its value no matter if you mill, press, spin, brew, squeeze, ferment, churn, dry, smoke, or a number of other alternative methods that manipulate items. The thing a person must become aware of is that this is a multiplication, not incremental value. This means the bigger the fish, the bigger the reward.
Cosmetics
Wardrobe: When it comes to your clothes, there isn't a lot of options. You can add tattoos, hair styles, something to cover your body, shoes, and most importantly a type of hat. There are less than a dozen outfits you can obtain between rags, hard-cover, and fancy overlays. But for hats, you can obtain quite a bit more through relationships, secret areas, and through progress of the game. There are even animated hats with small animals that hang over your head.
Structures: There were a few additions they added to the game after release that makes life a bit easier. One is the ability to move structures after they have already been placed. There's about a dozen spots to choose from that take into consideration up to four individual houses that can built in multiplayer and the tribe's buildings as your prosperity increases. These and the buildings you place in your field can be moved immediately at no cost just by talking with Croll. Each change in the village will have people - that you can ask what they are doing - working on it for a couple days. The Granary will show how many slots of grass you have filled, the animal sheds will have a horn to call them inside, and your house will have a horn to call your mount.
Decorations: There are a number of quality of life improvements when it comes to decorations that might surprise you if you aren't paying attention. For example, the game will take into consideration whether you want to lock things to a grid system (that still gives you enough room to walk around) or freely place them in any position you want. These items can be placed inside your home, outside, in the village, or any of the extended regions. They cannot be placed in gathering places, other homes, inside the cave, in the cooking area of your house, or key locations where there might be special cutscenes. Some items such as rugs can be rotated horizontally, diagonally, or vertically. Basic objects such as bowls can be customized with a variety of objects from a list that comes up just by clicking on them. Ironically, some of the hanging decorations can still be placed outside. Any light sources can be turned on or off. Any object such as food or your tool can be placed onto tables (without expending the item). Some allow you to paint down to the pixel such as empty canvasses or pots. Chests can be renamed or given a different shade of color to distinguish them from afar. The latest updates have allowed you to sit in chairs and buy a rare Obsidian Mirror to change your appearance (instead of paying a small fee to the hair stylist). A few exclusive items can be obtained through relationships.
Other
Music: At first, the music was very interesting and you could have it running for a full day without even thinking about it. There is not ever a time it stops except for the more ambient environment in the caves. Each region plays a different tune for each season, and it was possible to explore the entire beach before the tune finishes. My opinion changed during Fall when the music made me want to immediately turn it off. Perhaps the slower speed combined with length of time paused while sorting out my chests made it sound more repetitive than I anticipated. The winter music wasn't as bad. An interesting aspect of the game is how they incorporated the musicians to play a secondary melody that compliments the music while you are out in the field. I noticed this while clearing the lower field when Jelrod approached the river and began playing his instrument during the Summer. You can interrupt musicians by talking with them or hear specific parts when you play during the Music Festival.
Status: This might not become apparent at first but there is no combat
to speak of in the game. There is no health bar, sprint bar, or weapons
to wield. As an individual, there are no ailments or detrimental
effects when you run out of stamina. Animals are able to get colds,
fleas, or tummy aches if they are not properly maintained. Medicine can
be created to remove these effects. Perks can be obtained from food and
accessories to benefit specific activities. Depending on how long you
have something equipped or upgraded will determine how much they
increase. Festivals are entirely segregated from your experience as they
remove time, stamina, inventory, and the ability to gift others. You
will not lose anything if you don't make it back to a bed before 2am but
will wake up with a 25% stamina decrease for the next day.
Multiplayer: While I normally don't play games with other people, there was a certain fascination in learning about how the game works with other players. While some features like cross-platform play was only recently added, other features like being able to play it on the Xbox is still being developed. Contributions and resources are shared among everyone but each person must develop their own tools and house. You can upgrade your house to share a bed but you can't add more beds. Four are already supplied in your old home. Many aspects on how connecting with other people works can be explained in this post here.
Attention to Detail: Although obscure, there are a lot of little things implemented in the game that were not essential or noticeable to your gameplay. A few I mentioned above such as how musicians play with the music, granary updates depending on how much you have in storage, or how you can interact with decorations. While there isn't any actual dialogue, you can hear grunts when pushing the limits of your tools, sigh when you are being asked to fall asleep, or proper sound effects when crossing the river. Although limited, all living beings do share some form of expression when receiving a gift, during a cutscene, or performing various activities. Although an image appears over an animal's head when an activity is available, you can see physical changes in their appearance when they are ready to be shaved. Riding equipment is catered different for each animal. You can place items over trenches or floors under fences. Gates will automatically open and close without the need of interacting with them. Fences will automatically connect and randomly add little touches like cracks and vegetation. Time pauses when you are checking out your chests (at least not in multiplayer) and stamina isn't consumed when performing more non-work related activities. Trees in the world do grow back in the same spot after a full season passes. Hardwood is generally found within the village while standard wood can be found elsewhere. The database is filled with information such as a villager's birthday, introductory tutorials, discoveries regarding almost everything, and where each item is marked on the map. You can run your mount directly inside a place and automatically dismount with the animal still waiting outside for you. Getting up and down a mount is almost instantaneous. Tiny black and yellow bees from their hive can be seen circling the plants while they grow. Although the same song currently plays when you dance with people, each individual has their own unique style of moves.
Minor Inconveniences: Despite the number of functions available, not everything can be rotated or moved around. You can't craft your own cosmetics. The time dilation for the day can only be modified by 5 minutes from the main menu before starting a game session. There isn't enough tutorials to explain how everything works. While gates might automatically open for you, I didn't see a way to jump the fence. Animals you might have become acquainted with in the wild seem to eventually disappear when a new generation appears. I might applaud the fact you can craft items outside your inventory or easily separate items into stacks without occupying another inventory slot, but there doesn't seem to be a way to deposit or withdraw all items. Debris grows at an incredible rate and can only be stopped with some form of barrier. While grass does get replaced with debris during the winter, more can be obtained from the Savanna with a copper scythe. Although your game is only saved at the end of a day, my game never crashed and there doesn't seem to be a limit to when you can end the day. Though the database shows you what reaction people had to your gifts, I would have liked if it updated when new information was given through conversations.
Summary
Review: Roots of Pacha brings its own style of gameplay to the farming sim genre. There is enough difference when it comes to how stamina is handled and activities are compartmentalized that it feels almost necessary to join other players to have an enjoyable experience. However, the single player playthrough can be just as great when you realize you aren't capable of doing everything every day. The game gradually provides enough systems and ways to improve your performance through perks, upgrades, and meals that eventually automate a lot of activities. Despite the number of anticipated features and minor problems of the game, I definitely recommend this game.