If you get giddy with excitement every time an NPC asks you to fetch a pile of sticks for them, Yonder The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is the game for you.
Developer: Prideful Sloth
Publisher: Prideful Sloth
Platform: PC – Steam (Version reviewed), PS4
Release Date: July 18th, 2017
We all are familiar with the worn RPG trope of NPCs asking us to be their personal FedEx, delivering them items that at times were within two steps and a few coins’ reach. For the most part, we are willing to tolerate this familiar set of marching orders if it’s in the context of something greater, as we’ll usually gain some plot or other insight along the way. But Yonder The Cloud Catcher Chronicles never manages to frame its 10+ hour fetch quest extravaganza in a substantial way, despite its charming aesthetic and hints at greatness along the way.
Your character washes up on the island of Gemea after a terrible storm with nothing but the tattered clothes they are wearing and an idea that the island is somehow connected to their parents. It’s quickly clear that you’re unique in Gemea, both as someone with a history tied to the island and the power to see the Sprites–mysterious beings who once blessed Gemea with their gifts. With the help of the Sprites you befriend throughout your adventures, you can clear patches of a dark fog called Murk that has been plaguing the island’s residents. By doing so, you’ll increase their happiness and bring prosperity to the land.
The central quest of Yonder revolves around uncovering the source of the Murk and stopping its influence for good, but depending on how focused you are, the quest itself only takes a few hours to complete and provides a flimsy basis for the rest of your travels. You won’t find much in the way of compelling characters (most NPCs speak the same, dull throwaway lines) or depth of feeling, despite the fact that the story is written with some attempt at emotion. Though the story is what drives your presence on Gemea to begin with, it has nothing to do with how you’ll be spending most of your time. Though the set-up seems promising enough, Yonder rolls credits after a brief, anti-climactic wall of text and a self-aware achievement title.
Rather than focus on story, Yonder fancies itself a quirk crafting, questing, and farming simulator along the lines of games like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but with a hefty emphasis on crafting. You’ll find raw materials in spades as you trek across the island, and those can be converted into more interesting, sellable goods via membership in several guilds, such as Tailoring, Carpentry, and Tinkering. The end of all this crafting seems to get at building up several little farm plots into functioning profit machines. That said, there are plenty of other craftable items that are quest objectives, character customization items, or useful for bartering.
But let me talk about the bartering system in Yonder, because it’s a key place where the game falls apart. Yonder The Cloud Catcher Chronicles revolves around its economy and even styles the player as a traveling merchant. Yet there’s no true currency for most transactions (Old World Coins, the only currency, are only to be used for special purchases). Instead, items are assigned monetary values, and you must barter an acceptable amount for the goods you require. Merchants will replenish their stock every day, but will only sell certain items, so you’ll need to travel frequently to obtain certain things you need to finish recipes.
Here’s the trouble: the economy in Yonder is grossly imbalanced. You’ll end up with a hefty surplus of absolute garbage sitting in your inventory and storage very quickly. You won’t want to throw away anything because you’re constantly getting new recipes you might need different items for, but you’ll also have access to so many money-making materials that you’ll rarely have to sell anything to get what you want from merchants.
That said, most crafting recipes take five or more items to make, and you’ll need to craft lower levels of items to make higher ones. Often, the merchants who sell the two items you need will be at opposite ends of the world, resulting in constant travel back and forth just to get the items to repair a single bridge. Too many of the quests are the same way, sending you trekking back and forth across the map for seemingly trivial items. I spent more time in Yonder calculating how many vines I needed to craft another item to craft still another item to finish a quest than I ever should have had to.
And often, the merchants who sell the two items you need will be at opposite ends of the world, resulting in constant travel back and forth just to get the items to repair a single bridge. Too many of the quests are the exact same way. I spent more time in Yondercalculating how many vines I needed to craft another item to craft still another item to finish a quest than I ever wanted to. Nor do I have any love for the crafting system itself, which is buried too deeply in menus that are a pain to navigate as regularly as you have to.
Adding to this imbalance are all the farms you can set up, in which you can plant and harvest crops or build pens for the adorable animals that roam Gemea. Lure them back to your farm, and they’ll make it their home and produce items for you such as milk, flowers, or clay. Your farm requires almost no maintenance, and can easily be taken care of by a farmhand you can hire. You’ll only need to stop by every so often to pick up the produce and hug your Gruffle, making your farm less of a tended to home base and more of a quick ATM.
Yonder lures you away from your farm with its lovely, stylized world that almost overwhelms when you first begin due to its seeming enormity and the fact that almost everything is open to you from the start. While this is a boon at first, you’ll quickly discover that Gemea is not as big as you thought it was, and simultaneously is far too big. After about ten hours, you’ll both wish you had some new place to explore, and that the place you need to get to wasn’t so far away. Unlockable fast travel locations around the map do little to alleviate this frustration since you have to hike out to those out-of-the-way warps anyway.
Along the way, you (like me) may find plenty of weird bugs, such as characters stuck in the ground or quest bubbles without a quest giver. You might get stuck in a wall. You may also stumble upon some, uh, easter eggs:
Yonder feels like a title still in Early Access. The world dazzles at times with an aura of magic and mystery, but you’ll find after a few hours of play that walking it end to end is both trivial in its brevity and exasperating in how often you have to do it. There are plenty of secrets to find, but so many of them are geared toward the admittedly robust character customization that you’ll quickly grow bored of finding treasure chests. Admittedly, my journey was peppered with delightful moments of discovery, such as finding a hidden cavern or finally luring the adorable Sprig-pig back to my farm. But it’s easy to lose sight of those moments when a character asks you to hike across the world for the umpteenth time so they can have a glass of juice.
