Verdant Skies

There's something to be said for a game where you can relax, turn your brain off, and not have to worry about doing anything. But when does a game cross that fine line between "not having to do anything" and "not having anything to do"? Let's find out as we take a look at...

DEVELOPER: Howling Moon Software

PUBLISHER: Howling Moon Software

RELEASED: February 12, 2018

RATING: n/a

AVAILABLE: Itch.io, Steam

PRICE: $19.99

Until recently, if you asked for my opinion on farming sims, I'd have told you that while I didn't necessarily hate or dislike them, they weren't exactly my cup of tea either. I'd tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES years ago, but it just didn't grab my interest. Then, in 2016 on a random whim, I decided to try a little indie game that had just been released called Stardew Valley, and it almost instantly clicked with me. Stardew quickly became a favorite of mine, and since then I've always kept an eye out for games which might match, or perhaps even better, the experience.

You probably know by now how much of a sci-fi fan I am, so naturally if you take a Stardew Valley-esque game and set it on an alien planet, you're gonna pique my interest. Thus, we gaze into Verdant Skies. Set in the future on the planet Viridis Primus, you play as a member of a group of pioneers attempting to colonize the planet.

Things certainly start off with a bang, with your character crash landing on the planet.

Naturally, this being a farming sim there will be plenty of planting to partake in, but with a few key differences:

You don't buy seeds. Instead, you obtain them by scavenging through bird's nests scattered throughout the area (or, if you have the proper equipment, extracting them from the resultant crops).

As you may expect, you can only plant seeds in ground that has previously been tilled. However, only certain bits of land are able to be tilled, and these are in seemingly random points around the colony, with no apparent way to move them or create new areas.

The colony area (and I do realize that's the second time I've used the term "area" in a short space of time. It's deliberate; more on that later) is divided into three different biomes - Plains, Marsh, and Mountains - and certain seeds can only be grown in certain biomes, with some exceptions.

Plantable areas in each of the three biomes, with examples of the crops that can grow there

Those exceptions come courtesy one of the major selling points of Verdant Skies: genetic splicing. Seeds are imbued with different traits, some good, like being able to grow anywhere or yielding double the harvest, some not so good, like needing more water. By using a genetic sequencer, you can splice two samples of a particular seed to try and imbue it with the traits you want.

Animals are handled in much the same fashion. Rather than buying and raising an animal you want from young to maturity, instead you find the animal you want roaming in the wild, obtain a genetic sample from it, and place that sample in an incubator. Once fully grown (which takes 2 in-game days), you place it in a pen and it will give you certain crafting materials, so long as you feed it first. Like the plants, animals have genetic traits, allowing you to splice and incubate the exact animal you want.

Tinkering with traits

To give credit where it's due, Verdant Skies is one of the most inclusive games I've seen. Another of its selling points is the fact that its character creator doesn't require the player to select a gender. Plus, at least one of the other colonists has They/Them pronouns, and you can enter into polyamorous relationships with some of them (though others aren't so keen on the prospect, preferring to remain monogamous).

Perhaps the best improvement Verdant Skies makes on the farming sim formula is that there is no sleep deadline, i.e. you don't automatically pass out if you're not in bed by a certain time. You could, if you so wished, quite literally stay out working on the farm and gathering materials for days at a time, as long as you've got the food to keep your energy up, and as much as I love Stardew Valley and even World's Dawn, that's something which I felt was sorely missing from those games. It gives Skies a true sense of being able to relax, that Stardew and World's seemed just shy of mastering.

There are some downsides to all this bliss, however. Firstly, the area you're able to explore is not that big at all, and there's only the one. No separate areas for a village or beach or what have you. There are a couple of mines, but each consists of only one tiny cavern. Speaking of the mines, many of your crafting recipes require either rubies or sapphires, which you can only get (through random chance) by mining certain rocks, and even if you are lucky enough to get one of those gems, it takes a ridiculously long time for the rocks to respawn something to mine, which may or may not even be a gem. This means it takes forever and a day to build just about any major piece of machinery.

One of the only two mines in the game. Rocks with colored veins have harvestable minerals.

Finally, there's the relationship/family mechanic. Now, I should mention I have yet to play a farming sim with romancing options where it truly felt like I was making a connection with whoever I was dating, but that lack of connection is especially prevalent here in Verdant Skies. There's no gifts to give; instead, all you have to do to increase your prospective partner's affection is simply talk to them once a day. Once you fill their affection bar, you trigger a cutscene in which you grow closer with them, doing things like eating dinner together, dancing, etc., but the cutscenes always fade to black and skip over the interesting bits, so that all you see is essentially "Hey, thanks for coming, let's have dinner and talk for a while", fade to black, fade back, "Well, that was fun, kthx bye". Plus, if the event involves your partner inviting you over at a certain time, and you miss that time window, it doesn't matter, they'll still keep inviting you until you show up at the proper time, with no consequence whatsoever for standing them up. Once you're married, you can have a baby by literally clicking a button!! And not only can you get a divorce the same way, but you can then go right back to that partner and start dating again like nothing happened.

The pink ribbon indicates you've reached max affection for that character, the blue signifies having a child with them. If you're already dating someone who prefers a monogamous relationship, the highest affection level you can gain with anyone else is "good friends", shown by a green ribbon

Verdant Skies is by no means a bad game. It certainly serves as a pleasant enough distraction if you're looking to de-stress and unwind. But there was so little to do, so little variety in the crops and animals - hell, there's only one season! - that I thought perhaps the game was in early access and I just missed it, but no, I double-checked its Steam and Itch.io pages and it is indeed a "full" game if that's even the right word to use here. And for a game with a $20 asking price, it left me wanting rather than satisfied. There are apparently mods available for the game, but I haven't taken a look at any yet, and somehow I doubt they would make all that much of a difference to the overall experience.

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