The Game
Forager is a survival crafting game developed by HopFrog in which you start out on a single island with nothing but a pickaxe and a desire to “forage” everything around you. You start out simple – focusing on trees, rocks and berries. Gradually you expand your operations to include idle fish traps that will catch fish for you and eventually a smelter and the first crafting elements. The game allows you to expand by buying new islands adjacent to yours. As you expand you will find new materials and ways to upgrade your gear or build new machines to help you. As you establish yourself you can automate certain tasks and set your smelters or factories to constantly produce the materials that you need.
Every time you hit something you expend your energy, you can regain it by eating. Similarly, you start out with 3 hearts/health, if you get hit by an enemy that can drop to 2, certain foods will help replenish hearts. As you unlock islands you come across various puzzles and dungeons which will reward you with resources and ways to increase your health, damage or energy. Every time you level up you are also given a chance to spend your skill points on new skills. There are 4 main areas to spend your skills in, which are also the 4 main building types – industrial, farming, economic and magic.
Worth it?
The game is free on PS Plus Premium and also available via Xbox Gamepass, on Steam you can get it for around £15, but it’s frequently on sale for around £5. Overall that price seems fair – it’s a great little game, brilliantly simply with quite a bit of depth and very easy to get sucked into and lose hours. Once you get multiple machines and automation running the game is almost musical in its constant sound effects, it also has some great puzzles that are just the right amount of challenging. My single biggest issue with the game is that it seems that some of the trophies are broken on PlayStation (and possibly elsewhere) and it’s been a known issue for a while. It would be a great game to 100% but not getting that achievement really stung and killed the joy of it for me. It’s also worth mentioning that Forager multiplayer was in development but was canned due to some controversy around how the creator treated his team.
Overall Forager is a great game that will make time fly and keep you hooked for at least 10-20 hours while you complete the majority of it. The simple graphics and musical sound effects make it a great experience.
Tips
- You can get void items by building a void portal from the sigil maker, unlocked via the magic skill tree
- Build multiples of your industrial buildings and split stacks across them in order to get materials faster
- Buy sigils from the markets in the late game as a way to quickly grind bosses
- Don’t bother with the pet skill until later – it just gives you a pet, nothing more
- Most quest lines require a rare item that can be found by digging in dig spots (small holes in the ground), which randomly spawn on uncovered ground
- Geology is a very useful early skill to target in order to improve your coal production
- Vaults and Banks can also be useful early game in order to store items and generate passive income
- Combine quarries with mining lasers to automate the workflow
- Magic is useful early game as it will add fairies to the world which can instantly replenish your hearts and energy
- Dump your inventory at the museum
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