Kynseed

by Aethyna Dec 14, 2022 | 1 Votes | 41 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Simulation , RPG

Graphics:

Labels:

Sandbox Game , Cooking , Life Sim , Building , Storytelling , Crafting , Adventure , Pixel Art , Farm , Family

Platforms:

Publishers:

PixelCount Studios Explore an expansive world full of interesting places and go on exciting combat-filled adventures, gather various materials and craft useful items, forge relationships with the locals across several towns and learn their stories, develop your career, and even set up a family with your significant other in this adventure-driven life sim, Kynseed! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Featuring a massive world that’s ripe for you to explore, Kynseed is a charming adventure-driven life simulation RPG where you play as the “chosen one” of a powerful Fae called Mr. Fairweather. Explore an expansive world full of interesting points of interest and go on exciting combat-filled adventures, gather various materials and craft useful items, forge relationships with the locals across several towns and learn their stories, develop your career, be it as a seasoned adventurer or a merchant tycoon managing several shops and employees; and even set up a family with your significant other!

Plotline

You and your twin have been abandoned as babies at the Shoe, an orphanage run by a motherly matron. Unlike many of the kids there, you and your sibling were eventually adopted by your long-lost uncle and were brought over to his farm, Willowdown Farm.

However, your fate is destined to be very different from your sibling's as a powerful Fae Lord known as Mr. Fairweather has taken a liking to you. You see, the people of the Vale and Quill all celebrate the end of Summer with a ceremony called the Summertide. The purpose of the ceremony is to ask the goddesses, specifically the Queen of the Orchard, Druida, for blessings for a fruitful harvest.

During the ceremony, people from all over the place will bring tributes to be given to Druida herself. However, a Summertide Herald will need to be chosen, during the aptly-named “The Choosing’ event, to present these tributes to Druida by visiting the goddess in the Opal. People who went to the Opal don’t come back. This has always been the way.

This time around, Druida chose you to decide which of the two possible Heralds to be “sacrificed” and sent to the Opal. You had to choose – there is no other way. This greatly upset your sibling and to some extent, unsettled you too. This was when Mr. Fairweather decided to reach out to you with an offer you simply couldn’t refuse.

He scathingly mocked the people as being “pitiful and small-minded” to the point where they would actually ask a child to choose a sacrifice. However, he sees your potential and what change you can bring… if you have a little help to achieve it, that is. This “help” comes in the form of the Kynseed.

The seed allows you to accumulate generations-worth of knowledge, by allowing you to pass on 100% of whatever that’s learned from the predecessor to the successor, which can be your own children or a random orphan. The magic that runs through the Kynseed will also grant you access to all things Fae, including using Fae-enhanced items. However, there’s a major downside – you can only live until the “ripe old age” of 50, no more no less… well, it can actually be less if you died too many times before your time and had to be revived by Mr. Fairweather. He takes a 1-year cut for every revival.

Even with the hefty cost of the gift, the Kynseed should help you and your progenies to master everything there is to master in this world, and become powerful enough to make meaningful changes that will last from generation to generation.

As you play the game, you’ll also encounter plenty of “books” that are scattered throughout the land of Quill. In them, you’ll be treated to plenty of jokes, puns, and lots of gaming references that fans of both games and gamebooks would be able to recognize. The humorous writing here is fantastic, complete with lots of personality and heart, and because of this, it does make finding a book an event that many would look forward to.

Gameplay

Before you start, you’ll need to choose which of the two twins you’ll be playing as, along with the name you’d like to go with. Then, a Fae creature called Pott will run you through a series of questions to determine what additional stats your character will have. Questions include your life’s ambition and the legacy you’ll want to leave behind. Once you’re done, you’ll wake up from a “dream”, and get about starting your new life with your sibling and uncle at Willowdown Farm.

Being a life sim that’s inspired by games like Fable, Kynseed isn’t a linear game that dictates what you should do. However, the game does give you clues as to what you CAN do via its extended tutorial, which doubles as the prologue for the actual game later on, and what you can do here is astoundingly well-varied.

For starters, you can scour the world and forage for useful items to use or sell. There are plenty that you can find while exploring, ranging from plants to fruits, to even metal ores if you go into them caves. Some items require specific conditions to appear like pouring water on a tree stump, or appearing only in pools that are lined with rocks. At one point, you can also get yourself a pet dog who will occasionally stop and bark to indicate spots that you can then dig using a shovel for some free loot, or go bug hunting using a glass jar to fill up your bug collection.

The world in this game is filled with lots of secrets, events, instanced locations, and points of interest, with some only appearing during certain seasons, dates, and times, such as pig races, so there is definitely plenty to see year after year in Kynseed. There are also family chests that you can attempt to “hack” into by guessing the passcode, and lots of proverbs – a.k.a. tips – about the many resources you can get in the game so you could more easily find them and get better quality versions of them. Due to its size, the game makes it easy for you to quickly travel between areas either by your pig or sheep mount, or by teleporting via the goddess statues that you can activate in most areas.

While you can get quite a number of materials out in the wild, some items are “locked” to specific owners of the plot of land they are on, preventing you from stealing anything that you’re not supposed to have. Of course, there are also the more mundane tasks like planting, growing, and harvesting a variety of crops, completing (mostly fetch) quests for a variety of local NPCs, fishing, giving the goddesses their offering during Druida day (to get some perks for the week), and gifting items (that they like) to NPCs to build relationships that may eventually lead to a wedding and a family to call your own.

Not to forget, you can craft a variety of items here in this game. From brewing potions to hammering out a new sickle, to even cooking up a storm, everything you craft here can be used or sold for cash. However, unlike the passive-kind of crafting where you just choose how many of an item you want to craft and wait for the crafting bar to fill up, it’s pleasantly surprising to know that crafting is more interactive and active in Kynseed. For example, if you want to bake a mushroom pie, you’ll be expected to chop up the ingredients, roll the dough, and bake the pie yourself through various fun yet sometimes challenging (reflex-based) mini-games. Your performance in the mini-games and the quality of ingredients used will, in turn, determine the quality of the product you’ve produced.

Of course, you can even build a career here. If you opt to purchase businesses to run them, know that you don’t have (thankfully) to do everything yourself. You can hire the locals to do it for you while you reap all the profits. You can also get the Fae, like the brounies, and your own family members to help manage the household farm by performing the many chores needed.

As you progress, the game will eventually open up the North Gate, granting you access to the entire map of the Quill, including dark forests that are rife with dangerous creatures and rare materials. This is where you’ll need to learn to fight to survive. Thankfully, there are mentors, a.k.a. Masters, along the way who will help. I should point out that Masters don’t only teach combat skills though. There are plenty more out there who will teach you additional perks and skills for professions, like cooking and fishing, if you can unlock them via their respective “talent trees”, which may take quite a while.

Combat in Kynseed is truly a marvel, thanks to its unique design and mechanics! As someone who’s a massive fan of all kinds of strategy games (turn-based, simultaneous turn, and real-time), battling enemies here feels like a blend of all three. For one, the battlefield you fight on is separated vertically into three sections. With the exception of the section of the rightmost side of the screen which only has two rows, each vertical section is then segmented into three rows.

The first vertical section is where your character will stand. Here, you can easily switch his/her position depending on possible dangers and the positions of your enemies. Note that you can only melee attack enemies who are either right in front of you, or is diagonally away from you, but this restriction doesn’t apply to ranged attacks which you have a limited number of arrows for.

The second vertical section is what I’d call the “traps” section. Here, you or your enemies can set up traps to “ambush” any person who goes through them. The last vertical section is where all your enemies will be positioned. There are four spots here that are arranged in a diamond-like shape. This means at most, you’ll be facing up to four enemies at a time. Enemies can also move between the spots if they are empty and will follow the same attack rules as you do.

Combat here works in an odd but effective way. It seems to blend all three genres of strategy games into one melting pot of mechanics that is as unique as it is fun. Every enemy here will only attack once its attack bar is charged over a fairly short amount of time and the kind of attack you’ll face, especially if the enemy has a few skills under its belt, may seem random at first, but you’ll quickly realize that many of them follow a specific pattern which you can then take advantage of.

On your end, you’ll consume stamina whenever you attack an enemy or perform a block/parry, and you have a limited number of stamina points. Like the enemy’s attack bar, your stamina will regenerate over time, but it’s still important to be judicious with your stamina use since you don’t want to get caught with no stamina when you urgently need it.

There are, however, some tricks that you can use to gain an upper hand over your opponents. You can, for instance, squeeze in a cost-free counterattack whenever you’ve pulled off a successful parry. Enemies can also be stunned using the ranged attack you’ve got, so as to make taking on multiple enemies more manageable. There are times when fast clicking is crucial to beating an opponent, especially when both your health bars are low and it all boils down to whoever could deal the last hit first.

Adventuring through the many dark forests in this game feels a bit like a roguelite too. You get to choose which “way” to go, namely to continue the path you’re on or head deeper into the forest where you’ll potentially encounter more difficult enemies for a chance to get better and more loot.

Sometimes, instead of encountering fights after fights, the game will give you an event instead. Events can range from simple “Simon Says-like” puzzles to random gambles, to even a place to rest and restore your health. You are free to leave the forest at any time with your loot - except during a battle, of course – but the idea here is to make it to the end of the path and take on the big bad baddie at the end.

Now, as mentioned in the Plotline section above, what really sets you apart from the rest of the people in the game is the fact that you have the Kynseed and the backing of a powerful Fae, Mr. Fairweather. The Kynseed works by allowing you to accumulate generations-worth of knowledge, so you could basically pass on 100% of whatever that’s learned to your successor, which can be your own children or a random orphan. The only cost of this “gift” is that you can only live until 50 years old, but that’s also not a given since you can still die before your time and Mr. Fairweather will take a year away from the total you have for every revival he does.

There’s also a little neat advantage to being bound to Mr. Fairweather. He is able to help you by “selling” you a variety of Fae-enhanced items but he only takes years off your life as payment. Some of the items can be insanely useful so it’s probably worth knocking off a few years just to get them, such as the Wooden Key which allows you to access the many hidden Fae pathways in the game.

As a life sim, Kynseed isn’t the sort of game you can “complete” in a single sitting, even if you do play non-stop for hours on end. The game features an incredible amount of content, some of which requires some amount of “grind” – though there are shortcuts to be had, hint: read the proverbs - to access or unlock.

As much fun as I’ve had here, I believe there is still room for improvement for Kynseed. Besides adding in more quest and combat event variety, the game’s map UI could use a bit of an upgrade. Considering that the characters tend to move around on the map a lot, it’s good to have individual trackers on the map for each of the characters.

If that clogs up the map too much, then at least make it so that the game will mark down each of their houses on the map after their respective homestones have been found and interacted with. This way, at least it’d be easier to track down a quest giver’s home and send in their quest items via their mailboxes.

Graphics/ Sound

Fans of pixel art would fall instantly in love with the gorgeous pixel art in Kynseed. A nice palette of colors aside, each game asset here is lovingly drawn with an incredible amount of detail. The backgrounds look impressive too! In terms of sound, the game makes excellent use of both its selection of amazing soundtracks and silence with a hint of some ambiance, such as the sound of birds chirping or rain falling. The introduction of the game is also very well voice-acted, though the other characters in the game aren’t voice-acted.

Conclusion

As an avid fan of games like Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, Fable, and even Graveyard Keeper to some extent, Kynseed is definitely a very hard game to put down once you get going. The game has an incredible amount of content to offer, a massive world filled with secrets for you to discover, challenging adventures to be had in the many dark forests around the place, and plenty of locals for you to forge a relationship with. Besides being able to decide which career path you’d like, you can even set up your own family, have children, and pass on your Fae-contracted burden to your progeny. Plus, the amount of playtime you can sink into this game makes the asking price very worthwhile too!

So, if you’re a fan of life sim RPGs that let you tell your own stories while letting you learn about the stories of others, then Kynseed is one game you don’t want to miss!

New Game Added: Kynseed

by Aethyna Dec 14, 2022

Explore an expansive world full of interesting places and go on exciting combat-filled adventures, gather various materials and craft useful items, forge relationships with the locals across several towns and learn their stories, develop your career, and even set up a family with your significant other in this adventure-driven life sim, Kynseed!